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.[367] 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.'[368] 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.[369] 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.[370] 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.[371]
As for his food, Eden tells us[372] 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.[373]
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.[374]
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.'[375] Crops, too, were improving;
and enclosed lands about 1726 were said to produce over 20 bushels of
wheat to the acre.[376]
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',[377] and in a letter to Houghton in 1684, he is
the first to mention the feeding of turnips to sheep.[378] 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.[379] 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,[380] 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.[381]
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 £5. The next crop stood for seed, which was cut in
August, the hay being worth £9, 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 £30, without counting the aftermath. At this time most
of the seed was still imported from Flanders.[382] 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.[383]
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.[384] 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.[385] 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.'[386]
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 £20 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.[387] 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.[388] 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:[389]
DR. £ 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
---------
£40 19 0
=========
CR.
13,140 gallons of milk 136 17 6
40 19 0
---------
Balance (profit) £95 18 6
=========
A correspondent, however, pointed out to Bradley that this yield and
profit was far above the average, which was about £5 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.[390]
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.'[391] 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 £26 apiece. They
were driven to Smithfield and realized £25 each, having probably sunk
on the way, but dressed they weighed 80 stone a quarter![392] 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 £7 to £10.
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.[393] 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:[394]
DR. £ s. d.
39 bushels of barley 3 5 0
Balance, profit 16 0
----------
£4 1 0
==========
CR. £ 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
----------
£4 1 0
==========
He also recommends that in stocking a farm of £200 a year the
following poultry should be purchased:
£ 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.[395]
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.[396] 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 £30 yearly; but I have known hop grounds that have
cleared above £50 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.'[397] 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[398]; 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[399]; 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.'[400] But the
latter price was exceptionally low; Smith[401] 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'[402];
and about 1770 Young[403] 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.[404] 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.[405]
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.[406] 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.[407]
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'.[408]
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.[409]
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'.[410]
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.'[411] 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_
£ 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
---------
£ 4 10 0[412]
=========
_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.'[413] 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.[414] 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 £10 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.[415]
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.[416]
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. £ 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. £ 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 £1 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.[417] 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.[418] This estimate may be compared to that
of Tull for the 'old way' of sowing wheat,[419] and to the following
estimate of fifty years later in Surrey, when wheat was a much better
price:--
DR. £ 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
---------
£3 12 6[420]
=========
CR.
20 bushels at 5s. 5 0 0
1-1/2 loads of straw 1 2 6
---------
£6 2 6
=========
The profit was thus £2 10s. 0d. an acre, and for barley it was £3 3s.
6d., for oats £1 19s. 10d., for beans £1 13s. 0d.[421]
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.'[422]
FOOTNOTES:
[367] _Six Centuries of Work and Wages_, p. 472.
[368] See Baker, _Record of Seasons and Prices_, p. 185.
[369] Eden, _State of the Poor_, iii p. cvii; Thorold Rogers, _Work
and Wages_, p. 396.
[370] In Herefordshire at this time it was 1-1/2d. per lb.
[371] Hasbach, _op. cit._ p. 86.
[372] Eden, _op. cit._ i. 286.
[373] Ibid. i. 498.
[374] Hasbach, _op. cit._ p. 71.
[375] Smith, _Memoirs of Wool_, ii. 93.
[376] 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 £1, horses £6, hay 25s. a ton (_Hampshire
Notes and Queries_, iii. 120).
[377] Worlidge, _Systema Agriculturae_, p. 42.
[378] _Collections_, iv. 142.
[379] Lawrence, _New System of Agriculture_, p. 109.
[380] _Tour_ (ed. 1724), i. 87.
[381] Ellis, _Chiltern and Vale Farming_, p. 353.
[382] Bradley, _General Treatise_, i. 175.
[383] Ellis, _Chiltern and Vale Farming_, p. 260.
[384] J. Lawrence, _New System of Agriculture_, p. 112.
[385] Ibid. p. 92. About 1757 Lucerne, hitherto little grown in
England, took its place in the rotation of crops.
[386] Ibid. p. 130.
[387] _A General Treatise on Husbandry_ (1726), i. 72; cf. c.
[388] 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.
[389] Bradley, _General Treatise_, i. 76.
[390] Slater, _English Peasantry_, p. 52.
[391] _Tour_ (ed. 1724), i. (1) 97, and iii. (2) 73.
[392] Ibid. i. 63.
[393] J. Lawrence, _New System of Agriculture_, p. 151.
[394] Bradley, _General Treatise_, i. 110.
[395] _Country Gentleman and Farmer's Director_ (1726), p. 7.
[396] Defoe, _Tour_, i. 87.
[397] Defoe, _Tour_ (3rd ed.), i. 81.
[398] Defoe, _Tour_ (ed. 1724), ii. 1, 134.
[399] 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.
[400] _The West Country Farmer, a Representation of the Decay of
Trade_, 1737.
[401] _Memoirs of Wool_, ii. 243.
[402] Ibid. ii. 399.
[403] _Farmer's Letters_ (3rd ed.), p. 27.
[404] Cunningham, _Industry and Commerce_, ii. 384.
[405] Cunningham, _Industry and Commerce_, ii. 458.
[406] Ormerod, _Cheshire_, i. 129. These words were written about
1656.
[407] 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.'
[408] Defoe, _Tour_, i. (1) 78. Cheshire cheese was 2d. to 2-1/2d. per
lb., Cheddar 6d. to 8d. in 1724, an extraordinary difference.
[409] Bradley, i. 172.
[410] Preface to _Horse-hoeing Husbandry_, (ed. 1733).
[411] _Horse-hoeing Husbandry_, p. vi.
[412] _The West Country Farmer_, above quoted, says wheat growing (in
1737) paid little. Before a bushel can be sold it costs £4 an acre,
and the crop probably fetches half the money.
[413] _R.A.S.E. Journ._ (3rd Ser.), ii. 20.
[414] Cullum, _Hawsted_, p. 216.
[415] Tooke, _History of Prices_, i. 35.
[416] 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.
[417] Ellis, _Chiltern and Vale Farming_, p. 209. Nothing is charged
for tithe and taxes.
[418] Ibid. p. 352.
[419] See above, p. 177, also p. 199 for Young's estimate in 1770.
[420] Nothing is charged for the manure which was carted and spread.
[421] John Trusler, _Practical Husbandry_, p. 28.
[422] _Country Gentleman and Farmer's Director_ (1726), p. xiii.