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Worlidge's Systema Agriculturae (1669): improvements suggested by agricultural writers; tyranny of custom; contempt for book-farming; slow progress in farming skill; general standard low; horses, cattle, sheep, and pigs in the seventeenth century; want of leaders; growing influence of landowners; the finance of the Restoration, and the abolition of military tenures; legislation to promote agriculture; Gregory King on the State and Condition of England and Wales in 1696: the distribution of population and wealth.
THE practical improvements, which had been suggested by "Rustick Authors" in the first sixty years of the seventeenth century, were collected by John Worlidge in his Systema Agriculturæ (1669). Five editions of this "first systematic treatise on farming" show that it was for some time regarded as a standard authority. Free from the extravagant promises of his predecessors, Worlidge summarises their most useful recommendations. Inordinate space is still allotted to such topics as trees, orchards, "garden tyllage," bees, and silkworms, which occupy 106 pages out of a total number of 217. On the side of stock-breeding and stock-rearing his book remains especially defective. For information on this subject he merely refers readers in a general way to other writers. Three pages only are devoted to the section "Of Beasts," in which the special qualities required for the different uses of horses, cattle, and sheep are wholly ignored; only in the case of dogs does Worlidge appear to recognise the variety of purposes for which animals are bred.
Even the most practical work on farming which was published in the seventeenth century is ill-balanced and defective. Yet it is remarkable how many of the triumphs of nineteenth century farming were anticipated by these early writers, a century and a half before the improvements were generally adopted. Already the germs of a proper rotation of crops had been implanted, and a few advanced husbandmen, familiar with the methods of the Low Countries, had realised that, in roots and clovers, they commanded the means, not only of keeping more stock, but of increasing the yield of corn. Already some of the drawbacks of broad-cast sowing had been pointed out, and the advantages of setting in regular rows suggested. Already the foreign use of oil-cake for cattle had been observed and recommended to English farmers. But, as Mortimer notices (The whole Art of Husbandry; or the Way of Managing and Improving of Land, 1707), Lincolnshire farmers, after pressing out the "oyl" from their coleseed, preferred to "burn the cakes to heat their Ovens." Already also the field-cultivation of potatoes had been suggested, and it is a coincidence that the suggestion was made only a few years after the drainage of those fens, on the clover-sick soil of which, two centuries and a half later, the adoption of the crop worked a revolution. Already the use of silos and of ensilage, the storage of water in tanks for dry districts, the value of coverings to rick-stands, even the utility of the incubator for rearing poultry--a box heated by a candle or a lamp--had been urged on Stewart agriculturists. In a tentative fashion the "Rustick Authors" were feeling after improved agricultural machinery. Googe's reaping car, the double-furrow plough of the "ingenious yeoman of Kent," Plattes' corn-setter, the corn drill depicted by Worlidge, which made the furrow, sowed the seed, and deposited the manure, were the ancestors of many useful inventions. Still more vaguely Stewart writers were looking for the aid of science. Its future benefits could not, of course, be foreseen. But the demand for an Agricultural College, the recognition of the work of the Royal Society, the study of such books as Willis' De fermentatione or Glauber's Miraculum Mundi, in which an attempt was made to analyse the elements that contribute to vegetation, show that expectations had been aroused. Already a Land Registry, by which land could be made to pass as freely as money, had been suggested by Andrew Yarranton. Already also the abolition of "slavish customs," and of "Ill Tenures as Copyhold, KnightService etc," which "much discourage Improvements and are (as I suppose) Badges of our Norman Slavery" was demanded. The Hares and Rabbits legislation had been foreshadowed in the outcry against the destruction of growing crops by "coneys," and hares which in 1696, according to Gregory Icing's minute calculation, numbered 24,000. The necessity for General Highway and Enclosure Acts had been urged on the country. The prelude to the long struggle for compensation for unexhausted improvements had been sounded. Even the twentieth century agitation for pure bread had been anticipated in the protest that "the corruption of the best aliments, as bread, and which are in most use with us, causeth the worst Epidemicall Diseases."
