CHAPTER XIV. 1700-1765

1700-1765

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.--CROPS.--CATTLE.-- DAIRYING.--POULTRY.--TULL AND THE NEW HUSBANDRY.--BAD TIMES. --FRUIT-GROWING

The history of agriculture in the eighteenth century is remarkable for several features of great importance. It first saw the application of capital in large quantities to farming, the improvements of the time being largely initiated by rich landowners whom Young praises rightly as public-spirited men who deserved well of their country, though Thorold Rogers attributes a meaner motive for the improvement of their estates, namely, their desire not to be outshone by the wealthy merchants. They were often ably assisted by tenant farmers, many of whom were now men with considerable capital, for whom the smaller farms were amalgamated into large ones. After the agricultural revolution of the latter half of the century, the tendency to consolidate small holdings into large farms grew apace and was looked on as a decided mark of progress. This agricultural revolution was largely a result of the industrial revolution that then took place in England. Owing to mechanical inventions and the consequent growth of the factory system, the great manufacturing towns arose, whence came a great demand for food, and, to supply this demand, farms, instead of being small self-sufficing holdings just growing enough for the farmer and his family and servants, grew larger, and became manufactories of corn and meat. The century was also remarkable for another great change. England, hitherto an exporting country, became an importing one. The progress of the century was furthered by a band of men whose names are, or ought to be, household words with English farmers: Jethro Tull, Lord Townshend, Arthur Young, Bakewell, Coke of Holkham, and the Collings. Further the century witnessed a great number of enclosures, especially when it was drawing to its close. According to the Report of the Committee on Waste Lands in 1797, the number of Enclosure Acts was: under Anne, 2 Acts, enclosing 1,439 acres; under Geo. I, 16 Acts, enclosing 17,960 acres; under Geo. II, 226 Acts, enclosing 318,778 acres; from 1760 to 1797, 1,532 Acts, enclosing 2,804,197 acres.

The period from 1700 to 1765 has been called the golden age of the agricultural classes, as the fifteenth century has been called the golden age of the labourer, but the farmer and landlord were often hard pressed; rates were low, wages were fair, and the demand for the produce of the farm constant owing to the growth of the population, yet prices for wheat, stock, and wool were often unremunerative to the farmer, and we are told in 1734, 'necessity has compelled our farmers to more carefulness and frugality in laying out their money than they were accustomed to in better times.' The labourer's wages varied according to locality. The assessment of wages by the magistrates in Lancashire for 1725 remains, and according to that the ordinary labourer earned 10d. a day in the summer and 9d. in the winter months, with extras in harvest, and this may be taken as the average pay at that date. Threshing and winnowing wheat by piece-work cost 2s. a quarter, oats 1s. a quarter. Making a ditch 4 feet wide at the top, 18 inches wide at the bottom, and 3 feet deep, double set with quicks, cost 1s. a rood (8 yards), 10d. if without the quick. The magistrates remarked in their proclamation on the plenty of the times and were afraid that for the northern part of the county, which was then very backward, the wages were too liberal. Wheat was, unfortunately, that year 46s. 1d. a quarter, but a few years before and after that date it was cheap--20s., 24s., 28s. a quarter--and fresh meat was only 3d. a lb., so that their wages went a long way. A considerable portion of the wages was paid in kind, not only in drink but in food, though this custom became less frequent as the century went on.

As for his food, Eden tells us that the diet of Bedford workhouse in 1730 was much better than that of the most industrious labourer in his own home, and this was the diet: bread and cheese or broth for breakfast, boiled beef hot or cold, sometimes with suet pudding for dinner, and bread and cheese or broth for supper. This must have been sufficiently monotonous, and we may be sure the labourer at home very seldom had boiled beef for dinner; but in the north he was much cleverer than his southern brother in cooking cereal foods such as oatmeal porridge, crowdie (also of oatmeal), frumenty or barley milk, barley broth, &c.

The village of the first half of the eighteenth century contained a much better graded society than the village of to-day. It had few gaps, so that there was a ladder from the lowest to the highest ranks, owing to the existence of many small holders of various degree, soon to be diminished by enclosure and consolidation.

