Zbc Stuart period 



CHAPTER XXVI. 



ITS AGRICULTUKE. 



The seventeenth-century agricultural wi^iters draw particular 

 attention to the rapacity of English landlords, who by lev3dng 

 heavy exactions at the determination of a lease, discouraged 

 their tenants' attempts at permanent improvements. The 

 system of competitive rents occasioned by the former's practice 

 of proclaiming vacant holdings in open court, is especially 

 deprecated by Norden.^ Farmers had begun to look upon the 

 surveyor or agent as little better than a landlord's spy, and 

 thereb}^ had arisen a want of cohesion between landlord and 

 tenant, which did not fail to prejudice agricultural enterprise. 

 Hartlib ^ objected to the utter lack of system which the grant- 

 ing of fines involved, and by which the cop3'holder became a 

 prey to the rapacity of his landlord, and he further deprecated 

 the practice of keeping large flocks of pigeons by people who 

 held no land, and therefore relied on their neighbours' crops 

 to support the winged inmates of their dovecotes. These facts 

 are the more striking when we come to reflect that the writers 

 were men predisposed by birth and education to impartiality. 

 Norden was probably a surveyor, Markham a gentleman of 

 travelled experience and varied attainments, Hartlib a Dutch- 

 man of refined tastes who had visited all Western Europe and 

 parts of America, Vaughan a Herefordshire gentleman, Plattes 

 of foreign extraction, Worledge a Hampshire squire, several 

 like Plat, men of title, Blith a parliamentary officer, and 

 Weston an ambassador. 



Perhaps two of the most important improvements which 



* Norden, The Surveyor's Dialogue. 

 - Hartlib, Legacy of Husbandry. 



238 



