xxxvi INTRODUCTION 



During the reign of Elizabeth agriculture advanced. Tusser's 

 Fiv i Hundred Points of Good Husbandry (first complete edition 

 published in 1580) contains much useful information in metre. 

 According to this we learn the farmer of the sixteenth century 

 " had eels in his stew and bees in his garden. Grew his own 

 hops, made his own malt and many of his rough implements. 

 Raised his own hemp, twisted his own cart-ropes, cleaned and 

 spun his flax at home, sold some of his wool to the weaver, and 

 kept the spindle moving on his kitchen floor. Sawed his own 

 timber, built the mud walls round his cattle-yard, was his own 

 farrier and butcher, made his own candles, burned his wood into 

 charcoal, cultivated herbs for physic, which his wife dried or dis- 

 tilled, varied his corn crops by the cultivation of saffron and 

 mustard seed." 



In the seventeenth century Charles I resolved to revive the 

 forest laws which had been allowed in good part to drop into desue- 

 tude, at least all such parts of that disgraceful code as might tend 

 to the increase of his revenue. The Earl of Holland was appointed 

 to hold a court for the recovery of the king's forestral rights, or 

 those lands which had once belonged to the royal chases. In 

 this manner people were driven from many tracts which they 

 and their fathers had long occupied as their own ; gentlemen's 

 estates were encroached upon, and, as the king was the litigant, 

 the opposite party, even if he gained his cause, which in such cir- 

 cumstances he had but slight chance of doing, was distressed or 

 ruined by the costs of the action which he had to pay, whether 

 he was the loser or the winner. The Earl of Southampton was 

 reduced almost to poverty by a decision which deprived him of 

 his estate adjoining the New Forest in Hampshire. In Essex 

 the royal forests grew so large that people said they had swallowed 

 up the whoje county. Rockingham Forest was increased from 

 a circuit of six miles to one of sixty miles, and all trespassers were 

 punished by the imposition of enormous fines. " Which burden," 

 says Clarendon, " lighted most upon persons of quality and honour, 

 who thought themselves above ordinary oppressions, and were 

 therefore sure to remember it with more sharpness." To enlarge 

 Richmond Park, Charles deprived many proprietors, not merely 

 of their rights of common, but also of their freehold lands. It 

 would appear that he afterwards gave some compensation, but 

 the act at first had in it all the worst features of a cruel and plun- 

 dering despotism. 



About 1645 the field cultivation of red clover was introduced 

 into England by Sir Richard Weston, author of a Discourse 

 on the Husbandry of Brabant and Flanders, and in less than 

 ten years its cultivation had spread over England and made its 

 way into Ireland. Turnips also were introduced by Sir Richard 

 Weston as an agricultural crop. Blythe's Improver Improved, 