There was a great increase in the number of live stock owing to the spread, gradual though it was, of roots and clover, which increased the winter food; 'of late years,' it was said in 1739, 'there have been improvements made in the breed of sheep by changing of rams, and sowing of turnips, grass seeds, &c.' Crops, too, were improving; and enclosed lands about 1726 were said to produce over 20 bushels of wheat to the acre.

Though the number of Enclosure Acts at the beginning of the century was nothing like the number at the end, the process was steadily going on, often by non-parliamentary enclosure, and was approved by nearly every one. Some, however, were opposed to it. John Cowper, who wrote an essay on 'Enclosing Commons' in 1732, said, a common was often the chief support of forty or fifty poor families, and even though their rights were bought out they were under the necessity of leaving their old homes, for their occupation was gone; but he says nothing of the well-known increased demand for labour on the enclosed lands. The force of his arguments may be gauged from his answer to Lawrence's statement that enclosure is the greatest benefit to good husbandry, and a remedy for idleness. On the contrary, says he, who among the country people live lazier lives than the grazier and the dairyman? All the dairyman has to do is to call his cows together to be milked!

Worlidge in 1669 had lamented that turnips were so little grown by English farmers in the field, and that it was a plant 'usually nourished in gardens', and in a letter to Houghton in 1684, he is the first to mention the feeding of turnips to sheep. However, in 1726 it was said that nothing of late years had turned to greater profit to the farmer, who now found it one of his chief treasures; and there were then three sorts: the round which was most common, the yellow, and the long. For winter use they were to be sown from the beginning of June to the middle of August, on fallow which had been brought to a good tilth, the seed harrowed in with a bush harrow, and if necessary rolled. When the plants had two or three leaves each they were to be hoed out, leaving them five or six inches apart, though some slovenly farmers did not trouble to do this; but there is no mention of hoeing between the rows. The fly was already recognized as a pest, and soot and common salt were used to fight it. Folding sheep in winter on turnips was then little practised, though Lawrence strongly recommends it. According to Defoe, Suffolk was remarkable for being the first county where the feeding and fattening of sheep and other cattle with turnips was first practised in England, to the great improvement of the land, 'whence', he says, 'the practice is spread over most of the east and south, to the great enriching of farmers and increase of fat cattle.' There were great disputes as to collecting the tithe, always a sore subject, on turnips; and the custom seems to have been that if they were eaten off by store sheep they went tithe free, if sheep were fattened on them the tithe was paid.

Clover, the other great novelty of the seventeenth century, was now generally sown with barley, oats, or rye grass, about 15 lb. per acre. This amount, sown on 2 acres of barley, would next year produce 2 loads worth about L5. The next crop stood for seed, which was cut in August, the hay being worth L9, and the seed out of it, 300 lb., was sold much of it for 16d. a lb., the sum realized in that year from the 2 acres being L30, without counting the aftermath. At this time most of the seed was still imported from Flanders. Much of the common and waste land of England, not previously worth 6d. an acre, had been by 1732 vastly improved through sowing artificial grasses on it, so that various people had gained considerable estates.

Carrots were also now grown as a field crop in places, especially near London, two sorts being known, the yellow and red, used chiefly by farmers for feeding their hogs. Of wheat the names were many, but there were apparently only seven distinct sorts, the Double-eared, Eggshell, Red or Kentish, Great-bearded, Pollard, Grey, and Flaxen or Lammas. The growth of saffron had declined, though the English variety was the best in the world, according to Lawrence, and except in Cambridgeshire and about Saffron Walden it was little known.

