Book I. AGRICULTURE OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 41 



parently eluded by the partial exception of hereditary opulence. Had the restraints 

 imposed on the exportation of corn been transferred to wool, the internal consumption 

 would have soon regulated the respective prices of those articles ; the proportion between 

 arable and pasture lands would soon have been adjusted, and the declining cultivation 

 of the country prevented. An improved cultivation was reserved, however, for a future 

 period, when persecutions extirpated manufactures from the Netherlands ; when the 

 exportation of English wool had subsided, and its price diminished, the farmer or land- 

 holder, disappointed of his former exuberant profits, discovered the necessity of resuming 

 the plough, and again restoring his pastures to culture. {Henry ^ xii. 261.) 



215. The first English treatise on husbandry appeared during Henry VIII. 's reign, by 

 Sir A. Fitzherbert, judge of the common pleas. It is entitled IVie Book of Husbandry y 

 and contains directions for draining, clearing, and enclosing a farm ; and for enriching 

 and reducing the soil to tillage. Lime, marl, and fallowing are strongly recommended. 

 The landlords are advised to grant leases to farmers who will surround their farms, and 

 divide them by hedges into proper enclosures ; by which operation, he says, *' if an acre 

 of land be worth six pens (folds of sheep), before it be enclosed, it will be worth eight pens 

 when it is enclosed, by reason of the compost and dunging of the cattle." Another 

 reason is, that it will preserve the corn without the expence of a herdsman. From the 

 time of the appearance of this work, in 1534, Harte dates the revival of husbandry in 

 England. 



216. The culture of hops in the present period was either introduced or revived in 

 England ; and flax was attempted, but without success, though enforced by law. {Hol- 

 inshead, p. 110, 111. 24 Hen. 8. c. 4.) Legislature at that time endeavored to exe- 

 cute, by means of penalties, those rational improvements which have since been fostered 

 and cherished by bounties ; or what is better pursued from the common motive of self- 

 interest. 



217. The breeding of horses was now much encouraged. To the passion of the age, 

 and the predilection of the monarch for splendid tournaments, may be attributed the 

 attention bestowed on a breed of horses of a strength and stature adapted to the 

 weight of the complicated panoply with which the knight and his courser were both 

 invested. Statutes of a singular nature were enacted, allotting for deer parks a certain 

 proportion of breeding mares, and enjoining, not the prelates and nobles only, but 

 those whose wives wore velvet bonnets, to have stallions of a certain size for their 

 saddle. The legal standard was, fifteen hands in horses, thirteen in mares, and 

 "unlikely tits" were, without distinction, consigned to execution. (27 Hen. 8. cap. 6. 

 36 Hen. 8. cap. 13. Vide Harrington s Observations 07i the Statutes, p. 443.) James 

 the Fourth, with more propriety, imported horses from foreign countries to improve the 

 degenerate breed of his own. (Pitscottie, p. 153.) Artificial grasses for their winter 

 provender were still unknown ; nor were asses propagated in England till a subsequent 

 period. {Holinshead, p. 220. Polydore, Virgil, p. 13. Henry, xiu 268. 



218. Of the state of agriculture in Scotland during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries 

 little can be stated. According to Major (Historia BritanniccB, Paris, 1526.), a native 

 of Berwick, " the peasants neither enclosed nor planted, nor endeavored to ameliorate 

 the sterility of the soil." Such wheat as was required, must have been supplied from 

 other countries; for, according to Fynnis Moryson, the produce of the country con- 

 sisted chiefly of oats and barley. Diflferent laws were enacted for planting groves and 

 hedges, and pruning orchards, gardens, and parks for deer : but it is not the barren 

 injunctions of statutes that will excite a spirit of improvement in a country. 



SuBSECT. 4. History of Agriculture from the Death of Henry VIII. in 1547, to the 



Revolution in 1688. 



219. Agriculture, soon after the beginning of the sixteenth century, partook of the general 

 improvement which followed the invention of the art of printing, the revival of lite- 

 rature, and the more settled authority of government ; and, instead of the occasional 

 notices of historians, we can now refer to regular treatises, written by men who engaged 

 eagerly in this neglected, and hitherto degraded, occupation. 



220. The first and best of early agricultural works is, The Book of Husbandry, already 

 mentioned (215.), printed in 1534. This was followed, in 1539, by The Book of 

 Surveying and Improvements, by the same author. In the former treatise we have a 

 clear and minute description of the rural practices of that period ; and from the latter 

 may be learned a good deal of the economy of the feudal system in its decline. The 

 author of The Book of Husbandry writes from his own experience of more than forty 

 years ; and, if we except his biblical allusions, and some vestiges of the superstition 

 of the Roman writers about the influence of the moon, there is very little of his work 

 that should be omitted, and not a great deal that need be added, in so far as regards the 

 culture of corn, in a manual of husbandry adapted to the present time. It may sur- 

 prise some of the agriculturists of the present day, an eminent agricultural writer re- 

 marks, to be told, that, after the lapse of almost three centuries, Fitzherbert's practice, 



