A Short History of English Agriculture Part 18

[353] Eden, _State of the Poor_, i. 228.

[354] If we allow that most of the two last cla.s.ses enumerated were country folk. For the decline of the yeoman cla.s.s, see chap. xviii.

[355] Evelyn's _Diary_.

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

[357] Fowle, _Poor Law_, p. 63.

[358] Hasbach, _op. cit._ p. 66, says, 'the abuses complained of in the preamble (of the Act) did actually exist.'

[359] Hasbach, _op. cit._ pp. 67, 134, says the statute of 1662 did not entail so much evil by hindering migration as is generally supposed.

[360] _Shropshire County Records_: Abstracts of the orders made by the Court of Quarter Sessions, 1638-1782, pp. xxiv, xxv.

[361] See above, p. 70. 13 Eliz., c. 13. McCulloch, _Commercial Dictionary_ (1852), p. 412.

[362] Cunningham, _English Industry and Commerce_, ii. 371.

[363] _Political Arithmetic_, pp. 27-34, 193, 276.

[364] Lecky, _England in the Eighteenth Century_, vi. 192.

[365] McPherson, _Annals of Commerce_, iii. 311.

[366] Ibid. ii. 706; iii. 221, 293.

CHAPTER XIV

1700-1765

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.--CROPS.--CATTLE.-- DAIRYING.--POULTRY.--TULL AND THE NEW HUSBANDRY.--BAD TIMES.

--FRUIT-GROWING

The history of agriculture in the eighteenth century is remarkable for several features of great importance. It first saw the application of capital in large quant.i.ties to farming, the improvements of the time being largely initiated by rich landowners whom Young praises rightly as public-spirited men who deserved well of their country, though Thorold Rogers attributes a meaner motive for the improvement of their estates, namely, their desire not to be outshone by the wealthy merchants.[367] They were often ably a.s.sisted by tenant farmers, many of whom were now men with considerable capital, for whom the smaller farms were amalgamated into large ones. After the agricultural revolution of the latter half of the century, the tendency to consolidate small holdings into large farms grew apace and was looked on as a decided mark of progress. This agricultural revolution was largely a result of the industrial revolution that then took place in England. Owing to mechanical inventions and the consequent growth of the factory system, the great manufacturing towns arose, whence came a great demand for food, and, to supply this demand, farms, instead of being small self-sufficing holdings just growing enough for the farmer and his family and servants, grew larger, and became manufactories of corn and meat. The century was also remarkable for another great change. England, hitherto an exporting country, became an importing one. The progress of the century was furthered by a band of men whose names are, or ought to be, household words with English farmers: Jethro Tull, Lord Townshend, Arthur Young, Bakewell, c.o.ke of Holkham, and the Collings. Further the century witnessed a great number of enclosures, especially when it was drawing to its close.

According to the Report of the Committee on Waste Lands in 1797, the number of Enclosure Acts was: under Anne, 2 Acts, enclosing 1,439 acres; under Geo. I, 16 Acts, enclosing 17,960 acres; under Geo. II, 226 Acts, enclosing 318,778 acres; from 1760 to 1797, 1,532 Acts, enclosing 2,804,197 acres.

The period from 1700 to 1765 has been called the golden age of the agricultural cla.s.ses, as the fifteenth century has been called the golden age of the labourer, but the farmer and landlord were often hard pressed; rates were low, wages were fair, and the demand for the produce of the farm constant owing to the growth of the population, yet prices for wheat, stock, and wool were often unremunerative to the farmer, and we are told in 1734, 'necessity has compelled our farmers to more carefulness and frugality in laying out their money than they were accustomed to in better times.'[368] The labourer's wages varied according to locality. The a.s.sessment of wages by the magistrates in Lancashire for 1725 remains, and according to that the ordinary labourer earned 10d. a day in the summer and 9d. in the winter months, with extras in harvest, and this may be taken as the average pay at that date. Threshing and winnowing wheat by piece-work cost 2s. a quarter, oats 1s. a quarter. Making a ditch 4 feet wide at the top, 18 inches wide at the bottom, and 3 feet deep, double set with quicks, cost 1s. a rood (8 yards), 10d. if without the quick.[369] The magistrates remarked in their proclamation on the plenty of the times and were afraid that for the northern part of the county, which was then very backward, the wages were too liberal. Wheat was, unfortunately, that year 46s. 1d. a quarter, but a few years before and after that date it was cheap--20s., 24s., 28s. a quarter--and fresh meat was only 3d. a lb., so that their wages went a long way.[370] A considerable portion of the wages was paid in kind, not only in drink but in food, though this custom became less frequent as the century went on.[371]