Though it was still some time before the days of Bakewell, increased attention was given to cattle-breeding; it was urged that a well-shaped bull be put to cows, one that had 'a broad and curled forehead, long horns, fleshy neck, and a belly long and large.' Such in 1726 was the ideal type of the long-horns of the Midland and the north, but it was noticed that of late years and especially in the north the Dutch breed was much sought after, which had short horns and long necks, the breed with which the Collings were to work such wonders. The then great price of L20 had been given for a cow of this breed. Bradley, Professor of Botany at Cambridge, and a well-known writer on agriculture, divided the cattle of England into three sorts according to their colour: the black, white, and red. The black, commonly the smallest, was the strongest for labour, chiefly found in mountainous countries; also bred chiefly in Cheshire, Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Derbyshire, sixty years before this, and in those days Cheshire cheese came from these cattle, apparently very much like the modern Welsh breed. The white were much larger, and very common in Lincolnshire at the end of the seventeenth century. They gave more milk than the black sort but went dry sooner. They were also found in Suffolk and Surrey.

The red cattle were the largest in England, their milk rich and nourishing, so much so that it was given specially to consumptives. They were first bred in Somerset, where in Bradley's time particular attention was paid to their breeding, and were evidently the ancestors of the modern Devons. About London these cows were often fed on turnips, given them tops and all, which made their milk bitter. They were also found in Lincolnshire and some other counties, where 'they were fed on the marshes', and Defoe saw, in the Weald of Kent, 'large Kentish bullocks, generally all red with their horns crooked inward.' Bradley gives the following balance sheet for a dairy of nine cows:

DR. L s. d.

6 months' grass keep at 1s. 6d. per week per head 17 11 0 6 months' winter keep (straw, hay, turnips, and grains) at 2s. per week per head 23 8 0 --------- L40 19 0 ========= CR. 13,140 gallons of milk 136 17 6 40 19 0 --------- Balance (profit) L95 18 6 =========

A correspondent, however, pointed out to Bradley that this yield and profit was far above the average, which was about L5 a cow, on whom Bradley retorted that it could be made, though it was exceptional.

In the eighteenth century the great trade of driving Scottish cattle to London began, Walter Scott's grandfather being the pioneer. The route followed diverged from the Great North Road in Yorkshire in order to avoid turnpikes, and the cattle, grazing leisurely on the strips of grass by the roadside, generally arrived at Smithfield in good condition.

Defoe tells us that most of the Scottish cattle which came yearly into England were brought to the village of S. Faiths, north of Norwich, 'where the Norfolk graziers go and buy them. These Scots runts, coming out of the cold and barren highlands, feed so eagerly on the rich pasture in these marshes that they grow very fat. There are above 40,000 of these Scots cattle fed in this county every year. The gentlemen of Galloway go to England with their droves of cattle and take the money themselves.' It was no uncommon thing for a Galloway nobleman to send 4,000 black cattle and 4,000 sheep to England in a year, and altogether from 50,000 to 60,000 cattle were said to come to England from Galloway yearly. Gentlemen on the Border before the Union got a very pretty living by tolls from these cattle; and the Earl of Carlisle made a good income in this way.

Cattle were sometimes of a great size. In 1697, in the park of Sir John Fagg near Steyning, Defoe saw four bullocks of Sir John's own breeding for which was refused in Defoe's hearing L26 apiece. They were driven to Smithfield and realized L25 each, having probably sunk on the way, but dressed they weighed 80 stone a quarter! These weights must have been very exceptional, but go to prove that cattle then could be grown to much greater size than is generally credited. A good price for a bullock in the first half of the eighteenth century was from L7 to L10.

The best poultry at the same date (1736) were said to be 'the white-feathered sort', especially those that had short and white legs, which were esteemed for the whiteness of their flesh; but those that had long yellow legs and yellow beaks were considered good for nothing. Care was to be used in the choice of a cock, for those of the game kind were to be avoided as unprofitable. Bradley gives a balance sheet for 12 hens and 2 cocks who had a free run in a farmyard and an orchard:

DR. L s. d.

39 bushels of barley 3 5 0 Balance, profit 16 0 ---------- L4 1 0 ==========

CR. L s. d.

Eggs (number unfortunately not given) 1 5 0 20 early chickens at 1s. 1 0 0 72 late chickens at 6d. 1 16 0 ---------- L4 1 0 ==========

He also recommends that in stocking a farm of L200 a year the following poultry should be purchased:

L s. d.

