46 HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE. Part I. 



being by that event led into great expenses, raised the rents of the tenantry considerably, 

 whilst the very circumstance which occasioned the rise, contributed to lessen the means 

 of the tenant for fulfilling his engagements. Scotland, however, was much benefited by 

 the soldiers of Cromwell, who were chiefly English yeomen, not only well acquainted with 

 husbandry, but, like the Romans at a former period, studious also to improve and en- 

 lighten the nation which they had subdued. The soldiers of Cromwell's army were 

 regularly paid at the rate of eightpence per day, a sum equal at least to the money value 

 f two shillings of our currency ; and as this army lay in Scotland for many years, there 

 was a great circulation of money through the country. Perhaps the low country districts 

 were at that time in a higher state of improvement than at any former period. In the 

 counties of Lanark, Renfrew, Ayr, and Kickcudbright, the rentals of various estates 

 were greater in 1660 than they were seventy years afterwards ; and the causes which 

 brought about a declension in value are ascertained without difficulty. The large fines 

 exacted from country gentlemen and tenants in these counties, during the reign of 

 Charles II. and his brother James, were almost sufficient to impoverish both proprietors 

 and cultivators, had they even been as wealthy as they are at the present day. In addi- 

 tion to those fines, the dreadful imprisonments, and other oppressive measures pursued by 

 those in power, equally contrary to sound policy and to justice and humanity, desolated 

 large tracts, drove the oppressed gentry and many of their wealthy tenants into foreign 

 countries, and extinguished the spirit of industry and improvement in the breasts of those 

 who were left behind. 



245. Yet in the seventeenth century were those laws made which paved the way for the 

 present improved system of agriculture in Scotland. By statute 1633, landholders were 

 enabled to have their tithes valued, and to buy them either at nine or at six years pur- 

 chase, according to the value of the property. The statute 1685, conferring on landlords 

 a power to entail their estates, was indeed of a very different tendency, in regard to its 

 effects on agriculture. But the two acts in 1695, for the division of commons, and separ- 

 ation of intermixed properties, have facilitated in an eminent degree the progress of im- 

 provement. (Ency. Brit. art. ^gr.) 



246. The literary history of agriculture during the seventeenth century is of no great 

 interest till about the middle of that period. For more than fifty years after the ap- 

 pearance of Gooche's work, there are no systematic works on husbandry, though several 

 treatises on particular departments of it. From these it is evident, that all the different 

 operations of the farmer were performed with more care and correctness than formerly ; 

 that the fallows were better worked ; the fields kept free of weeds, and much more 

 attention paid to manures of every kind. A few of the writers of this period deserve to 

 be shortly noticed. 



247. Sir John Norden's Surveyor's Dialogue , printed in 1607, is a work of consider- 

 able merit. The first three books of it relate to the rights of the lord of the manor, and 

 the various tenures by which landed property was then held, and the obligations which 

 they imposed : among others, we find the singular custom, so humorously described in 

 the Spectator, about the incontinent widow riding upon a ram. In the fifth book, there 

 are a good many judicious observations on the " different natures of grounds, how they 

 may be employed, how they may be bettered, reformed, and amended." The famous 

 meadows near Salisbury are mentioned ; and when cattle have fed their fill, hogs, it is 

 pretended, " are made fat with the remnant, namely, with the knots and sappe of the 

 grasse." So many extravagant assertions have been made about these meadows by 

 several of our early writers, that we ought to receive their statements with some degree 

 of scepticism, wherever they seem to approach the marvellous. " Clover grass, or the 

 grass honeysuckle," (white clover), is directed to be sown with other hay- seeds. 

 " Carrot-roots" were then raised in several parts of England, and sometimes by farmers.'* 

 London street-dung, and stable-dung, was carried to a distance by water ; though it ap- 

 pears from later writers to have been got almost for the trouble of removing. And 

 leases of twenty-one years are recommended for persons of small capital, as better than 

 employing it in purchasing land ; an opinion that prevails very generally among our 

 present farmers. 



248. Bees seem to have been great favorites with these early writers ; and among 

 others, there is a treatise by Butler, a gentleman of Oxford, called the Feminine Monar- 

 chie, or the History of Bees, printed in 1609, full of all manner of quaintness and 

 pedantry. 



249. Markham, Mascall, Gabriel Plattes, Weston, and other authors belonged to 

 this period. In Sir Richard Weston's Discourse on the Husbandry of Brabant and 

 Flanders, published by Hartlib, in 1645, we may. mark the dawn of the vast improve- 

 ments which have since been effected in Britain. This gentleman was ambassador from 

 England to the Elector Palatine and King of Bohemia, in 1619, and had the merit of 

 being the first who introduced the great clover, as it was then called, into English 



