After 1753 it fell again, largely owing to the great plague among cattle, which brought about a 'prodigious increase of sheep'[402]; and about 1770 Young[403] favoured corn rather than wool, for there was always a market for the former, but the foreign demand for cloth was diminishing, especially in the case of France, besides prohibition of export kept down the price.[404] Yet although wool was being deserted for corn it had in Young's time 'been so long supposed the staple and foundation of all our wealth, that it is somewhat dangerous to hazard an opinion not consonant to its encouragement'.

At the end of the century, however, there was a rapid increase in the price, partly due to increased demand by spinners and weavers who, owing to machinery, were working more economically; and partly to the enclosure of commons, and the ploughing up of land for corn.[405]

Cheshire had long been famous for cheese. Barnaby Googe, in the last quarter of the sixteenth century, says, 'in England the best cheese is the Cheshyre and the Shropshyre, then the Banbury cheese, next the Suffolk and the Essex, and the very worst the Kentish cheese.' Camden, who died in 1623, tells us that 'the grasse and fodder (in Cheshire) is of that goodness and vertue that cheeses be made here in great number, and of a most pleasing and delicate taste such as all England again affordeth not the like, no though the best dairywomen otherwise and skillfullest in cheese making be had from hence;' and a little later it was said no other county in the realm could compare with Cheshire, not even that wonderful agricultural country Holland from which England learnt so much.[406] In Lawrence's time Cheddar cheese was also famous, and there it had long been a custom for several neighbours to join their milk together to make cheeses, which were of a large size, weighing from 30 lb. to 100 lb. Good cheese came also from Gloucestershire and Warwickshire. The Cheshire men sent great quantities by sea to London, a long and tedious voyage, or else by land to Burton-on-Trent, and down that river to Hull and then by sea to London. The Gloucestershire men took it to Lechlade and sent it down the Thames; from Warwickshire it went by land all the way, or to Oxford and thence down the Thames to London. Stilton, too, had lately become famous, and was considered the best of all, selling for the then great price of 1s. a lb. on the farm, and 2s. 6d. at the Bell Inn, Stilton, where it seems to have first been sold in large quantities, though Leicestershire perhaps claims the honour of first making it.[407]

The eastern side of Suffolk was, in Defoe's time, famous for the best butter and perhaps the worst cheese in England, the butter being 'barrelled and sometimes pickled up in small casks'.[408]

Rabbits were occasionally kept in large numbers for profit; at Auborne Chase in Wilts, there was a warren of 700 acres surrounded by a wall—a most effective way of preventing escape, but somewhat expensive. In winter time they were fed on hay, and hazel branches from which they ate the bark. They were never allowed to get below 8,000 head, and from these, after deducting losses by poachers, weazles, polecats, foxes, &c., 24,000 were sold annually. These rabbits, owing to the quality of the grass, were famous for the sweetness of their flesh. The proprietor, Mr. Gilbert, began to kill them at Bartholomewtide, Aug. 24, and from then to Michaelmas obtained 9s. a dozen for them delivered free in London; but those from Michaelmas to Christmas realized 10s. 6d. a dozen.

The difference in price at the two periods is accounted for by the fact that their skins were much better in the latter, and the rabbits kept longer when killed; they must also have been larger. A skin before Michaelmas was only worth 1d., but soon after nearly 6d.; and in Hertfordshire was a warren where rabbit skins with silvery hair fetched 1s. each.[409]

We have now reached the period when the result of Jethro Tull's labours was given to the world, his Horse-hoeing Husbandry appearing in 1733. It is no exaggeration to say that agriculture owes more to Tull than to any other man; the principles formulated in his famous book revolutionized British agriculture, though we shall see that it took a long time to do it. He has indeed been described as 'the greatest individual improver agriculture ever knew'. He first realized that deep and perfect pulverization is the great secret of vegetable nutrition, and was thus led on to perfect the system of drilling seed wide enough apart to admit of tillage in the intervals, and abandoning the wide ridges in vogue, laid the land into narrow ridges 5 feet or 6 feet wide. He was born at Basildon in Berkshire, heir to a good estate, and was called to the bar in 1699, but on his marriage in the same year settled on the paternal farm of Howberry in Oxfordshire. In his preface to his book he throws a flash of light on country life at a time when the roads were nearly as bad as in the Middle Ages, so that they effectually isolated different parts of England, when he speaks of 'a long confinement within the limits of a lonely farm, in a country where I am a stranger, having debarred me from all conversation'.[410]