Here and there some changes in farming practices had been made for the better. But such progress was purely local, and rarely survived the individual by whom it was effected. Traditional methods were jealously guarded as agricultural heirlooms. Even ocular proof of the superior advantages derived from improvements failed to drive the John Trot geniuses of farming from the beaten track in which their ancestors had plodded. Circumstances combined to render the force of custom tyrannical. The agrarian partnerships on village farms opposed a natural obstacle to change. On open-fields, where the rotations of crops were fixed by immemorial usage, based on the common rights of the whole body of associated farmers, no individual could move hand or foot to effect improvements. Unless a large number of joint occupiers, often ignorant, suspicious, and prejudiced, agreed to forgo common rights and adopt turnips and clover, it was impossible to introduce their cultivation. The enterprise of twenty farmers might be checked by the apathy or caution of one. It was for this reason mainly that Worlidge addresses his treatise to the "gentry and yeomanry," and that he thinks the moment opportune for improvement, because so many farmers had been obliged to give up their holdings owing to "the great Plenty and Smallness of Value of the Ordinary Productions of the Earth," which left no profit to those who "exercised onely the Vulgar Methods of Agriculture." Even if the new materials for agricultural wealth were successfully introduced by some energetic landlord or tenant on an enclosed farm, the result of the experiment was rarely known beyond the immediate neighbourhood. Each village was at once isolated and self-sufficing. Communication was difficult; frequented roads were often impassable except for a well-mounted horseman or a coach, drawn by eight horses. Education had not spread to the class to which farmers generally belonged. Letters were rarely interchanged. Visits were seldom paid. The only form in which information could be disseminated was in books or pamphlets, and in remote villages buyers were few or none. Newspapers had hardly begun to exist. The first attempt to found a scientific agricultural paper was made by John Houghton, whose Collection of Letters for the Improvement of Husbandry and Trade appeared in a weekly series from 1681 to 1683, and again from 1692 to 1703. It is improbable that the circulation could have been extensive even among the wealthiest of the country gentry. Rumours of the progress of the outside world scarcely penetrated to distant villages. Farmers of one district knew little more of the practices of the next than they did of those of Kamchatka. Beyond the limited range of their horizon, their neighbours were only
"Anthropophagi, and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders."
In this extreme isolation must be sought a fruitful cause for the slow diffusion of agricultural improvements. Another cause lay in the absence of any strong incentive to raise more produce from the soil than was requisite for the immediate wants of the producers. Markets were, in many parts of England, not only difficult of access but few in number. From vast and crowded haunts of labour and trade the cry of the artisan had not yet arisen for bread and meat. As soon as the farmer had satisfied the needs of himself, his family, and his rent, his work was done. Till a wider demand for agricultural produce had been created by the rapid growth of population which resulted from the development of manufacturing industries, and till the new markets had been brought to the farmer's door by improved means of communication, the supply was mainly regulated by the wants of the producer himself.
Another cause for the neglect of improvements has been already mentioned. A contempt for book-farmers, which was not wholly unjustifiable, partially explains the slow adoption of new methods and new crops. Of this class of agricultural writers, Thomas Tryon affords an interesting example. Like most men of his kind, he was a "Jack of all trades." He was a voluminous writer on a miscellaneous variety of subjects--against drinking brandy and "smoaking tobacco," upon brewing ale and beer, upon medical topics, upon dreams and visions, on the benefit of clean beds on the generation of bugs, on the pain in the teeth. He also composed a "short discourse" of a Pythagorean and a mystic. His agricultural book, The Countryman's Companion (1681), is chiefly noticeable for its account of that "Monsterous, Mortifying Distemper, the Rot," and for the strange remedies which he suggests for the preservation of sheep from that disorder. Thomas Tryon is an admirable representative of the class of writers who brought the book-farmer into disrepute. But already true science was coming to the aid of agriculture. The Sylva (1664) and Terra (1676) of John Evelyn are known to all well-read agriculturists, and John Ray's Catalogus Plantarum Angliae (1670) marks an epoch in the history of botanical science.
