Chapter XVI (2)

Shall spend on the premises all hay, straw, and manure, or
leave them at the end of the term.

Tenant on quitting to be allowed for hay left on the premises,
for clover and rye-grass sown in the last year, and for all
fallows made within that time.'[489]

A striking picture of the conditions prevailing in many parts of England at this period is given by Mr. Loch in his account of the estates of the Marquis of Stafford.[490] When this nobleman inherited his property in Staffordshire and Shropshire, much of the land, as in other parts of England, was held on leases for three lives, a system said to have been ruinous in its effects. Although the farms were held at one-third of their value, nothing could be worse than the course of cultivation pursued, no improvements were carried out, and all that could be hoped for was that the land would not be entirely run out when the lease expired. The closes were extremely small and of the most irregular shape; the straggling fences occupied a large portion of the land; the crookedness of the ditches, by keeping the water stagnant, added to, rather than relieved, the wetness of the soil. Farms were much scattered, and to enable the occupiers to get at their land, lanes wound backwards and forwards from field to field, covering a large quantity of ground.

It is to the great credit of the Marquis of Stafford that this miserable state of things was swept away. Lands were laid together, the size of the fields enlarged, hedges and ditches straightened, the drainage conducted according to a uniform plan, new and substantial buildings erected, indeed the whole countryside transformed.

Another evil custom on the estate had been to permit huts of miserable construction to be erected to the number of several hundreds by the poorest, and in many instances the most profligate, of the population. They were not regularly entered in the rental account, but had a nominal payment fixed upon them which was paid annually at the court leet. These cottages were built on the sides of the roads and on the lord's waste, which was gradually absorbed by the encroachment, which the occupiers of these huts made from time to time by enclosing the land that lay next them. These wretched holdings gradually fell into the hands of a body of middlemen, who underlet them at an extravagant rent to the occupiers; and these men began to consider that they had an interest independent of the landlord, and had at times actually mortgaged, sold, and devised it. This abuse was also put an end to, the cottagers being made immediate tenants of the landlord, to their great gain, but to this day small aggregations of houses in Shropshire called 'Heaths' mark the encroachments of these squatters on the roadside wastes. This class, indeed, has been well known in England since the Middle Ages. Norden speaks of them in 1602, and so do many subsequent writers. Numbers of small holdings exist to-day obtained in this manner, and the custom must to some extent have counteracted the effect of enclosure.[491]

The roads of England up to the end of the eighteenth century were generally in a disgraceful condition. Some improvement was effected in the latter half of the century, but it was not until the days of Telford and Macadam that they assumed the appearance with which we are familiar; and long after that, though the main roads were excellent, the by-roads were often atrocious, as readers of such books as _Handley Cross_, written in the middle of the nineteenth century, will remember.

Defoe in his tour in 1724 found the road between S. Albans and Nottingham 'perfectly frightful,' and the great number of horses killed by the 'labour of these heavy ways a great charge to the country'. He notes, however, an improvement from turnpikes. Many of the roads were much worn by the continual passing of droves of heavy cattle on their way to London. Sheep could not travel in the winter to London as the roads were too heavy, so that the price of mutton at that season in town was high. Breeders were often compelled to sell them cheap before they got to London, because the roads became impassable for their flocks when the bad weather set in.[492]

In 1734 Lord Cathcart wrote in his diary: 'All went well until I arrived within 3 miles of Doncaster, when suddenly my horse fell with a crash and with me under him. I fancied myself crushed to death. I slept at Doncaster and had a bad night. I was so bad all day, that I could get no further than Wetherby. Next day I was all right again. I had another terrible fall between North Allerton and Darlington, but was not a bit the worse.'[493]

It was owing to this defective condition of the roads that the prices of corn still differed greatly in various localities; there would be a glut in one place and a deficiency in another, with no means of equalizing matters. To the same cause must be attributed in great measure the slow progress made in the improvement of agriculture. New discoveries travelled very slowly; the expense of procuring manure beyond that produced on the farm was prohibitive; and the uncertain returns which arose from such confined markets caused the farmer to lack both spirit and ability to exert himself in the cultivation of his land.[494] Therefore farming was limited to procuring the subsistence of particular farms rather than feeding the public. The opposition to better roads was due in great measure to the landowners, who feared that if the markets in their neighbourhood were rendered accessible to distant farmers their estates would suffer. But they were not alone in their opposition; in the reign of Queen Anne the people of Northampton were against any improvement in the navigation of the Nene, because they feared that corn from Huntingdon and Cambridge would come up the river and spoil their market.[495] Horner was very enthusiastic over the improvement recently effected: 'our very carriages travel with almost winged expedition between every town of consequence in the kingdom and the metropolis' and inland navigation was soon likely to be established in every part, in consequence of which the demand for the produce of the land increased and the land itself became more valuable and rents rose. 'There never was a more astonishing revolution accomplished in the internal system of any country'; and the carriage of grain was effected with half the former number of horses.