He took to agriculture more by necessity than by choice, for he knew too much 'the inconveniency and slavery attending the exorbitant power of husbandry servants', and he further gives this extraordinary character of the farm labourer of his day: ''Tis the most formidable objection against our agriculture that the defection of labourers is such that few gentlemen can keep their land in their own hands, but let them for a little to tenants who can bear to be insulted, assaulted, kicked, cuffed, and Bridewelled, with more patience than gentlemen are endowed with.'[411] Tull wrote just before it became the fashion for gentlemen to go into farming, and laments that the lands of the country were all, or mostly, in the hands of rack-renters, whose supposed interest it was that they should never be improved for fear of fines and increased rents. Gentlemen then knew so little of farming that they were unable to manage their estates. No doubt his scathing remarks helped to initiate the well-known change in this respect, and soon, over all England, gentlemen of education and position were engaged in removing this reproach from their class. The same complaint as to their ignorance of matters connected with their land crops up again during the great French war, but they then had a good excuse, as they were busy fighting the French.

His ideas were largely derived from the mechanism of the organ which, being fond of music, he had mastered in his youth—a rotary mechanism, which is the foundation of all agricultural sowing implements. His first invention may be described as a drill plough to sow wheat and turnip seed in drills three rows at a time, a harrow to cover the seed being attached. Afterwards he invented a turnip drill, so arranged as regards dropping the seed and its subsequent covering with soil that half the seed should come up earlier than the rest, to enable a portion at least to escape the dreaded fly. He was a great believer in doing everything himself, and worked so hard at his drill that he had to go abroad for his health. He was somewhat carried away by his invention, and asserts that the expense of a drilled crop of wheat was one-ninth of that sown in the old way, giving the following figures to prove his assertion:

He considered fallowing and manure unnecessary, and grew without manure 13 successive wheat crops on the same piece of ground, getting better crops than his neighbours who pursued the ordinary course of farming. His three great principles, indeed, were drilling, reduction of seed, and absence of weeds, and he saw that dung was a great carrier of the latter but lacked a due appreciation of its chemical action. Of course, like all improvers, he was met with unlimited opposition, and on the publication of his book he was assailed with abuse, which, being a sensitive man, caused him extreme annoyance. His health was bad, his troubles with his labourers unending, his son a spendthrift, and he died at his now famous home, Prosperous Farm, near Hungerford, in 1741, having said not long before his death, 'Some, allowed as good judges, have upon a full view and examination of my practice declared their opinion that it would one day become the general husbandry of England.'[413] Scotland was the first to perceive the merits of the system, and it gradually worked southwards into England, but for many years had to fight against ignorance and prejudice, even so intelligent a man as Arthur Young being opposed to it.

Farm leases had by this time assumed their modern form, and cultivation clauses were numerous. In one of 1732, at Hawsted, the tenant was to keep the hedges in repair, being allowed bushes and stakes for so doing. He was also to bestow on some part of the lands one load of good rotten muck over and above what was made on the farm for every load of hay, straw, or stover (fodder) which he should carry off.[414] In another of 1740, he was to leave in the last year of the tenancy one-third of the arable land summer tilled, ploughed, and fallowed, for which he was to be paid according to the custom of the country. In 1753, in the lease of Pinford End Farm, there was a penalty of £10 an acre for breaking up pasture; a great increase in the amount of the penalty. All compost, dung, soil, and ashes arising on the farm were to be bestowed upon it.

Only two crops successively were to be taken on any of the arable land, but land sown with clover and rye-grass, if fed off, or with turnips which were fed on some part of the farm, were not to count as crops.

The ashes mentioned were those from wood, which were now carefully looked after, as it had become the custom to sell them to the soap-boilers, who came round to every farm collecting them. This is the earliest mention in a Hawsted lease of rye-grass, clover, and turnips, though clover and turnips had been first cultivated there about 1700, and soon spread.