All these conditions combined to raise formidable obstacles to the diffusion of improvements in farming. Agricultural writers scarcely expected that the changes they suggested would be adopted. Donaldson, for instance, says that people will probably answer him with "Away with your fool Notions; there are too many Bees in your Bonet-case. We will satisfie ourselves with such Measures as our Fathers have followed hitherto." Farmers, says Hartlib's Legacie, did not venture to attempt innovations lest they should be called "projectors." Bradley, Professor of Botany at Cambridge, complains in his Complete Body of Husbandry (1727), that if he were to advise farmers "about improvements, they will ask me whether I can hold a plough, for in that they think the whole mystery of husbandry consists." It was long before clover emerged "from the fields of gentlemen into common use"; it did not penetrate into Suffolk villages till the eighteenth century. In Worcestershire and adjoining districts the personal efforts of Andrew Yarranten in 1653-77 had for the time established its use. But "farmers," says Jethro Tull, writing in the reign of George II., "if advised to sow clover would certainly reply, 'Gentlemen might sow it if they pleased, but they (the farmers) must take care to pay their rents.'" Even more obstinate was the resistance to turnips. It was of little use that Worlidge in his Systema (1669) urged upon farmers the cultivation of roots; or that Reeve (1670) reprinted Weston's advice to use turnips as the best methods of improving "barren and heathy land"; or that Houghton (1684) described the benefits which had resulted in Norfolk and Essex from growing them as winter food for sheep. Even their advocates had not yet appreciated the full value of roots. Worlidge in 1683 had observed that " sheep fatten very well on turnips, which prove an excellent nourishment for them in hard winters, when fodder is scarce; for they will not only eat the greens, but feed on the roots in the ground, and scoop them hollow even to the very skin." Houghton in 1694 writes that "Some in Essex have their fallow after turneps, which feed their sheep in winter, by which means their turneps are scooped, and so made capable to hold dews and rain water which, by corrupting, imbibes the nitre of the air, and when the shell breaks, it runs about and fertilizes. By feeding the sheep, the land is dung'd as if it had been folded; and these turneps, tho' few or none be carried off for human use, are a very excellent improvement; nay, some reckon it so, tho' they only plough the turneps in, without feeding." They made but slow progress. Sir John Cullum, in his History of the Manor of Hawsted, preserves the name of Michael Houghton as the first man in that Suffolk parish, who about 1700 raised a crop of turnips on two acres of his land. "I introduced turnips into the field," says Tull, "in King William's reign; but the practice did not travel beyond the hedges of my estate till after the Peace of Utrecht" (1713). Potatoes were even less successful. John Forster (1664) had, as has been already noticed, urged their adoption as a field crop. Houghton notices that they had been brought from Ireland "to Lancashire, where they are very numerous, and now they begin to spread all the Kingdom over. They are a pleasant food boiled or roasted, and eaten with butter and sugar." But Mortimer (Whole Art of Husbandry, etc., 1707) despised them even in the garden as " very near the Nature of the Jerusalem Artichoak, which is not so good or wholesome. These are planted either of the Roots or Seeds, and may probably be propagated in great Quantities, and prove a good food for Swine." Neither clover nor turnips became general in England before the latter half of the eighteenth century, and potatoes were not extensively grown till fifty years later, when their value was urged on the country by the Board of Agriculture.
