“Your sheep,” I replied, “that used to be so meek and eat so little. Now they are becoming so greedy and wild that they devour human beings themselves, as I hear. They devastate and pillage fields, houses, and towns. For in whatever parts of the land the sheep yield the softest and most expensive wool, there the nobility and gentry . . . are not content with the old rents that the land yielded to their predecessors. Living in idleness and luxury, without doing any good to society, no longer satisfies them . . . They enclose every acre for pasture; they destroy houses and abolish towns . . .” (Bk 1)