The winter of 1708-9 was very severe, a great frost lasting from October until the spring; wheat was 81s. 9d. a quarter, and high prices lasted until 1715.[415]

From 1715 to 1765 was an era of good seasons and low prices generally; in that half-century Tooke says there were only five bad seasons. In 1732 prices of corn were very low, wheat being about 24s. a quarter, so that we are not surprised to find that its cultivation often did not pay at all.[416]

At Little Gadsden in Hertfordshire, in that year a fair season, and on enclosed land, the following is the balance sheet for an acre:

On barley, worth about £1 a quarter, the loss was 3s. 6d. an acre; on oats, worth 13s. a quarter, however, the profit was 21s.; on beans, 26s. 6d., these being that year exceptionally good and worth 20s. a quarter.[417] Ellis objected to the new mode of drilling wheat because, he said, the rows are more exposed to the violence of the winds, rains, &c., by growing apart, than if close together, when the stalks support each other.[418] This estimate may be compared to that of Tull for the 'old way' of sowing wheat,[419] and to the following estimate of fifty years later in Surrey, when wheat was a much better price:—

The profit was thus £2 10s. 0d. an acre, and for barley it was £3 3s. 6d., for oats £1 19s. 10d., for beans £1 13s. 0d.[421]

This crop of wheat was not very good, as the average in that district was from 20 to 25 bushels per acre, and Young before this saw crops of 30 bushels per acre growing. The over frequent use of fallows, which had so long marked agriculture, was in the early half of the eighteenth century beginning to be strongly disapproved of. Bradley advocated the continuous cultivation of the ground with different kinds of crops, 'for I find', he said, 'by experience that if such crops are sown as are full of fibrous roots, such roots greatly help to open the parts of grounds inclining to too much stiffness.'[422]

CHAPTER XV

In 1730 Charles, second Viscount Townshend, retired from politics, on his quarrel with his brother-in-law Walpole, who remarked that 'as long as the firm was Townshend and Walpole the utmost harmony prevailed, but it no sooner became Walpole and Townshend than things went wrong'. He devoted himself to the management of his Norfolk estates and set an example to English landlords in wisely and diligently experimenting in farm practice which was soon followed on all sides, the names of Lords Ducie, Peterborough, and Bolingbroke being the best known of his fellow-labourers. A generation afterwards Young wrote, 'half the County of Norfolk within the memory of man yielded nothing but sheep feed, whereas those very tracts of land are now covered with as fine barley and rye as any in the world and great quantities of wheat besides.'[423] There can be no doubt from this statement, made by an eyewitness of exceptional capacity, that he commenced the work so nobly carried on by Coke. The same authority tells us that when Townshend began his improvements near Norwich much of the land was an extensive heath without either tree or shrub, only a sheepwalk to another farm; so many carriages crossed it that they would sometimes be a mile abreast of each other in pursuit of the best track. By 1760 there was an excellent turnpike road, enclosed on each side with a good quickset hedge, and all the land let out in enclosures and cultivated on the Norfolk system in superior style; the whole being let at 15s. an acre, or ten times its original value. Townshend's two special hobbies were the field cultivation of turnips, and improvement in the rotation of crops. Pope says his conversation was largely of turnips, and he was so zealous in advocating them that he was nicknamed 'Turnip Townsend'.[424] He initiated the Norfolk or four-course system of cropping, in which roots, grasses, and cereals were wisely blended, viz. turnips, barley, clover and rye grass, wheat. He also reintroduced marling to the light lands of Norfolk, and followed Tull's system of drilling and horse-hoeing turnips, with the result that the poor land of which his estate was largely composed was converted into good corn and cattle-growing farms. Like all the progressive agriculturists of the day, he was an advocate of enclosures, and he had no small share in the growth of the movement by which, in the reigns of Anne and the first two Georges, 244 enclosure Acts were passed and 338,177 acres enclosed. The progress of enclosure was alleged as a proof that England was never more prosperous than under Walpole; the number of private gentlemen in Britain of ample estates was said to exceed that of any country in the world proportionately, and was far greater than in the reign of Charles II. The value of land at twenty-six or twenty-seven years' purchase was a conclusive proof of the wealth of England.[425]