The widest differences existed between the farming of various districts. The general level was extremely low. But in individual cases a high standard was attained, and the best possible use made of such resources as agriculturists could command. In natural fertility the Vale of Taunton, which Norden calls the "Paradise of England," was pre-eminent. The best pastures, according to the same authority, were at Crediton and Welshpool. In arable farming, says Mascall, or his editor, Ruscam, the seasons for the operations of agriculture, as well as the choice of implements must depend on the character of the soil. Thus on the "stiffs clayes of Huntingdonshire, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire," on "mixt soils that are good and fruitful, as Northamptonshire, Hartfordshire, most parts of Kent, Essex, Barkshire," on "light and dry grounds which have also a certain natural fruitfulness in them as in Norfolk, Suffolk, most parts of Lincolnshire, Hampshire and Surrey"-- farmers will adapt themselves to circumstances. On "the barren and unfruitful earths, as in Devonshire, Cornwall, many parts of Wales, Darbyshire, Lancashire, Cheshire, Yorkshire," they must profit by experience." The best corn land in Europe," in the opinion of Gabriel Plattes, was the Vale of Belvoir. The best cheeses were made at Banbury, in Cheshire, or in the Chedder district. But the latter, says Hartlib's Legacie, were "seldom seen but at Noblemans tables or rich Vintners Sellars." In some places the new crops recommended by the Stewart writers had been tried. Liquorice was grown with success at Pontefract in Yorkshire and at "Godliman" in Surrey; saffron was established in Essex and Cambridgeshire; canary seed and caraways were tried in Kent and Oxfordshire; hops were not confined to Kent, but had spread into Suffolk, Essex, Surrey, and other counties; sainfoin had been tested at Cobham in Kent; weld, used for dyeing of "bright Yellows and Limon-colours," flourished near Canterbury; madder and woad had been proved to be profitable crops; the best flax and hemp were grown near Maidstone, where a thread factory had been recently established, at Bow and Stratford in Essex, and in Nottinghamshire. At a later date the district round Beccles in Suffolk was famous for its hemp; rape and coleseed were established in Kent, Lincolnshire, and elsewhere. Kent, Worcestershire, Herefordshire, Gloucestershire, and the neighbourhood of London were famous for their apples, and as many as 200 varieties were collected in a single orchard. The cherries of Kent and the quinces of Essex were in chief repute. "There are now," writes William Hughes, (The Compleat Vineyard, 1665) "in Kent and other places of this Nation, such Vineyards and Wall-vines as produce great store of excellent good wine."
Increased attention was also being paid to live-stock, and the values of distinctive breeds of horses, cattle, sheep, and pigs were discussed. If Gervase Markham's Cheape and good Husbandry (edition of 1631) is compared with Mortimer's Whole Art of Husbandry (1707), some idea may be formed of the views of the seventeenth century on stock-breeding.
On horses, Markham, in spite of the criticism of Child already quoted, was reputed an authority. "Now for the choyse of the best Horse," he writes, "it is divers according to the use for which you will imploy him." Of "Horses for the Warre," he says, " the courser of Naples is accounted the best, the Almaine, the Sardinian, or the French." "For a Prince's Seat, any supreame Magistrate, or for any great Lady of state," he recommends a "milkewhite" or "faire dapple gray" steed of English breed: failing that, a "Hungarian, Swethland, Poland, or Irish" horse. The best hunter he finds in "the English horse, bastardized with any of the former Races first spoake of." The finest race-horses are "the Arabian, Barbary, or his bastard-Jennets, but the Turkes are better." "For travaile or burthen" the best is the English horse, and "the best for ease is the Irish-hobby." "For portage, that is for the Packe or Hampers," and "for the Cart or Plough," he makes no selection. For coach horses, he chooses the large English gelding, or the Flemish mare, or the Flemish or Frisian horse. There were doubtless already distinctive breeds in England, such as the Yorkshire saddle-horses of the Cleveland district, the heavy Black Horse of the Midlands, the Suffolk Punch or the West-country packhorse; but they are not mentioned by Markham. Nor does Mortimer refer to any English breeds. He tells us, however, that Leicestershire was in his day one of the great horse-breeding counties, and that Hertfordshire farmers bought the colts as two-yearolds, and sold them "at about six Years old to Gentlemen at London for their Coaches."
Among cattle, the best breeds " for meat " were the long-horned cattle of Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Lancashire, and Staffordshire: The tall long-legged Lincolns, generally "pide," with more white than any other colour, were reckoned the best for "labour and draught." "Those in Somersetshire and Gloucestershire are generally of a blood-red colour, in all shapes like unto those in Lincolne-shire, and fittest for their uses." So far Markham. Mortimer adds other breeds. "A good hardy Sort for fatting on barren or middling Sort of Land are your Angleseys and Welch. The hardiest are the Scotch." The best breed for milking, in his opinion, was "the longlegged short-horn'd Cow of the Dutch breed," chiefly found in Lincolnshire and Kent.
Both Markham and Mortimer have much to say about sheep, which were reckoned as the most profitable of live-stock. Their manifold uses inspired Leonard Mascall (Government of Cattell, 1591) to rhyme in "praise of sheep":
"These cattle (sheep) among the rest,
Is counted for man one of the best,
No harmful beast, nor hurt at all;
His fleece of wool doth cloath us all,
Which keeps us all from extream cold;
His flesh doth feed both young and old
His tallow makes the candles white,
To burn and serve us day and night
His skin doth pleasure divers ways,
To write, to wear, at all assaies;
His guts, thereof we make wheel-strings;
They use his bones for other things;
His horns some shepherds will not lose,
Because therewith they patch their shooes ;
His dung is chief, I understand,
To help and dung the Plowman's land;
Therefore the Sheep among the rest,
He is for man a worthy beast."
