CHAPTER XVI. 1765-1793

1765-1793

ARTHUR YOUNG.--CROPS AND THEIR COST.--THE LABOURERS' WAGES AND DIET.--THE PROSPERITY OF FARMERS.--THE COUNTRY SQUIRE.--ELKINGTON.--BAKEWELL.--THE ROADS.--COKE OF HOLKHAM.

The history of English agriculture in the latter half of the eighteenth century has been so well described by Arthur Young that any account of it at that time must largely be an epitome of his writings. The greatest of English writers on agriculture was born in 1741, and began farming early; but, as he confesses himself, was a complete failure. When he was twenty-six he took a farm of 300 acres at Samford Hall in Essex, and after five years of it paid a farmer L100 to take it off his hands, who thereupon made a fortune out of it. He had already begun writing on agriculture, and it must be confessed that he began to advise people concerning the art of agriculture on a very limited experience. It paid him, however, much better than farming, for between 1766 and 1775 he realized L3,000 on his works, among which were The Farmer's Letters, The Southern, Northern, and Eastern Tours. These are his qualifications for writing on agriculture, from his own pen: 'I have been a farmer these many years' (he was not yet thirty), 'and that not in a single field or two but upon a tract of near 300 acres most part of the time. I have cultivated on various soils most of the vegetables common in England and many never introduced into field husbandry. I have always kept a minute register of my business in every detail of culture, expenses, and produce, and an accurate comparison of the old and new husbandry.' It is said that though he really understood the theory and practice of farming he failed utterly in small economies. He was also far too vivacious and fond of society for the monotonous work of the plain farmer. At the same time his failures gave his observant mind a clear insight into the principles of agriculture. He was indefatigable in inquiries, researches, and experiments; and the best proof of the value of his works is that they were translated into Russian, German, and French. He tells us in the preface to Rural Economy that his constant employment for the previous seven years, 'when out of my fields, has been registering experiments.' His pet aversions were absentee landlords, obsolete methods of cultivation, wastes and commons, and small holdings (though towards the end of his life he changed his opinion as to the last); and the following, according to him, were the especially needed improvements of the time:--

The knowledge of good rotations of crops so as to do away with fallows, which was to be effected by the general use of turnips, beans, peas, tares, clover, &c., as preparation for white corn; covered drains; marling, chalking, and claying; irrigation of meadows; cultivation of carrots, cabbages, potatoes, sainfoin, and lucerne; ploughing, &c., with as few cattle as possible; the use of harness for oxen; cultivation of madden liquorice, hemp, and flax where suitable. Above all, the cultivation of waste lands, which he was to live to see so largely effected.

There was little knowledge of the various sorts of grasses at this time, and to Young is due the credit of introducing the cocksfoot, and crested dog's tail.

In 1790 he contemplated retiring to France or America, so heavy was taxation in England. 'Men of large fortune and the poor', he said, in words which many to-day will heartily endorse, 'have reason to think the government of this country the first in the world; the middle classes bear the brunt.' Perhaps to-day 'men of large fortune' have altered their opinion and only 'the poor' are satisfied. However, he only visited France, and gave us his vivid picture of that country before the great revolution.

In 1793 the Board of Agriculture was formed, and Young was made secretary with a salary of L400 a year.

About 1810 he wrote that the preceding half-century had been by far the most interesting in the progress of agriculture, and ascribes the increase of interest in it to the publication of his Tours. George III told him he always took with him the Farmer's Letters. The improvement, Young said, had been largely due to individual effort, for commerce had been predominant in Parliament and agriculture had begun to be neglected; a statement which, seeing that Parliament was then almost entirely composed of landowners, must be accepted with some reserve.

Young died in 1820, having been totally blind for some time, a misfortune which did not prevent him working hard. In his well-known Tours he often had much difficulty in obtaining information, and confesses that he was forced to make more than one farmer drunk before he got anything out of him.

The exodus from the country to the towns then, as so often in history, was noted by thinking people, but Young says it was merely a natural consequence of the demand for profitable employment and was not to be regretted; but he wrote in a time when the country population was still numerous, and there was little danger of England becoming, what she is to-day, a country without a solid foundation, with no reservoir of good country blood to supply the waste of the towns.

When Young began to write, the example of Townshend and his contemporaries was being followed on all sides, and this good movement was stimulated by Young's writings. Farming was the reigning taste of the day. There was scarce a nobleman without his farm, most of the country gentlemen were farmers, and attended closely to their business instead of leaving it to stewards, 'who governed in matters of wheat and barley as absolutely as in covenants of leases,' and the squire delighted in setting the country a staring at the novelties he introduced. Even the stable and the kennel were ousted by farming from rural talk, and citizens who breathed the smoke of London five days a week were farmers the other two, and many young fellows of small fortune who had been brought up in the country took farms, and the fashion was followed by doctors, lawyers, clergymen, soldiers, sailors, and merchants. The American and French War of 1775-83 and the great conflict with France from 1793 to 1815 were, however, to divert many of the upper classes from agriculture, for they very properly thought their duty was then to fight for their country; so that we again have numerous complaints of agents and stewards managing estates who knew nothing whatever about their business. It was not to be wondered at that all this activity brought about considerable progress. 'There have been,' said Young about 1770, 'more experiments, more discoveries, and more general good sense displayed within these ten years than in a hundred preceding ones,' a statement which perhaps did not attach sufficient importance to the work of Townshend and his contemporaries, and to the 'new husbandry' of Tull, which Young did not appreciate at its full value.

The place subsequently taken by the Board of Agriculture, and in our time by the Royal Agricultural Society, was then occupied by the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, which offered premiums for such objects as the cultivation of carrots in the field for stock, then little practised; for gathering the different sorts of grass seeds and keeping them clean and free from all mixture with other grasses, a very rare thing at that time; for experiments in the comparative merits of the old and new husbandry; for the growth of madder; L20 for a turnip-slicing machine, then apparently unknown, and for experiments whether rolling or harrowing grass land was better, 'at present one of the most disputed points of husbandry.'

In spite of this progress, many crops introduced years before were unknown to many farmers. Sainfoin, cabbages, potatoes, carrots, were not common crops in every part of England, though every one of them was well known in some part or other; not more than half, or at most two-thirds, of the nation cultivated clover. Many, however, of the nobility and gentry in the north had grown cabbages with amazing success, lately, 30 guineas an acre being sometimes the value of the crop.

Half the cultivated lands, in spite of the progress of enclosure for centuries, were still farmed on the old common-field system. When anything out of the common was to be done on common farms, all common work came to a standstill. 'To carry out corn stops the ploughs, perhaps at a critical season; the fallows are frequently seen overrun with weeds because it is seed time; in a word, some business is ever neglected.' As for the outcry against enclosing commons and wastes, people forgot that the farmers as well as the poor had a right of common and took special care by their large number of stock to starve every animal the poor put on the common.

About the same time that Young wrote these words there appeared a pamphlet written by 'A Country Gentleman' on the advantages and disadvantages of enclosing waste lands and common fields, which puts the arguments against enclosure very forcibly. The writer's opinion was that it was clearly to the landowner's gain to promote enclosures, but that the impropriator of tithes reaped most benefit and the small freeholder least, because his expenses increased inversely to the smallness of his allotment. As to diminution of employment, he reckoned that enclosed arable employed about ten families per 1,000 acres, open field arable twenty families, a statement opposed to the opinion of nearly all the agricultural writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is surely an incontestable fact that enclosed land meant much better tillage, and better tillage meant more labour, the excessive amount of fallow necessary under the common-field system, from the inability to grow roots except by special arrangement, is alone enough to prove this. The same writer admitted that common pastures, wastes, &c., employed only one family per 2,000 acres, but enclosed pasture five families per 1,000 acres, and enclosed wastes sixteen families.

