A Short History of English Agriculture Part 14

[271] 21 Jac. 1, c. 28.

[272] _Transactions of the Royal Historical Society_ (New Series), xix. 116.

[273] _Transactions of the Royal Historical Society_ (New Series), xix. 127.

[274] Ibid. 130.

[275] See article in _Transactions of the Royal Historical Society_ (New Series), xix.

[276] Macaulay, _History of England_, ch. iii.

[277] _Quarterly Journal of Economics_, xvii. 587. Considering that the legislature of the sixteenth century was against enclosure and depopulation, it is hard to understand 31 Eliz., c. 7, which forbade cottages to be erected unless 4 acres of land were attached thereto, in order to avoid the great inconvenience caused by the 'buyldinge of great nombers and mult.i.tude of cottages, which are daylie more and more increased in many partes of this realme'. How was it that cottages had increased so much in rural districts, which are of course alluded to, in spite of enclosure?

[278] Harwood, _Erdeswick_.

[279] Hasbach, _op. cit._ p. 44.

[280] Cunningham, _Industry and Commerce_, i. 187.

[281] _General View of Hunts._, p. 8.

[282] _General View of Lincoln_, p. 29.

[283] _Farming Calendar_, from an original MS., printed in _Archaeologia_, xiii. 373 et seq.

[284] Cf. Tusser:

'October for wheat-sowing calleth as fast';

and

'When wheat upon eddish (stubble), ye mind to bestowe Let that be the first of the wheat ye do sowe';

and

'Who soweth in raine, he shall reap it with tears'.

[285] The writer of the diary probably meant this work should be done in September.

CHAPTER XII

THE GREAT AGRICULTURAL WRITERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.--FRUIT GROWING. A SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ORCHARD

The seventeenth century is distinguished by a number of agricultural writers whose works, as they afford the best account of the farming of the time, we may be pardoned for freely quoting. The best known of them were, Sir John Norden, Gervase Markham, Sir Richard Weston, Blythe, Hartlib, Sir Hugh Plat, John Evelyn, John Worlidge, and Houghton.

Sir John Norden printed his _Surveyor's Dialogue_ in 1608, which is in the form of a conversation between a farmer and a surveyor, the former at the outset telling the latter that men of his profession were then very unpopular because 'you pry into men's t.i.tles and estates, and oftentimes you are the cause that men lose their land, and customs are altered, broken, and sometimes perverted by your means. And above all, you look into the values of men's lands, wherefore the lords of manors do reckon their tenants to a higher rent, and therefore not only I but many poore tenants have good cause to speak against the profession'.[286]

The surveyor attributes the increase in prices to farmers outbidding one another for farms, for the rents of farms and prices grow together; a statement which seems to have been quite true and disposes of the a.s.sertion that the landlords raised the rents unfairly, for they were quite ent.i.tled to what rent they could get in the open market, the farmers being presumably wise enough not to offer rents which would preclude a profit. He further blames the farmer of his day for being discontented with his lot: in former times 'farmers and their wives were content with mean dyet and base attire and held their children to some austere government, without haunting alehouses, taverns, dice, and cards; now the husbandman will be equal to the yeoman, the yeoman to the gentleman, the gentleman to the squire, and there is at this day thirty times as much vainely spent in a family of like mult.i.tude and quality as was in former ages'; a complaint that has been common in all ages. Contrary to what is the practice to-day, and apparently to common sense, the surveyor recommends that open drains be made as narrow above as at the bottom, at the most not more than a foot and a half broad.[287] Hops, he says, were then grown in Suffolk, Ess.e.x, and Surrey, 'in your loose and spongie grounds, trenched.' 'Carret' roots were raised in Suffolk and Ess.e.x, and beginning to increase in all parts of the realm[288]; but if he alludes to their cultivation in the open field the statement must be taken with considerable qualification, as they were not so grown generally until the end of the eighteenth century or the beginning of the next.

Kent was then, as now, the great fruit county of England; 'above all others I think the Kentishmen be most apt and industrious in planting orchards with pippins and cherries, especially near the Thames about Feversham and Sittingbourne.' But Devon and Hereford were also famous; Westcote about 1630 says the Devonshire men had of late much enlarged their orchards, and 'are very curious in planting and grafting all kinds of fruit'[289]; and John Beale in 1656 tells us Hereford 'is reputed the orchard of England'[290]; while Hartlib says there were many orchards in Worcestershire and Gloucestershire.[291] He calls 'Tandeane' near Taunton the Paradise of England, where the husbandry was excellent, the land fruitful by nature and improved by the art and industry of the farmers; 'they take extraordinary pains in soyling, ploughing, and dressing their lands, and after the plow there goeth some three or four with mattocks to break the clods and to draw up the earth out of the furrows that the lands may lye round, and that the water annoy not the seed (the water evidently often lying long in the furrows between the great high ridges), and to that end they most carefully cut gutters and trenches in all places. And for the better enriching of their ploughing lands they cut up, cast, and carry in the unplowed headlands and places of no use. Their hearts, hands, eyes, and all their powers concurre in one to force the earth to yield her utmost fruit; and the crops of wheat that rewarded this industry were sometimes 8 and 10 quarters to an acre.

