256 History of the English Landed Interest. 



years with 100 loads of marl, wliicli enabled it to yield through- 

 out this period on an average four quarters of wheat or five of 

 soft corn. They dunged or folded for all their winter cereals, 

 reckoning two nights' folds equal to a dunging of twelve loads 

 to the acre. Some of the farms were between two and three 

 thousand acres, most of them over one thousand, the culti- 

 vation of which would be as follows : — 



100 acres of winter com. 



1,100 



Such holdings carried twenty cows and nine hundred sheep, 

 and required for purposes of cultivation six servants, six 

 labourers, thirty horses, and five ploughs. During harvest 

 time some forty people were employed in the field. After a 

 good turnip season the farmers used up the surplus crop in 

 fattening Scotch cattle by means of winter stall feeding. 

 When the effects of the marl began to lessen, they bought oil 

 cakes from Holland,^ and manured their winter corn crops at a 

 cost of fifteen shillings per acre. Some of these men cleared 

 over £1,000 per annum, after deducting all expenses ; and one, 

 a certain Mr. Mallett, had purchased with his savings estates 

 in the county returning an income of £1,700 per annum. This 

 same individual on a so-called " corn farm " had during the 

 winter of 1768 no less than two hundred and eighty steers 

 fattening on turnips and artificial grass hay. 



And this is the county famous for its resistance under Ket 

 to the Enclosure System — the county where nature in the 

 form of cold eastern blasts and sterile sand would seem to 

 have offered the least encouragement of any to the husband- 

 man — the county physically incapacitated from the advantage 

 of both home and foreign markets. For much of its agricul- 



^ Still practised in turnip culture. 



