CHAPTER III 

 ESSEX PAST AND PRESENT 



LONG before the era when wheat production was at its 

 best in Great Britain, Essex was a famous dairy 

 country, its nearness to so great a centre of consump- 

 tion as London giving to the local farmers an excep- 

 tionally good market for their produce, and especially 

 for their supplies of new milk. But when Wheat 

 became King, he had no more loyal and devoted 

 adherents than those who followed his standard in 

 Essex, and cereals took the leading place previously 

 occupied by dairy products. Land yielding good crops 

 fetched high rents so long as the crops in question 

 yielded good prices. 



Not only were times prosperous for the landlords, but 

 wealth poured in upon the farmers, who could live a 

 life of ease and comfort, with a few bottles of wine at 

 their elbow when they sat down to dinner, two or three 

 good hunters in their stables to take them to the * meet,' 

 bailiffs to look after the labourers who toiled at a barely 

 living wage to provide them with the luxuries they 

 enjoyed, and dealers to relieve them of all trouble in the 

 buying and selling of stock. It was a Golden Age to 

 which a few impoverished survivors now look back as 

 the 'good old days ' a time they may recall from the 

 recesses of their memory, but one that, for them at 

 least, is only a reminiscence and a dream. 



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