A short pamphlet called the _Fruiterer's Secrets_, published in London in 1604, imparts some interesting and curious information about fruit growing.[292] There were then four sorts of cherries in England, Flemish,[293] English, Gascoyne, and black, and the preserving of them from birds, always a burden on the grower, the author says can be done by a gun or a sling; the worst enemies being jays and bullfinches, who ate stones and all. Stone fruit should be gathered in dry weather, and after the dew is off, for if gathered wet it loses colour and becomes mildewed. If nettles newly gathered are laid at the bottom of the basket and on the top of the fruit, they will hasten the ripening of fruit picked unripe, and make it keep its colour.

Those English farmers who still shake their apples from the trees to fall and be bruised on the ground had better listen to the careful directions for placing the ladder on the trees where it will do no damage, as to the use of the gathering hook so that the branches can be brought within easy reach of the picker on his ladder, the wearing of a gathering ap.r.o.n, and the emptying of it gently into the baskets.

Green fern has the same effect on pears packed for carriage as nettles on stone fruit; while apples should be packed in wheat, or better still in rye straw. For long journeys the American system of packing in barrels is antic.i.p.ated, the apples being carefully put in by hand, and the barrels lined at both ends with straw, but not at the sides to avoid heating, while holes should be bored at either end to prevent heat. Pippins, John Apples, Pearmains, and other 'keepers' need not be turned until the week before Christmas, and again at the end of March, when they must be turned oftener; but never touch fruit during a frost or a thaw, or in rainy weather, or it will turn black.

Hartlib, a few years after, reckoned no less than 500 sorts of apples in England, though doubtless many of these were identical, since the same apple often has two or three names in one parish. The best for the table were the Jennetings, Harvey Apple, Golden Pippin, Summer and Winter Pearmains, John Apple, &c.; for cider the Red Streak (the great favourite), Jennet Moyle, Eliot, Stocking Apple, &c. He was told that in Herefordshire a tenant bought the farm he rented with the fruit crop of one year; 10 to 15 having been given per acre for cherries and more for apples and pears. Pears for the table were the Windsor, 'Burgamet,' 'Boon Christians'! Greenfield, and others; and for perry, which John Beale, a well-known writer of the day considered 'a weak drink, fit for our hindes and generally refused by our gentry as breeding wind in the stomack', the Horse Pear, Bosbury, Choak, &c.[294] There were many kinds of plums, among them the Mistle Plum, Damazene, Violet, and Premorden.

Four kinds of grafting were practised: in the cleft, and in the bark, the two most usual ways; shoulder or whip grafting, and grafting by approach,[295] the last 'where the stock you intend to graft on and the tree from which you take your graft stand so near together that they may be joined, then take the sprig you intend to graft and pare away about three inches in length of the rind and wood near unto the very pith, and cut also the stock on which you intend to graft the same after the same manner that they may evenly join each other, and so bind them and cover them with clay or wax.' Inoculation was also practised, 'when the sap is at the fullest in the summer, the buds you intend to inoculate being not too young but sufficiently grown.' For transplanting the middle of October is recommended, and the wise advice added, 'plant not too deep,' and in clay plant as near the surface as possible, for the roots will seek their way downward but rarely upward; and in transplanting 'you may prune the branches as well as the roots of apples and pears, but not of plums.' The best distance apart in an orchard for apples and pears was considered to be from 20 to 30 feet, the further apart the more they benefit from the sun and air, a piece of advice which many a subsequent planter has neglected. For cherries and plums 15 to 20 feet was thought right.

Worlidge's directions for pruning are minute and careful, and should be well hammered into many slovenly farmers to-day.

