AGRICULTURE IN BRITAIN. 439 



be very lazy, and may be frequently observed to plow in their 

 cloaks. It is the fashion of them to wear cloaks when they go 

 abroad, but especially on Sundays. They have neither good 

 bread, cheese, nor drink. They cannot make them, nor will 

 they learn. Their butter is very indifferent, and one would 

 wonder how they contrive to make it so bad. They use much 

 pottage made of colewort, which they call kail ; sometimes 

 broth of decorticated barley. The ordinary country houses are 

 pitiful cots, built of stone and covered with turfs, having in 

 them but one room, many of them no chimneys, the windows 

 very small holes, and not glazed. The ground in the valleys 

 and plains bears very good grain, but especially bears barley 

 and oats, but rarely wheat and rye." 



It is probable that no great change had taken place in Scot- 

 land from the end of the fifteenth century, except that tenants 

 gradually became possessed of a little stock of their own, in- 

 stead of having their farms stocked by the landlord. The 

 minority of James V., the reign of Mary Stuart, the infancy of 

 her son, and the civil wars of her grandson, Charles I., were all 

 periods of lasting waste. The very laws which . were made 

 during successive reigns, for protecting the tillers of the soil 

 from spoil, are the best proofs of the deplorable state of the hus- 

 bandman. The accession of James VI. to the crown of Eng- 

 land is understood to have been unfavorable to the agricultural 

 interests of Scotland, inasmuch as the nobles and gentry, being 

 by that event led into great expenses, raised the rents of the 

 tenantry considerably, while the very circumstance which occa- 

 sioned the rise contributed to lessen the means of the tenant 

 for fulfilling his engagements. Scotland, however, was much 

 benefited by the soldiers of Cromwell, who were chiefly English 

 yeomen, not only well acquainted with husbandry, but, like the 

 Romans at a former period, studious also to improve and en- 

 lighten the nation which they had subdued. 



The soldiers of Cromwell's army were regularly paid, at the 

 rate of eightpence per day, a sum equal to the money value of 

 two shillings of English currency ; and, as this army lay in 

 Scotland for many years, there was a great circulation of money 

 through the country. Perhaps the low country districts were, 

 at this time, in a higher state of improvement than at any 