24 chickens at 4d. 8 0 20 geese 1 0 0 20 turkeys 1 0 0 24 ducks 12 0 6 pair of pigeons 12 0

The best way to fatten chickens, according to Bradley, was to put them in coops and feed them with barley meal, being careful to put a small quantity of brickdust in their water to give them an appetite.

On this farm were 20 acres of cow pasture besides common, and this with some turnips kept 9 cows, which gave about three gallons of milk a day at least, the milk being worth 1d. a quart. His pigs were of the 'Black Bantham' breed, which were better than the large sort common in England, for the flesh was much more delicate.

Suffolk was famous for supplying London with turkeys. Three hundred droves of turkeys, each numbering from 300 to 1000, had in one season passed over Stratford Bridge on the road from Ipswich to London. Geese also travelled on foot to London in prodigious numbers from Norfolk, Suffolk, and the Fen country, often 1,000 to 3,000 in a drove, starting in August when harvest was nearly over, so that the geese might feed on the stubble by the way; 'and thus they hold on to the end of October, when the roads begin to be too stiff and deep for their broad feet and short legs to march on.' There was, however, a more rapid method of getting poultry to the great market, by means of carts of four stages or stories, one above another, to carry the birds in, drawn by two horses, which by means of relays travelled night and day, and covered as much as 100 miles in two days and one night, the driver sitting on the topmost stage.

Hop growing in 1729, according to Richard Bradley, paid well; he says, 'ground never esteemed before worth a shilling an acre per annum, is rendered worth forty, fifty, or sometimes more pounds a year by planting hops judiciously. An acre of hops shall bring to the owner clear profit about L30 yearly; but I have known hop grounds that have cleared above L50 yearly per acre.' At this date 12,000 acres in England were planted with hops.

The great market for hops was Stourbridge Fair, once the greatest mart in England and still preserving much of its former importance: 'there is scarce any price fixed for hops in England till they know how they sell in Stourbridge Fair.' Thither they came from Chelmsford, Canterbury, Maidstone, and Farnham, where the bulk of the hops in England were then grown, though some were to be found at Wilton near Salisbury, in Herefordshire, and Worcestershire. Round Canterbury Defoe says there were 6,000 acres of hops, all planted within living memory; but the Maidstone district was called 'the mother of hop grounds', and with the country round Feversham was famous for apples and cherries.

The finest wool still, it seems, came from near Leominster, where the sheep in Markham's time were described as small-boned and black-faced, with a light fleece, and apparently they still had the same appearance at the beginning of the eighteenth century; and large-boned sheep with coarser wool were to be found in the counties of Warwick, Leicester, Buckingham, Northampton, and Nottingham; in the north of England too were big-boned sheep with inferior wool, the largest with coarse wool being found in the marshes of Lincolnshire.

About this time wool had fallen much in price: 'Has nobody told you,' writes a west country farmer to his absentee landlord in 1737, 'that wool has fallen to near half its price, and that we cannot find purchasers for a great part of it at any price whatsoever. When most of our estates (farms) were taken wool was generally 7d., 8d., or more by the pound; the same is now 4d. and still falling.' But the latter price was exceptionally low; Smith gives the following average prices per tod of 28 lb.:

1706 17s. 6d. 1717-8 23s. to 27s. 1737-42 11s. to 14s. 1743 20s. 1743-53 24s.

After 1753 it fell again, largely owing to the great plague among cattle, which brought about a 'prodigious increase of sheep'; and about 1770 Young favoured corn rather than wool, for there was always a market for the former, but the foreign demand for cloth was diminishing, especially in the case of France, besides prohibition of export kept down the price. Yet although wool was being deserted for corn it had in Young's time 'been so long supposed the staple and foundation of all our wealth, that it is somewhat dangerous to hazard an opinion not consonant to its encouragement'.

At the end of the century, however, there was a rapid increase in the price, partly due to increased demand by spinners and weavers who, owing to machinery, were working more economically; and partly to the enclosure of commons, and the ploughing up of land for corn.

