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 £100 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 £3,000 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.'[440] 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.[441] 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 £400 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,[442] 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.[443]
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; £20 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.'[444] 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.[445]
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.[446] 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.[447] 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.[448] 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.[449]
Then, as now, one of the commonest errors of farmers was that of
taking too much land for their capital; Young considered £6 an acre
necessary on an average, equal to more than £12 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.[450]
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[451]:
On land worth 5s. an acre:
Wheat 12 bushels per acre.
Rye 16 " "
Barley 16 " "
Oats 20 " "
Turnips, to the value of £1.
Clover " "
On land worth 20s. an acre:
Wheat 28 bushels per acre.
Barley 40 " "
Oats 48 " "
Beans 40 " "
Turnips, to the value of £3.
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: £ 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
-----------
£2 16 9
===========
It will be noticed there was no horse-hoeing.
Second year, barley: £ 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
-----------
£2 17 9
===========
Third year, clover: £ s. d.
Rent, &c. 1 8 0
Seed 5 0
Sowing 3
----------
£1 13 3
==========
Fourth year,[452] wheat: £ 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
----------
£2 19 6
==========
Fifth year, beans: £ 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
----------
£3 12 6
==========
Sixth year, oats: £ 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
----------
£2 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 £88, whereas on grass it was £212, or
9s. 9d. an acre per annum for the former and 23s. for the latter.[453]
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 £5 a year per
cow, and its average produce was not worth more than £5 6s. 3d.[454]
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 £4 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.[455]
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. £ 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[456] 11 6
10 bushels peas 1 6 3
----------
£8 11 7
==========
CR. £ 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
-----------
£18 12 9
8 11 7
-----------
Profit £10 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.'[457]
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_[458] 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.[459] 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 £2 to £3 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_[460] 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:--
£ 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
------------
£326 11 0
============
Or nearly £5 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 £1,500, and estimated that, after paying expenses
and maintaining his family, he could put by £50 a year; 'but this
capital was much beyond what farmers in general can attain to.'[461]
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 £50 against £25 for the former.[462]
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[463] 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.[464]
In 1767 Young found wages differing according to the distance from
London[465]:--
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:--
£ s. d.
Food, 6s. per week[466]; 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
----------
£23 17 0
==========
£ 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
----------
£37 15 0
==========
Which would give the family a surplus of £13 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[467] 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.[468] In Suffolk, according to
Cullum,[469] 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.[470] 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.'[471] Yet in the
beer-drinking counties great quantities were consumed; a gallon a day
per man all the year round being no uncommon allowance.[472]
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:--
£ 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
----------
£34 5 0
==========
This, with the same Income as before, left him with a surplus of £3
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,[473] 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.[474] 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.[475]
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'[476]; 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.'[477] 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.'[478] 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 £300 or £400 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[479] 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 £300 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[480]; 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.[481] 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 £10 or £12, 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.'[482] 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.[483] It was
owing to the Board of Agriculture at the end of the century that he
obtained the vote of £1,000 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.[484] 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,[485] 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 £3,000 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.'[486] 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.'[487] 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[488]:
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 £20 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.'[489]
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.[490] 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.[491]
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.[492]
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.'[493]
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.[494] 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.[495] 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.[496]
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.[497] 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[498]:
Prices after harvest of 1781. Prices after harvest of 1782.
£ s. d. £ 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° 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.[499] In 1791 there was a remarkable
change of temperature in the middle of June, the thermometer in a few
days falling from 75° to 25°, 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.[500] 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.[501] 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.[502] Between 1776 and 1842 (the
date of his death) he is said to have spent £536,992 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.[503] 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 £2,700, and
from 1776 to 1816 he increased the rent roll of his estate from £2,200
to £20,000, 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:
[440] _Northern Tour_, i. 9. For an interesting account of Young, see
_R.A.S.E. Journal_ (3rd Series), iv. 1.
[441] 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_.
[442] _Rural Economy_ (1771), pp. 173-5. Trusler, who wrote in 1780,
mentions 'the general rage for farming throughout the
kingdom.'--_Practical Husbandry_, p. I.
[443] 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.)
