SLOW ACCEPTANCE OF NEW CROPS 135 



very well on turnips, which prove an excellent nourishment for 

 them in hard winters, when fodder is scarce ; for they will not only 

 eat the greens, but feed on the roots in the ground, and scoop them 

 hollow even to the very skin." Houghton 1 in 1694 writes that 

 " Some in Essex have their fallow after turneps, which feed their 

 sheep in winter, by which means their turneps are scooped, and so 

 made capable to hold dews and rain water which, by corrupting, 

 imbibes the nitre of the air, and when the shell breaks, it runs about 

 and fertilizes. By feeding the sheep, the land is dung'd as if it 

 had been folded ; and these turneps, tho' few or none be carried 

 off for human use, are a very excellent improvement ; nay, some 

 reckon it so, tho' they only plough the turneps in, without 

 feeding." They made but slow progress. Sir John Cullum, in his 

 History of the Manor of Hawsted, preserves the name of Michael 

 Houghton as the first man in that Suffolk parish, who about 1700 

 raised a crop of turnips on two acres of his land. " I introduced 

 turnips into the field," says Tull, " in King William's reign ; but 

 the practice did not travel beyond the hedges of my estate till after 

 the Peace of Utrecht " (1713). Potatoes were even less successful. 

 John Forster (1664) had, as has been already noticed, urged their 

 adoption as a field crop. Houghton notices that they had been 

 brought from Ireland " to Lancashire, where they are very numerous, 

 and now they begin to spread all the Kingdom over. They are a 

 pleasant food boiled or roasted, and eaten with butter and sugar." a 

 But Mortimer (Whole Art of Husbandry, etc., 1707) despised them 

 even in the garden as " very near the Nature of the Jerusalem 

 Artichoak, which is not so good or wholesome. These are planted 

 either of the Roots or Seeds, and may probably be propagated in 

 great Quantities, and prove a good food for Swine." Neither 

 clover nor turnips became general in England before the latter 

 half of the eighteenth century, and potatoes were not extensively 

 grown till fifty years later, when their value was urged on the 

 country by the Board of Agriculture. 



The widest differences existed between the farming of various 

 districts. The general level was extremely low. But in individual 

 cases a high standard was attained, and the best possible use made 

 of such resources as agriculturists could command. In natural 

 fertility the Vale of Taunton, which Norden calls the " Paradise of 

 England," was pre-eminent. The best pastures, according to the 

 1 Ibid. vol. i. p. 213. 8 Collections, etc. vol. ii. p. 469. 