Cider-making was performed much as it is in old-fashioned farms to-day, by mashing the apples in a trough by means of a millstone set edgeways, and then pressing the juice out through hair mats, the juice, says Hartlib, 'having been let stand a day or two and the black sc.u.m that ariseth in that time taken off they tunne it, and in the barrels it continueth to work some days longer, just as beer useth to do.[296] Another method was to put the fruit in a clean vessel or trough, and bruise or crush it with beetles, then put the crushed fruit in a bag of hair-cloth and press it.[297] After the cider was in the barrels there was placed in them a linen bag containing cloves, mace, cinnamon, ginger, and lemon peel which was said to make the cider taste as pleasantly as Rhenish wine.

Worlidge gives us what is perhaps the first mention of a poultry farm, and strangely enough it seems to have paid. 'I have been credibly informed that a good farm hath been wholly stocked with poultry, spending the whole crop upon them and keeping severall to attend them, and that it hath redounded to a very considerable improvement'.[298]

Incubators of a very rude sort were used, three or four dozen eggs being placed in a 'lamp furnace made of a few boards', and hatched by the heat of a lamp or candle.

It must strike the reader that the accusation levelled against the English farmer, of having made little progress in his art from the Middle Ages to the commencement of the reign of George III is hardly warranted. Their knowledge and skill in their business were evidently such as to make considerable progress inevitable, and then as now they were in some cases a.s.sisted by their landlords, as in Herefordshire, where Lord Scudamore, after the a.s.sa.s.sination of his friend the Duke of Buckingham, devoted his energies to the culture of fruit, and with other public-spirited gentlemen turned that county into 'one entire orchard', besides improving the pastures and woods[299]; though Hartlib laments that gentlemen try so few experiments for the advancement of agriculture, and that both landowners and farmers instead of communicating their knowledge to each other kept it jealously to themselves.[300] The chief hindrance to landlord and tenant was that the heavy hand of ancient custom lay upon them, with its antiquated communistic system of farming, which still in the greater part of the land of England utterly prevented good husbandry and stifled individual effort. It was one of these Herefordshire gentlemen. Rowland Vaughan, who in 1610 wrote what is probably the first account of irrigation in England, though the art was mentioned by Fitzherbert and must have been known in Devon and Hampshire long before his time; indeed, it is another instance of the then isolation of country districts that he speaks as if he had made a new discovery.

He tells us that 'having sojourned two years in his father's house, wearied in doing nothing and fearing his fortunes had been overthrown, he cast about what was best to be done to retrieve his reputation'.

And one day he saw from a mole-hill on the side of a brook on his property a little stream of water issuing down the working of the mole, which made the ground 'pleasing green', and from this he was led on to what he calls 'the drowning of his lands'. This was so successful that he improved the value of his estate from 40 to 300 a year, and his neighbours, who of course had first scoffed at him, came to learn from him. Not many years after 'drowning' was said to have become one of the most universal and advantageous improvements in England.[301] Vaughan says that he had counted as many as 300 persons gleaning in one field after harvest, and that in the mountains near eggs were 20 a penny, and a good bullock 26s. 3d., but this was a backward region.[302]

Between 1617 and 1621 the price of wheat fell from 43s. 3d. to 21s. a quarter, and immediately affected the payment of rent.[303] Mr. John Chamberlain, in February, 1620, wrote to Sir Dudley Carleton, 'We are here in a strange state to complain of plenty, but so it is that corn beareth so low a price that farmers are very backward to pay their rents and in many places plead disability: for remedy whereof the Council have written letters into every shire to provide a granary with a stock to buy corn and keep it for a dear year.' Sir Symonds D'Ewes notes in his diary that 'at this time (1621) the rates of all sorts of corn were so extremely low as it made the very prices of land fall from twenty years' purchase to sixteen or seventeen. For the best wheat was sold for 2s. 8d. and 2s. 6d. the bushel, the ordinary at 2s.

Barley and rye at 1s. 4d. and 1s. 3d. the bushel, and the worser of those grains at a meaner rate, the poorer sort that would have been glad but a few years before of coa.r.s.e rye bread, did now usually traverse the markets to find out the finer wheats as if nothing else would please their palates'. Instead of being glad that they were for once having a small share of the good things of this world, he rejoices that their unthankfulness and daintiness was soon punished by high prices and dearness of all sorts of grain.[304] The year 1630 was the commencement of a series of dear seasons, when for nine consecutive years the price of wheat did not fall below 40s. a quarter and actually touched 86s. The restraints laid on corn-dealers had, since the principles of commerce were being better understood, been modified in 1624, but the high prices revived the old hatred against them, and we find Sir John Wingfield writing from Rutland that he has 'taken order that ingrossers of corne shall be carefullie seen unto and that there is no Badger (corn-dealer) licensed to carry corne out of this countrye nor any starch made of any kind of graine'. He adds that he had 'refrayned the maulsters from excessive making of mault, and had suppressed 20 alehouses'.[305] However, the senseless policy of preventing trade in corn received a severe blow from the statute 15 Car. II, c. 7, which enacted that when corn was under 48s. persons were to be allowed to buy and store corn and sell the same again without penalty, provided they did not sell it in the same market within three months of buying it, a statute which Adam Smith said contributed more to the progress of agriculture than any previous law in the statute book.

