210 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH AGRICULTURE. 



ford, was the agricultural leader, another great Norfolk land-owner succeeded 

 to the muntle of Lord Townahond. Thia was Mr. Coke, of Holkham, after- 

 wards Earl of Leicester, who, towards the close of the last, and throughout 

 the first c^uarter of the present centurj, lieaded the moyement. The reclaim- 

 ing the waatts of Norfolk, the marling the light land, the estonsive cultivation 

 of turnips, and the introduction of the rotation of crops, have all been ascribed 

 to him. But as Young, in the Tours he published several years l^efore Mr. 

 Coke possessed an acre in the county, states that every one of these practices 

 was then in common use, and constituted the general features of the Norfolk 

 husbandry, it is evident that this is another of the numerous cases in which 

 the last improver is credited with the accumulated merits of his predecessors. 

 But though the precise nature of what Mr. Coke effected is often misunder- 

 stood, the amount of his services has not been overrated. He stands foremost 

 among the class of whom Arthur Young wrote in 1770 — " Let no one accuse 

 me of the vanity of thinking that I shall erer, by writing, wean farmers of 

 their prejudices : all improvements in agriculture must have their origin in 

 landlords." Five years afterwards Mr. Coke succeeded to the estates of the 

 Leicester family. The fine house at Holkham, erected from the designs of 

 Kent, about the middle of the last century, bears an inscription which imports 

 that it was budt in the midst of a desert tract, and its noble founder was ac- 

 ■customed to say, at once jocularly and sadly, that his nearest neighbor was 

 the King of Denmark. There was still many a broad acre in its primitiye 

 state of sheep-walk, and Mr. Coke graphically described the condition of por- 

 tions of the property surrounding this princely mansion by the remark " that 

 he found two rabbits quarrelling for one blade of grass." His first care was 

 to apply the existing methods to fertilizing his barren wilds ; his second was 

 to improve on the prevailing practices ; his third was to persuade his country- 

 men to follow his example. From the thirty years, between 1760 and 1790, 

 both landlords and tenants were content to follow in the track which Lord 

 Townshend had marked out for them — a track which led to such wealth that 

 it is no wonder they were not tempted to further experiments. Mr. Coke 

 roused them from their lethargy, and what Young calls a " second revolution " 

 commenced. Tlie great evil of the time was the isolation in whicii farmers 

 lived. Thev were nearly as much fixtures as their houses, and what was done 

 upon one side of a hedge was hardly known upon the other. The Lord of 

 Holkham instituted his annual sheep-shearing, at which he feasted crowds of 

 guests from all parts and of all degrees. Under the guise of a gigantic festi- 

 val, it was an agricultural school of the most effective kind, for the social 

 benevolence engendered by such magnificent hospitality disarmed prejudice, 

 and many who would have looked with disdain upon new breeds of stock, 

 n?w-fangled implements, and new modes of tillage, regarded them with favor 

 when they came recommended by their genial host. Hot politician as he was, 

 according to the fashion of tliose days, his opponents forgot the partisan in 

 the agriculturist ; and when Cobbett, who had no leaning to him, rode through 

 Norfolk in 1821, he acknowledged that every one " made use of the expressions 

 towards him that affectionate cliildren use towards the best of parents'." " I 

 have not," he adds, " met with a single exception." The distinguished visitors 

 who ca:ue from otlier counties to the sheep-shearings, carried liome with them 

 lessons wiiich had an effect upon farming throughout the kingdom. Excluded 

 by his political opinions from Court favor or office, Mr. Coke must have found 

 abundant compensation in the feudal state of gatherings, at which, as a con- 

 temporary journalist records, " hundreds assembled and were entertained — 

 farming, hunting, or shooting in the mornings — after dinner discussing agri- 

 cultural subjects, whether the Southdown or the new Leicester was the better 

 sheep — whether the Devon or the old Norfolk ox was the more profitable." In 

 dealing witli those who farmed under him, he showed the same wisdom as in 

 big own tillage. He formed an intimacy with Young, and acted on three of 

 his maxims, on which agricultural progress may be said to depend — that " a 