A 'Country Farmer', who wrote in 1786, states that many of the small farmers displaced by enclosures sold their few possessions and emigrated to America. The growing manufacturing towns also absorbed a considerable number. That there was a considerable amount of hardship inflicted on small holders and commoners is certain, but industrial progress is frequently attended by the dislocation of industry and consequent distress; the introduction of machinery, for instance, often causing great suffering to hand-workers, but eventually benefiting the whole community. How many men has the self-binding reaping machine thrown for a time out of work? So enclosure caused distress to many individuals, but was for the good of the whole nation. The history of enclosure is really the history of progress in farming; the conversion of land badly tilled in the old common fields, and of waste land little more valuable than the prairies; into well-managed fruitful farms. That much of the common-field land when enclosed was laid down to grass is certainly true, and certainly inevitable if it paid best under grass. No one can expect the holders of land naturally best suited for grass to keep it under tillage for philanthropic purposes. A vast number of the commoners too were idle thriftless beings, whose rights on a few acres enabled them to live a life of pilfering and poaching; and it was a very good thing when such people were induced to lead a more regular and respectable existence. The great blot on the process was that it made the English labourer a landless man. Compensation was given him at the time of enclosure in the shape of allotments or sums of money, but the former he was generally compelled to give up owing to the expense he had been put to at allotment, and the latter he often spent in the public-house.

At this date the proprietors of large estates who wished to enclose by Act of Parliament, generally settled all the particulars among themselves before calling any meeting of the rest of the proprietors. The small proprietor had very little say either in regulating the clauses of the Act, or in the choice of commissioners. Any owner of one-fifth of the land, however, could negative the measure and often used his right to impose unreasonable clauses. It is well known that the legal expenses and fencing were very costly. The enclosure commissioners too often divided the land in an arbitrary and ignorant manner, and there was no appeal from them except by filing a bill in Chancery. Accounts were hardly ever shown by the commissioners, and if a proprietor refused to pay the sums levied they were empowered to distrain immediately. All these evils attending enclosure made many who were eager to benefit by it very chary in commencing it.

Then, as now, one of the commonest errors of farmers was that of taking too much land for their capital; Young considered L6 an acre necessary on an average, equal to more than L12 to-day; a sum which few farmers at any time have in hand when they take a farm. As for gentlemen farmers, who were then rushing into the business, they were warned that they had no chance of success if they kept any company or amused themselves with anything but their own business, unless perhaps they had a good bailiff.

Lime, one of the most ancient of manures, was then the most commonly used in England, 80 to 100 loads an acre being a common dressing, but many farmers were very ignorant of its proper use. Marl, which to-day is seldom used, was considered to last for twenty years, though for the first year no benefit was observable, and very little the second and the third, its value then becoming very apparent. In the last five years, however, its value was nearly worn out. But it was much to be questioned whether marl in its best state anywhere yields an increase of produce equal to that which a good manuring of dung will give. Marl was applied in huge quantities on arable and grass, and often made the latter look like arable land so thickly was it spread.

At this date (1770) the average crops on poor, and on good land were:

On land worth 5s. an acre:

Wheat 12 bushels per acre. Rye 16 " " Barley 16 " " Oats 20 " " Turnips, to the value of L1. Clover " "

On land worth 20s. an acre:

Wheat 28 bushels per acre. Barley 40 " " Oats 48 " " Beans 40 " " Turnips, to the value of L3. Clover " "

The cost of cultivating the latter, which may be given in full, as it affords an excellent example of the price of growing various crops, and the methods of their cultivation at this period, was as follows:

First year, turnips: L s. d.

Rent 1 0 0 Tithe and 'town charges' 8 0 Five ploughings, @ 4s. 1 0 0 Three harrowings 1 0 Seed 6 Sowing 3 Twice hand-hoeing 7 0 ----------- L2 16 9 ===========

It will be noticed there was no horse-hoeing.

Second year, barley: L s. d.

Rent, tithe, &c. 1 8 0 Three ploughings 12 0 Three harrowings 1 0 Seed 8 0 Sowing 3 Mowing and harvesting 3 0 Water furrowing 6 Threshing, @ 1s. a quarter 5 0 ----------- L2 17 9 ===========

Third year, clover: L s. d.

Rent, &c. 1 8 0 Seed 5 0 Sowing 3 ---------- L1 13 3 ==========

Fourth year, wheat: L s. d.

Rent, &c. 1 8 0 One ploughing 4 0 Three harrowings 1 0 Seed 10 0 Sowing 3 Water furrowing 9 Thistling 1 6 Reaping and harvesting 7 0 Threshing, @ 2s. a quarter 7 0 ---------- L2 19 6 ==========

Fifth year, beans: L s. d.

Rent, &c. 1 8 0 Two ploughings 8 0 Seed, 2 bushels 8 0 Sowing 6 Twice hand-hoeing 12 0 Twice horse-hoeing 3 0 Reaping and harvesting 8 0 Threshing 5 0 ---------- L3 12 6 ==========

Sixth year, oats: L s. d.

Rent, &c. 1 8 0 Once ploughing 4 0 Two harrowings 8 Four bushels of seed 6 0 Sowing 3 Mowing and harvesting 3 0 Threshing, @ 1s. a quarter 6 0 ---------- L2 7 11 ==========

Good land at a high rent is always better than poor land at a low rent; the average profit per acre on 5s. land was then about 8s. 8d., on 20s. land, 29s.

Grass was much more profitable than tillage, the profit on 20 acres of arable in nine years amounted to L88, whereas on grass it was L212, or 9s. 9d. an acre per annum for the former and 23s. for the latter. Yet dairying, at all events, was then on the whole badly managed and unprofitable. The average cow ate 2-1/2 acres of grass, and the rent of this with labour and other expenses made the cost L5 a year per cow, and its average produce was not worth more than L5 6s. 3d. This scanty profit was due to the fact that few farmers used roots, cabbages, &c., for their cows, and to their wrong management of pigs, kept on the surplus dairy food. By good management the nett return could be made as much as L4 15s. 0d. per cow.

The management of sheep in the north of England was wretched. In Northumberland the profit was reckoned at 1s. a head, partly derived from cheese made from ewes' milk. The fleeces averaged 2 lb., and the wool was so bad as not to be worth more than 3d. or 4d. per lb.

Pigs could be made to pay well, as the following account testifies:

Food and produce of a sow in one year (1763), which produced seven pigs in April and eleven in October:

DR. L s. d.

Grains 10 4 Cutting a litter 1 6 5 quarters peas 5 2 0 10 bushels barley 1 0 0 Expenses in selling 11 6 10 bushels peas 1 6 3 ---------- L8 11 7 ==========

CR. L s. d.

A pig 2 3 A fat hog 1 9 0 Another, 110 lb. wt. 1 12 9 Another, 116 lb. wt. 2 0 0 Heads 5 3 3 fat hogs 6 7 0 1 fat hog 2 0 0 10 young pigs 4 16 6 ----------- L18 12 9 8 11 7 ----------- Profit L10 1 2 ===========

We have seen that Young thought little of the 'new husbandry'; he does not even give Tull the credit of inventing the drill: 'Mr. Tull perhaps again invented it. He practised it upon an extent of ground far beyond that of any person preceding him: the spirit of drilling died with Mr. Tull and was not revived till within a few years.' It was doubtful if 50 acres of corn were then annually drilled in England. Lately drilling had been revived and there were keen disputes as to the old and new methods of husbandry, the efficacy of the new being far from decided. The cause of the slow adoption of drill husbandry was the inferiority of the drills hitherto invented. They were complex in construction, expensive, and hard to procure. It seemed impossible to make a drill or drill plough as it was called, for such it then was--a combination of drill, plough, and harrow--capable of sowing at various depths and widths, and at the same time light enough for ordinary use. All the drills hitherto made were too light to stand the rough use of farm labourers: 'common ploughs and harrows the fellows tumble about in so violent a manner that if they were not strength itself they would drop to pieces. In drawing such instruments into the field the men generally mount the horses, and drag them after them; in passing gateways twenty to one they draw them against the gate post.' Some of 'these fellows' are still to be seen!