Though, however, the first half of the century was generally prosperous there were bad times for farmer and landlord. We have seen that wheat-growing paid little, although from 1689 to 1773 the farmer was protected against imports and aided by a bounty on exports. In 1738 Lord Lyttelton wrote: 'In most parts of England, gentlemen's rents are so ill paid and the weight of taxes lies so heavy upon them that those who have nothing from the Court can scarce support their families.'[426] Sheep in the damp climate of England have always been subject to rot, and in 1735 there was, according to Ellis, the most general rot in the memory of man owing to a very wet season; and, as in the disastrous year of 1879, which must be fresh in many farmers' memories, other animals, deer, hares, and rabbits, were affected also; and the dead bodies of rotten sheep were so numerous in road and field that the stench was offensive to every one. Another bad outbreak occurred in 1747. It is well known that farmers are always grumblers, probably with an eye to the rent; but even in these much praised times they apparently made small profits. The west country farmer quoted before, who had been fifty years on the same estate, and writes with the stamp of sincerity, admits in 1737 that 'with all the skill and diligence in the world he can hardly keep the cart upon the wheels. Wool had gone down, wheat didn't pay and graziers were doing badly; tho' formerly our cattle and wool was always a sure card'. He says that the profits of grazing were reckoned at one-third of the improvement that ensued from the grazing, but the grazier was not now getting this. He attributed much of the distress, however, to the extravagance of the times. Landlords, including his own, preferred London to the country, and spent their money there. How different was the behaviour of his landlord's grandfather. 'Many a time would his worship send for me to go a-hunting or shooting with him; often would he take me with him on his visits and would introduce me as his friend. The country gentlewoman and the parson's wife, that used to stitch for themselves, are now so hurried with dressings and visits and other attractions that they hire an Abigail to do it.'

He thought, too, the labourers were getting too high wages; 'they are so puffed up by our provender as to offer us their heels and threaten on any occasion to leave us to do our work ourselves.' One would like to hear the labourers' opinion on this point, but they were dumb. In spite of higher wages the young men and young women flocked to the cities, and those who remain were lazy and extravagant, even the country wenches contending about 'double caps, huge petticoats, clock stockings, and other trumpery'.[427]

The bounty now paid on the export of wheat was naturally resented by the common people, as it raised the price of their bread. In 1737 a load belonging to Farmer Waters of Burford, travelling along the road to Redbridge for exportation, was stopped near White parish by a crowd of people who knocked down the leading horse, broke the wagon in pieces, cut the sacks, and strewed about the corn, with threats that they would do the like to all who sold wheat to export.[428] While England was paying farmers to export wheat she was also importing, though in plentiful years importers had a very bad time. In 1730 there were lying at Liverpool 33,000 windles (a windle—220 lb.) of imported corn, unsaleable owing to the great crop in England.[429] The year 1740 was distinguished by one of the severest winters on record. From January 1 to February 5 the thermometer seldom reached 32°, and the cold was so intense that hens and ducks, even cattle in their stalls died of it, trees were split asunder, crows and other birds fell to the ground frozen in their flight. This extraordinary winter was followed by a cold and late spring; no verdure had appeared by May; in July it was still cold, and thousands of acres of turnips rotted in the ground. Among minor misfortunes may be noticed the swarms of grasshoppers who devastated the pastures near Bristol at the end of August 1742,[430] and the swarms of locusts who came to England in 1748 and consumed the vegetables.[431]

The cattle plague of 1745[432] was so severe that owing to the scarcity of stock great quantities of grass land were ploughed up, which helped to account for the fact that in 1750 the export of corn from England reached its maximum; though the main cause of this was the long series of excellent seasons that set in after 1740.[433] The cattle plague also raged in 1754 in spite of an Order in Council that all infected cattle should be shot and buried 4 ft. deep, and pitch, tar, rosin, and gunpowder burnt where infected cattle had died, and cow-houses washed with vinegar and water. Such were the sanitary precautions of the time.[434] In 1756 came another bad year, corn was so scarce that there were many riots; the king expressed to Parliament his concern at the suffering of the poor, and the export of corn was temporarily prohibited. The fluctuations in price are remarkable: in 1756, before the deficiency of the harvest was realized, wheat was 22s. and it went up at the following rate: Jan., 1757, 49s.; Feb., 51s.; March, 54s.; April, 64s.; June, 72s.

