The Civil Wars. 



oo. 



could support double tlie usual quantity by the improvement 

 of its herbage. Sainfoin, trefoil, sweet fenugreek, buck and 

 cow wheat, field turnips and spurrey were therefore grown. 

 They let out their farms on improvement, discovered a dozen 

 new fertilisers, and were the first of modern nations to appre- 

 ciate the beneficial eflPects of green crops cultivated for plough- 

 ing under as manure. They paid special attention to sheep, 

 housing them every night in covered sheds whose floors were 

 strewed with virgin earth or sand. The manure thus made 

 served as an excellent top dressing. Salt, street dirt, sullage 

 of streets, clay, fuller's and moorish earth, dunghills in layers ; 

 hair, burnt vegetables, malt dust, willow-tree earth, soap-boiler's 

 ashes, marl and broken pilchards were rescued from the gutter 

 or rubbish heap to fertilise their farms. ^ 



It was to such people that our leading agriculturalists now 

 turned for instruction. The new element that had entered 

 into part possession of the English soil was composed of needy, 

 serious, industrious and skilled husbandmen, who looked upon 

 landownership as a profitable profession. Their example 

 leavened the whole lump ; and directly men could lay aside 

 bandoleer, tuck and corslet, it became the fashion to stop at 

 home and cultivate their lands. As regards agriculture, it 

 mattered nothing to such men whether they had recently 

 worn the blue sash, white plumed hat, and laced cloak of the 

 Royalist, or the red surtout and steeple hat of the Parliamen- 

 tarian Mahgnants and Fifth Monarchy Men; Sectaries and 

 Churchmen, all looked to Cromwell as the patron of their 

 profession, whether they secretly called him " Old Noll " or 

 Lord High Protector. Men of the greatest refinement and 

 learning were using their pens in the agricultural cause. 

 Hartlib was the crony of Milton, Sir Hugh Platte a friend of 

 Cromwell's,^ and these two writers were feeling after a some- 

 thing that had long been a want in agriculture. One has only 

 to study their writings to discover that unwittingly they were 

 raising a cry for help to chemical science, to which, alas, for 



' Eees, Encyclo.^ sub voc. Agricultvire. 



^ Blith dedicated his work to Cromwell, and Hartlib received a pension 

 from the same patron as a reward for his agricultural research. 