But Mascall makes no attempt to distinguish varieties of breed. Like many of the Stewart writers, he would probably have answered as the Cumberland shepherd replied to the question--where he got his rough-legged, ill-formed sheep--"Lor', sir, they are sik as God set upon the land; we never change any." Markham, however, distinguishes the various breeds by the quality of their wool. The finest short wool came from the small black-faced Herefordshire sheep in the neighbourhood of Leominster, and in parts of Worcestershire and Shropshire. The Cotswold breed was heavier, but the wool was longer and straighter in the staple, and the fleece coarser. Parts of Warwickshire and Worcestershire, "all Leicestershire, Buckinghamshire, and part of Northamptonshire, and that part of Nottinghamshire which is exempt from Sherwood Forest" produced "a large-boned Sheep, of the best shape and deepest staple." These were pasture sheep, and their wool was coarse in quality. The Yorkshire breed was "of reasonable bigge bone, but of a staple rough and hairie." Welsh sheep were to be "praised only in the dish, for they are the sweetest mutton." The Lincolnshire salt marshes bore the largest animals; but "their legges and bellies are long and naked, and their staple is coarser than any other." Mortimer practically repeats Markham's list. But he adds one significant remark. Speaking of Lincolns and the coarseness of their wool, he says: "they are lately much amended in their Breed." Some local pioneer of Bakewell and his Leicesters was already attempting the improvement of Lincolns. Both Markham and Mortimer condemn horned sheep, and advise buyers to choose animals with plenty of bone. Both also repeat the warning of Fitzherbert and Tusser that on open-field farms lambs must be timed to fall in January.
Pigs naturally take a prominent place in the books of "Rustick Authors." They are, says Markham, "troublesome, noysome, unruly, and great ravenours," yet they are " the Husbandmans Best Scavenger, and the Huswifes most wholesome sinke," and, "in the dish, so lovely and so wholesome, that all other faults may be borne with." Mascall quotes as a proverb the common saying: "The hog is never good but when he is in the dish." The natural cleanliness of the animal is strongly urged by all the seventeenth century writers. As to breed, no English county could be said to have a better sort than any other. But Markham thinks the best pigs are raised in Leicestershire, some parts of Northamptonshire, and the clay countries bordering on Leicestershire. As to colour, he recommends white or "sanded," or black. But these last are said to be rare. Pied pigs he considers to be more subject to measles. Both he and Mortimer attribute the superiority of Leicestershire and the surrounding districts to the great quantities of beans and pulse which were raised in those counties, and Mortimer adds that the pigs from those parts of the country were mostly sold in London for use at sea.
At the Restoration, the greatest need of English farming was the leadership of practical men, possessed of the leisure, the education, and the capital, to test by experiments the value of a mass of theoretical advice, to adopt new crops, introduce new methods, improve the live-stock of the country. Such pioneers were found, at a later date, among the large landowners. In 1660 they were not forthcoming from that or from any other class, and this want of leadership to a great extent explains the reluctance of farmers to put in practice many of the improvements which not only bookfarmers but practical agriculturists were recommending. The state of society was still too unsettled, the title to land too insecure, to tempt expenditure. The number of men who could afford the necessary outlay was relatively few. Landed property in 1660 was distributed in smaller quantities among more numerous owners than it was a century later. The events of the Commonwealth period had further increased this wide distribution of ownership. Large quantities of land, confiscated by the Parliament, had been thrown on the market. Many estates had also been forfeited to the Government and sold, often in small parcels, because the royalist owners either refused or neglected to compound for their "delinquencies." Portions of other properties had been sold by their owners to pay the composition or the Decimation Tax. In all these cases, numbers of the purchasers were small men. At the Restoration, the estates of the Crown and of the Church, and the confiscated lands of eminent royalists were restored to their original owners, without compensation to purchasers who had bought under the authority of the Commonwealth Government. But no attempt was made to cancel the purchase of lands which had been sold under forfeitures to the Parliament, or under the pressure of the taxation imposed by the victorious Puritans on the vanquished royalists. All claims of this nature were barred by an Act, which disappointed Cavaliers condemned as an act of indemnity to the King's enemies and of oblivion to his friends. But whether the Republicans were deprived of their purchases, or confirmed in their possession, the example was not lost on their contemporaries. The nature of the compromise effected at the Restoration necessarily impaired the sense of security. When titles were precarious, outlay of capital seemed too speculative a risk. Moreover, many of the royalists who were fortunate enough to retain or regain possession of their estates, found themselves too impoverished to spend money on their improvement, or too formed in their habits to endure the tediousness of directing them. The generations which knew the Civil War, the Commonwealth, the Restoration, the rebellion of Monmouth, and the Revolution had passed away, before landowners, in widely different circumstances, assumed the lead in agricultural progress.