Gervase Markham, who was born about 1568 and died in 1637, gives us a description of the day's work of the English farmer. He is to rise at four in the morning, feed his cattle and clean his stable. While they are feeding he is to get his harness ready, which will take him two hours. Then he is to have his breakfast, for which half an hour is allowed. Getting the harness on his horses or cattle, he is to start by seven to his work and keep at it till between two and three in the afternoon. Then he shall bring his team home, clean them and give them their food, dine himself, and at four go back to his cattle and give them more fodder, and getting into his barn make ready their food for next day, not forgetting to see them again before going to his own supper at six. After supper he is to mend shoes by the fireside for himself and his family, or beat and knock hemp and flax, or pitch and stamp apples or crabs for cider or verjuice, or else grind malt, pick candle-rushes, or 'do some husbandry office within doors till it befall eight o'clock'. Then he shall take his lantern, visit his cattle once more, and go with all his household to rest. The farm roller of this time, according to Markham, was made of a round piece of wood 30 inches in circ.u.mference, 6 feet long, having at each end a strong pin of iron to which shafts were made fast.[306] He mentions wooden and iron harrows, but this refers only to the tines, the wooden ones being made of ash. From an ill.u.s.tration of a harrow which he gives, it appears it was much like Fitzherbert's and many used to-day: a wooden frame, with the teeth set perhaps more closely than ours; the single harrow 4 feet square drawn by one horse, the double harrow 7 feet square by two oxen at least. Wheat he says, when the land is dug 15 inches deep, and the seed dibbled in, will produce twelve times as much as when ploughed; but he admits the 'intricacy and trouble' of this method.[307] As to the question of mowing or reaping corn, he is of opinion that though 'it is a custom in many countries of this kingdom not to sheare the wheat but to mow it, in my conceit it is not so good, for it both maketh the wheate foule and full of weede'.

Barley, however, should be mown close to the ground, though many reap it; oats too were to be mown. His directions for planting an orchard[308] are interesting, both as showing the kinds of fruit then grown, the number of different sorts planted together, and the growth of the olive in England.[309] The orchard, he says, should be a square, divided into four quarters by alleys, and in the first quarter should be apples of all sorts, in the second pears and wardens of all sorts, in the third quinces and chestnuts, in the fourth medlars and services. A wall is the best fence, and on the north wall, 'against which the sunne reflects, you shall plant the abricot, verdochio, peache, and damaske plumbe; against the east side the white muskadine grape, the pescod plumbe, and the Emperiale plumbe; against the west, the grafted cherries and the olive tree; and against the south side the almond and the figge tree.' As if this extraordinary mixture were not enough, 'round about the skirts of the alleys' were to be planted plums, damsons, cherries, filberts and nuts of all sorts, and the 'horse clog' and 'bulleye', the two latter being inferior wild plums.

Plums were to be 5 feet apart, apples and other large fruit 12 feet.

Young trees should be watered morning and evening in dry summers, and old ones should have the earth dug away from the upper part of the roots from November to March, then the earth, mixed with dung or soap ashes, replaced. Moss was carefully to be sc.r.a.ped off the trees with the back of an old knife, and, to prevent it, the trees manured with swine's dung. Minute distinctions are given as to pruning and washing the trees with strong brine of water and salt, either with a garden pump placed in a tub or with 'squirtes which have many hoales', the forerunner of modern spraying.

Cider was then mostly made in the west, as in Devonshire and Cornwall, and perry in Worcestershire and Gloucestershire; but he leaves out Herefordshire, where it was certainly made at this time.[310]

A curious help to fattening beasts, says Markham, is a lean horse or two kept with them, for the beasts delight to feed with them.

Fattening cattle were to have first bite at the pastures, then draught cattle, and then sheep; after Midsummer, when there is an extraordinary sweetness in the gra.s.s, suffer the cattle to eat the gra.s.s closer till Lammas (August 1). Though some do not hold with him, he thinks reading and writing not unprofitable to a husbandman, but not much material 'to his bailiff'; for there is more trust in an honest score chalked on a trencher than 'in a commen writen scrowle'.

