32 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY 



now rare except about Fulham and the Suffolk coast. 

 Carrots were called Sandwich carrots, after the chief place 

 of their cultivation. Turnips were scarcely grown except 

 in gardens near London. Potatoes were still exotics, and 

 luxuries of the rich. Both turnips and clover are urged 

 on English farmers by Elizabethan writers. Googe, who 

 knew the Low Countries, calls clover ' trefle de Bourgogne,' 

 and, after Heresbach, supposes it to be a Moorish grass, 

 brought in by the Spaniards. In the same author's men- 

 tion of a car armed with sharp sickles may be traced the 

 first hint of the reaping machine. 



The civil wars checked agricultural progress. Hus- 

 bandry, if it did not actually decline, languished. It was 

 a period of extreme distress. In 1651 Blithsays that the 

 poor farmers ' lived worse than in Bridewell ; ' Hartlib 

 adds that but for foreign supplies the people must have 

 starved. Wheat rose rapidly, till in 1648 it stood at 85s. 

 the quarter. This rise was due to the deficiency not only 

 of harvests, but of arable land. The average price from 

 1647 to 1651 was 77s. Id. ; the average taken from 1647 

 to 1700 was only 49s. lOt^. Hartlib calculates that, in 

 England and Wales, not more than four million acres 

 were under tillage. While beef and mutton also rose to 

 3f cZ. per pound, daily wages without food advanced only 

 Id. upon the od. of 1444. 



On the other hand, the materials of agricultural wealth 

 rapidly accumulated, and the work of preparation con- 

 tinued almost uninterruptedly. To Sir Richard Weston, 

 of Sutton in Surrey, formerly ambassador in the Palatinate, 

 belongs the credit of the first successful cultivation of 

 turnips and clover, the pivots of English agriculture. As 

 Brillat-Savarin valued a new dish above a new star, so 

 Young regards Weston as a ' greater benefactor than 



