viii CONTENTS 



of tillage to pasture : enclosures and depopulation : legislation against 

 enclosures ; literary attack on enclosures ; the practical defence of en- 

 closures : larger farms in separate occupation : loss of employment ; 

 enclosures equitably arranged, or enforced by tyranny ; legal powers of 

 landowners ; open-field farmers not the chief sufferers by enclosures ; 

 scarcity of emplosrment and rise in prices ; the new problem of poverty : 

 the ranks of vagrants ; the Elizabethan fraternity of vagabonds. 



Pp. 55-77 



CHAPTER IV. 

 THE REIGN OF ELIZABETH. 



Paternal despotism : restoration of the purity of the coinage ; a definite 

 commercial policy : revival of the wool trade : new era of prosperity 

 among landed gentry and occupiers of land : a time of adversity for small 

 landowners and wage-earning labourers : Statute of Apprentices ; hiring 

 fairs ; growth of agricultural Hterature : Fitzherbert and Tusser : their 

 pictiu-e of Tudor farming : defects of the open-field system : experience of 

 the value of enclosures ; improvement in farming : Barnaby Googe ; 

 Sir Hugh Plat : progress in the art of gardening. Pp. 78-102 



CHAPTER V. 



FROM JAMES I. TO THE RESTORATION. 1603-1660. 



FARMING UNDER THE FIRST STEWARTS AND THE 

 COMMONWEALTH. 

 Promise of agricultural progress checked by the Civil War : agricultural 

 writers and their suggestions : Sir Richard Weston on turnips and clover : 

 conservatism of English farmers ; their dislike to book-farming not im- 

 reasonable : unexhausted improvements discussed ; Walter Blith on 

 drainage : attempts to drain the fens in the eastern counties ; the resist- 

 ance of the fenmen : new views on commons : Winstanley's claims : 

 enclosures advocated as a step towards agricultural improvement. 



Pp. 103-129 



CHAPTER VL 



THE LATER STEWARTS AND THE REVOLUTION. 

 1660-1700. 



Worlidge's Systema Agriculturae (1669) : improvements suggested by agri- 

 cultural writers ; tyranny of custom ; contempt for book-farming ; slow 

 progress in farming skill ; general standard low ; horses, cattle, sheep, 

 and pigs in the seventeenth century ; want of leaders ; growing influence 