Landowners derived a good income from their woods and coppices. An acre of underwood of twenty-one years' growth, was at this time worth from 20 to 30; of twelve years' growth, 5 to 6; but on many of the best lands it was only cut every thirty years.[311]

In 1742-3 oak timber was worth from 15d. to 18d. per cubic foot and ash about 10d. During the Napoleonic war oak sold for 4s. 6d. a foot.

In Blyth's _Improver Improved_ we have one of the first accounts of covered drains. The draining trench was to be made deep enough to go the bottom of the 'cold spewing moist water' that feeds the flags and the rushes; as for the width 'use thine own liberty' but be sure make it as straight as possible. The bottom was to be filled in with f.a.ggots or stones to a depth of 15 inches, a method in some parts retained till comparatively modern times, with the top turf laid upon them gra.s.s downward, and the drain filled in with the earth dug out of it.

A country gentleman at this date could keep up a good establishment on an income which to-day would compel him to live economically in a cottage. From the accounts of Mr. Master, a landowner near Chiselhurst, it appears that a man with an income of 300 or 400 a year could live in some luxury, keep a stud of horses, and a considerable number of servants.[312] Some of them had no scruples about adding to their incomes by turning corn-dealers, even selling such small quant.i.ties as pecks of peas, bushels of rye, and half pecks of oatmeal. From the accounts of one of them, Henry Best,[313] of Elmswell, we learn many valuable details concerning farming in Yorkshire about 1641. It was the custom to put the ram to the ewes about October 18, but Best did so about Michaelmas, and generally used one ram to 30 or 40 ewes, and he considered it necessary that the ewes should be two-shear. 'Good handsome ewes', he says, could have been bought at Kilham fair for 3s. 6d. each, a price far below the average of the time. As for wages, mowers of gra.s.s had 10d. a day, and found their own food and their scythes, which cost them about 2s. 3d. each.

Haymakers got 4d. a day, and had to 'meat themselves' and find their own forks and rakes. Shearers or reapers were paid from 8d. to 10d., and found their own sickles; binders and stackers, 8d.; mowers of 'haver', or oats, 10d., a good mower cutting 4 acres a day. In 1641 he sold oats for 14s. a quarter, best barley for 22s., rye 27s. 6d., wheat 30s.[314] The roads were dreadful, and produce nearly all sent to market on pack-horses. 'Wee seldome send fewer than 8 horse loads to the market at a time, and with them two men, for one man cannot guide the poakes (sacks) of above four horses. When wee sende oats to the market wee sack them up in 3 bushel poakes and lay 6 bushels on a horse; when wee sende wheate, rye, or ma.s.seldene (rye and wheat) and barley to market wee put it into mette poakes (2 bushel sacks), sometimes into half quarter sacks, and these we lay on horses that are short coupled and well backed.' When the servants got to market they were charged a halfpenny a horse for stabling and hay, but if they dined at the inn they paid nothing for their horses, and their dinners cost them 4d. a head. b.u.t.ter was sold by the lb., or the 'cake' of 2 lb., and in the beginning of Lent was 5d. a lb., by April 20, 3d., in the middle of May, 2-1/2d. When William Pinder took 50 acres of land 'of my Lord Haye' he paid a fine of 60 and a rent of 40; but this must have been an extremely choice piece of land, for arable land rented apparently at less than 3s. an acre.[315] The rent of a cottage was usually 10s. a year, 'though they have not so much as a yard or any backe side belonging to them.' There is more evidence, if such were needed, of the beneficial effect of enclosure, which was said to treble the value of pasture. Good meadow land fetched a great price: 'The medow Sykes is about 5 acres of grounde, and was letten in the year 1628 at 6 per annum, and in 1635 at 6 13s. 4d.

The requirements of a foreman on a farm were that he could sow, mow, stack peas, go well with 4 horses, and be accustomed to marketing; and for this when hired by the year he received 5 marks, and perhaps half a crown as earnest money. The next man got 50s., the next 46s. 6d., the fourth 35s. 'Christopher Pearson had the first year he dwelt here 3 5s. 0d. wages per annum and 5s. to a G.o.d's penny (earnest money); next year he had 4 wages, and he was both a good seedsman,' before the invention of drills a very valuable qualification, 'and did sow all our seed both the years. When you are about to hire a servant you are to call them aside and talk privately with them concerning their wage, and if the servants stand in the churchyard they usually call them aside and walk to the back side of the church and there treat of their wage. I heard a servant asked what he could do, who made this answer:

"I can sowe, I can mowe, And I can stacke; And I can doe My master too When my master turns his backe".'