It is clear, however, that he was easily satisfied, and this opinion must be compared with the statements of Young and Marshall, who were continually travelling all over England some time after it was written, and found the roads, in many parts, in a very bad state.

Even near London they were often terrible. 'Of all the cursed roads that ever disgraced this kingdom in the very ages of barbarism, none ever equalled that from Billericay to the King's Head at Tilbury.[496] It is for near 12 miles so narrow that a mouse cannot pass by any carriage. I saw a fellow creep under his wagon to assist me to lift, if possible, my chaise over a hedge. The ruts are of an incredible depth, and everywhere chalk wagons were stuck fast till 20 or 30 horses tacked to each drew them out one by one' Others said that turnpike roads were the enemies of cheapness; as soon as they opened up secluded spots, low prices vanished and all tended to one level. Owing to the work of Telford and Macadam, the high roads by the first quarter of the nineteenth century attained a high pitch of excellence; and were thronged with traffic, coaches, postchaises, private carriages, equestrians, carts and wagons: so animated a sight that our forefathers built small houses called 'gazebos' on the sides of the road, where they met to take tea and watch the ever varying stream. It should not be forgotten, too, that the inns, where numbers of horses put up, were splendid markets for the farmers' oats, hay, and straw.

The seasons in the latter part of the eighteenth century were distinguished for being frequently bad. In 1774 Gilbert White wrote, 'Such a run of wet seasons as we have had the last ten or eleven years would have produced a famine a century or two ago.' Owing to the dearness of bread in 1767 riots broke out in many places, many lives were lost, and the gaols were filled with prisoners.[497] 1779 was, however, a year of great fertility and prices were low all round: wheat 33s. 8d., barley 26s., oats 13s. 6d., wool 12s. a tod of 28 lb.: and there were many complaints of ruined farmers and distressed landlords. Though England was now becoming an importing country, the amount of corn imported was insufficient to have any appreciable effect on prices, which were mainly influenced by the seasons, as the following instance of the fluctuations caused by a single bad season (1782) testifies[498]:

Prices after harvest of 1781. Prices after harvest of 1782.

£ s. d. £ s. d.

Wheat, per bushel 5 0 Wheat, per bushel 10 6
Barley " 2 9 Barley " 7 2
Dutch oats for seed 1 8 Dutch oats for seed 3 6
Clover seed, per cwt. 1 11 6 Clover seed, per cwt. 5 10 0

The summer of 1783 was amazing and portentous and full of horrible phenomena, according to White, with a peculiar haze or smoky fog prevailing for many weeks. 'The sun at noon looked as blank as a clouded moon, and shed a rust-coloured ferruginous light on the ground and floors of rooms.' This was succeeded by a very severe winter, the thermometer on December 10 being 1° below zero; the worst since 1739-40.

In 1788 occurred a severe drought in the summer, 5,000 horned cattle perishing for lack of water.[499] In 1791 there was a remarkable change of temperature in the middle of June, the thermometer in a few days falling from 75° to 25°, and the hills of Kent and Surrey were covered with snow.

