SIR HUGH PLAT 101 



ashes from the burning of stubble, weeds, and bracken ; the hair 

 of beasts, malt dust, soap-ashes, putrified pilchards, garbage of 

 fish, blood offal and the entrails of animals. He warns farmers 

 of the difficulty in discovering the right proportion of marl to lay 

 on different sorts of soil. He condemns the waste of the richest 

 properties of farm-yard manure, and recommends the use of covers 

 to all pits used for its accumulation. He himself used a barn roof 

 at his farm at St. Albans, which moved up and down on upright 

 supports, so that the muck-heap could be raised, yet always remain 

 under cover. In his Arte of setting of Corne (1600) he advocates 

 dibbing as superior to broadcast sowing. He traces the origin 

 of the practice to the accident of a silly wench, who deposited 

 some seeds of wheat in holes intended for carrots. He goes so 

 far as to say that, by dibbing, the average yield of wheat per 

 acre would be raised from 4 quarters to 15 quarters ! 



The growth of an agricultural literature, as well as Googe's list 

 of notable authorities, suggest that landowners were beginning to 

 interest themselves in corn and cattle. Probably their taste for 

 farming was encouraged by the fashionable love for horticulture. 

 In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries both had declined : in the 

 Tudor age both revived. The garden was the precursor of the 

 home-farm. In the reign of Elizabeth, gardening became one of 

 the pursuits and pleasures of English country life. The art was 

 loved by Bacon ; it was patronised by Burghley and Walsingham ; 

 it gathered round it a rich literature ; it claimed the services of 

 explorers and builders of Empire like Sir Walter Raleigh. Tudor 

 architects used pleasure gardens to carry on and support the Lines 

 of their main buildings, and even repeated the patterns of their 

 mural decorations in the geometrical " Knots " of their flower 

 borders ; but they banished kitchen gardens out of sight. The 

 cultivation of vegetables made less progress than that of flowers 

 and fruits. This useful side of horticulture, like farming, was as 

 yet comparatively neglected by the Tudor gentry. But an advance 

 was made. The first step was to recover lost ground. In order 

 to flatter Elizabeth, Harrison probably exaggerated the disuse of 

 vegetables before the accession of her father. He over-states his 

 case when he says that garden-produce, which before was treated 

 as fit for hogs and savage beasts, now supplied not only food for 

 the " poore commons " but " daintie dishes at the tables of delicate 

 merchants, gentlemen, and the nobilitie." It was doubtless true 