Changes were already at work which, within the next half century, not only restored the position of the landed gentry, but gave them an influence which they had never before possessed. Parliament gained control over the Government, and the House of Commons over Parliament. At the same time the jurisdiction of magistrates was greatly extended. Controlling the House of Commons through the county elections, administering local justice, allied with the Church as the bulwark of Protestantism, recruiting from its wealthiest members the order of the peerage, absorbing into its own ranks their younger sons, the landed gentry became the predominant class in the country. How great was the increase in their power may be illustrated by the difference in the attitude which Elizabethan and Hanoverian Parliaments assumed towards enclosures. Many of the seeds of this growth in the political and social ascendancy of the landed aristocracy were sown during the period under notice.
One of the first questions which came before the Restoration Parliament was that of finance. Some permanent provision had to be made for the ordinary charges of Government. A Committee was appointed which reported that the average yearly income of Charles I. for the period 1637-41 had been £900,000, but that of this sum £200,000 were derived from sources no longer available. Parliament decided to raise the annual income of the Crown to £1,200,000. In providing this sum the lines laid down by the Republican financiers were in the main followed. The cost of the Civil War and the subsequent expenses of the Commonwealth Government had been met by the old device of customs duties, and by the new expedients of monthly assessments on lands and goods, and of excise duties, borrowed from the Dutch financiers, on a large range of products which at one time included meat and salt. The old feudal dues, exacted by the Crown on all lands held by military tenure, had dwindled in importance and value, in spite of the attempts made by Henry VIII. and Charles I. to enforce them with greater rigour. To a large extent their place had been taken by parliamentary grants of subsidies on lands and goods. Those which remained in operation were comparatively unproductive; they were besides uneconomical, uncertain, and inconvenient. They were also not granted by Parliament, and thus provided the Crown with funds which were not under national control. Their abolition had been recommended in the reign of James I.; it had been carried by a resolution of both Houses of Parliament in 1645; it was one of the terms of the Treaty of Newport in 1648, when Charles I. agreed to surrender the dues for the payment of £100,000 a year; it had been demanded by Puritan agriculturists like Hartlib and Blith; finally, in 1656 the abolition had been passed into law with the consent of Cromwell. Technically speaking, the legislation of the Commonwealth was annulled by the Restoration; practically, however, the question was not whether the abolished dues should be continued, but whether they should be revived. Against this revival it was argued in 1660 that much land had changed hands in the previous fifteen years without any provision for the possible revival of the liability. The income voted for Charles II. had to be provided, the problem of ways and means to be solved. The Restoration Parliament might have abandoned the excise duty, or revived the feudal dues, or substituted for them a land tax. They retained the excise introduced by Republican financiers, but reduced it by a half; they confirmed Cromwell's abolition of the emoluments which the Crown had derived from lands held in chivalry; they declined by a majority of two votes to impose a land tax. At the same time the Crown surrendered its oppressive prerogatives of purveyance and pre-emption: No doubt the immediate result of these fiscal changes was that the landed aristocracy continued to be relieved from a burden, and that, from motives of self-interest, they refused to revive, either in its original or in a substituted form, a system of taxation which, before the Commonwealth, had once attached to land held in chivalry.
