The Husbaiidi'y of the Period. 255 



in wet seasons yield prodigioas crops. A prospect far different 

 from flocks of slieep wandering over the sluggard walks, fol- 

 lowed eacli by its own shepherd with a boy and a couple of 

 dogs ! Think of the wealth such a cultivation as I have hinted 

 at pours into the kingdom ! Think of the emj)loyment given 

 to the best hands a kingdom boasts ! Think of this improve- 

 ment ; and then behold in the same country as many sheep 



as ever 



I " 



In his Bix Weeli,^^ Tour^ Young/ in describing the estates of 

 the Earl of Leicester in the same county, speaks as follows : 

 "All the country from Holkham to Houghton was a wild sheep 

 walk before the spirit of improvement seized the inhabitants, 

 and this glorious spirit has wrought amazing effects ; for in- 

 stead of boundless wilds and uncultivated wastes, inhabited by 

 scarce anything but sheep, the country is all cut into inclosures, 

 cultivated in a most husbandlike manner, richly manured, well 

 peopled, and yielding an hundred times the produce that it 

 did in its former state. What has wrought these vast im- 

 provements is the marling ; for under the whole country runs 

 veins of a very rich soapy kind, which they dig up and spread 

 upon the old sheep walks, and then by means of inclosing they 

 throw their farms into a regular course of crops, and gain 

 immensely by the improvement." 



Young goes on to describe the farms on this famous estate as 

 all large and low-rented. The tenants, encouraged by long 

 leases and fixity of tenure, spent much money in improving 

 their holdings, so that their real rental value soon became 

 greatly in excess of what they actually paid their landlord. 

 Fortunes were constantly made, and the occupiers of farms 

 paying from £300 to £900 a year in rent, at an average of 

 from 2s. 6^. to 6s. per acre, bid fair in time to become the pos- 

 sessors of the whole county. It was not an unusual practice 

 to dress each acre of the clover leys once in eighteen or twenty 



' Six Weeks' Tour through the Southern Comities of England mid 

 Wales, 2ad ed., 1771. A. Young. Exactly the same paragraph appears 

 in Defoe's Tour through Britain, p. 75, 7th ed., and is somewhat too liter- 

 allj- paraphrased in a work entitled A Description of England and Wales, 

 vol. vi. p. 238. London, 1769. 