As for his food, Eden tells us[372] that the diet of Bedford workhouse in 1730 was much better than that of the most industrious labourer in his own home, and this was the diet: bread and cheese or broth for breakfast, boiled beef hot or cold, sometimes with suet pudding for dinner, and bread and cheese or broth for supper. This must have been sufficiently monotonous, and we may be sure the labourer at home very seldom had boiled beef for dinner; but in the north he was much cleverer than his southern brother in cooking cereal foods such as oatmeal porridge, crowdie (also of oatmeal), frumenty or barley milk, barley broth, &c.[373]

The village of the first half of the eighteenth century contained a much better graded society than the village of to-day. It had few gaps, so that there was a ladder from the lowest to the highest ranks, owing to the existence of many small holders of various degree, soon to be diminished by enclosure and consolidation.[374]

There was a great increase in the number of live stock owing to the spread, gradual though it was, of roots and clover, which increased the winter food; 'of late years,' it was said in 1739, 'there have been improvements made in the breed of sheep by changing of rams, and sowing of turnips, gra.s.s seeds, &c.'[375] Crops, too, were improving; and enclosed lands about 1726 were said to produce over 20 bushels of wheat to the acre.[376]

Though the number of Enclosure Acts at the beginning of the century was nothing like the number at the end, the process was steadily going on, often by non-parliamentary enclosure, and was approved by nearly every one. Some, however, were opposed to it. John Cowper, who wrote an essay on 'Enclosing Commons' in 1732, said, a common was often the chief support of forty or fifty poor families, and even though their rights were bought out they were under the necessity of leaving their old homes, for their occupation was gone; but he says nothing of the well-known increased demand for labour on the enclosed lands. The force of his arguments may be gauged from his answer to Lawrence's statement that enclosure is the greatest benefit to good husbandry, and a remedy for idleness. On the contrary, says he, who among the country people live lazier lives than the grazier and the dairyman?

All the dairyman has to do is to call his cows together to be milked!

Worlidge in 1669 had lamented that turnips were so little grown by English farmers in the field, and that it was a plant 'usually nourished in gardens',[377] and in a letter to Houghton in 1684, he is the first to mention the feeding of turnips to sheep.[378] However, in 1726 it was said that nothing of late years had turned to greater profit to the farmer, who now found it one of his chief treasures; and there were then three sorts: the round which was most common, the yellow, and the long.[379] For winter use they were to be sown from the beginning of June to the middle of August, on fallow which had been brought to a good tilth, the seed harrowed in with a bush harrow, and if necessary rolled. When the plants had two or three leaves each they were to be hoed out, leaving them five or six inches apart, though some slovenly farmers did not trouble to do this; but there is no mention of hoeing between the rows. The fly was already recognized as a pest, and soot and common salt were used to fight it. Folding sheep in winter on turnips was then little practised, though Lawrence strongly recommends it. According to Defoe,[380] Suffolk was remarkable for being the first county where the feeding and fattening of sheep and other cattle with turnips was first practised in England, to the great improvement of the land, 'whence', he says, 'the practice is spread over most of the east and south, to the great enriching of farmers and increase of fat cattle.' There were great disputes as to collecting the t.i.the, always a sore subject, on turnips; and the custom seems to have been that if they were eaten off by store sheep they went t.i.the free, if sheep were fattened on them the t.i.the was paid.[381]

Clover, the other great novelty of the seventeenth century, was now generally sown with barley, oats, or rye gra.s.s, about 15 lb. per acre.

This amount, sown on 2 acres of barley, would next year produce 2 loads worth about 5. The next crop stood for seed, which was cut in August, the hay being worth 9, and the seed out of it, 300 lb., was sold much of it for 16d. a lb., the sum realized in that year from the 2 acres being 30, without counting the aftermath. At this time most of the seed was still imported from Flanders.[382] Much of the common and waste land of England, not previously worth 6d. an acre, had been by 1732 vastly improved through sowing artificial gra.s.ses on it, so that various people had gained considerable estates.[383]

Carrots were also now grown as a field crop in places, especially near London, two sorts being known, the yellow and red, used chiefly by farmers for feeding their hogs.[384] Of wheat the names were many, but there were apparently only seven distinct sorts, the Double-eared, Eggsh.e.l.l, Red or Kentish, Great-bearded, Pollard, Grey, and Flaxen or Lammas.[385] The growth of saffron had declined, though the English variety was the best in the world, according to Lawrence, and except in Cambridgeshire and about Saffron Walden it was little known.