The abolition of military tenures reduced to some extent the necessary outgoings of many of the landed gentry. At the same time the commercial policy adopted by the Restoration Government maintained, if it did not swell, their incomes. The steady rise in the price of wool during the past century had begun to hamper the clothing trade. In order to lower prices for home manufacturers, an Act passed in 1647, and re-enacted in 1660, prohibited its exportation. Still further to stimulate the clothing industry, a series of Acts, from 1666 onwards, ordered the burial of the dead in woollen fabrics. Partly for revenue, partly in compensation for these concessions to manufacturing industries, partly to meet the claims of impoverished adherents, partly to maintain the balance between pasture and tillage, partly, no doubt, to make England self-supporting in its food supplies, important changes were made in the laws which regulated the trade in corn. In the reign of Philip and Mary, home-grown corn could not be exported if home-prices for wheat rose above 6s. 8d. per quarter, and for cheaper grains in proportion. This limit was raised by subsequent legislation. Thus the home price for wheat, at which exportation was prohibited, was raised in 1593 to 20s., in 1604 to 26s. 8d., in 1623 to 32s., in 1660 to 40s., in 1663 to 48s. In 1660 duties were also imposed on the importation of foreign wheat. These duties were at first nominal. Thus they started at 2s. per quarter on imported wheat, when home-prices exceeded 44s. In 1663 they were raised to 5s. 4d. per quarter, when home-grown wheat rose above 48s. In 1670 the corn laws became more frankly protective. No limit of price was fixed above which the exportation of home-grown corn was prohibited, and a heavy duty of 16s. a quarter was imposed on foreign wheat when home prices did not exceed 53s. 4d. per quarter. Similar duties were imposed on the importation of other foreign grain at proportionate prices. A further change was made in 1688. The Act of that year offered a bounty on the export of home-grown corn of 5s. per quarter of wheat, whenever the home-price fell below 48s. per quarter, and on other grain in proportion. On these two principles, namely a duty on the importation of foreign corn and a bounty on the exportation of home-grown corn, combined with frequent prohibitions of exports, the corn trade was regulated throughout the eighteenth century. Similar measures were adopted to encourage the raising of cattle, and importations from Ireland were prohibited. Legislation did not, however, raise prices; it only succeeded in maintaining them. Increased production at home counteracted the effect which the restriction of imports might otherwise have produced. England, says Sir William Petty, (Several Essays in Political Arithmetic, ed. 1755, pp. 150-169) "doeth so abound in Victuals as that it maketh Laws against the Importation of Cattle, Flesh and Fish from abroad ; and that the draining of Fens, improving of Forests, inclosing of Commons, Sowing of St. Foyne and Clover-grass be grumbled against by Landlords, as the Way to depress the price of Victuals." Elsewhere he adds: "it is manifest that the land in its present Condition is able to bear more Provision and Commodities, than it was forty years ago."
Throughout the period from the Restoration to the Revolution, except for one disastrous year of plague, fire, and war, the country prospered. The receipts from customs steadily advanced. Trade was expanding. As Amsterdam decayed, and Portuguese and Spanish Jews fled to England to escape the Inquisition, money flowed into the country. Other religious refugees brought with them useful arts and manufactures. The development of banking stimulated commercial undertakings. Between 1661 and 1687 the receipts from the customs duties more than doubled. Fortunes, made in the city were often invested in land, which now was beginning to confer on its possessors a new political and social influence. The landed gentry shared in the growing prosperity, either through its general effects on the country, or by wealthy marriages, or by sending their sons--as Rashleigh Osbaldistone was sent by Sir Hildebrand--into business. Between 1675 and 1700, said Sir William Temple "the first noble families married into the City." Latimer had preached against landlords becoming "graziers," and aldermen turning "colliers," and disquietude at this commercial tendency had influenced the legislation of Edward VI. But times had changed. Though Heralds still distinguished between "foreign Merchants" and retail shopkeepers, on the ground apparently that "Navigation was the only laudable part of all buying and selling," yet they* had solemnly decided that "if a Gentleman be bound an Apprentice to a Merchant, or other Trade, he hath not thereby lost his Degree of Gentility."
*(Logan's Treatise of Honor at the end of Gwillim's Display of Heraldry (ed. 1679), p. 155.)
