106 HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE 



Saffron also was much grown, that at Saffron Walden in 

 Essex was said to be the best in the world, the profit from 

 it being reckoned at 13 an acre. Its virtues were innumer- 

 able, if we may believe the contemporary writers ; it flavoured 

 dishes, helped digestion, was good for short wind, killed moths, 

 helped deafness, dissolved gravel, and, lastly, ' drunk in wine 

 doth haste on drunkenesse.' 



The most important novelty of this century was the 

 potato, which the colonists, sent out in 1586 by Sir Walter 

 Raleigh, brought from Virginia to Ireland, though it had 

 been introduced into Europe by the Spaniards before this. 

 According to Gerard, the old English botanist, it was, on its 

 first introduction from America, only cultivated in the gardens 

 of the nobility and gentry as a curious exotic ; and in 1606 it 

 occurs among the vegetables considered necessary for a noble- 

 man's household. 1 It is curious to find Gerard comparing it 

 to what he calls the ' common potato ', in reality the sweet 

 potato brought to England by Drake and Hawkins earlier in 

 the century. In James I's reign the root was considered 

 a great delicacy, and was sold to the queen's household at 

 zs. a lb., an enormous price. 



Like most agricultural novelties it spread very slowly, but 

 about the middle of the seventeenth century began to be 

 planted out in the fields in small patches in Lancashire, 

 whence it spread all over the kingdom and to France. 2 At 

 this date it was looked upon as a very second-rate article of 

 food, if we may judge by the Spectator (No. 232), which alludes 

 to it as the diet of beggars. About 1690, Houghton says, 

 ' now they begin to spread all the kingdom over ,' and re- 

 commends them boiled or roasted and eaten with butter and 

 sugar. 3 Eden notes its increasing popularity during the 

 eighteenth century, and by his time (the end of that century) 



1 A rchaeologia, xi i i . 3 7 1 . 



2 In 1650 it was much cultivated about London. 



3 Collections on Husbandry and Trade, ii. 468. 