About the middle of the century, if we may judge from the Compleat Cyderman written in 1754 by experienced hands living in Devon, Cornwall, Herefordshire, and elsewhere, fruit-growing received an amount of attention which diminished greatly in after years. The authors fully realized that an orchard under tillage causes apple trees to grow as fast again as under grass, and this was well understood and practised in Kent, where crops of corn were grown between the trees.

A Devonshire 'cyderist' urged that orchards should be well sheltered from the east winds, which 'bring over the narrow sea swarms of imperceptible eggs, or insects in the air, from the vast tracts of Tartarian and other lands, from which proceeded infinite numbers of lice, flies, bugs, caterpillars, cobwebs, &c.' The best protection was a screen of trees, and the best tree for the purpose, a perry pear tree. In the hard frosts of 1709, 1716, and 1740 great numbers of fruit and other trees had been destroyed. In Devon what was called the 'Southams method' was used for top-dressing the roots of old apple trees, which was done in November with soil from the roads and ditches, or lime or chalk, laid on furze sometimes, 6 inches thick, for 4 or 5 ft. all round the trees. Great attention was paid there to keeping the heads of fruit trees in good order, so that branches did not interfere with each other,[435] and the heads were made to spread as much as possible. Many of the trees were grown with the first branches commencing 4 ft. 6 in. from the ground. It was claimed that Devon excelled all other parts of England in the management of fruit trees, a reputation that was not maintained, according to the works of half a century later. The best cider apple In the county then was the White-sour, white in colour, of a middling size, and early ripe; other good ones were the 'Deux-Anns, Jersey, French Longtail, Royal Wilding, Culvering, Russet, Holland Pippin, and Cowley Crab.' In Herefordshire it was the custom to open the earth about the roots of the apple trees and lay them bare and exposed for the 'twelve days of the Christmas holidays', that the wind might loosen them. Then they were covered with a compost of dung, mould, and a little lime. 'The best way' to plant was to take off the turf and lay it by itself, then the next earth or virgin mould, to be laid also by itself. Next put horse litter over the bottom of the hole with some of the virgin mould on that, on which place the tree, scattering some more virgin mould over the roots, then spread some old horse-dung over this and upon that the turf, leaving it in a basin shape. The ground between the trees in Devonshire in young orchards was first planted with cabbage plants, next year with potatoes, next with beans, and so on until the heads of the trees became large enough, when the land was allowed to return to pasture, a proceeding which was quite contrary to their previously quoted assertion that tillage was best for fruit trees. The cider-makers were quite convinced, as many are to-day, that rotten apples were invaluable for cider, and the lady who was famous for the best cider in the county never allowed one to be thrown away. A generation later than this Marshall[436] noted that in Herefordshire the management of orchards and their produce was far from being well understood, though 'it has ever borne the name of the first cider county'. All the old fruits were lost or declining in quality, the famous Red Streak Apple was given up and the Squash Pear no longer made to flourish.

As for prices, in 1707 apples were selling at Liverpool for 2s. 6d. a bushel,[437] a very good price if we allow for the difference in the value of money, but prices then were entirely dependent on the English seasons; no foreign apples were imported, and a night's frost would treble prices in a day. In 1742 at Aspall Hall, Suffolk, apples, apparently for cider, were 10d. a bushel, in 1745 1s. a bushel, in 1746 only 4d., and in 1747 cider there was worth 6d. a gallon.[438] At the end of the century, in 'the great hit' of 1784, common apples were less than 6d. a bushel, the best about 2s. in 1786 the price was twice as high, owing to a short crop. Incidentally there is mentioned in the Compleat Cyderman a novel implement, 'a most profitable new invented five-hoe plough, that after the ground has been once ploughed with a common plough will plough four or five acres in one day with only four horses, and by a little alteration is fitted to hoe turnips or rape crops as it is now practised by the ordinary farmers'; much too favourable an estimate of the ordinary farmer, as Young found horse-hoeing rare.

An acre of good orchard land at this time was let at £2 an acre; and this is a fair balance sheet for an acre[439]:—