THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



13 



and the preceding facts readily explain why the 

 applications to Rome for canonizing him were but 

 coldly received. — {Wilkins' Concilia, ii., 287.) 



There is no sound reason, then, for doubting that 

 Bishop Greathead wrote the " Tratyse of Hus- 

 bandry ;" and if he did, it is certainly the earliest 

 relation we have of English Agriculture in the 13th 

 century, for he died in 1253, at Buckden, the 

 episcopal residence of his see, and the agriculture 

 he describes was that of the reigns of Henry II., 

 Richard I., John aud Henry III. 



It is refreshing to review works like these. They 

 came forth as soon as printing was introduced into 

 our island; plainly written little books for the 



small farmers of their time. Printing, indeed, 

 when it first showered its blessings over other 

 classes, did not neglect the agriculturists. It has 

 since been the handmaid of all the sciences, all the 

 knowledge which have gradually raised the British 

 farmer to his present proud position. Printing — 

 and printing only— enabled Fitzherbert and Grote- 

 head to so well address their brother-cultivators of 

 1532. They were well followed by Tusser in the 

 same century, Old Worlidge and others in the 

 seventeenth ; and Jethro TuU (the greatest bene- 

 factor to his country of them all) in 1732, exactly 

 two centuries after the publication of the first 

 English " Boke of Husbandrie." 



THE HERDS OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



Chapter XIII. 



MR. SAMUEL WILEY'S. 



Classics are disposed to back Nestor ; the Midland 

 Counties have stood up as consistently for their Naseby 

 patriarch, who cut off the crust, and left the soft for 

 his son ; but if there was a gold medal to be awarded 

 to vigorous old age, Yorkshire would elect to show in 

 pairs, with 85 as the average, and nominate Sir Tatton 

 and Mr. Wiley as their champions. 



The Sledmere pastures are all alive with Daniel 

 O'Rourkes and Riflemen; while the perennial blood- 

 mare, which was wooed by Orvile, Tramp, Blacklock, 

 Comus, Filho da Puta, or Margrave, as each was in 

 turn the fashion, has quite ceased to be an institu- 

 tion of Brandsby : but the veterans have not severed 

 in their taste for pure Leicesters, and are still as brisk at 

 a tup-bargain as when they eyed each other across 

 the Barmpton letting-ring, or journeyed in the long 

 summer-days, with Tom Carter at their side, to Bur- 

 gess's of Holme- Pierrepont and Buckley's of Norman- 

 ton. On these occasions, however, they were seldom 

 in opposition, as Sir Tatton has always liked a 

 smaller sheep, from a belief that they are more profit- 

 able to the Wold farmers. 



The venerable baronet had readied his thirteenth 

 birthday when Mr. Wiley came, as a boy of nine, with 

 his father, to the farm which he now holds, and, before 

 1810, the latter found himself the inheritor of a flock 

 quite good enough to bring tup-hirers about him. 

 He might be said to have begun on his own account 

 by giving Mr. Mason, of Chilton, fifty guineas for the 

 use of Butter Lump for the season, and then for four- 

 teen years in succession, Robert Collins never had to 

 eet him down as a Jiily absentee. Shoulders, Car- 

 case, Brother to Carcase, Ditto, a son of Symmetry, 

 and Blossom (sire of the ram Ajax, for whom Sir 

 Tatton bid up to 156 guineas, against Mr. George 

 Baker, of Elemore) were the upshot of these outings ; 

 but Mr. Wiley valued none of them more than a 

 sixty. guinea two-shear, for which he drew cuts 

 with xMajor Rudd. His owner, who had used him as 

 ashearling, kept him out of the letting- list as a three- 



shear ; but the gallant Major would not be denied, and 

 as all chance of hiring became a forlorn hope, he 

 sent twenty ewes to him, at five guineas each. When 

 the Barmpton flock was dispersed, Mr. Wiley turned 

 his thoughts southwards, to the home of the Leicesters. 

 His Durham Mentor had ower] not a little of his own 

 celebrity to that tup of Mr. Stubbins, the predecessor 

 of the Burgesses, to which he sent, in conjunction with 

 Mr. Sayle, of Wentbridge, a hundred ewes at three 

 guineas ; and he determined to better the instruction 

 if possible. 



There are few in the present Brandsby flock 

 which cannot boast of such affinity; but still, Mr, 

 Wiley has by no means limited his devotion to the 

 memory of Burgesses' D. R., Old D., and D. V. In 

 1833 he first hired from Mr. John Stone, of Quorndon, 

 and then became a constant customer to the late 

 aud present Mr. John Buckley, of Normanton Hill- 

 It was from the Buckley flock that ho drew his K.G. 

 and D.N. ; and at Mr. Stone's sale he bought the 

 highest-priced lot — No. 6, a three-shear, which that 

 celebrated breeder had used pretty freely as a sliear- 

 ling, and let to Mr. Pawlett in the following season. 

 The union of tliese celebrated strains, all different both 

 in size and points, to a breeder's eye, has made the 

 present flock; and for eight or nine years back, Mr. 

 Wiley has quite ceased to hire. In some seasons he 

 has let as many as eighty tups to his brother Yorkshire- 

 men, and other celebrated breeders ; but the general 

 average is about sixty. Setting aside some dozens of 

 premiums at the shows of the district, his flock-book 

 has no mean tale to tell of its success in the Highland 

 Society's lists. In 1850, its tups were first and 

 second in both classes at Glasgow ; and earned the 

 same honour at the Berwickshire show, four years 

 afterwards, with the head prize for the pen of five 

 ewes to boot. Again did the Highland Society affix 

 the first "winning ticket" to his name in the summers 

 of the past and present years ; but, so far, he has only 

 won a second prize at the Royal Society, and that for 

 his pen of Chester gimmers. 



Two or three Woldsmen, with Mr. Wiley, and the 

 shepherd, among the tups in the home meadow, fur- 