[444] _Rural Economy_, p. 26.
[445] _Farmer's Letters_ (3rd ed.), p. 89.
[446] Slater, _English Peasantry and Enclosure_, p. 95.
[447] Ibid. p. 101.
[448] 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.
[449] Young, _Northern Tour_, i. 222.
[450] _Rural Economy_, p. 252.
[451] Ibid. p. 271.
[452] Cf. above, p. 180.
[453] _Farmer's Letters_ (3rd ed), p. 372.
[454] _Northern Tour_, iv. 167.
[455] Ibid. iv. 186.
[456] 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.
[457] _Rural Economy_, p. 314.
[458] 1775, pp. x-xiii.
[459] _Northern Tour_, iv. 192-202.
[460] See _Parliamentary Reports Commission_ (1881), xvi. 260.
[461] _Dissertations on Rural Subjects_, p. 278.
[462] _Farmer's Letters_, p. 433.
[463] _History of Hawsted_, p. 169.
[464] Hasbach, _op. cit._ p. 127; Kent, _Hints to Gentlemen_, p. 152.
[465] _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.
[466] 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.
[467] _State of the Poor_, i. 562.
[468] 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.
[469] _History of Hawsted_, p. 184.
[470] Eden, _State of the Poor_, i. 513.
[471] _Rural Economy of Gloucestershire_, i. 53.
[472] Eden, _op. cit._ i. 547.
[473] _Farmer's Letters_, i. 300
[474] 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.
[475] Hasbach, _op. cit._ 82; Clarke, _General View of Herefordshire_,
p. 29; Marshall, _Review of Northern Department_, p. 375.
[476] Tooke, _History of Prices_, i. 50; Hallam, _Constitutional
History_, iii. 302.
[477] _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.
[478] _The Way to be Rich and Respectable_, London, 1780.
[479] Grose, _Olio_, pp. 41-4; Lecky, _History of England in
Eighteenth Century_, vi. 169 et. seq.
[480] Cullum, _History of Hawsted_, p. 219.
[481] Cullum, _History of Hawsted_, p. 225.
[482] _Thoughts on Enclosure, by a Country Farmer_ (1786), p. 21.
[483] Johnstone, _Account of Elkington's Draining_ (1797), pp. 8-9.
[484] _R.A.S.E. Journal_ (1894), p. 11, from which this account of
Bakewell is mainly taken.
[485] 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.
[486] _Culley on Live Stock_ (1807), p. 56.
[487] Marshall, _Rural Economy of the Midland Counties_, i. 273.
[488] _Victoria County History: Warwickshire, Agriculture_.
[489] 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).
[490] 1820, p. 173 et seq.
[491] See Hasbach, _op. cit._ pp. 77 sq.; _Annals of Agriculture_,
xxxvi. 497; Scrutton, _Commons and Common Fields_, p. 139.
[492] Defoe, _Tour_, ii. 178 et seq.
[493] _R.A.S.E. Journal_ (3rd Ser.), ii. 9.
[494] Horner, _Inquiry into the Means of Preserving the Public Roads_
(1767), pp. 4 et seq.
[495] _Victoria County History: Northants._, ii. 250.
[496] Young, _Southern Tour_ (ed. 2), p. 88.
[497] 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
Appendix III.
[498] _Annals of Agriculture_, iii. 366.
[499] Baker, _Seasons and Prices_, pp. 224 et seq.
[500] A. Stirling, _Coke of Holkham_, i. 249.
[501] But in other parts of it the cultivation of turnips was well
understood, for the _Complete Farmer_, s.v. _Turnips_ (ed. 3), says
that about 1750 Norfolk farmers boasted that turnips had doubled the
value of their holdings, and Norfolk men were famous for understanding
hoeing and thinning, which were little practised elsewhere. Further,
Young, _Southern Tour_, p. 273, says: 'the extensive use of turnips is
known but little of except in Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex. I found no
farmers but in these counties that understood anything of fatting
cattle with them; feeding lean sheep being the only use they put them
to.'
[502] A. Stirling, _op. cit._ i. 264.
[503] _R.A.S.E. Journal_ (1895), p. 12.