144 HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE 



trees bear well savours of a time when old women were still 

 burnt as witches. ' First split his root, then apply a compost of 

 pigeon's dung, lees of wine, or stale wine, and a little brimstone '. 

 The tithes of wine in Gloucestershire were ' in divers parishes 

 considerably great', and wine was then made in Kent and 

 Surrey, notably by Sir Peter Ricard, who made 6 or 8 hogs- 

 heads yearly. 1 There is no doubt that the vine has been 

 grown in the open in England from very early times until com- 

 paratively recent ones. The Britons were taught to plant it by 

 the Romans in A.D. 28o. 2 In Domesday there are 38 examples 

 of vineyards, chiefly in the south central counties. Neckham, 

 who wrote in the twelfth century, says the vineyard was an 

 important adjunct to the mediaeval mansion. 3 William of 

 Malmesbury praised the vines and wine of Gloucestershire ; 

 and says that the vine was either allowed to trail on the 

 ground, or trained to small stakes fixed to each plant. Indeed, 

 the mention of them in mediaeval chronicles is frequent. 



Two bushels of green grapes in 1332 fetched Js. 6d.* 

 Richard II planted vines in great plenty, according to Stow, 

 within the upper park of Windsor, and sold some part to his 

 people. The wine made in England was sweetened with 

 honey, and probably flavoured and coloured with blackberries. 5 

 At the dissolution of the monasteries there was a vineyard at 

 Barking Nunnery. ' We might have a reasonable good wine 

 growing in many places of this realme ', says Barnaby Googe, 

 about 1577, 'as doubtless we had immediately after the 

 Conquest, tyll, partly by slothfulnesse, partly by civil discord 

 long continued, it was left, and so with time lost. . . . There 

 is besides Nottingham an ancient house called Chylwel in 

 which remaineth yet as an ancient monument in a great 

 wyndowe of glasse, the whole order of planting, proyning, 

 stamping, and pressing of vines. Upon many cliffes and hills are 



1 Compleat Husbandman (1659), p. 23. 



2 Archaeologia, i. 324 ; iii. 53. 



3 De Natura Rerum, Rolls Ser., Ixi. 



4 Denton, England in the Fifteenth Century, 57 n. 5 Ibid. 