Another defect in drilling was that the drill plough filled up all the water furrows, which, at a time when drainage was often neglected, were deemed of especial importance, and they all had to be opened again.

Further, said the advocates of the old husbandry, it was a question whether all the horse-hoeings, hand-hoeings, and weedings of the new husbandry, though undoubtedly beneficial, really paid. It was very hard to get enough labourers for these operations. With more reason they objected to the principles of discarding manure and sowing a large number of white straw crops in succession, but admitted the new system was admirably adapted for beans, turnips, cabbages, and lucerne.

However, there were many followers of Tull. The Author of Dissertations on Rural Subjects thought the drill plough an excellent invention, as it saved seed and facilitated hoeing; but he said Tull's drill was defective in that the distances between the rows could not be altered, a defect which the writer claims to have remedied. Young's desire for a stronger drill seems to have been soon answered, as the same writer says the barrel drill invented by Du-Hamel and improved by Craik was strong, cheap, and easily managed.

The tendency of the latter half of the century was decidedly in favour of larger farms; it was a bad thing for the small holders, but it was an economic tendency which could not be resisted. The larger farmers had more capital, were more able and ready to execute improvements; they drained their land, others often did not; having sufficient capital they were able both to buy and sell to the best advantage and not sacrifice their produce at a low price to meet the rent, as the small farmer so often did and does. They could pay better wages and so get better men, kept more stock and better, and more efficient implements. They also had a great advantage in being able by their good teams to haul home plenty of purchased manure, which the small farmer often could not do. The small tenants, who had no by-industry, then, as now, had to work and live harder than the ordinary labourer to pay their way.

Young calculated as early as 1768 that the average size of farms over the greater part of England was slightly under 300 acres. In his Tour in France Young, speaking of the smallness of French farms as compared with English ones, and of the consequent great inferiority of French farming, says, 'Where is the little farmer to be found who will cover his whole farm with marl at the rate of 100 to 150 tons per acre; who will drain his land at the expense of L2 to L3 an acre; who will, to improve the breed of his sheep, give 1,000 guineas for the use of a single ram for a single season; who will send across the kingdom to distant provinces for new implements and for men to use them? Deduct from agriculture all the practices that have made it flourishing in this island, and you have precisely the management of small farms.' In 1868 the Report of the Commission on the Agriculture of France agreed with Young, noting the grave consequences of the excessive subdivision of land, loss of time, waste of labour, difficulties in rotation of crops, and of liberty of cultivation.

For stocking an arable farm of 70 acres Young considered the following expenditure necessary, the items of which give us interesting information as to prices about 1770:--

L s. d.

Rent, tithe, and town charges for first year 70 0 0 Household furniture 30 0 0 Wagon 25 0 0 Cart with ladders 12 0 0 Tumbril 10 0 0 Roller for broad lands (of wood) 2 0 0 " narrow " " 1 15 0 Cart harness for 4 horses 8 17 0 Plough " " 2 16 0 2 ploughs 3 0 0 A pair of harrows 1 15 0 Screen, bushel, fan, sieves, forks, rakes, &c. 8 0 0 Dairy furniture 3 0 0 20 sacks 2 10 0 4 horses 32 0 0 Wear and tear, and shoeing one year 13 0 0 Keep of 4 horses from Michaelmas to May Day, @ 2s. 6d. each a week 14 0 0 5 cows 20 0 0 20 sheep 5 10 0 One sow 15 0 One servant's board and wages for one year 15 0 0 A labourer's wages for one year 20 0 0 Seed for first year, 42 acres, @ 11s. 6d. 24 3 0 Harvest labour 1 10 0 ------------ L326 11 0 ============

Or nearly L5 an acre.

About the same date the Complete English Farmer reckoned that the occupier of a farm of 500 acres (300 arable, 200 pasture), ought to have a capital of L1,500, and estimated that, after paying expenses and maintaining his family, he could put by L50 a year; 'but this capital was much beyond what farmers in general can attain to.'

The controversy of horses versus oxen for working purposes was still raging, and Young favoured the use of oxen; for the food of horses cost more, so did their harness and their shoeing, they are much more liable to disease, and oxen when done with could be sold for beef. One stout lad, moreover, could attend to 8 or 10 oxen, for all he had to do was to put their fodder in the racks and clean the shed; no rubbing, no currying or dressing being necessary. No beasts fattened better than oxen that had been worked. A yoke of oxen would plough as much as a pair of horses and carry a deeper and truer furrow, while they were just as handy as horses in wagons, carts, rollers, &c. William Marshall, the other great agricultural writer of the end of the eighteenth century, agreed with Young, yet in spite of all these advantages horses were continually supplanting oxen.

Among the improvements in agriculture was the introduction of broad-wheeled wagons; narrow-wheeled ones were usual, and these on the turnpikes were only allowed to be drawn by 4 horses so that the load was small, but broad-wheeled wagons might use 8 horses. The cost of the latter was L50 against L25 for the former.

Young's opinion of the labouring man, like Tull's, was not a high one. 'I never yet knew', he says, 'one instance of any poor man's working diligently while young and in health to escape coming to the parish when ill or old.' This is doubtless too sweeping. There must have been others like George Barwell, whom Marshall tells of in his Rural Economy of the Midlands, who had brought up a family of five or six sons and daughters on a wage of 5s. to 7s. a week, and after they were out in the world saved enough to support him in his old age. The majority, however, long before the crushing times of the French War, seem to have been thoroughly demoralized by indiscriminate parish relief, and habitually looked to the parish to maintain them in sickness and old age. Cullum a few years later, remarks on the poor demanding assistance without the scruple and delicacy they used to have, and says 'the present age seems to aim at abolishing all subordination and dependence and reducing all ranks as near a level as possible.'! Idleness, drunkenness, and what was then often looked on with disgust and contempt, excessive tea-drinking, were rife. Tea then was very expensive, 8s. or 10s. a lb. being an ordinary price, so that the poor had to put up with a very much adulterated article, most pernicious to health. The immoderate use of this was stated to have worse effects than the immoderate use of spirits. The consumption of it was largely caused by the deficiency of the milk supply, owing to the decrease of small farms; the large farmers did not retail such small commodities as milk and butter, but sent them to the towns so that the poor often went without.

In 1767 Young found wages differing according to the distance from London:--

s. d.

20 miles from London they were per week 10 9 From 20 to 60 " " " 7 8 " 60 to 110 " " " 6 4 " 110 to 170 " " " 6 3

Giving an average of 7s. 9d. which, however, was often exceeded as there was much piece-work which enabled the men to earn more.

Young drew up a dietary for a labourer, his wife, and a family of three children, which he declared to be sufficient:--

L s. d.

Food, 6s. per week; per year 15 12 0 Rent 1 10 0 Clothes 2 10 0 Soap and candles 1 5 0 Loss of time through illness, and medicine 1 0 0 Fuel 2 0 0 ---------- L23 17 0 ==========

L s. d.

The man's wages were, @ 1s. 3d. a day, for the year 19 10 0 The woman's, @ 3-3/4d. a day, for the year 4 17 6 The boy of fifteen could earn 9 0 0 The boy of ten could earn 4 7 6 ---------- L37 15 0 ==========

Which would give the family a surplus of L13 18s. 0d. a year.

