70 History of the English Landed Interest. 



record in their farming characteristics, since Camden wrote 

 of them a hundred years earlier. Sheep were bred in large 

 quantities on the hills and vales of Bucks, G-loucestershire, 

 and Herefordshire, and on the wastes of Norfolk and Suffolk ; 

 but the most esteemed fleeces of any, not excepting those of 

 Leominster in Herefordshire, and Cotswold in Gloucestershire, 

 were off the backs of Isle of Wight flocks. Dorset, the Severn 

 Valley, part of Kent, and the champaign country of Lanca- 

 shire are especially praised for their corn-yielding properties. 

 Essex and Cambridgeshire were the centres of the saffron culti- 

 vation ; and the soil of the former county was so fruitful as to 

 be able, not only to yield tliree consecutive years 80 to 100 cwt. 

 per acre of moist saffron, but after that to bear without manure 

 eighteen years in succession a fine crop of barley.* Cheshire 

 was particularly famous for its cheeses, Herefordshire for its 

 red-streaked cider apples, Lancashire for its flax, oats and cattle, 

 the north parts of Staffordshire for the sweetest and fattest 

 mutton in England, and Rutland for general fruitfulness. 

 Surrey was a district most fertile about its borders, but some- 

 what hard and barren towards its centre ; graphically de- 

 scribed by the inhabitants as " a county like a coarse piece of 

 cloth with a fine list." Much of Cornwall, Staffordshire, and 

 Norfolk was still unenclosed ; the last county being celebrated 

 almost as much because of its woodland pasturage for cattle 

 as for the nourishing grasses of its sheep-walks. On the other 

 hand, Northamptonshire is specially mentioned as being more 

 or less split up into individual holdings under the enclosure 

 sj'stem. Stourbridge was the greatest wool mart in the king- 

 dom, and Croydon one of the greatest corn marts. 



It is, however, in none of these directions that any new 

 departure in the English mode of living can be detected. Let 

 us, then, turn elsewhere, and see if in the customs and manners 

 of the various rural classes we can find that altered state of 

 affairs which inspired the pen of our author. 



Perhaps the most unpleasant novelty of the times was the 

 National Debt, which no efforts had as yet been made to 



* The New State of England, by G. M., ch. viii. p. 80. 



