SIR RICHARD WESTON 107 



Weston were suggesting new agricultural methods, or introducing 

 new crops which were destined to change the face of English farm- 

 ing. Plattes (1638), who seems to have been of Flemish origin, 

 urged that corn should be steeped before sowing, and not sown 

 broadcast but set in regular rows. To those who adopted the sug- 

 gestion of the " corn setter," he promised a yield of a hundred-fold, 

 and he invented a drill to facilitate and cheapen the process. Plattes 

 was on the verge of a great improvement. But men who looked 

 for no larger return than six-fold or eight-fold on the grain sown, 

 regarded his promise as the dream of a visionary who had not 

 travelled beyond the sound of Bow Bells. Unfortunately, the 

 career of Plattes confirmed the contempt with which practical 

 farmers were ready to regard the theories of agricultural writers. 

 Like Tusser, he failed in farming. As Tusser died (1580) in the 

 debtor's prison of the Poultry Compter, so Plattes is said to have 

 died starving and shirtless in the streets of London. 1 



Sir Richard Weston could at least lay claim to thirty years 

 experience in the successful improvement of his estates at Sutton 

 in Surrey " by Fire and Water." He had enriched his heathy land 

 by the process of paring and burning, " which wee call Devon- 

 shiring " ; he had also adopted Vaughan's suggestion of irrigation, 

 and proved its value on his own meadows. But the important 

 change with which Weston's name will always be associated is the 

 introduction of a new rotation of crops, founded on the field cultiva- 

 tion of roots and clover. As Brillat-Savarin valued a new dish 

 above a new star, so Arthur Young regards Weston as " a greater 

 benefactor than Newton." He did indeed offer bread and meat 

 to millions. Whether Weston had visited Flanders before 1644 is 

 uncertain. His attempt to make the Wey navigable by means of 

 locks suggests that he was acquainted with the foreign system of 

 canals. On the other hand, his treatise on agriculture implies that 

 he paid his first visit to the country in that year as a refugee. A 

 Royalist and a Catholic, Weston, at the outbreak of the Civil War, 

 was driven into exile, and his estates were sequestrated. He took 

 refuge in Flanders. There he studied the Flemish methods of 

 agriculture, especially their use of flax, clover, and turnips. For 

 the field cultivation of clover he advises that heathy ground should 

 be pared, burned, limed, and well ploughed and harrowed ; that 

 the seed should be sown in April, or the end of March, at the rate 

 1 Hartlib's Legacie (3rd edition, 1655), p. 183. 



