AGRICULTURE IN THE 



see no reason,' he says, chap, iv, 'why tenants at will, 

 for life, or a term of years, should be industrious, whereas 

 the benefit of their labours is to fall into other men's 

 purses, unless there be a contract between landlord and 

 tenant, whereby a just share may redound to both parties 

 answerable to their merit, which, if this were done, then 

 would the husbandman be much stirred up to try ex- 

 periments.' Again, chap, vii: 'There would be many 

 improvements, if there were a law that every tenant, if he 

 were put out, should recover double his charges of the suc- 

 ceeding tenant, which also may be done by contract between 

 landlord and tenant, if they could agree. And then men 

 would labour cheerfully, as for their posterity, if they were 

 sure another should not reap where they had sown.' ' The 

 bane of husbandry is the uncertainty of their tenures, as 

 may be seen in Ireland at this time 1 .' Plattes is withal a 

 strenuous advocate of enclosures and high farming, and at this 

 time, though common field farming was the rule, there were 

 arable lands held in severalty. He contends however that 

 no common should ever be enclosed, without leaving at least 

 a cow's grass to every cottage. 



Blith wrote on English husbandry in 1649. His comments 

 on agriculture do not differ from those particulars which I 

 have quoted out of Markham's more elaborate treatises. 

 There is however one passage to which I must refer. He 

 says, ' If a tenant be at ever so great pains or cost for the 

 improvement of his land, he doth thereby but occasion a 

 greater task upon himself, or else invests his landlord with 

 his cost and labour gratis, or at best lies at his landlord's 

 mercy for requital, which occasions a neglect of good hus- 

 bandry, to his own, the land, the landlord, and the kingdom's 

 suffering. Now this I humbly conceive may be removed, if 

 there were a law enacted, whereby every landlord should be 

 obliged, either to give him reasonable allowance for his 



1 Plattes is probably thinking of the system of Irish gavelkind, which before 

 his time had been successfully denounced by Sir John Davis, as a ' lewd custom.' 





