A Short History of English Agriculture

by W. H. R. Curtler

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 assisted by their landlords, as in Herefordshire, where Lord Scudamore, after the assassination 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 coarse 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 circumference, 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 illustration 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 scraped 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 grass, suffer the cattle to eat the grass 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 faggots 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 grass 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 quantities 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 grass 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 masseldene (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. Butter 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, 2¹/₂d. 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.