132 LATER STEWARTS AND THE REVOLUTION 



cry against the destruction of growing crops by " coneys," and 

 hares which in 1696, according to Gregory King's minute calcula- 

 tion, numbered 24,000. The necessity for General Highway and 

 Enclosure Acts had been urged on the country. The prelude to 

 the long struggle for compensation for unexhausted improvements 

 had been sounded. Even the twentieth century agitation for pure 

 bread had been anticipated in the protest that " the corruption of 

 the best aliments, as bread, and which are in most use with us, 

 causeth the worst Epidemicall Diseases." 



Here and there some changes in farming practices had been made 

 for the better. But such progress was purely local, and rarely 

 survived the individual by whom it was effected. Traditional 

 methods were jealously guarded as agricultural heirlooms. Even 

 ocular proof of the superior advantages derived from improvements 

 failed to drive the John Trot geniuses of farming from the beaten 

 track in which their ancestors had plodded. Circumstances com- 

 bined to render the force of custom tyrannical. The agrarian 

 partnerships on village farms opposed a natural obstacle to change. 

 On open-fields, where the rotations of crops were fixed by imme- 

 morial usage, based on the common rights of the whole body of 

 associated farmers, no individual could move hand or foot to effect 

 improvements. Unless a large number of joint occupiers, often 

 ignorant, suspicious, and prejudiced, agreed to forgo common 

 rights and adopt turnips and clover, it was impossible to introduce 

 their cultivation. The enterprise of twenty farmers might be 

 checked by the apathy or caution of one. It was for this reason 

 mainly that WorHdge addresses his treatise to the " gentry and 

 yeomanry," and that he thinks the moment opportune for improve- 

 ment, because so many farmers had been obhged to give up their 

 holdings owing to " the great Plenty and Smallness of Value of the 

 Ordinary Productions of the Earth,'" which left no profit to those 

 who " exercised onely the Vulgar Methods of Agriculture." Even 

 if the new materials for agricultural wealth were successfullj'^ intro- 

 duced by some energetic landlord or tenant on an enclosed farm, 

 the result of the experiment was rarely known beyond the im- 

 mediate neighbourhood. Each village was at once isolated and 

 self-sufficing. Communication was difficult ; frequented roads 

 were often impassable except for a well-mounted horseman or a 

 coach drawn by eight horses. Education had not spread to the 

 class to which farmers generally belonged. Letters were rarely 



