314 History of the English Landed Interest. 



now tlie worse for the wear and tear of intervening cen- 

 turies. Probably the old smoke tattered fence-rows in most 

 cases enclose the self-same fields into which the Tudor agricul- 

 turalists converted parts of the common land, and, too, bear 

 crops identicall}- similar to those which were cultivated by the 

 Tudor yeoman. The pasture land Avas ploughed up as soon 

 as clover seed arrived in this country, and it has never been 

 restored since. Oats, grass seeds, potatoes, and occasionally 

 wheat have rung the changes of cropping j'ear after j^ear 

 throughout the stormy days of Stuart rule, and the calmer 

 times of the House of Brunswick. The devastation of disas- 

 trous civil war at home and the glories of successful victories 

 abroad; the bounties on the exportation of corn, the heavj'" 

 fiscal charges on its importation, and the ultimate repfeal 

 of all its laws ; the agricultural honours paid to the turnip, 

 the successes of the Midland graziers, the discoveries of 

 chemical science, and the growth of great centres of commerce- 

 in the very district itself, all alike failed to turn the southern 

 Lancastrian from his time-honoured groove of husbandry. He 

 clings to his potatoes and oats as sole sources of profit, whether 

 their prices range high or low in the local markets. He uses- 

 no other manures than good farmyard dung, Clitheroe lime, 

 and town nightsoil ; he grumbles when Irish potato merchants 

 or American cornchandlers undersell him, but he sticks to the 

 old system through thick and thin, ^trusts onl}" to his own 

 and his family's industry for working his small tenancy, pays- 

 his rent with the regularity of clockwork, and lives and dies 

 in the same building which centuries back sufficed for his 

 Tudor ancestors.' 



Far different is the case in the county chosen for the farm 

 we are about to describe. Notwithstanding the resistance to 

 the enclosure S3'stem as evidenced by Ket's rebellion, the East 

 Anglian husbandman has long established his claim to be 

 considered the pioneer of English agriculture. Badly circum- 

 stanced as he is with regard to the congested centres of com- 

 merce, and light as much of his soil undoubtedly is, he has 



' Tlie reader should study the rough ground plan and description of a 

 farniliouso given in G. Markham's TO-? English Husbandman, 1613. 



