A Short History of English Agriculture Part 15

If we are to judge by the food provided for the thatchers, who were little better than ordinary labourers, the Yorkshire farm-hand fared well on plenty of simple food, his three meals a day consisting of b.u.t.ter, milk, cheese, and either eggs, pies, or bacon, sometimes porridge instead of milk.

Probably, however, few country gentlemen were such industrious farmers as Best; many of them pa.s.sed their days mostly in hunting and fowling and their evenings in drinking, though we know too that there were exceptions who did not care for this rude existence. Deer hunting, and we must add deer poaching, was the great sport of the wealthy, but the smaller gentry had to be content with simpler forms of the chase. For fox hunting each squire had his own little pack, and hunted only over his own estate and those of his friends. He had also the otter, the badger, and the hare to amuse him. Fowling was conducted, as in the Middle Ages, by hawk or net, for the shot gun had not yet come into use, and was forbidden by an old law.[316] The partridge and pheasant, as now, were the chief game birds. After the Restoration the country gentlemen seem to have been infected by the dissipation of the Court, and farming was left to the tenant farmer and yeoman: 'our gentry', says Pepys, 'have grown ignorant of everything in good husbandry.'

The middle of the seventeenth century was the Golden Age of the yeoman who owned and farmed his land; even at the end of the Stuart period, when their decline had already begun, Gregory King estimated their numbers at 160,000 families, or about one-seventh of the population. The cla.s.s included all those between the man who owned freehold land worth 40s. a year and the wealthier yeoman who was hardly distinguishable from the small gentleman. Owning their own land they were a st.u.r.dy and independent cla.s.s, and they 'took a jolly pride in voting as in fighting on the opposite side of the neighbouring squire'. 'The yeomanry', wrote Fuller, 'is an estate of people almost peculiar to England;' he 'wears russet clothes but makes golden payment, having tin in his b.u.t.tons and silver in his pocket He seldom goes abroad, and his credit stretches farther than his travel.' The tenant farmers were nearly as numerous, King estimating them at 150,000 families; economically they were about on a level with the yeoman, their social standing, however, was considerably inferior.

The greatest improvement of the seventeenth century, the introduction from Holland of turnips and clover, was over-estimated by its author, Sir Richard Weston; for he tells his sons that by sowing flax, turnips, and clover they might in five years improve 500 acres of poor land so as to bring in 7,000 a year.[317] To bring about this desirable consummation, he provides his sons with accounts as to the cost, one of which shows the cost of growing an acre of flax and the profit thereon, though this gentleman's estimates are clearly optimistic:

DR. s. d.

Devonshiring, i.e. paring and burning 1 0 0 Lime 0 12 0 Ploughing and harrowing 0 6 0 3 bushels of seed 2 0 0 Weeding 0 1 0 Pulling and binding 0 10 0 Gra.s.sing the seed from the flax 0 6 0 Watering, drying, swinging, and beating 4 10 0 ---------- 9 5 0 ==========

CR. s. d.

900 lb. of flax 40 0 0 9 5 0 ----------- Balance profit 30 15 0 ===========

Turnips were to come after flax, and were to be given to the cows as they did in Flanders; that is, wash them clean, put them in a trough where they were to be stamped together with a spitter or small spade; and the turnips were to be followed by clover. All these, says Weston, were already grown in England, but 'there is as much difference between what groweth here and there as is between the same thing which groweth in a garden and that which groweth wild in the fields'.

Worlidge soon after recommended that clover be sown on barley or oats about the end of March or in April, and harrowed in, or by itself; and says, with optimism equal to Weston's, one acre of clover will feed you as many cows as 6 acres of ordinary gra.s.s and make the milk richer.[318]

It has been noticed that the price of wool altered little during the century, and from the private accounts of Sir Abel Barker[319] of Hambleton, in the County of Rutland, we learn that in 1642 he sold his wool to his 'loving friend Mr. William Gladstone' for 1 a tod, though by 1648 it had gone up to 29s., a good price for those days. During the Civil War some of Barker's horses were carried off for the service of the State, and he values them at 8 a piece, a fair price then.

Some years later, for mowing 44 acres of gra.s.s he sets down in his account 2 7s. 0d., for making the same 2 3s. 0d., and stacking it 3s.

Simon Hartlib, a Dutchman by birth and a friend of John Milton, published his _Legacy_ in 1651, containing both rash statements and useful information. We certainly cannot believe him when he states that pasture employs more hands than tillage. His estimate of a good crop of wheat was from 12 to 16 bushels per acre, and he speaks strongly of the great fluctuations in prices, for he had known barley sell at Northampton at 6d. a bushel, and within 12 months at 5s., and wheat in London in one year varied from 3s. 6d. to 15s. a bushel. The enormous number of dovecotes was still a great nuisance, and the pigeons were reckoned to eat 6,000,000 quarters of grain annually.

