FARMER GEORGE" 207 



CHAPTER X. 



LARGE FARMS AND CAPITALIST FARMERS. 

 1780-1813. 



Agricultural enthusiasm at the close of the eighteenth century ; high prices 

 of agricultural produce ; the causes of the advance ; increased demand 

 and cessation of foreign supplies ; the state of the currency ; rapid advance 

 of agriculture on the new lines of capitalist farming ; impulse given to 

 enclosing movement and the introduction of improved practices ; Davy's 

 Lectures on Agricultural Chemistry ; the work of large landlords : Coke 

 of Norfolk. 



THE enthusiasm for farming progress, which Arthur Young zeal- 

 ously promoted, spread with rapidity. A fashion was created 

 which was more lasting, because less artificial and more practical, 

 than it had been in the days of Pope. Great landlords took the 

 lead in agricultural improvements. Their farming zeal did not 

 escape criticism. Dr. Edwards * in 1783 expressed a feeling which 

 was prevalent two centuries before : " Gentlemen have no right 

 to be farmers ; and their entering upon agriculture to follow it as 

 a business is perhaps a breach of their moral duty." But it was 

 now that young men, heirs to landed estates as well as younger 

 sons, began to go as pupils to farmers. George III. rejoiced in 

 the title of " Farmer George," considered himself more indebted to 

 Arthur Young than to any man in his dominions, carried the last 

 volume of the Annals with him in his travelling carnage, kept his 

 model farm at Windsor, 2 formed his flock of merino sheep, and 

 experimented in stock-breeding. The Duke of Bedford at Woburn, 

 Lord Rockingham at Went worth, Lord Egremont at Pet worth, 

 Coke at Holkham, and numerous other landlords, headed the 



1 Plan of an Undertaking for the Improvement of Husbandry etc., by Dr. 

 Edwards of Barnard Castle (1783). 



2 The King's Windsor Farm is described by Nathaniel Kent in Hunter's 

 Georgical Essays (1803), vol. iv. Essay vii. 



