94 STATE OP LAND 



for the working classes was during the period 

 of the Luddite riots, when for a short time 

 wheat and oats alike fetched the enormous 

 price of twenty shillings a bushel. This price 

 I realized myself in Stockport market on 

 two successive Fridays only, as did the late 

 Major Marsland of Henbury Hall, who at 

 that time had a considerable extent of ex- 

 cellent land in Heaton Norris in his hands, 

 which while under his management was a 

 perfect model of a highly cultivated farm. 

 And an extensive tenant-farmer under Lloyd 

 Bampord Hesketh, Esq., who held two large 

 farms near Stockport, at the same time sold 

 one hundred bushels of cone wheat for one 

 hundred pounds to a corn merchant in Stock- 

 port. But this price was soon considerably 

 lowered by the produce of a new harvest 

 coming more freely into the market. 



During these eventful times, a great im- 

 poverishment of the land was occasioned by 

 the demand of cowdung from the calico- 



