29 



CHAPTER III. 



THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 



But though the change from common to individual owner- 

 ship, from self-sufficing to profit-gaining agriculture, was 

 accompanied with wide-spread distress, the sixteenth cen- 

 tury, especially towards its close, witnessed a general im- 

 pulse to the study and practice of farming. It was now 

 that Herrera in Spain, Tarello in Italy, Heresbach in the 

 Low Countries, Charles Estienne and Bernard Palissy in 

 France, wrote upon agriculture. The gentry began to pay 

 attention to farming. As Michel de I'Hopital solaced his 

 exile from court with his farm at Etampes, so Fitzherbert 

 relieved his judicial labours with the cultivation of his land. 

 With the Tudor period begins the agricultural litera- 

 ture of England.' Besides Fitzherbert and Tusser, there 

 were Turner, Googe, Sir Hugh Plat, Plattes, Markham, 

 and others. ' Mayster Fitzherbert's Boke of Husbandry ' 

 was 'impr^mted in 1523,' and in the same year appeared 

 his ' Boke of Surveying.' The reputed author, a judge of 

 the Common Pleas, treated his subjects in the most prac- 

 tical manner. His theory of the origin of the fluke in 

 sheep survives in a more scientific form at the present day. 

 The prevalence of the rot disquieted other agricultural 

 writers. Harrison attributes it to ' gossamers, rowty fogs, 

 mildews, and rank grass.' Leonard Mascall, who wrote on 

 ' Appendix III., The early literature of agricultiire. 



