Gregory King, at the end of the seventeenth century, estimated the acreage of England and Wales at 39,000,000—not at all a bad estimate, the area, excluding water, according to the Board of Agriculture Returns of 1907, being 37,130,344. The different estimates by Grew, Templeman, Petty, Young, Halley, Middleton, and others varied between 31,648,000 and 46,916,000 acres. The last, that of Arthur Young, was actually adopted by Pitt for his estimate of the income-tax.[760]
Caird in 1850[761] estimated the cultivated lands of England at 27,000,000 acres (in 1907 they were 24,585,455 acres), cultivated thus:—
| Permanent grass | 13,333,000 |
| Arable | 13,667,000 |
the latter being divided as follows:—
| Acres. | Bushels per acre. | Produce, quarters. | |
| Wheat | 3,416,750 | 27 | 11,531,531 |
| Barley | 1,416,750 | 38 | 6,729,562 |
| Oats and rye | 2,000,000 | 44 | 11,000,000 |
| Clover and seeds | 2,277,750 | ||
| Beans and peas | 1,139,000 | 30 | 4,271,250 |
| Turnips, marigolds, & potatoes | 2,116,750 | ||
| Rape and fallow | 1,300,000 |
Davenant, at the end of the seventeenth century, made the following estimate showing the importance of wool in English trade[762]:—
| Annual income of England | £43,000,000 |
| Yearly rent of land | 10,000,000 |
| Value of wool shorn yearly | 2,000,000 |
| " woollen manufactures | 10,000,000 |
Thus the rents of land formed nearly one-fourth the total income of the country, and wool paid one-fifth of the rents.[763]
In the eighteenth century a great quantity of wool was smuggled out of England in defiance of the law; in the space of four months in 1754, 4,000 tods was 'run' into Boulogne.[764]