What the man's food should consist of is shown by a list of 'seven days' messes for a stout man':--

s. d.

1st day. 2 lb. of bread made of wheat, rye, and potatoes--'no bread exceeds it' 2 Cheese, 2 oz. @ 4d. a lb 1/2 Beer, 2 quarts 1 2nd day. Three messes of soup 2 3rd day. Rice pudding 2-1/2 4th day. 1/4 lb. of fat meat and potatoes baked together 2-3/4 Beer 1 5th day. Rice milk 2 6th day. Same as first day 3-1/2 7th day. Potatoes, fat meat, cheese, and beer 4 --------- 1 9-1/4 =========

As Young was a man of large practical experience we may assume that this, though it seems a very insufficient diet, was not unlike the food of some labourers at that date. However, the bread he recommends was not that eaten by a large number of them. Eden states that in 1764 about half the people of England were estimated to be using wheaten bread, and at the end of the century, although prices had risen greatly, he says that in the Home Counties wheaten bread was universal among the peasant class. Young, indeed, acknowledges that many insisted on wheaten bread. In Suffolk, according to Cullum, pork and bacon were the labourer's delicacies, bread and cheese his ordinary diet.

The north of England was more thrifty than the south. At the end of the eighteenth century barley and oaten bread were much used there. Lancashire people fed largely on oat bread, leavened and unleavened; the 33rd Regiment, which went by the name of the 'Havercake lads', was usually recruited from the West Riding where oat bread was in common use, and was famous for having fine men in its ranks. The labourers of the north were also noted for their skill in making soups in which barley was an important ingredient. In many of the southern counties tea was drunk at breakfast, dinner, and supper by the poor, often without milk or sugar; but alcoholic liquors were also consumed in great quantities, the southerner apparently always drinking a considerable amount, the northerner at rare intervals drinking deep. The drinking in cider counties seems always to have been worse as far as quantity goes than elsewhere, and the drink bills on farms were enormous. Marshall says that in Gloucestershire drinking a gallon 'bottle', generally a little wooden barrel, at a draught was no uncommon feat; and in the Vale of Evesham a labourer who wanted to be even with his master for short payment emptied a two-gallon bottle without taking it from his lips. Even this feat was excelled by 'four well-seasoned yeomen, who resolved to have a fresh hogshead tapped, and setting foot to foot emptied it at one sitting.' Yet in the beer-drinking counties great quantities were consumed; a gallon a day per man all the year round being no uncommon allowance.

The superior thrift of the north was shown in clothes as well as food, the midland and southern labourer at the end of the century buying all his clothes, the northerner making them almost all at home; there were many respectable families in the north who had never bought a pair of stockings, coat, or waistcoat in their lives, and a purchased coat was considered a mark of extravagance and pride.

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of Young's dietary is that green vegetables are absolutely ignored. The peasant was supposed to need them as little as in the Middle Ages.

However, Young admits that very few labourers lived as cheaply as this, and he found the actual ordinary budget for the same family to be:--

L s. d.

Food, per week, 7s. 6d.; per year 19 10 0 Beer " 1s. 6d. " 3 18 0 Soap and candles 1 5 0 Rent 1 10 0 Clothes 2 10 0 Fuel 2 0 0 Illness, &c. 1 0 0 Infant 2 12 0 ---------- L34 5 0 ==========

This, with the same Income as before, left him with a surplus of L3 10s. 0d.; but as it was not likely his wife could work all the year round, or that both his eldest children should be boys, it appears that his expenses must often have exceeded his income. This being so, it is not surprising that he was often drunken and reckless, and ready to come on the parish for relief. To labour incessantly, often with wife and boys, to live very poorly, yet not even make both ends meet, was enough to kill all spirit in any one.

A great evil from which the labourer suffered was the restrictions thrown on him of settling in another parish. If he desired to take his labour to a better market he often found it closed to him. His marriage was discouraged, because a single man did not want a cottage and a married one did. To ease the rates there was open war against cottages, and many were pulled down. If a labourer in a parish to which he did not legally belong signified his intention of marrying, he immediately had notice to quit the parish and retire to his own, unless he could procure a certificate that neither he nor his would be chargeable. If he went to his own parish he came off very badly, for they didn't want him, and cottages being scarce he probably had to put up with sharing one with one or more families. Sensible men cried out for the total abolition of the poor laws, the worst effects of which were still to be felt.

Yet there was a considerable migration of labour at harvest time when additional hands were needed. Labourers came from neighbouring counties, artisans left their workshops in the towns, Scots came to the Northern counties, Welshmen to the western, and Irishmen appeared in many parts; and they were as a rule supplied by a contractor.

London was regarded as a source of great evil to the country by attracting the young and energetic thither. It used, men said, to be no such easy matter to get there when a stage coach was four or five days creeping 100 miles and fares were high; but in 1770 a country fellow 100 miles from London jumped on a coach in the morning and for 8s. or 10s. got to town by night, 'and ten times the boasts are sounded in the ears of country fools by those who have seen London to induce them to quit their healthy clean fields for a region of dirt, stink, and noise.' A prejudice might well have been entertained against the metropolis at this time, for it literally devoured the people of England, the deaths exceeding the births by 8,000 a year. One of the causes that had hitherto kept people from London was the dread of the small-pox, but that was now said to be removed by inoculation. Among the troubles farmers had to contend with were the audacious depredations caused by poachers, generally labourers, who swarmed in many villages. They took the farmer's horses out of his fields after they had done a hard day's work and rode them all night to drive the game into their nets, blundering over the hedges, sometimes staking the horses, riding over standing corn, or anything that was cover for partridges, and when they had sold their ill-gotten game spent the money openly at the nearest alehouse. Then they would go back and work for the farmers they had robbed, drunk, asleep, or idle the whole day. The subscription packs of foxhounds were also a great nuisance, many of the followers being townsmen who bored through hedges and smashed the gates and stiles, conduct not unknown to-day. In spite of these drawbacks the long period of great abundance from 1715 to 1765 and the consequent cheapness of food with an increase of wages was attended with a great improvement in the condition and habits of the people. Adam Smith refers to 'the peculiarly happy circumstances of the country'; Hallam described the reign of George II as 'the most prosperous period that England has ever experienced'; and it was Young's opinion about 1770 that England was in a most rich and flourishing situation, 'her agriculture is upon the whole good and spirited and every day improving, her industrious poor are well fed, clothed, and lodged at reasonable rates, the prices of all necessaries being moderate, our population increasing, the price of labour generally high.' The great degree of luxury to which the country had arrived within a few years 'is not only astonishing but almost dreadful to think of. Time was when those articles of indulgence which now every mechanic aims at the possession of were enjoyed only by the baron or lord.' Great towns became the winter residence of those who could not afford London, and the country was said to be everywhere deserted, an evil largely attributed to the improvement of posting and coaches. The true country gentleman was seldom to be found, the luxuries of the age had softened down the hardy roughness of former times and the 'country, like the capital, is one scene of dissipation.' The private gentleman of L300 or L400 a year must have his horses, dogs, carriages, pictures, and parties, and thus goes to ruin. The articles of living, says the same writer, were 100 per cent. dearer than some time back. This is a very different picture from that in which Young represents every one rushing into farming, but no doubt depicts one phase of national life.

