It was busy with foreign enterprises, discovering
new lands ; with commerce and trade, building up
a solid foundation of wealth ; with new branches
of knowledge, with fresh studies of old things, with
reconstituting its religious beliefs, and with keep-
ing up its head among the nations. Poets in the
Middle Ages had sung of woman as an angel,
ecclesiastical asceticism had treated her as little
better than a demon, but the men of the sixteenth
century were of a different mould. They had
something of the modern spirit, and looked upon
woman as a being to share in the common burdens
and pleasures of life, not to be worshipped or
shunned.
It is clear that in England women had attained
to a greater degree of freedom in daily life than



Il8 ENGLAND AFTER THE RENAISSANCE.
