

THE HOLKHAM SHEEP-SHEARINGS 221 



shearing in June, 1806 is described in the Farmer's Magazine 1 in 

 the stilted language of the day, as " the happy resort of the most 

 distinguished patrons and amateurs of Georgic employments." In 

 1818 open house was kept at Holkham for a week ; hundreds of 

 persons assembled from all parts of Great Britain, the Continent, 

 and America. The mornings were spent in inspecting the land and 

 the stock ; at three o'clock, six hundred persons sate down to din- 

 ner ; the rest of each day was spent in discussion, toasts, and 

 speeches. The Emperor of Russia sent a special representative, 

 and among the learners was Erskine, who abandoned the study of 

 Coke at Westminster Hall to gather the wisdom of his namesake 

 at Holkham. At the sheep-shearings, year after year, were col- 

 lected practical and theoretical agriculturists, fanners from every 

 district, breeders of every kind of stock, who compared notes and 

 exchanged experiences. In many other parts of England similar 

 meetings were held by great landlords, like the Duke of Bedford at 

 Woburn, 2 or Lord Egremont at Petworth, who in their own localities 

 were carrying on the same work as Coke. 



At Holkham and Woburn sheep-shearings, both landlords and 

 farmers were learners ; both required to be educated in the new 

 principles of their altered business. It was by no means uncommon 

 to find landlords who prevented progress by refusing to let land 

 except at will, or bound their tenants by restrictive covenants to 

 follow obsolete practices. There was, moreover, a tendency among 

 the land-owning class to expect from rent-paying tenants a greater 

 outlay on the land than a farmer's capital could bear or an occupier 

 was justified in making. The question of improvements had not 

 yet assumed the complicated forms which have developed under 

 modern agricultural methods. But it had already been raised in 

 the simpler shape. The liability for improvements of a permanent 

 character required to be defined ; no distinction was yet drawn 

 between changes which added some lasting benefit to the holding 

 and those whose effects were exhausted within the limits of a brief 

 occupation. Expenditure which might legitimately be borne by 

 landlords was often demanded from tenants at will or even from year 

 to year. Thousands of acres still lay unproductive because owners 

 looked to occupiers for the reclamation of waste, the drainage of 



1 Farmer's Magazine, August, 1806. 



2 For a description of a Woburn sheep-shearing, or "this truly rational 

 Agricultural Fete," see Farmer's Magazine for July, 1800. 



