Parliament, of course, tried to regulate the price of food; an Act of 1532, 24 Hen.  VIII, c. 3, ordained that beef and pork should be 1/2d. a lb. and mutton and veal 5/8d. a lb.  The decrease in the number of cows also received its attention; 2 and 3 Philip and Mary, c. 3, states that forasmuch of late years a great number of persons have fed in their pastures sheep and cattle with no regard to breeding, so that there was great scarcity of stock, therefore for every 60 sheep kept one milk cow shall be kept, and for every 120 sheep one calf shall be bred, and for every 10 head of horned cattle shall be kept one milk cow, and for every two cows so kept one calf shall be bred.  The Act was to last seven years, but 13 Eliz. c. 25 made it perpetual.

In 1549 came the rising of Robert Kett in Norfolk, the last attempt of the English labourer to obtain redress of his wrongs by force of arms, though Kett himself belonged to the landlord class and took the side of the people probably by accident.  The petition of grievances drawn up by his followers aimed at diminishing the power of lords of manors as regards enclosures, the keeping of dove-cots, and other feudal wrongs.  ‘We pray’, said the insurgents, ’that all bondmen may be made free, for God made all free with His precious blood-shedding.’  The rebellion came to nothing, and some of the abuses at which it was aimed were dying a natural death, though enclosure often acted hardly on the poor man.

The manorial system went on steadily decaying, and by this time the demesne lands had much diminished in area on most manors.  Many parcels had been sold to the new landlord class, who had made their fortunes in the towns and, like most Englishmen, desired to become country gentlemen.

Much of the demesne had been sold in small lots to well-off tradesmen, and as the villeins had become copyholders a large part of the land was owned or occupied by yeomen or tenant farmers, who cultivated from 20 to 150 acres.  Many of the labourers also owned or rented cottages with 4 or 5 acres attached to them.  Such was the rural society at the end of the Tudor period.  The progress of enclosures helped to destroy this, for the labourers gradually ceased to own or occupy land, farms increased in size, the ownership of land came to be more and more the privilege of the rich, and people flocked in increasing numbers to the towns.[227a] In five Norfolk manors in Elizabeth’s time only from one-seventh to one-tenth was in demesne, and little of what was left was farmed by the lord, but let to farmers on leases.[227b] On some manors the demesne land lay in compact blocks near the manor house; on others it was in scattered strips of various size; in others it lay in blocks and strips.  The following particulars of a manor in Norfolk give a good picture of an estate in 1586-8, the tenants on it, their rank, and the size of their holdings:—­

Horstead with Staninghall, 2,746 acres.