Cheshire had long been famous for cheese. Barnaby Googe, in the last quarter of the sixteenth century, says, 'in England the best cheese is the Cheshyre and the Shropshyre, then the Banbury cheese, next the Suffolk and the Essex, and the very worst the Kentish cheese.' Camden, who died in 1623, tells us that 'the grasse and fodder (in Cheshire) is of that goodness and vertue that cheeses be made here in great number, and of a most pleasing and delicate taste such as all England again affordeth not the like, no though the best dairywomen otherwise and skillfullest in cheese making be had from hence;' and a little later it was said no other county in the realm could compare with Cheshire, not even that wonderful agricultural country Holland from which England learnt so much. In Lawrence's time Cheddar cheese was also famous, and there it had long been a custom for several neighbours to join their milk together to make cheeses, which were of a large size, weighing from 30 lb. to 100 lb. Good cheese came also from Gloucestershire and Warwickshire. The Cheshire men sent great quantities by sea to London, a long and tedious voyage, or else by land to Burton-on-Trent, and down that river to Hull and then by sea to London. The Gloucestershire men took it to Lechlade and sent it down the Thames; from Warwickshire it went by land all the way, or to Oxford and thence down the Thames to London. Stilton, too, had lately become famous, and was considered the best of all, selling for the then great price of 1s. a lb. on the farm, and 2s. 6d. at the Bell Inn, Stilton, where it seems to have first been sold in large quantities, though Leicestershire perhaps claims the honour of first making it.

The eastern side of Suffolk was, in Defoe's time, famous for the best butter and perhaps the worst cheese in England, the butter being 'barrelled and sometimes pickled up in small casks'.

Rabbits were occasionally kept in large numbers for profit; at Auborne Chase in Wilts, there was a warren of 700 acres surrounded by a wall--a most effective way of preventing escape, but somewhat expensive. In winter time they were fed on hay, and hazel branches from which they ate the bark. They were never allowed to get below 8,000 head, and from these, after deducting losses by poachers, weazles, polecats, foxes, &c., 24,000 were sold annually. These rabbits, owing to the quality of the grass, were famous for the sweetness of their flesh. The proprietor, Mr. Gilbert, began to kill them at Bartholomewtide, Aug. 24, and from then to Michaelmas obtained 9s. a dozen for them delivered free in London; but those from Michaelmas to Christmas realized 10s. 6d. a dozen.

The difference in price at the two periods is accounted for by the fact that their skins were much better in the latter, and the rabbits kept longer when killed; they must also have been larger. A skin before Michaelmas was only worth 1d., but soon after nearly 6d.; and in Hertfordshire was a warren where rabbit skins with silvery hair fetched 1s. each.

We have now reached the period when the result of Jethro Tull's labours was given to the world, his Horse-hoeing Husbandry appearing in 1733. It is no exaggeration to say that agriculture owes more to Tull than to any other man; the principles formulated in his famous book revolutionized British agriculture, though we shall see that it took a long time to do it. He has indeed been described as 'the greatest individual improver agriculture ever knew'. He first realized that deep and perfect pulverization is the great secret of vegetable nutrition, and was thus led on to perfect the system of drilling seed wide enough apart to admit of tillage in the intervals, and abandoning the wide ridges in vogue, laid the land into narrow ridges 5 feet or 6 feet wide. He was born at Basildon in Berkshire, heir to a good estate, and was called to the bar in 1699, but on his marriage in the same year settled on the paternal farm of Howberry in Oxfordshire. In his preface to his book he throws a flash of light on country life at a time when the roads were nearly as bad as in the Middle Ages, so that they effectually isolated different parts of England, when he speaks of 'a long confinement within the limits of a lonely farm, in a country where I am a stranger, having debarred me from all conversation'.