We have now to deal with one of those landowners whose great example is one of the glories of English agriculture. Coke of Holkham began his great agricultural work about 1776 on an estate where, as old Lady Townshend said, 'all you will see will be one blade of grass and two rabbits fighting for that;' in fact it was little better than a rabbit warren. It has been said that all the wheat consumed in the county of Norfolk was at this time imported from abroad; but this is in direct contradiction to Young's assertion, already noted, that there were in 1767 great quantities of wheat besides other crops in the county. Coke's estate indeed seems to have been considerably behind many parts of the shire when he began his farming career.[500] When Coke came into his estate, in five leases which were about to expire the farms were held at 3s. 6d. an acre; and in the previous leases they had been 1s. 6d. an acre. We may judge of the quality of this land by comparing it with the average rent of 10s. which Young says prevailed at this time. With a view to remedy this state of things he studied the agriculture of other counties, and his observations thereon reveal a very poor kind of farming in many places: in Cheshire the rich pasture was wasted and the poor impoverished by sheer ignorance, in Yorkshire luxuriant grass was understocked, in Shropshire there were hardly any sheep; in his own part of Norfolk the usual rotation was three white straw crops and then broadcast turnips.[501] This Coke changed to two white crops and two years pasture, and he dug up and brought to the surface the rich marl which lay under the flint and sand, so that clover and grasses began to grow. So successful was he in this that in 1796 he cut nearly 400 tons of sainfoin from 104 acres of land previously valued at 12s. an acre. He increased his flock of sheep from 800 worthless animals with backs as narrow as rabbits, the description of the Norfolk sheep of the day, to 2,500 good Southdowns. Encouraged by the Duke of Bedford, another great agriculturist, he started a herd of North Devons, and, fattening two Devons against one Shorthorn, found the former weighed 140 stone, the latter 110, and the Shorthorn had eaten more food than the two Devons. However, a single experiment of this kind is not very conclusive.

The ploughs of Norfolk were, as in many other counties, absurdly over-horsed, from three to five being used when only two were necessary; so Coke set the example of using two whenever possible, and won a bet with Sir John Sebright by ploughing an acre of stiff land in Hertfordshire in a day with a pair of horses. He transformed the bleak bare countryside by planting 50 acres of trees every year until he had 3,000 acres well covered, and in 1832 had probably the unique experience of embarking in a ship which was built of oak grown from the acorns he had himself planted.[502] Between 1776 and 1842 (the date of his death) he is said to have spent £536,992 on improving his estate, without reckoning the large sums spent on his house and demesne, the home farm, and his marsh farm of 459 acres. This expenditure paid in the long run, but when he entered upon it, it must have seemed very doubtful if this would be the case. A good understanding between landlord and tenant was the basis of his policy, and to further this he let his farms on long leases, at moderate rents, with few restrictions. When farmers improved their holdings on his estate the rent was not raised on them, so that the estate benefited greatly, and good tenants were often rewarded by having excellent houses built for them; so good, indeed, that his political opponents the Tories, whom he, as a staunch Whig detested, made it one of their complaints against him that he built palaces for farmhouses. At first he met with that stolid opposition to progress which seems the particular characteristic of the farmer. For sixteen years no one followed him in the use of the drill, though it was no new thing; and when it was adopted he reckoned its use spread at the rate of a mile a year. Yet eventually he had his reward; his estate came to command the pick of English tenant farmers, who never left it except through old age, and would never live under any other landlord. Even the Radical Cobbett, to whom, as to most of his party, landlords were, and are, the objects of inveterate hatred, said that every one who knew him spoke of him with affection. Coke was the first to distinguish between the adaptability of the different kinds of grass seeds to different soils, and thereby made the hitherto barren lands of his estate better pasture land than that of many rich counties. Carelessness about the quality of grasses sown was universal for a long time. The farmer took his seeds from his own foul hayrick, or sent to his neighbour for a supply of rubbish; even Bakewell derived his stock from his hayloft. It was not until the Society for the Encouragement of Arts offered prizes for clean hay seeds that some improvement was noticeable. In Norfolk, as in other parts of England, there was at this time a strong prejudice against potatoes; the villagers of Holkham refused to have anything to do with them, but Coke's invincible persistency overcame this unreasoning dislike and soon they refused to do without them.