Hartlib recommends his countrymen to sow 'a seed commonly called Saint Foine, which in England is as much as to say Holy Hay,' as they do in France: especially on barren lands, advice which some of them followed, and in Wilts., soon after, sainfoin is said to have so improved poor land that from a n.o.ble (6s. 8d.) per acre, the rent had increased to 30s.[320] They were also to use 'another sort of fodder which they call La Lucern at Paris for dry and barren grounds'. So wasteful were they of labour in some parts that in Kent were to be seen 12 horses and oxen drawing one plough.[321]

The use of the spade was long looked askance at by English husbandmen; old men in Surrey had told Hartlib that they knew the first gardeners that came into those parts to plant cabbages and 'colleflowers', and to sow turnips, carrots, and parsnips, and that they gave 8 an acre for their land. The latter statement must be an exaggeration, as it is equivalent to a rent of about 40 in our money; but we may give some credence to him when he says that the owner was anxious lest the spade should spoil his ground, 'so ignorant were we of gardening in those days.' Though it was not the case in Elizabeth's time, by now the licorice, saffron, cherries, apples, pears, hops, and cabbages of England were the best in the world; but many things were deficient, for instance, many onions came from Flanders and Spain, madder from Zealand, and roses from France.[322] 'It is a great deficiency in England that we have not more orchards planted. It is true that in Kent, and about London, and in Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, and Worcestershire[323] there are many gallant orchards, but in other country places they are very rare and thin, I know in Kent some advance their ground from 5s. per acre to 5 by this means', and 30 acres of cherries near Sittingbourne had realized 1,000 in one year.

His recipe for making old fruit trees bear well savours of a time when old women were still burnt as witches. 'First split his root, then apply a compost of pigeon's dung, lees of wine, or stale wine, and a little brimstone'. The t.i.thes of wine in Gloucestershire were 'in divers parishes considerably great', and wine was then made in Kent and Surrey, notably by Sir Peter Ricard, who made 6 or 8 hogsheads yearly.[324] There is no doubt that the vine has been grown in the open in England from very early times until comparatively recent ones. The Britons were taught to plant it by the Romans in A.D.

280.[325] In Domesday there are 38 examples of vineyards, chiefly in the south central counties. Neckham, who wrote in the twelfth century, says the vineyard was an important adjunct to the mediaeval mansion.[326] William of Malmesbury praised the vines and wine of Gloucestershire; and says that the vine was either allowed to trail on the ground, or trained to small stakes fixed to each plant. Indeed, the mention of them in mediaeval chronicles is frequent.

Two bushels of green grapes in 1332 fetched 7s. 6d.[327] Richard II planted vines in great plenty, according to Stow, within the upper park of Windsor, and sold some part to his people. The wine made in England was sweetened with honey, and probably flavoured and coloured with blackberries.[328] At the dissolution of the monasteries there was a vineyard at Barking Nunnery. 'We might have a reasonable good wine growing in many places of this realme', says Barnaby Googe, about 1577, 'as doubtless we had immediately after the Conquest, tyll, partly by slothfulnesse, partly by civil discord long continued, it was left, and so with time lost.... There is besides Nottingham an ancient house called Chylwel in which remaineth yet as an ancient monument in a great wyndowe of gla.s.se, the whole order of planting, proyning, stamping, and pressing of vines. Upon many cliffes and hills are yet to be seen the rootes and old remaines of vines.' Plot, in his _Natural History of Staffordshire_,[329] says 'the vine has been improved by Sir Henry Lyttelton at Over (Upper) Arley, which is situate low and warm, so that he has made wine there undistinguishable from the best French by the most judicious palates, but this I suppose was done only in some over hot summer, and Dr. Bathurst made very good claret at Oxon in 1685, a very mean year for the purpose.' In 1720 the famous vineyard at Bath of 6 acres, planted with the 'white muscadene'

and the 'black Chester grape,' produced 66 hogsheads of wine worth 10 a hogshead, but in unfavourable years grew very little.'[330] Mr.

Peter Collinson, writing from Middles.e.x in 1747, says, 'the vineyards turn to good profit, much wine being made this year in England;' and again in 1748, 'my vineyards are very ripe; a considerable quant.i.ty of wine will this year be made in England.'[331] However, the attempt made to grow vines on the undercliff at Ventnor at the end of the eighteenth century by Sir Richard Worsley ended in dismal failure, and it is probable that the English climate in its normal years seldom produced good grapes out of doors whatever it may have done in exceptionally hot ones, unless we a.s.sume that it has changed considerably, for which there is little ground.