An excellent observer noticed in 1792 that the preceding forty or fifty years had witnessed the total destruction in England of the once common type of the small country squire. He was:--

'An independent gentleman of L300 per annum who commonly appeared in a plain drab or plush coat, large silver buttons, a jockey cap, and rarely without boots. His travels never exceeded the distance of the county town, and that only at assize or session time, or to attend an election. Once a week he commonly dined at the next market town with the attorneys and justices. He went to church regularly, read the weekly journal, settled the parochial disputes, and afterwards adjourned to the neighbouring alehouse, where he generally got drunk for the good of his country. He was commonly followed by a couple of greyhounds and a pointer, and announced his arrival at a neighbour's house by smacking his whip and giving a view halloo. His drink was generally ale, except on Christmas Day, the Fifth of November, or some other gala day, when he would make a bowl of strong brandy. The mansion of one of these squires was of plaster striped with timber, not unaptly called callimanco work, or of red brick with large casemented bow windows; a porch with seats in it and over it a study: the eaves of the house well inhabited by swallows, and the court set round with hollyhocks; near the gate a horse-block for mounting. The hall was furnished with flitches of bacon, and the mantelpiece with guns and fishing-rods of different dimensions, accompanied by the broadsword, partisan, and dagger borne by his ancestor in the Civil Wars. Against the wall was posted King Charles's Golden Rules, Vincent Wing's Almanac and a portrait of the Duke of Marlborough; in his window lay Baker's Chronicle, Foxe's Book of Martyrs, Glanvill On Apparitions, Quincey's Dispensatory, The Complete Justice, and a Book of Farriery. In a corner by the fireside stood a large wooden two-armed chair with a cushion, and within the chimney corner were a couple of seats. Here at Christmas he entertained his tenants, assembled round a glowing fire made of the roots of trees; and told and heard the traditionary tales of the village about ghosts and witches while a jorum of ale went round. These men and their houses are no more.'

The farmer, in some parts at all events, was becoming a more civilized individual; the late race had lived in the midst of their enlightened neighbours like beings of another order; in their personal labour they were indefatigable, in their fare hard, in their dress homely, in their manners rude. The French and American War of 1775-83 was a very prosperous time, and the farmer's mode of living greatly improved. Farmhouses in England, it was noticed, were in general well furnished with every convenient accommodation. Into many of them a 'barometer had of late years been introduced'. The teapot and the mug of ale jointly possessed the breakfast table, and meat and pudding smoked on the board every noon. Formerly one might see at church what was the cut of a coat half a century ago, now dress was spruce and modern. As a proof of the spirit of improvement among farmers, Marshall instances the custom in the Midlands of placing their sons as pupils on other farms to widen their experience. 'Their entertainments are as expensive as they are elegant, for it is no uncommon thing for one of these new-created farmers to spend L10 or L12, at one entertainment, and to have the most expensive wines; to set off the entertainment in the greatest splendour an elegant sideboard of plate is provided in the newest fashion.' As to dress, no one could tell the farmer's daughter from the duke's. Marshall noticed that in Warwickshire the harness of the farmer's teams was often ridiculously ornamented, and the horses were overfed and underworked to save their looks. Before enclosure the farmer entertained his friends with bacon fed by himself, washed down with ale brewed from his own malt, in a brown jug, or a glass if he was extravagant. He wore a coat of woollen stuff, the growth of his own flock, spun by his wife and daughters, his stockings came from the same quarter, so did the clothes of his family.

Some of these farmers were doing their share in helping the progress of agriculture. In 1764 Joseph Elkington, of Princethorpe in Warwickshire, was the first to practise the under drainage of sloping land that was drowned by the bursting of springs. He drained some fields at Princethorpe which were very wet, and dug a trench 4 or 5 feet deep for this purpose; but finding this did not reach the principal body of subjacent water, he drove an iron bar 4 feet below the bottom of his trench and on withdrawing it the water gushed out. He was thus led to combine the system of cutting drains, aided when necessary by auger holes. His main principles were three: (1) Finding the main spring, or cause of the mischief. (2) Taking the level of that spring and ascertaining its subterranean bearings, for if the drain is cut a yard below the line of the spring the water issuing from it cannot be reached, but on ascertaining the line by levelling the spring can be cut effectually. (3) Using the auger to tap the spring when the drain was not deep enough for the purpose. It was owing to the Board of Agriculture at the end of the century that he obtained the vote of L1,000 from Parliament, and a skilful surveyor was appointed to observe his methods and give them to the public, for he was too ignorant himself to give an intelligible account of his system. After the publication of the report his system was followed generally until Smith of Deanston in 1835 gave the method now in use to his country.

Robert Bakewell, who did more to improve live stock than any other man, was born at Dishley, Leicestershire, in 1735, and succeeding to the management of his father's farm in 1760 began to make experiments in breeding. He scorned the old idea that the blood must be constantly varied by the mixture of different breeds, and his new system differed from the old in two chief points: (1) small versus large bone, and consequently a greater proportion of flesh and a greater tendency to fatten; (2) permissible in-breeding versus perpetual crossing with strange breeds. He took immense pains in selecting the best animals to breed from, and had at Dishley a museum of skeletons and pickled specimens for the comparison of one generation with another, and he conducted careful post-mortem examinations on his stock. His great production was the new Leicester breed of sheep, which in half a century spread over every part of the United Kingdom, as well as to Europe and America, and gave England 2 lb. of meat where she had one before. Sheep at this time were divided into two main classes: (1) short-woolled or field sheep, fed in the open fields; (2) long-woolled or pasture sheep, fed in enclosures. That they were not at a very high state of perfection may be gathered from this description of the chief variety of the latter, the 'Warwickshire' breed: 'his frame large and loose, his bones heavy, his legs long and thick, his chine as well as his rump as sharp as a hatchet, his skin rattling on his ribs like a skeleton covered with parchments.' The origin of the new Leicester sheep is uncertain, but apparently the old Lincoln breed was the basis of it, though this, like other large breeds of English sheep, was itself an introduction of the last half century. The new sheep was described as having a clean head, straight broad flat back, barrel-like body, fine small eyes, thin feet, mutton fat, fine-grained and of good flavour, wool 8 lb. to the fleece, and wethers at two years old weighed from 20 to 30 lb. a quarter.

By 1770 his rams were hired for 25 guineas a season, and soon after he made L3,000 a year by their hire, one named 'Two-pounder' bringing him 1,200 guineas in one year.

One of his theories was that the poorer the land the more it demanded well-made sheep, which is no doubt true to a certain extent; but it has been proved conclusively since that the quality of the breed gradually drops to the level of the land unless artificially assisted. At his death he left two distinct breeds of sheep, for he improved on his own new Leicester, so that the improved became the 'New Leicester' and the former the 'Old Leicester.' However, at the time and, afterwards, his sheep were generally called 'New Leicesters', and sometimes the 'Dishley breed'. There was much prejudice among farmers against the new breed; in the Midlands most of the farmers would have nothing to do with them, and 'their grounds were stocked with creatures that would disgrace the meanest lands in the kingdom.' Yet in April, 1786, yearling wethers of the new breed were sold for 28s. while those of the old were 16s.