Though it was still some time before the days of Bakewell, increased attention was given to cattle-breeding; it was urged that a well-shaped bull be put to cows, one that had 'a broad and curled forehead, long horns, fleshy neck, and a belly long and large.'[386]

Such in 1726 was the ideal type of the long-horns of the Midland and the north, but it was noticed that of late years and especially in the north the Dutch breed was much sought after, which had short horns and long necks, the breed with which the Collings were to work such wonders. The then great price of 20 had been given for a cow of this breed. Bradley, Professor of Botany at Cambridge, and a well-known writer on agriculture, divided the cattle of England into three sorts according to their colour: the black, white, and red.[387] The black, commonly the smallest, was the strongest for labour, chiefly found in mountainous countries; also bred chiefly in Cheshire, Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Derbyshire, sixty years before this, and in those days Cheshire cheese came from these cattle, apparently very much like the modern Welsh breed.[388] The white were much larger, and very common in Lincolnshire at the end of the seventeenth century. They gave more milk than the black sort but went dry sooner. They were also found in Suffolk and Surrey.

The red cattle were the largest in England, their milk rich and nourishing, so much so that it was given specially to consumptives.

They were first bred in Somerset, where in Bradley's time particular attention was paid to their breeding, and were evidently the ancestors of the modern Devons. About London these cows were often fed on turnips, given them tops and all, which made their milk bitter. They were also found in Lincolnshire and some other counties, where 'they were fed on the marshes', and Defoe saw, in the Weald of Kent, 'large Kentish bullocks, generally all red with their horns crooked inward.'

Bradley gives the following balance sheet for a dairy of nine cows:[389]

DR. s. d.

6 months' gra.s.s keep at 1s. 6d. per week per head 17 11 0 6 months' winter keep (straw, hay, turnips, and grains) at 2s. per week per head 23 8 0 --------- 40 19 0 ========= CR.

13,140 gallons of milk 136 17 6 40 19 0 --------- Balance (profit) 95 18 6 =========

A correspondent, however, pointed out to Bradley that this yield and profit was far above the average, which was about 5 a cow, on whom Bradley retorted that it could be made, though it was exceptional.

In the eighteenth century the great trade of driving Scottish cattle to London began, Walter Scott's grandfather being the pioneer. The route followed diverged from the Great North Road in Yorkshire in order to avoid turnpikes, and the cattle, grazing leisurely on the strips of gra.s.s by the roadside, generally arrived at Smithfield in good condition.[390]

Defoe tells us that most of the Scottish cattle which came yearly into England were brought to the village of S. Faiths, north of Norwich, 'where the Norfolk graziers go and buy them. These Scots runts, coming out of the cold and barren highlands, feed so eagerly on the rich pasture in these marshes that they grow very fat. There are above 40,000 of these Scots cattle fed in this county every year. The gentlemen of Galloway go to England with their droves of cattle and take the money themselves.'[391] It was no uncommon thing for a Galloway n.o.bleman to send 4,000 black cattle and 4,000 sheep to England in a year, and altogether from 50,000 to 60,000 cattle were said to come to England from Galloway yearly. Gentlemen on the Border before the Union got a very pretty living by tolls from these cattle; and the Earl of Carlisle made a good income in this way.

Cattle were sometimes of a great size. In 1697, in the park of Sir John f.a.gg near Steyning, Defoe saw four bullocks of Sir John's own breeding for which was refused in Defoe's hearing 26 apiece. They were driven to Smithfield and realized 25 each, having probably sunk on the way, but dressed they weighed 80 stone a quarter![392] These weights must have been very exceptional, but go to prove that cattle then could be grown to much greater size than is generally credited. A good price for a bullock in the first half of the eighteenth century was from 7 to 10.

The best poultry at the same date (1736) were said to be 'the white-feathered sort', especially those that had short and white legs, which were esteemed for the whiteness of their flesh; but those that had long yellow legs and yellow beaks were considered good for nothing.[393] Care was to be used in the choice of a c.o.c.k, for those of the game kind were to be avoided as unprofitable. Bradley gives a balance sheet for 12 hens and 2 c.o.c.ks who had a free run in a farmyard and an orchard:[394]

DR. s. d.

39 bushels of barley 3 5 0 Balance, profit 16 0 ---------- 4 1 0 ==========

CR. s. d.

Eggs (number unfortunately not given) 1 5 0 20 early chickens at 1s. 1 0 0 72 late chickens at 6d. 1 16 0 ---------- 4 1 0 ==========

He also recommends that in stocking a farm of 200 a year the following poultry should be purchased:

s. d.

24 chickens at 4d. 8 0 20 geese 1 0 0 20 turkeys 1 0 0 24 ducks 12 0 6 pair of pigeons 12 0

The best way to fatten chickens, according to Bradley, was to put them in coops and feed them with barley meal, being careful to put a small quant.i.ty of brickdust in their water to give them an appet.i.te.[395]

On this farm were 20 acres of cow pasture besides common, and this with some turnips kept 9 cows, which gave about three gallons of milk a day at least, the milk being worth 1d. a quart. His pigs were of the 'Black Bantham' breed, which were better than the large sort common in England, for the flesh was much more delicate.