90 History of the English Landed Interest. 



virtuous and liberal. When in the role of Secretary of State 

 to George I. he visited Hanover, he was struck with the simi- 

 larity of its soil to that at home, and paid special attention to 

 its cultivation. The result was that he brought back the 

 turnip and the practice of its husbandry to Rainham, and 

 strongly recommended both to his tenantry. Henceforth he 

 established a process of agriculture which for ever after associ- 

 ated his own name with the turnip, and his count^^ with that 

 of the four-course rotation. These were the successful results 

 of improvements, which, be it remembered, were carried out by 

 an individual who had quitted all the power and lustre of a 

 court for the amusements of agriculture. " The importance," 

 says Arthur Young, " of embassies, vice-roj^'alties, and seals, is 

 as transitory as that of personal beauty, and the memory of 

 this lord, though a man of great abilities, will in a few ages be 

 lost as a minister and a statesman, and preserved only as a 

 farmer." ' Thus, even in his lifetime, his name was extolled 

 in every European language, not as a statesman, but as an 

 agriculturist, and no better memoir of him can be found than 

 the following quotation from a French book, " Milord Town- 

 hend " (sic) : " s'etant retire dansses terres, surpassa bientot ses 

 modeles. Par ses soins il etablit des fermes fertiles, enclos de 

 haies vives, dans ses terreins reputes trop maigres jusque-la 

 pour les labourer." ^ 



These celebrated husbandmen were, however, but the fore- 

 runners of a numerous class of amateur farmers, who will make 

 their appearance from time to time in these pages, whenever 

 their valuable services to England's agriculture entitles them 

 to our honourable mention. 



The ordinary villager, unless close to the metropolis, seldom 

 mixed with its citizens. There is an amusing contrast de- 

 picted by means of a dialogue between a citizen and a country- 

 man, in a brochure of the seventeenth century.^ The rustic, 

 rendered idle by the great snowstorm of 1614, which continued 

 off and on from January 17th to March 7th, leaves his north- 



1 Annals of Agriculture, vol. iv. p. 120. 



^ Les Interets de France mal entendus, Tom. i. p. 138. 



8 " The Great Snowstorm, 1614." Old Book Collector's Miscellany, vol. i. 