The cattle which he set to work to improve were the famous old longhorn breed, the prevailing breed of the Midlands, which had already been considerably improved by Webster of Canley in Warwickshire, and others, especially in Lancashire and the north. The kind of cattle esteemed hitherto had been 'the large, long-bodied, big-boned, coarse, flat-sided kind, and often lyery or black-fleshed.' He founded his herd upon two heifers of Webster's and a bull from Westmoreland, and from these bred all his cattle. The celebrated bull 'Twopenny' was a son of the Westmoreland bull and one of these heifers, who came to be celebrated in agricultural history as 'Old Comely', for she was slaughtered at the age of twenty-six. He bred his cattle so that they produced an enormous amount of fat, as hitherto there had been a difficulty in producing animals to fatten readily; but this he pushed to too great an extreme, so that there has been a reaction. The following is a description of a six-year-old bull, got by 'Twopenny' out of a Canley cow: 'His head, chest, and neck remarkably fine and clean; his chest extraordinarily deep; his brisket bearing down to his knees; his chine thin, loin narrow at the chine, but remarkably wide at the hips. Quarters long, round bones snug, but thighs rather full and remarkably let down. The carcase throughout, chine excepted, large, roomy, deep, and well spread.' The new longhorn, however good for the grazier, was not a good milker. Bakewell was a great believer in straw as a food, and strongly objected to having it trodden into manure; his beasts were largely fed on it, in such small quantities that they greedily ate what was before them and wasted little. His activity was not confined to the breeding of cattle and sheep, for he also produced a breed of black horses, thick and short in the body, with very short legs and very powerful, two ploughing 4 acres a day, a statement which seems much exaggerated; and was famous for his skill in irrigating meadows, by which he could cut grass four times a year. He was a firm believer in the wisdom of treating stock gently and kindly, and his sheep were kept as clean as racehorses. A visitor to Dishley saw a bull of huge proportions, with enormous horns, led about by a boy of seven. He travelled much, and admired the farms of Norfolk most in England, and those of Holland and Flanders abroad, founding his own system on these. It was his opinion that the Devon breed of cattle were incapable of improvement by a cross of any other breed, and that from the West Highland heifer the best breed of cattle might be produced.

He died in 1795, and apparently did not keep what he made, owing largely to his boundless hospitality, which had entertained Russian princes, German royal dukes, English peers, and travellers from all countries. His breed of cattle has completely disappeared, unless traces survive in the lately resuscitated longhorn breed, but his principles are still acted upon, viz. the correlation of form, and the practice of consanguineous breeding under certain conditions.

Bakewell's earliest pupil was George Culley, who devoted himself to improving the breed of cattle, and became one of the most famous agriculturists at the end of the eighteenth and the commencement of the nineteenth centuries. Another farmer to whom English agriculture owes much was John Ellman of Glynde, born in 1753, who by careful selection firmly established the reputation of the Southdown sheep which had previously been hardly recognized. He was one of the founders of the Smithfield Cattle Show in 1793, which helped materially to improve the live stock of the country.

The relations between landlord and tenant, judging from the accounts of contemporary writers, were generally good. Leases were less frequent than agreements voidable by six months' notice on either side, and when there was a tenancy-at-will the tenant who entered as a young man was often expected to hand on the holding to his posterity, and therefore executed improvements at his own cost, so complete was the trust between landlord and tenant. Tenants then did much that they would refuse to do to-day, as the following lease, common in the Midlands in 1786, shows:

Tenant agrees to take, &c., and to pay the stipulated rent within forty days, without any deduction for taxes, and double rent so long as he continues to hold after notice given.

To repair buildings, accidents by fire excepted.

To repair gates and fences.

When required, to cut and plash the hedges, and make the ditches 3 feet by 2 feet, or pay or cause to be paid to the landlord 1s. per rood for such as shall not be done after three months' notice has been given in writing.

Not to break up certain lands specified in the schedule, 'under L20 an acre.'

Not to plough more than a specified number of acres of the rest of the land in any one year, under the same penalty.

To forfeit the same sum for every acre that shall be ploughed for any longer time than three crops successively, without making a clean summer fallow thereof after the third crop.

And the like sum for every acre over and above a specified number (clover excepted) that shall be mown in any one year.

At the time of laying down arable lands to grass he shall manure them with 8 quarters of lime per acre, and sow the same with 12 lb. of clover seeds, and one bushel of rye-grass per acre.

Shall spend on the premises all hay, straw, and manure, or leave them at the end of the term.

Tenant on quitting to be allowed for hay left on the premises, for clover and rye-grass sown in the last year, and for all fallows made within that time.'

A striking picture of the conditions prevailing in many parts of England at this period is given by Mr. Loch in his account of the estates of the Marquis of Stafford. When this nobleman inherited his property in Staffordshire and Shropshire, much of the land, as in other parts of England, was held on leases for three lives, a system said to have been ruinous in its effects. Although the farms were held at one-third of their value, nothing could be worse than the course of cultivation pursued, no improvements were carried out, and all that could be hoped for was that the land would not be entirely run out when the lease expired. The closes were extremely small and of the most irregular shape; the straggling fences occupied a large portion of the land; the crookedness of the ditches, by keeping the water stagnant, added to, rather than relieved, the wetness of the soil. Farms were much scattered, and to enable the occupiers to get at their land, lanes wound backwards and forwards from field to field, covering a large quantity of ground.

It is to the great credit of the Marquis of Stafford that this miserable state of things was swept away. Lands were laid together, the size of the fields enlarged, hedges and ditches straightened, the drainage conducted according to a uniform plan, new and substantial buildings erected, indeed the whole countryside transformed.

Another evil custom on the estate had been to permit huts of miserable construction to be erected to the number of several hundreds by the poorest, and in many instances the most profligate, of the population. They were not regularly entered in the rental account, but had a nominal payment fixed upon them which was paid annually at the court leet. These cottages were built on the sides of the roads and on the lord's waste, which was gradually absorbed by the encroachment, which the occupiers of these huts made from time to time by enclosing the land that lay next them. These wretched holdings gradually fell into the hands of a body of middlemen, who underlet them at an extravagant rent to the occupiers; and these men began to consider that they had an interest independent of the landlord, and had at times actually mortgaged, sold, and devised it. This abuse was also put an end to, the cottagers being made immediate tenants of the landlord, to their great gain, but to this day small aggregations of houses in Shropshire called 'Heaths' mark the encroachments of these squatters on the roadside wastes. This class, indeed, has been well known in England since the Middle Ages. Norden speaks of them in 1602, and so do many subsequent writers. Numbers of small holdings exist to-day obtained in this manner, and the custom must to some extent have counteracted the effect of enclosure.

The roads of England up to the end of the eighteenth century were generally in a disgraceful condition. Some improvement was effected in the latter half of the century, but it was not until the days of Telford and Macadam that they assumed the appearance with which we are familiar; and long after that, though the main roads were excellent, the by-roads were often atrocious, as readers of such books as Handley Cross, written in the middle of the nineteenth century, will remember.

Defoe in his tour in 1724 found the road between S. Albans and Nottingham 'perfectly frightful,' and the great number of horses killed by the 'labour of these heavy ways a great charge to the country'. He notes, however, an improvement from turnpikes. Many of the roads were much worn by the continual passing of droves of heavy cattle on their way to London. Sheep could not travel in the winter to London as the roads were too heavy, so that the price of mutton at that season in town was high. Breeders were often compelled to sell them cheap before they got to London, because the roads became impassable for their flocks when the bad weather set in.

In 1734 Lord Cathcart wrote in his diary: 'All went well until I arrived within 3 miles of Doncaster, when suddenly my horse fell with a crash and with me under him. I fancied myself crushed to death. I slept at Doncaster and had a bad night. I was so bad all day, that I could get no further than Wetherby. Next day I was all right again. I had another terrible fall between North Allerton and Darlington, but was not a bit the worse.'

It was owing to this defective condition of the roads that the prices of corn still differed greatly in various localities; there would be a glut in one place and a deficiency in another, with no means of equalizing matters. To the same cause must be attributed in great measure the slow progress made in the improvement of agriculture. New discoveries travelled very slowly; the expense of procuring manure beyond that produced on the farm was prohibitive; and the uncertain returns which arose from such confined markets caused the farmer to lack both spirit and ability to exert himself in the cultivation of his land. Therefore farming was limited to procuring the subsistence of particular farms rather than feeding the public. The opposition to better roads was due in great measure to the landowners, who feared that if the markets in their neighbourhood were rendered accessible to distant farmers their estates would suffer. But they were not alone in their opposition; in the reign of Queen Anne the people of Northampton were against any improvement in the navigation of the Nene, because they feared that corn from Huntingdon and Cambridge would come up the river and spoil their market. Horner was very enthusiastic over the improvement recently effected: 'our very carriages travel with almost winged expedition between every town of consequence in the kingdom and the metropolis' and inland navigation was soon likely to be established in every part, in consequence of which the demand for the produce of the land increased and the land itself became more valuable and rents rose. 'There never was a more astonishing revolution accomplished in the internal system of any country'; and the carriage of grain was effected with half the former number of horses.