He took to agriculture more by necessity than by choice, for he knew too much 'the inconveniency and slavery attending the exorbitant power of husbandry servants', and he further gives this extraordinary character of the farm labourer of his day: ''Tis the most formidable objection against our agriculture that the defection of labourers is such that few gentlemen can keep their land in their own hands, but let them for a little to tenants who can bear to be insulted, assaulted, kicked, cuffed, and Bridewelled, with more patience than gentlemen are endowed with.' Tull wrote just before it became the fashion for gentlemen to go into farming, and laments that the lands of the country were all, or mostly, in the hands of rack-renters, whose supposed interest it was that they should never be improved for fear of fines and increased rents. Gentlemen then knew so little of farming that they were unable to manage their estates. No doubt his scathing remarks helped to initiate the well-known change in this respect, and soon, over all England, gentlemen of education and position were engaged in removing this reproach from their class. The same complaint as to their ignorance of matters connected with their land crops up again during the great French war, but they then had a good excuse, as they were busy fighting the French.

Tull invented his drill about 1701 at Howberry. The first occasion for making it, he says, was that it 'was very difficult to find a man that could sow clover tolerably; they had a habit to throw it once with the hand to two large strides and go twice in each cast; thus, with 9 or 10 lb. of seed to an acre, two-thirds of the ground was unplanted. To remedy this I made a hopper, to be drawn by a boy, that planted an acre sufficiently with 6 lb. of seed; but when I added to this hopper an exceeding light plough that made 6 channels eight inches asunder, into which 2 lb. to an acre being drilled the ground was as well planted. This drill was easily drawn by a man, and sometimes by a boy.'

His invention was largely prompted by his desire to do without the insolent farm servant whom he has described above, and the year after it was invented he certainly had his wish, for they struck in a body and were dismissed: 'it were more easy to teach the beasts of the field than to drive the ploughman out of his way.'

His ideas were largely derived from the mechanism of the organ which, being fond of music, he had mastered in his youth--a rotary mechanism, which is the foundation of all agricultural sowing implements. His first invention may be described as a drill plough to sow wheat and turnip seed in drills three rows at a time, a harrow to cover the seed being attached. Afterwards he invented a turnip drill, so arranged as regards dropping the seed and its subsequent covering with soil that half the seed should come up earlier than the rest, to enable a portion at least to escape the dreaded fly. He was a great believer in doing everything himself, and worked so hard at his drill that he had to go abroad for his health. He was somewhat carried away by his invention, and asserts that the expense of a drilled crop of wheat was one-ninth of that sown in the old way, giving the following figures to prove his assertion:

The Old Way L s. d.

Seed, 2-1/2 bushels, at 3s. 7 6 Three ploughings, harrrowing, and sowing 16 0 Weeding 2 0 Rent of preceding fallow 10 0 Manure 2 10 0 Reaping 4 6 --------- L 4 10 0 =========

The New Way

Seed, 3 pecks 2 3 Tillage 4 0 Drilling 6 Weeding 6 Uncovering (removing clods fallen on the wheat) 2 Brine and lime 1 Reaping 2 6 ----- 10 0 =====

It should be noted that he has omitted to charge rent for the year in which the crop was grown in both cases.

He considered fallowing and manure unnecessary, and grew without manure 13 successive wheat crops on the same piece of ground, getting better crops than his neighbours who pursued the ordinary course of farming. His three great principles, indeed, were drilling, reduction of seed, and absence of weeds, and he saw that dung was a great carrier of the latter but lacked a due appreciation of its chemical action. Of course, like all improvers, he was met with unlimited opposition, and on the publication of his book he was assailed with abuse, which, being a sensitive man, caused him extreme annoyance. His health was bad, his troubles with his labourers unending, his son a spendthrift, and he died at his now famous home, Prosperous Farm, near Hungerford, in 1741, having said not long before his death, 'Some, allowed as good judges, have upon a full view and examination of my practice declared their opinion that it would one day become the general husbandry of England.' Scotland was the first to perceive the merits of the system, and it gradually worked southwards into England, but for many years had to fight against ignorance and prejudice, even so intelligent a man as Arthur Young being opposed to it.

