PROGRESS 113 



of wheat, and then a crop of oats, after which you may sow 

 clover again.' 



In the seventeenth century the practice of liming and marling, 

 which had been largely discontinued since the fourteenth cen- 

 tury, was revived (Westcote, in his View of Devon in 1630, calls 

 liming, &c., a new invention), and there was also a great im- 

 provement in implements. Patents were taken out for draining 

 machines in 1628, for new manures in 1633-6, ploughs 1633-7 

 and 1634, mechanical sowing 1634-9. Only six were taken out, 

 however, between 1640 and 1760 that concerned agriculture. 1 

 The Civil War checked the improvement, for though the great 

 mass of the people had nothing to do with either party, the 

 country was of necessity in a very unsettled state, and both 

 sides plundered indiscriminately. Yet in some parts, as in 

 Devonshire, so many of the able men served in the two armies, 

 that few but old men, women, and children were left to manage 

 the farms, and even they were afraid to grow more than 

 enough to supply themselves since both armies seized the 

 crops. 2 These bad effects lasted for some time afterwards; 

 Chappie, a Devonshire land agent of the eighteenth century, 

 says he had talked with people who remembered the state of 

 husbandry in the last ten or twelve years of the reign of 

 Charles II, when in many parts of Devonshire an acre or two 

 of wheat was esteemed a rarity. 



That the rate of progress in the century was not more rapid 

 is attributed by Blyth to several causes : 



1. Want of leases, by which tenants were deprived of 

 security. 



2. Discouragement to flood (irrigate) land, from the risk of 

 law suits with neighbours. 



3. Intermixture of different properties in common fields. 



4. Unlimited pasturage on commons, by which they were 

 overstocked. 



1 R.A.S. E. Journal, 1892, p. 19. 



2 Chappie, Review of Risdorts Survey of Devon (1785), p. 17 n. Victoria, 

 County History : Devonshire^ Agriculture. 