It is clear, however, that he was easily satisfied, and this opinion must be compared with the statements of Young and Marshall, who were continually travelling all over England some time after it was written, and found the roads, in many parts, in a very bad state.

Even near London they were often terrible. 'Of all the cursed roads that ever disgraced this kingdom in the very ages of barbarism, none ever equalled that from Billericay to the King's Head at Tilbury. It is for near 12 miles so narrow that a mouse cannot pass by any carriage. I saw a fellow creep under his wagon to assist me to lift, if possible, my chaise over a hedge. The ruts are of an incredible depth, and everywhere chalk wagons were stuck fast till 20 or 30 horses tacked to each drew them out one by one' Others said that turnpike roads were the enemies of cheapness; as soon as they opened up secluded spots, low prices vanished and all tended to one level. Owing to the work of Telford and Macadam, the high roads by the first quarter of the nineteenth century attained a high pitch of excellence; and were thronged with traffic, coaches, postchaises, private carriages, equestrians, carts and wagons: so animated a sight that our forefathers built small houses called 'gazebos' on the sides of the road, where they met to take tea and watch the ever varying stream. It should not be forgotten, too, that the inns, where numbers of horses put up, were splendid markets for the farmers' oats, hay, and straw.

The seasons in the latter part of the eighteenth century were distinguished for being frequently bad. In 1774 Gilbert White wrote, 'Such a run of wet seasons as we have had the last ten or eleven years would have produced a famine a century or two ago.' Owing to the dearness of bread in 1767 riots broke out in many places, many lives were lost, and the gaols were filled with prisoners. 1779 was, however, a year of great fertility and prices were low all round: wheat 33s. 8d., barley 26s., oats 13s. 6d., wool 12s. a tod of 28 lb.: and there were many complaints of ruined farmers and distressed landlords. Though England was now becoming an importing country, the amount of corn imported was insufficient to have any appreciable effect on prices, which were mainly influenced by the seasons, as the following instance of the fluctuations caused by a single bad season (1782) testifies:

Prices after harvest of 1781. Prices after harvest of 1782.

L s. d. L s. d.

Wheat, per bushel 5 0 Wheat, per bushel 10 6 Barley " 2 9 Barley " 7 2 Dutch oats for seed 1 8 Dutch oats for seed 3 6 Clover seed, per cwt. 1 11 6 Clover seed, per cwt. 5 10 0

The summer of 1783 was amazing and portentous and full of horrible phenomena, according to White, with a peculiar haze or smoky fog prevailing for many weeks. 'The sun at noon looked as blank as a clouded moon, and shed a rust-coloured ferruginous light on the ground and floors of rooms.' This was succeeded by a very severe winter, the thermometer on December 10 being 1 deg. below zero; the worst since 1739-40.

In 1788 occurred a severe drought in the summer, 5,000 horned cattle perishing for lack of water. In 1791 there was a remarkable change of temperature in the middle of June, the thermometer in a few days falling from 75 deg. to 25 deg., and the hills of Kent and Surrey were covered with snow.

We have now to deal with one of those landowners whose great example is one of the glories of English agriculture. Coke of Holkham began his great agricultural work about 1776 on an estate where, as old Lady Townshend said, 'all you will see will be one blade of grass and two rabbits fighting for that;' in fact it was little better than a rabbit warren. It has been said that all the wheat consumed in the county of Norfolk was at this time imported from abroad; but this is in direct contradiction to Young's assertion, already noted, that there were in 1767 great quantities of wheat besides other crops in the county. Coke's estate indeed seems to have been considerably behind many parts of the shire when he began his farming career. When Coke came into his estate, in five leases which were about to expire the farms were held at 3s. 6d. an acre; and in the previous leases they had been 1s. 6d. an acre. We may judge of the quality of this land by comparing it with the average rent of 10s. which Young says prevailed at this time. With a view to remedy this state of things he studied the agriculture of other counties, and his observations thereon reveal a very poor kind of farming in many places: in Cheshire the rich pasture was wasted and the poor impoverished by sheer ignorance, in Yorkshire luxuriant grass was understocked, in Shropshire there were hardly any sheep; in his own part of Norfolk the usual rotation was three white straw crops and then broadcast turnips. This Coke changed to two white crops and two years pasture, and he dug up and brought to the surface the rich marl which lay under the flint and sand, so that clover and grasses began to grow. So successful was he in this that in 1796 he cut nearly 400 tons of sainfoin from 104 acres of land previously valued at 12s. an acre. He increased his flock of sheep from 800 worthless animals with backs as narrow as rabbits, the description of the Norfolk sheep of the day, to 2,500 good Southdowns. Encouraged by the Duke of Bedford, another great agriculturist, he started a herd of North Devons, and, fattening two Devons against one Shorthorn, found the former weighed 140 stone, the latter 110, and the Shorthorn had eaten more food than the two Devons. However, a single experiment of this kind is not very conclusive.

The ploughs of Norfolk were, as in many other counties, absurdly over-horsed, from three to five being used when only two were necessary; so Coke set the example of using two whenever possible, and won a bet with Sir John Sebright by ploughing an acre of stiff land in Hertfordshire in a day with a pair of horses. He transformed the bleak bare countryside by planting 50 acres of trees every year until he had 3,000 acres well covered, and in 1832 had probably the unique experience of embarking in a ship which was built of oak grown from the acorns he had himself planted. Between 1776 and 1842 (the date of his death) he is said to have spent L536,992 on improving his estate, without reckoning the large sums spent on his house and demesne, the home farm, and his marsh farm of 459 acres. This expenditure paid in the long run, but when he entered upon it, it must have seemed very doubtful if this would be the case. A good understanding between landlord and tenant was the basis of his policy, and to further this he let his farms on long leases, at moderate rents, with few restrictions. When farmers improved their holdings on his estate the rent was not raised on them, so that the estate benefited greatly, and good tenants were often rewarded by having excellent houses built for them; so good, indeed, that his political opponents the Tories, whom he, as a staunch Whig detested, made it one of their complaints against him that he built palaces for farmhouses. At first he met with that stolid opposition to progress which seems the particular characteristic of the farmer. For sixteen years no one followed him in the use of the drill, though it was no new thing; and when it was adopted he reckoned its use spread at the rate of a mile a year. Yet eventually he had his reward; his estate came to command the pick of English tenant farmers, who never left it except through old age, and would never live under any other landlord. Even the Radical Cobbett, to whom, as to most of his party, landlords were, and are, the objects of inveterate hatred, said that every one who knew him spoke of him with affection. Coke was the first to distinguish between the adaptability of the different kinds of grass seeds to different soils, and thereby made the hitherto barren lands of his estate better pasture land than that of many rich counties. Carelessness about the quality of grasses sown was universal for a long time. The farmer took his seeds from his own foul hayrick, or sent to his neighbour for a supply of rubbish; even Bakewell derived his stock from his hayloft. It was not until the Society for the Encouragement of Arts offered prizes for clean hay seeds that some improvement was noticeable. In Norfolk, as in other parts of England, there was at this time a strong prejudice against potatoes; the villagers of Holkham refused to have anything to do with them, but Coke's invincible persistency overcame this unreasoning dislike and soon they refused to do without them.

