CHAPTER XV 



1700-1765 



TOWNSHEND. SHEEP ROT. CATTLE PLAGUE. 

 FRUIT-GROWING 



IN 1730 Charles, second Viscount Townshend, retired from 

 politics, on his quarrel with his brother-in-law Walpole, who 

 remarked that ' as long as the firm was Townshend and Wal- 

 pole the utmost harmony prevailed, but it no sooner became 

 Walpole and Townshend than things went wrong '. He devoted 

 himself to the management of his Norfolk estates and set an 

 example to English landlords in wisely and diligently experi- 

 menting in farm practice which was soon followed on all sides, 

 the names of Lords Ducie, Peterborough, and Bolingbroke 

 being the best known of his fellow-labourers. A generation 

 afterwards Young wrote, ' half the County of Norfolk within the 

 memory of man yielded nothing but sheep feed, whereas those 

 very tracts of land are now covered with as fine barley and rye 

 as any in the world and great quantities of wheat besides.' l 

 There can be no doubt from this statement, made by an eye- 

 witness of exceptional capacity, that he commenced the work 

 so nobly carried on by Coke. The same authority tells us 

 that when Townshend began his improvements near Norwich 

 much of the land was an extensive heath without either tree or 

 shrub, only a sheepwalk to another farm ; so many carriages 

 crossed it that they would sometimes be a mile abreast of 

 each other in pursuit of the best track. By 1760 there 

 was an excellent turnpike road, enclosed on each side with 

 a good quickset hedge, and all the land let out in enclosures 

 and cultivated on the Norfolk system in superior style ; the 



1 farmer's Letters, i. 10. 



