AGRICULTURE. 



raised, and the corn farmers were ruined. 

 " They everywhere," says Roger Ascham, " la- 

 bour, economize, and consume themselves 

 to satisfy their owners. Hence so many 

 families dispersed, so many houses ruined, so 

 many tables common to every one, taken 

 away. Hence the honour and strength of 

 England, the noble yeomanry, are broken up 

 and destroyed." (A^cham's Epistles, 293 295.) 

 Bishops Story, Latimer, and others, raised 

 their voices in their behalf, and hurled their 

 invectives from the pulpit upon those who op 

 pressed them. "Let them," said Latimer, in a 

 sermon preached before the king, " let them 

 have sufficient to maintain them, and to find 

 them in necessaries. A plough land must 

 have sheep to dung their ground for bearing 

 corn ; they must have swine for their food, to 

 make their bacon of; their bacon is their veni- 

 son, it is their necessary food to feed on, 

 which they may not lack; they must hav.e 

 other cattle, as horses to draw their plough, 

 and for carriage of things to the markets, and 

 kine for their milk and cheese, which they 

 must live upon, and pay their rents." 



The short-sighted executive of that period 

 endeavoured to prevent these enclosures by a 

 prohibitory proclamation, as the legislature 

 had done by the statutes 4 Hen. 7, c. 16, 19. 

 There doubtless was great distress, and always 

 will be upon any sudden change in the direc- 

 tion of the national industry, and in none more 

 extensively than in the return from an agri- 

 cultural to a pastoral mode of life. But, as is 

 observed by one of the most impartial of our 

 historians, " every one has a legal and social 

 right of employing his property as he pleases ; 

 and how far he will make his use of it com- 

 patible with the comforts of others, must be 

 always matter of his private consideration, 

 with which no one, without infringing the com- 

 mon freedom of all, can ever interfere. That 

 no national detriment resulted from this exten- 

 sive enclosure no diminution of the riches, 

 food, and prosperity of the country at large, is 

 clear to every one who surveys the general 

 state and progress of England with a compre- 

 hensive impartiality." (Turner's History of 

 Edward the Sixth, &c.) " The landlord." he 

 further observes, " advanced his rent, but the 

 farmer also was demanding more for his pro- 

 duce." 



The evil of converting arable to pasture 

 land cured itself. The increased growth of 

 wool in other countries, and the improvement 

 of their manufactures, by degrees caused the 

 production of it in Engla'nd to diminish: and 

 as dearths of corn accrued, and the consequent 

 enormous increase of its value rendered its 

 growth more lucrative, pasture-land gradually 

 returned to the dominion of the plough. 



Since that period enclosures have gone on 

 with various, but certainly undiminished, de- 

 grees of activity. More than 3000 enclosure 

 bills were passed in the reign of George III. 

 The land so enclosed was, and is, chiefly dedi- 

 cated to the growth of corn ; but since the field 

 culture of turnips was introduced in the seven- 

 teeth, of mangel wurzel in the nineteenth cen- 

 tury, and other improvements in agricultural 

 practice, every farm is enabled to combine 

 6 



AGRICULTURE. 



the advantages of the stock and tillage 

 bandry. 



Implements. It is very certain that the state 

 of any art is intimately connected with that of 

 its instruments. If these are imperfect it can- 

 not be much advanced ; and this is so univer- 

 sally the case, that agriculture, of course, is no 

 exception. 



1. Norman plough, with the hatchet carried by the 

 ploughman for breaking the clods. 2. Sowing, as re- 

 presented by Strutt. 3. Reaping. 4. Threshing. 5. Whet- 

 ting. 6. Beating hemp. 



We find, in the earliest of our national 

 records, that the ploi^gh, the most important 

 implement of husbandmen, was then of a very 

 rude construction. In general form it rudely 

 resembled the plough now employed, but the 

 workmanship was singularly imperfect. This 

 's no matter of surprise ; for among the early 

 inhabitants of this country there were no arti- 

 ficers. The ploughman was also the plough- 

 wright. It was a law of the early Britons that 

 no one should guide a plough until he could 

 make one; and that the driver should make 

 he traces, by which it was drawn, of withs or 

 wisted willow, a circumstance which affords 

 an interpretation to many corrupt terms at 

 present used by farming men to distinguish 

 he parts of the cart harness. Thus the womb 

 withy has degenerated into wambtye. or wantye,- 

 withen trees into whipping or whipple trees , be- 

 sides which we have the tail withes, and some 

 thers still uncorrupted. (Leges Wallicx, 283 

 288.) We read, also, that Easterwin, Abbot 

 f Wearmouth, not only guided the' plough and 

 winnowed the corn grown on the abbey lands, 

 )ut also with his hammer forged the instru- 

 ments of husbandry upon the anvil. (Bede, 

 Hist. Abb. Wearmofh, 296.) Whether the early 

 British or Saxon ploughs had wheels is uncer- 

 ain, but those of the Normans certainly had 

 such appendages. Pliny says that wheels 

 were first applied to ploughs by the Gauls. 

 D 2 41 