Coke was a great advocate for sowing wheat early and very thick in the rows, and for cutting it when ear and stem were green and the grain soft, declaring that by so doing he got 2s. a quarter more for it; he also believed in the early cutting of oats and peas. It was his custom to drill 4 bushels of wheat per acre, which he said prevented tillering and mildew. He was the first to grow swedes on a large scale.[503] The famous Holkham Sheep-shearings, known locally as 'Coke's Clippings', which began in 1778 and lasted till 1821, arose from his practice of gathering farmers together for consultation on matters agricultural, and developed into world-famous meetings attended by all nationalities and all ranks, men journeying from America especially to attend them, and Lafayette expressed it as one of his great regrets that he had never attended one. At these gatherings all were equal, the suggestion of the smallest tenant farmer was listened to with respect, and the same courtesy and hospitality were shown to all whether prince or farmer. At the last meeting in 1821 no less than 7,000 people were present. His skill, energy, and perseverance worked a revolution in the crops; his own wheat crops were from 10 to 12 coombs an acre, his barley sometimes nearly 20. The annual income of timber and underwood was £2,700, and from 1776 to 1816 he increased the rent roll of his estate from £2,200 to £20,000, which, even after allowing for the great advance in prices during that period, is a wonderful rise. It is a very significant fact that there was not an alehouse on the estate, and in connexion with this, and with the fact that his improvements made a constant demand for labour, we are not surprised to learn that the workhouse was pulled down as useless, for it was always empty, and this at a time when the working-classes of England were pauperized to an alarming degree. The year 1818 was one of terrible distress all over England in country and town, yet at his sheep-shearing of that year Coke was enabled to say he had trebled the population of his estate and not a single person was out of employment, though everywhere else farmers were turning off hands and cutting down wages. Principally through his agency, between 1804 and 1821, no less than 153 enclosures took place in Norfolk, while between 1790 and 1810, 2,000,000 acres of waste land in England were brought under cultivation largely by his efforts. He is said, indeed, to have transformed agriculture throughout England, and, but for that, the country would not have been able to grow enough food for its support during the war with Napoleon, and must have succumbed.

FOOTNOTES:

[440] _Northern Tour_, i. 9. For an interesting account of Young, see _R.A.S.E. Journal_ (3rd Series), iv. 1.

[441] In 1726 Bradley had urged the use of liquorice, madder, woad, and caraway as improvers of the land in the Preface to the _Country Gentleman_.

[442] _Rural Economy_ (1771), pp. 173-5. Trusler, who wrote in 1780, mentions 'the general rage for farming throughout the kingdom.'--_Practical Husbandry_, p. I.

[443] In 1780 Sir Thomas Bernard, travelling through Northumberland, saw 'luxuriant plantations, neat hedges, rich crops of corn, comfortable farmhouses' in a county whereof the greater part was barren moor dearly rented at 1s. 6d. an acre thirty years before, and he said the county had increased in annual value fourfold, (Contemporary MS., unpublished.)

[444] _Rural Economy_, p. 26.

[445] _Farmer's Letters_ (3rd ed.), p. 89.

[446] Slater, _English Peasantry and Enclosure_, p. 95.

[447] Ibid. p. 101.

[448] Young, _Northern Tour_, iv. 340, about 1770 estimates the cultivated land of England to be half pasture and half arable, and, in the absence of reliable statistics, his opinion on this point is certainly the best available. The conversion of a large portion of the richer land from arable to grass in the eighteenth century was compensated for, according to Young, by the conversion, on enclosure, of poor sandy soils and heaths or moors into corn land. Hasbach, _op. cit._ pp. 370-1.

[449] Young, _Northern Tour_, i. 222.

[450] _Rural Economy_, p. 252.

[451] Ibid. p. 271.

[452] Cf. above, p. 180.

[453] _Farmer's Letters_ (3rd ed), p. 372.

[454] _Northern Tour_, iv. 167.

[455] Ibid. iv. 186.

[456] This large item is explained by the fact that a bailiff was employed to sell, and no bailiff could find customers 'without feeling the same drought as stage coachmen when they see a sign'.--Young, _Farmer's Letters_, p. 403.

[457] _Rural Economy_, p. 314.

[458] 1775, pp. x-xiii.

[459] _Northern Tour_, iv. 192-202.

[460] See _Parliamentary Reports Commission_ (1881), xvi. 260.

[461] _Dissertations on Rural Subjects_, p. 278.

[462] _Farmer's Letters_, p. 433.

[463] _History of Hawsted_, p. 169.

[464] Hasbach, _op. cit._ p. 127; Kent, _Hints to Gentlemen_, p. 152.

[465] _Southern Tour_, p. 324. He says nothing of the manufacturing towns, which had not yet began to influence the wages of farm labourers near them as they soon afterwards did.

[466] Some prices at this time were: bread per lb., 2d.; butter, 5-1/2d. to 8d.; cheese, 3-1/2d. to 4d.; beef, 3d. to 5d.; mutton, 3-1/2d. to 5d.

[467] _State of the Poor_, i. 562.

[468] According to Walter Harte, though the yeoman in the middle of the seventeenth century ate bread of rye and barley (maslin), in 1766 even the poor cottagers looked upon it with horror and demanded best wheaten bread. Yet in 1766 the quartern loaf in London was 1s. 6d.--Tooke, _History of Prices_, i. 68.