Hartlib was no friend of commons; they made the poor idle and trained them for the gallows or beggary, and there were fewest poor where there were fewest commons,[332] as in Kent--a statement re-echoed by many observant writers; he also recommends enclosures, because they gave warmth and consequent fertility to the soil. He tells us that an effort had been made by James I to encourage the growth of mulberry trees and the breeding of silkworms, the lords-lieutenant of the different counties being urged to see to it, but it had little effect.[333]

The number of different sorts of wheat was by this time considerable.

Hartlib gives the white, red, bearded ('which is not subject to mildews as others'); some sorts with two rows, others with four and six; some with one ear on a stalk, others with two; the red stalk wheat of Bucks; winter wheat and summer wheat. There were also twenty varieties of peas that he knew, and the white, black, naked. Scotch, and Poland oats. Markham adds the whole straw wheat, the great brown pollard, the white pollard, the organ, the flaxen, and the chilter wheat.

There was a sad lack of enterprise in the breeding of stock now and for many generations before; indeed, it may be doubted if this important branch of farming, except perhaps in the case of sheep, was much attended to until the time of Bakewell and the Collings. In Elizabeth's time a Frenchman had twitted England with having only 3,000 or 4,000 horses worth anything, which was one of the reasons that induced the Spaniards to invade us.[334] 'We are negligent, too, in our kine, that we advance not the best species.'

The size of cattle at this date, however, seems to have been greater than is often stated. The Report of the Select Committee on the Cultivation of Waste Lands in 1795, states that the average weight, dressed, of cattle at Smithfield in 1710 was only 370 lb.,[335] yet the Household Book of Prince Henry at the commencement of the seventeenth century says that an ox should weigh 600 lb. the four quarters, and cost about 9 10s., a sheep about 45 lb., so that the latter were apparently relatively smaller than the oxen. In 1603 oxen were sold at Tostock in Suffolk weighing 1,000 lb. apiece, dead weight.[336] According to the records of Winchester College, the oxen sold there in the middle of the century averaged, dressed, about 575 lb.; in 1677, 35 oxen sold there averaged 730 lb. 'Some kine,' it was said at the end of the century, 'have grown to be very bulky and a great many are sold for 10 or 12 apiece; there was lately sold near Bury a beast for 30, and 'twas fatted with cabbage leaves. An ox near Ripon weighed, dressed, 13-1/4 cwt.'[337] They were, of course, chiefly valued as beasts of draught, and no doubt the one Evelyn saw in 1649, 'bred in Kent, 17 foot in length, and much higher than I could reach,' was a powerful animal for this purpose. The young ones were taught to draw by yoking two of them, together with two old ones before and two behind, with a man on each side the young ones, 'to keep them in order and speak them fair,' for if much beaten they seldom did well: for the first two or three days they were worked only three or four hours a day, but soon they worked as long as the older ones, that is from 6 to 11, then a bait of hay and rest till 1, with work again till 5, at least in Lancashire. They were kept in the yoke till nine or ten years old, then turned on to the best gra.s.s in May, and sold to the butcher.[338]

FOOTNOTES:

[286] _Surveyor's Dialogue_ (ed. 1608), p. 2.

[287] _Surveyor's Dialogue_, p. 188.

[288] Ibid. p. 207.

[289] _Victoria County History: Devon, Agriculture_.

[290] _Herefordshire Orchards a Pattern for All England_ (ed. 1724).

[291] See infra, p. 136.

[292] These extracts are from the original edition in the Bodleian Library.

[293] 'The Flanders cherry excels', says Worlidge, _Syst. Agr._, p.

97.

[294] Bradley, in 1726, gives a long list of pears all with French names, hardly any of which are now known in England.

[295] Worlidge, _Systema Agriculturae_, p. 107.

[296] _Annotation upon the Legacie of Husbandry_, 1651, p. 105.

[297] Markham, i. 174 (ed. 1635).

[298] _Systema Agriculturae_, p. 152.

[299] Evelyn, _Pomona_ (ed. 1664), p. 2.

[300] _Compleat Husbandman_ (ed. 1659), p. 75.

[301] _Most Approved and Long Experienced Waterworks_. London, 1610.

[302] See Worlidge, _Systema Agriculturae_ (ed. 1669), p. 155.

[303] Tooke, _History of Prices_, i. 23.

[304] _Life of Sir S. D'Ewes_, i. 180.

[305] _Calendar of State Papers, Domestic_, 1629-31, p. 414.

[306] _Whole Art of Husbandry_ (ed. 1635), i. 50.

[307] Ibid. i. 100.

[308] Ibid. i. 121.

[309] An astonishing statement; cf. Denton, _England in the Fifteenth Century_, p. 56, Neckham, _De Natura Rerum_, cap. clxvi. and above, p.

93.

[310] _Whole Art of Husbandry_ (ed. 1635), i. 173.

[311] _Whole Art of Husbandry_ (ed. 1635), ii. 144. and MS. accounts of Mr. Chevallier of Aspall Hall, Suffolk.