Closely united with the nobility, the Church, and the merchant princes, sharing in the general prosperity, and, in virtue of their property, exercising new political and social powers, the landed gentry were beginning to acquire that predominant influence which was so marked a feature in the eighteenth century. The change necessarily added an artificial value to the ownership of land: it not only arrested the tendency towards its wider distribution, but encouraged its accumulation in fewer hands. Once acquired, estates were held together by the introduction of family settlements. On the eve of this change, it may be of interest to note a contemporary estimate of the agricultural population and wealth of the country at the close of the eighteenth century.
Gregory King, whose training and experience specially qualified him for the task, drew up a statistical account of the "State and Condition" of England and Wales in 1696. His estimates of the actual numbers of the population are the result of an investigation by a competent and careful observer, who made the fullest use of the information supplied by such figures as those contained in the Hearth-office, the assessments on Births, Marriages, and Burials, the Parish Registers, and Public Accounts. The substantial accuracy of this part of his work has stood the test of subsequent criticism, in spite of his prophecy that in 1900 the population would have risen to 7,350,000. For the rest of his estimates he mainly depended on guess-work. Confidence is scarcely created by his laborious calculation of the numbers of hares, rabbits, and wild fowl in the country. King's figures were largely used by Davenant in An Essay upon the Probable Methods of making a People Gainers in the Ballance of Trade, 1698, but his actual manuscript remained unpublished till 1801.
King estimated the total acreage of England and Wales at 39 million acres (the actual figure is 37,319,221); of which 11 million acres were arable, averaging a yearly rent per acre of 5s. 10d.; and 10 million were meadow or pasture, averaging 9s. an acre. Of the 11 million arable acres, ten million were under the plough for corn, pease, beans, and vetches ; one million acres were allotted to flax, hemp, saffron, woad and other dyeing weeds, etc. He goes on to calculate the live-stock of the country thus: "horses (and asses)," 600,000; cattle, 4½ million; sheep, 11 million; pigs, 2 million. The total population in 1696 is estimated at 5,500,000 persons, distributed into 1,400,000 urban, and 4,100,000 rural, inhabitants. The total yearly income of the nation in 1688 is calculated at £43,500,000. Of this total, coniderably more than half (£24,480,000) belonged to the following families .
Average Yearly Income. 40,000 Freeholders* of the better sort £84 0 0 140,000 Freeholders of the lesser sort 50 0 0 150,000 Farmers 44 0 0 364,000 Labouring People and Out-servants 15 0 0 400,000 Cottagers and Paupers 6 10 0 *It should be noted that freeholders included not only owners and occupying owners, but tenants for life and lives, as well as copyholders.
King's estimates bring into strong relief the vast revolution which the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries produced in the distribution of population and of wealth. The same point is illustrated from a different point of view by a comparison of the wealth of the different counties in 1696 and at the present day. Material for such a comparison is found in the frequent assessments which were made of the counties during the seventeenth century for various fiscal purposes. The central counties are the richest; then follow in order of wealth the south, the east, the west. Poorest of all is the north. Throughout the whole period, Middlesex is the richest and Cumberland the poorest county. The most conspicuous change was that of Surrey, which rose from the eighteenth place in 1636 to the second in 1693. Excluding Middlesex, and excepting Surrey, the wealthiest district throughout the whole period was formed by a block of six agricultural counties north of the Thames--namely Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, Oxfordshire, and Northamptonshire. Their position illustrates the importance of London as a market for agricultural produce. Already its rapid growth was exciting alarm, lest "the Head" should become "too big for the Body." According to Gregory King, its population was 530,000 souls out of an urban population of 1,400,000, and a total population, urban and rural, of 5½ millions. Throughout the whole period, again, the seven poorest counties, though their order in the list varies, were Cheshire, Derbyshire, Yorkshire, Lancashire, Northumberland, Durham, and Cumberland. The assessment of the whole district north of the Humber, comprising one-fifth of the total area of England, was not greater than that of Wiltshire. In the latter half of the following century not only wealth but population migrated northwards, and the inhabitants of rural districts began to flow into the centres of trade and manufacture which crowded round the coal and iron fields and waterpower of the northern counties.