Farm leases had by this time assumed their modern form, and cultivation clauses were numerous. In one of 1732, at Hawsted, the tenant was to keep the hedges in repair, being allowed bushes and stakes for so doing. He was also to bestow on some part of the lands one load of good rotten muck over and above what was made on the farm for every load of hay, straw, or stover (fodder) which he should carry off. In another of 1740, he was to leave in the last year of the tenancy one-third of the arable land summer tilled, ploughed, and fallowed, for which he was to be paid according to the custom of the country. In 1753, in the lease of Pinford End Farm, there was a penalty of L10 an acre for breaking up pasture; a great increase in the amount of the penalty. All compost, dung, soil, and ashes arising on the farm were to be bestowed upon it.

Only two crops successively were to be taken on any of the arable land, but land sown with clover and rye-grass, if fed off, or with turnips which were fed on some part of the farm, were not to count as crops.

The ashes mentioned were those from wood, which were now carefully looked after, as it had become the custom to sell them to the soap-boilers, who came round to every farm collecting them. This is the earliest mention in a Hawsted lease of rye-grass, clover, and turnips, though clover and turnips had been first cultivated there about 1700, and soon spread.

The winter of 1708-9 was very severe, a great frost lasting from October until the spring; wheat was 81s. 9d. a quarter, and high prices lasted until 1715.

From 1715 to 1765 was an era of good seasons and low prices generally; in that half-century Tooke says there were only five bad seasons. In 1732 prices of corn were very low, wheat being about 24s. a quarter, so that we are not surprised to find that its cultivation often did not pay at all.

At Little Gadsden in Hertfordshire, in that year a fair season, and on enclosed land, the following is the balance sheet for an acre:

DR. L s. d.

Rent 12 0 Dressing (manuring) 1 0 0 2-1/2 bushels of seed 7 6 Ploughing first time 6 0 " twice more 8 0 Harrowing 6 Reaping and carrying 6 6 Threshing 3 9 -------- 3 4 3 ========

CR. L s. d.

15 bushels of wheat (a poor crop, as 20 bushels was now about the average) 2 2 0 Straw 11 6

2 13 6 -------- LOSS 10 9 ========

On barley, worth about L1 a quarter, the loss was 3s. 6d. an acre; on oats, worth 13s. a quarter, however, the profit was 21s.; on beans, 26s. 6d., these being that year exceptionally good and worth 20s. a quarter. Ellis objected to the new mode of drilling wheat because, he said, the rows are more exposed to the violence of the winds, rains, &c., by growing apart, than if close together, when the stalks support each other. This estimate may be compared to that of Tull for the 'old way' of sowing wheat, and to the following estimate of fifty years later in Surrey, when wheat was a much better price:--

DR. L s. d.

Rent, tithe, taxes 1 0 0 Team, &c. 1 0 0 2 bushels of seed 10 0 Carting and spreading manure and water furrowing 2 6 Brining 6 Weeding 1 6 Reaping and carrying 9 0 Threshing and cleaning 7 6 Binding straw 1 6 --------- L3 12 6 =========

CR. 20 bushels at 5s. 5 0 0 1-1/2 loads of straw 1 2 6 --------- L6 2 6 =========

The profit was thus L2 10s. 0d. an acre, and for barley it was L3 3s. 6d., for oats L1 19s. 10d., for beans L1 13s. 0d.

This crop of wheat was not very good, as the average in that district was from 20 to 25 bushels per acre, and Young before this saw crops of 30 bushels per acre growing. The over frequent use of fallows, which had so long marked agriculture, was in the early half of the eighteenth century beginning to be strongly disapproved of. Bradley advocated the continuous cultivation of the ground with different kinds of crops, 'for I find', he said, 'by experience that if such crops are sown as are full of fibrous roots, such roots greatly help to open the parts of grounds inclining to too much stiffness.'

FOOTNOTES:

Six Centuries of Work and Wages, p. 472.

See Baker, Record of Seasons and Prices, p. 185.

Eden, State of the Poor, iii p. cvii; Thorold Rogers, Work and Wages, p. 396.

In Herefordshire at this time it was 1-1/2d. per lb.

Hasbach, op. cit. p. 86.

Eden, op. cit. i. 286.

