712 



FARMERS' REGISTER— USE OF CORN IN ENGLAND. 



In the fifjure, a a are llie pressers, made of cast- 

 iron, and wei»;hin>^ 2^ cwt. each. They are made 

 cither in the form of a wheel or of two cups, fas- 

 tened at llie eih^e; they are 2 feet 9 indies in 

 diameter; they are fastened on Ion<^' slip-boxes, 

 which slide upon the axle c, and secured by ])inch- 

 inp;-si rews h h at the width to suit tiie width of the 

 furrows to be compressed, b is a cast-iron wheel, 

 Avhich rolls on the land-side or sward, and carries 

 the frame-work. This wheel and the two pres- 

 sers are hung on the axle c, which rnns in plumber- 

 blocks fiistened to the under side of the frame-ends 

 y/, which are made, of stout ash, and bent so as' to 

 suit the hei<),ht of the axle c and the draft of the 

 shafts d d, betw^een which the horse is yoked, e e 

 are chains, which pass over tlie pulleys i i, and 

 are fastened to the draught-hooks of the collar of 

 the horse, to equalize the draught of the machine. 

 g g are two cleaners, made forked, and fastened 

 with pinching sciews on the hindmost rail of the 

 frame, and are made to shift, to suit the width of 

 the j)resser ; they are intended to scrape off any 

 earth that may adhere to the pressers during their 

 action. h. w. 



USE OF CORN IN ENGLAND. 



Jlbridgdd from " Vegetable Substances used for 

 the Food of Man." 



The Anglo-Saxon monks of the Abbej- of St. 

 Edmund, in the eighth century, ate barley bread, 

 because the income of the estal)lishment would not 

 admit of their feeding twice or thrice a day on 

 wheaten bread. The English laliorers o! the 

 southern and midland counties, in the latter part of 

 the eighteenth century, refused to eat bread made 

 of one-third wheat, one-third rve, and one-third 

 barley,saying, that" they had lost tlieir rye-teeth." 

 It would be a cui ious and not unprofitable inquiry, 

 to trace the progress of the national taste in this 

 particular. It would show that whatever priva- 

 tions the English laborer may now endure, and 

 whatever he has endured for many generations, he 

 has succeeded in rendering the dearest kind of 

 vegetable food the general food of the country. 

 This single circumstance is a security to him 

 against those sufferings from actual famine which 

 were familiar to his fore-elders, and which are 

 still the objects of continual apprehension in those 

 countries where the laborers live upon the cheapest 

 substances. Wages cannot be depressed in such 

 a manner as to deprive the laborer, for any length 

 of time, of the power of maintaining himself upon 

 the kind of food which habit has made necessary 

 to him ; and as the ordinary food of the English 

 laborer is not the very cheapest that can be got, it 

 is in his power to have recourse for awhile to less 

 expensive articles of subsistence should any tem 

 porary scarcity of food or want of employment 

 deprive him of his usual fiire, — an advantage not 

 possessed by his Irish fellow-subjects, to whom the 

 failure of a potato crop is a matter not of discom- 

 Ibrt merely, but of absolute starvation. 



In the satire of Pierce Plowman, written in the 

 time of Edward III., it is said, that ichen the new 

 corn began to be sold, 



"AVoulde no beggar and breed that in it beraies were, 

 But of cocket, and clemantyne, or else clene wheate." 



This taste, however, was only to be indulged 

 " when the new corn began to be sold;" for then a 



short season of plenty succeeded to a long period 

 of fasting ; the supply of corn was not equalized 

 throughout the year by the provident effects of 

 conunercial speculation. The fluctuations in the 

 price of grain, experienced during this period, and 

 which were partly owing to the insullicient agri- 

 cultural skill, were sudden and excessive. On the 

 securing of an abundant harvest in 1317, wheat, 

 the price of which had been so high as 80s., fell 

 immediately to 6s. 8d. i)er quarter. The people 

 of those days always looked lor a great abatement 

 in the price of grain on the successful gathering of 

 every harvest; and the inordinate joy,of our ances- 

 tors at their harvest-home — a joy which is 'faintly 

 reflected in our own times — proceeded, tliere is 

 little doul)t, from the change which the gathering 

 of the crops produced, from want to abundance, 

 fiom famine to fulness. That useful class of men 

 who employ themselves in purchasing from the 

 producers that they may sell again to the custo- 

 mers, M'as then unknown in England. Immedi- 

 ately after the harvest, the people bought their corn 

 directly from the farmers at a cheap rate, and, as 

 is usual under such circumstances, were improvi- 

 dent in the use of it, so that the su|)ply fell short 

 before the arrival of the following harvest, and 

 prices advanced out of all proportion. 



The reformation, and the discovery of America, 

 were events that had a considerable influence upon 

 the condition of the great body of the people in 

 England. The one drove away the inmates of 

 the monasteries, from whence the poor were accus- 

 tomed to receive donations of food ; the otlier, by 

 pouring the precious metals into Europe, raised 

 the price of provisions. In the latter half of the 

 sixteenth century, wheat was three times as dear, 

 both in England and France, as in the former half 

 The price of wheat, upon an average of years, 

 varied very little for four centuries before the 

 metallic riches of the New World were brought 

 into Europe ; upon an average of years, it has 

 varied very little since. The people of the days 

 of Henry VIII. felt the change in the money-value 

 of provisions, although the real value remained the 

 same; and they ascribed the circumstance to the 

 dissolution of the monasteries. There is an old 

 song of that day in the Somersetshire dialect, which 

 indicates the nature of the popular error : — 



"I'll tell thee what, good vellowe, 



Before the vriars went hence, 

 A bushel of the best wheate 



Was sold for vourteen pence ; 

 And vofly eggs a penny 



That were both good and newe ; 

 And this, I say, myself have seen, 



And yet 1 am no Jewe." 



When wheat was fourteen pence a bushel, it was 

 probably consumed by the people, in seasons of 

 plenty, and soon after harvest. During a portion 

 of the year, there is little doubt that the English 

 laborer, had better food than the French, who, in 

 the fifteenth century, were described by Fortescue 

 thus : — •" Thay dryiike water, thay eate apples, 

 with bred riglit brown, made of rye." Locke, 

 travelling in France, in 1678, says of the peasantry 

 in his journal, " their ordinarj' food, rye bread and 

 water." The English always disliked what they 

 emphatically termed " changing the white loaf for 

 the brown." Their dislike to brown bread in 

 some degree prevented the change w hich they pro- 

 verbially dreaded. In the latter part of the six- 



