A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK 



A turnip crop first occurs in the Friston records in 1 694 : ^'* CuUum "' 

 mentions their cultivation at Hawstead in 1700, some thirty years before 

 it was to become general all over England. ^*° With these signs of enter- 

 prise may be compared the condition of property in Framlingham,^" w^here 

 under the lordship of Pembroke College the ' coliar holders ' are found in 1712 

 paying rents of 2ld. per acre and where the customs ' having no foundation 

 in reason, conscience or law ' include the payment of tithe in kind or by 

 compounds of totally inadequate value. The tenth and seventh lamb or 4J. ; if 

 under seven, each y. The tenth or seventh pig or zs. ; if under seven, each Id. 

 Or as at Saxtead, for ' every gast or grazing beast zd., for every skep of 



bees y: "' 



During the 1 6th century agriculture in Suffolk was but the handmaiden 

 of the dominant industry of cloth-making, but with the slow decay of the 

 cloth-trade throughout the succeeding century it began itself to take the fore- 

 most place : the export of cloth to the foreign market gradually yielded in 

 importance to the export of dairy produce for consumption in London. 

 The Privy Council answered the petitions of distressed cloth workers with 

 futile attempts to coerce the dying trade into activity by well-directed 

 legislation ; the Suffolk landowners were more concerned to press forward 

 Acts for the draining of the fens and the reclamation of sea-board,^" and so 

 to increase the grazing capacity of their properties.^** 



The hearth tax returns^*' at this period (1662-8) show Suffolk to have 

 had a population of approximately 142,000, which by 1700 increased to 

 172,1 10. But East Bergholt, Hadleigh, Halesworth, Woodbridge, with their 

 long lists of empty houses bear witness to decaying trade no less than do 

 Aldeburgh, Dunwich, Gorleston, Southwold, and Walberswick to encroaching 

 seas and dwindling fisheries. 



The Civil War may for a time have hampered agricultural activities : so 

 rich a source of supply as Suffolk was not likely to be overlooked where troops 

 were to be fed : the direct exaction of ship-money, which in the last reign 

 had pressed very heavily upon the small farmer,"* was replaced by the seizure 

 for the use of the Parliamentary army of ' billingers of barley ' and the 

 commandeering of hundreds of tons of cheese."^ But in 1722 when Defoe 

 made his tour "' High Suffolk was full of rich feeding grounds and large 

 farms, employed in making the best butter and (in his opinion) the worst 

 cheese in England, and in fattening great quantities of beef and mutton, 

 turkeys, fowls and geese for the London market."' 



From the middle of the i8th century with the wider introduction of 

 turnips and clover crops, and the consequent avoidance of the necessity of 

 leaving the fields to fallow, the cultivation of the arable entered on a fresh 

 stage. 



CuUum"" notices the provision in leases from 1732 onwards for the im- 

 provement of the soil by the use of manures, e.g. the tenant of Pinford End 



'"Add. MS. 22249, ^'- '44- '• ^' <^te of entry cf. fol. 13, 147. "Cullum, op. cit. 218. 



'" Cf. Defoe, Tour in Eastern Counties, 1 20. 



"'MS. Hist, of Framlingham (Add. MS. 33247), fol. 452. 



'"Ibid. fol. 377. '" Cal. S.P. Dom. 1631-3, p. 115 ; 1638-9, p. 326. 



^"Suff. Green Books, no. xi, vol. 13, p. 29. '"Suckling, Introd. 27. 



"*C<j/. S.P. Dom. 1648-9, p. 382. '"Ibid. 1650, p. 590. 



'" Tour in the Eastern Counties, 1 10. '" Ibid. 1 20 et seq. "* Op. cit. 2 1 6. 



670 