Ibid. i. 498.

Hasbach, op. cit. p. 71.

Smith, Memoirs of Wool, ii. 93.

John Lawrence, New System of Agriculture, p. 45. In 1712, a normal season, 48 acres of wheat at Southwick in Hants produced 16 bushels per acre, 45 acres of barley 12 bushels per acre, 30 acres of oats 24 bushels per acre; at the same place 240 sheep realized 8s. each, cows 65s., calves L1, horses L6, hay 25s. a ton (Hampshire Notes and Queries, iii. 120).

Worlidge, Systema Agriculturae, p. 42.

Collections, iv. 142.

Lawrence, New System of Agriculture, p. 109.

Tour (ed. 1724), i. 87.

Ellis, Chiltern and Vale Farming, p. 353.

Bradley, General Treatise, i. 175.

Ellis, Chiltern and Vale Farming, p. 260.

J. Lawrence, New System of Agriculture, p. 112.

Ibid. p. 92. About 1757 Lucerne, hitherto little grown in England, took its place in the rotation of crops.

Ibid. p. 130.

A General Treatise on Husbandry (1726), i. 72; cf. c.

The black cattle seem to have been spread very generally over England, according to previous writers and to Defoe, who often mentions them. He saw a 'prodigious quantity' in the meadows by the Waveney in Norfolk.--Tour, i. 97.

Bradley, General Treatise, i. 76.

Slater, English Peasantry, p. 52.

Tour (ed. 1724), i. (1) 97, and iii. (2) 73.

Ibid. i. 63.

J. Lawrence, New System of Agriculture, p. 151.

Bradley, General Treatise, i. 110.

Country Gentleman and Farmer's Director (1726), p. 7.

Defoe, Tour, i. 87.

Defoe, Tour (3rd ed.), i. 81.

Defoe, Tour (ed. 1724), ii. 1, 134.

Bradley, General Treatise, i. 160; see also Smith, Memoirs of Wool, ii. 169, where the sheep of Leominster, of Cotteswold, and of the Isle of Wight are said to be the best in 1719. The great market for sheep was Weyhill Fair, and Stourbridge Fair was a great wool market.

The West Country Farmer, a Representation of the Decay of Trade, 1737.

Memoirs of Wool, ii. 243.

Ibid. ii. 399.

Farmer's Letters (3rd ed.), p. 27.

Cunningham, Industry and Commerce, ii. 384.

Cunningham, Industry and Commerce, ii. 458.

Ormerod, Cheshire, i. 129. These words were written about 1656.

See Victoria County History: Rutland, Agriculture. Stilton was eaten in the same condition as many prefer it now, 'with the mites round it so thick that they bring a spoon for you to eat them.'

Defoe, Tour, i. (1) 78. Cheshire cheese was 2d. to 2-1/2d. per lb., Cheddar 6d. to 8d. in 1724, an extraordinary difference.

Bradley, i. 172.

Preface to Horse-hoeing Husbandry, (ed. 1733).

Horse-hoeing Husbandry, p. vi.

The West Country Farmer, above quoted, says wheat growing (in 1737) paid little. Before a bushel can be sold it costs L4 an acre, and the crop probably fetches half the money.

R.A.S.E. Journ. (3rd Ser.), ii. 20.

Cullum, Hawsted, p. 216.

Tooke, History of Prices, i. 35.

Wheat averaged:

1718-22 about 27s. 1730 about 30s. 1750 about 30s. 1724 " 36s. 1732 " 24s. 1755 " 35s. 1725 " 46s. 1736 " 30s. 1760 " 38s. 1726 " 35s. 1740 " 42s. 1765 " 42s. 1728 " 52s. 1744 " 23s.

Ellis, Chiltern and Vale Farming, p. 209. Nothing is charged for tithe and taxes.

Ibid. p. 352.

See above, p. 177, also p. 199 for Young's estimate in 1770.

Nothing is charged for the manure which was carted and spread.

John Trusler, Practical Husbandry, p. 28.

Country Gentleman and Farmer's Director (1726), p. xiii.