[469] _History of Hawsted_, p. 184.

[470] Eden, _State of the Poor_, i. 513.

[471] _Rural Economy of Gloucestershire_, i. 53.

[472] Eden, _op. cit._ i. 547.

[473] _Farmer's Letters_, i. 300

[474] The pulling down of cottages began to be complained of in the seventeenth century; they harboured the poor, who were a charge upon the parish, and repairs were saved.--_Transactions Royal Historical Society_ (New Series), xix. 120.

[475] Hasbach, _op. cit._ 82; Clarke, _General View of Herefordshire_, p. 29; Marshall, _Review of Northern Department_, p. 375.

[476] Tooke, _History of Prices_, i. 50; Hallam, _Constitutional History_, iii. 302.

[477] _Northern Tour_, iv. 420. The increase in population in the first half of the eighteenth century was slow; after the Peace of Paris in 1763, when the commerce and manufactures of the country were extended in an unprecedented degree, it was rapid.

[478] _The Way to be Rich and Respectable_, London, 1780.

[479] Grose, _Olio_, pp. 41-4; Lecky, _History of England in Eighteenth Century_, vi. 169 et. seq.

[480] Cullum, _History of Hawsted_, p. 219.

[481] Cullum, _History of Hawsted_, p. 225.

[482] _Thoughts on Enclosure, by a Country Farmer_ (1786), p. 21.

[483] Johnstone, _Account of Elkington's Draining_ (1797), pp. 8-9.

[484] _R.A.S.E. Journal_ (1894), p. 11, from which this account of Bakewell is mainly taken.

[485] According to some, Joseph Allom originated the breed, and Bakewell vastly improved it. We may safely give the chief credit to so careful and gifted a breeder as Bakewell.

[486] _Culley on Live Stock_ (1807), p. 56.

[487] Marshall, _Rural Economy of the Midland Counties_, i. 273.

[488] _Victoria County History: Warwickshire, Agriculture_.

[489] In Lancashire at this date it was not uncommon, when a tenant wished for his farm or a particular field to be improved by draining, marling, liming, or laying down to grass, to hand it over to the landlord for the process; who, when completed, returned it to the tenant with an advanced rent of 10 per cent. upon the improvements.--Marshall, _Review of Reports to Board of Agriculture_ (under Lancashire).

[490] 1820, p. 173 et seq.

[491] See Hasbach, _op. cit._ pp. 77 sq.; _Annals of Agriculture_, xxxvi. 497; Scrutton, _Commons and Common Fields_, p. 139.

[492] Defoe, _Tour_, ii. 178 et seq.

[493] _R.A.S.E. Journal_ (3rd Ser.), ii. 9.

[494] Horner, _Inquiry into the Means of Preserving the Public Roads_ (1767), pp. 4 et seq.

[495] _Victoria County History: Northants._, ii. 250.

[496] Young, _Southern Tour_ (ed. 2), p. 88.

[497] Tooke, _History of Prices_, i. 68. It is difficult to understand the price of the quartern loaf, 1s. 6d. in 1766, as wheat was only 43s. 1d. a quarter. Prices of wheat in these years were:

s. d.

1767 47 4
1768 53 9
1769 40 7
1770 43 6
1771 47 2
1772 50 8
1773 51 0
1774 52 8
1775 48 4
1776 38 2
1777 45 6
1778 42 0
1779 33 8

These returns differ from those of the Board of Agriculture; see Appendix III.

[498] _Annals of Agriculture_, iii. 366.

[499] Baker, _Seasons and Prices_, pp. 224 et seq.

[500] A. Stirling, _Coke of Holkham_, i. 249.

[501] But in other parts of it the cultivation of turnips was well understood, for the _Complete Farmer_, s.v. _Turnips_ (ed. 3), says that about 1750 Norfolk farmers boasted that turnips had doubled the value of their holdings, and Norfolk men were famous for understanding hoeing and thinning, which were little practised elsewhere. Further, Young, _Southern Tour_, p. 273, says: 'the extensive use of turnips is known but little of except in Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex. I found no farmers but in these counties that understood anything of fatting cattle with them; feeding lean sheep being the only use they put them to.'

[502] A. Stirling, _op. cit._ i. 264.

[503] _R.A.S.E. Journal_ (1895), p. 12.