Coke was a great advocate for sowing wheat early and very thick in the rows, and for cutting it when ear and stem were green and the grain soft, declaring that by so doing he got 2s. a quarter more for it; he also believed in the early cutting of oats and peas. It was his custom to drill 4 bushels of wheat per acre, which he said prevented tillering and mildew. He was the first to grow swedes on a large scale. The famous Holkham Sheep-shearings, known locally as 'Coke's Clippings', which began in 1778 and lasted till 1821, arose from his practice of gathering farmers together for consultation on matters agricultural, and developed into world-famous meetings attended by all nationalities and all ranks, men journeying from America especially to attend them, and Lafayette expressed it as one of his great regrets that he had never attended one. At these gatherings all were equal, the suggestion of the smallest tenant farmer was listened to with respect, and the same courtesy and hospitality were shown to all whether prince or farmer. At the last meeting in 1821 no less than 7,000 people were present. His skill, energy, and perseverance worked a revolution in the crops; his own wheat crops were from 10 to 12 coombs an acre, his barley sometimes nearly 20. The annual income of timber and underwood was L2,700, and from 1776 to 1816 he increased the rent roll of his estate from L2,200 to L20,000, which, even after allowing for the great advance in prices during that period, is a wonderful rise. It is a very significant fact that there was not an alehouse on the estate, and in connexion with this, and with the fact that his improvements made a constant demand for labour, we are not surprised to learn that the workhouse was pulled down as useless, for it was always empty, and this at a time when the working-classes of England were pauperized to an alarming degree. The year 1818 was one of terrible distress all over England in country and town, yet at his sheep-shearing of that year Coke was enabled to say he had trebled the population of his estate and not a single person was out of employment, though everywhere else farmers were turning off hands and cutting down wages. Principally through his agency, between 1804 and 1821, no less than 153 enclosures took place in Norfolk, while between 1790 and 1810, 2,000,000 acres of waste land in England were brought under cultivation largely by his efforts. He is said, indeed, to have transformed agriculture throughout England, and, but for that, the country would not have been able to grow enough food for its support during the war with Napoleon, and must have succumbed.

FOOTNOTES:

Northern Tour, i. 9. For an interesting account of Young, see R.A.S.E. Journal (3rd Series), iv. 1.

In 1726 Bradley had urged the use of liquorice, madder, woad, and caraway as improvers of the land in the Preface to the Country Gentleman.

Rural Economy (1771), pp. 173-5. Trusler, who wrote in 1780, mentions 'the general rage for farming throughout the kingdom.'--Practical Husbandry, p. I.

In 1780 Sir Thomas Bernard, travelling through Northumberland, saw 'luxuriant plantations, neat hedges, rich crops of corn, comfortable farmhouses' in a county whereof the greater part was barren moor dearly rented at 1s. 6d. an acre thirty years before, and he said the county had increased in annual value fourfold, (Contemporary MS., unpublished.)

Rural Economy, p. 26.

Farmer's Letters (3rd ed.), p. 89.

Slater, English Peasantry and Enclosure, p. 95.

Ibid. p. 101.

Young, Northern Tour, iv. 340, about 1770 estimates the cultivated land of England to be half pasture and half arable, and, in the absence of reliable statistics, his opinion on this point is certainly the best available. The conversion of a large portion of the richer land from arable to grass in the eighteenth century was compensated for, according to Young, by the conversion, on enclosure, of poor sandy soils and heaths or moors into corn land. Hasbach, op. cit. pp. 370-1.

Young, Northern Tour, i. 222.

Rural Economy, p. 252.

Ibid. p. 271.

Cf. above, p. 180.

Farmer's Letters (3rd ed), p. 372.

Northern Tour, iv. 167.

Ibid. iv. 186.

This large item is explained by the fact that a bailiff was employed to sell, and no bailiff could find customers 'without feeling the same drought as stage coachmen when they see a sign'.--Young, Farmer's Letters, p. 403.

Rural Economy, p. 314.

1775, pp. x-xiii.

Northern Tour, iv. 192-202.

See Parliamentary Reports Commission (1881), xvi. 260.

Dissertations on Rural Subjects, p. 278.

Farmer's Letters, p. 433.

History of Hawsted, p. 169.

Hasbach, op. cit. p. 127; Kent, Hints to Gentlemen, p. 152.

Southern Tour, p. 324. He says nothing of the manufacturing towns, which had not yet began to influence the wages of farm labourers near them as they soon afterwards did.

Some prices at this time were: bread per lb., 2d.; butter, 5-1/2d. to 8d.; cheese, 3-1/2d. to 4d.; beef, 3d. to 5d.; mutton, 3-1/2d. to 5d.

State of the Poor, i. 562.

According to Walter Harte, though the yeoman in the middle of the seventeenth century ate bread of rye and barley (maslin), in 1766 even the poor cottagers looked upon it with horror and demanded best wheaten bread. Yet in 1766 the quartern loaf in London was 1s. 6d.--Tooke, History of Prices, i. 68.

History of Hawsted, p. 184.

Eden, State of the Poor, i. 513.

Rural Economy of Gloucestershire, i. 53.

Eden, op. cit. i. 547.

Farmer's Letters, i. 300

The pulling down of cottages began to be complained of in the seventeenth century; they harboured the poor, who were a charge upon the parish, and repairs were saved.--Transactions Royal Historical Society (New Series), xix. 120.

Hasbach, op. cit. 82; Clarke, General View of Herefordshire, p. 29; Marshall, Review of Northern Department, p. 375.

Tooke, History of Prices, i. 50; Hallam, Constitutional History, iii. 302.

Northern Tour, iv. 420. The increase in population in the first half of the eighteenth century was slow; after the Peace of Paris in 1763, when the commerce and manufactures of the country were extended in an unprecedented degree, it was rapid.

The Way to be Rich and Respectable, London, 1780.

Grose, Olio, pp. 41-4; Lecky, History of England in Eighteenth Century, vi. 169 et. seq.

Cullum, History of Hawsted, p. 219.

Cullum, History of Hawsted, p. 225.

Thoughts on Enclosure, by a Country Farmer (1786), p. 21.

Johnstone, Account of Elkington's Draining (1797), pp. 8-9.

R.A.S.E. Journal (1894), p. 11, from which this account of Bakewell is mainly taken.

According to some, Joseph Allom originated the breed, and Bakewell vastly improved it. We may safely give the chief credit to so careful and gifted a breeder as Bakewell.

Culley on Live Stock (1807), p. 56.

Marshall, Rural Economy of the Midland Counties, i. 273.

Victoria County History: Warwickshire, Agriculture.

In Lancashire at this date it was not uncommon, when a tenant wished for his farm or a particular field to be improved by draining, marling, liming, or laying down to grass, to hand it over to the landlord for the process; who, when completed, returned it to the tenant with an advanced rent of 10 per cent. upon the improvements.--Marshall, Review of Reports to Board of Agriculture (under Lancashire).

1820, p. 173 et seq.

See Hasbach, op. cit. pp. 77 sq.; Annals of Agriculture, xxxvi. 497; Scrutton, Commons and Common Fields, p. 139.

Defoe, Tour, ii. 178 et seq.

R.A.S.E. Journal (3rd Ser.), ii. 9.

Horner, Inquiry into the Means of Preserving the Public Roads (1767), pp. 4 et seq.

Victoria County History: Northants., ii. 250.

Young, Southern Tour (ed. 2), p. 88.

Tooke, History of Prices, i. 68. It is difficult to understand the price of the quartern loaf, 1s. 6d. in 1766, as wheat was only 43s. 1d. a quarter. Prices of wheat in these years were:

s. d.

1767 47 4 1768 53 9 1769 40 7 1770 43 6 1771 47 2 1772 50 8 1773 51 0 1774 52 8 1775 48 4 1776 38 2 1777 45 6 1778 42 0 1779 33 8

These returns differ from those of the Board of Agriculture; see