AGRICULTURE: MANURES, CHEESE, MALT, ETC. 105 



no boare can gett through them. Captain Jones, of Newton Tony, did the like on his downes. 

 Their method is thus : they first runne a furrow with the plough, and then they sow the cakes of 

 the crabbes, which they gett at the verjuice mill. It growes very well, and on many of them they 

 doe graffe. 



Limeing of ground was not used but about 1595, some time after the comeing in of tobacco. 

 (From Sir Edw. Ford of Devon.) 



Old Mr. Broughton, of Herefordshire, was the man that brought in the husbandry of soap ashes. 

 He living at Bristoll, where much soap is made, and the haven there was like to have been choak't 

 up with it, considering that ground was much meliorated by compost, &c. did undertake this experi- 

 ment, and having land near the city, did accordingly improve it with soap ashes. I remember the 

 gentleman very well. He dyed about 1650, I believe near 90 yeares old, and was the handsomest, 

 well limbed, strait old man that ever I saw, had a good witt and a graceful elocution. He was the 

 father of Bess Broughton, one of the greatest beauties of her age. 



Proverb for apples, peares, hawthorns, quicksetts, oakes : 



" Sett them at All-hallow-tyde, and command them to grow; 

 Sett them at Candlemass, and entreat them to grow.*' 



Butter and Cheese. At Pertwood and about Lidyard as good butter is made as any in England, 

 but the cheese is not so good. About Lidyard, in those fatt grounds, in hott weather, the best 

 huswives cannot keep their cheese from heaving. The art to keep it from heaving is to putt in cold 

 water. Sowre wood-sere grounds doe yield the best cheese, and such are Cheshire. Bromefield, in 

 the parish of Yatton, is so sower and wett and where I had better cheese made than anywhere in 

 all the neighbourhood. 



Somerset proverb : 



" If you will have a good cheese, and hav'n old, 

 You must turn'n seven times before he is cold." 



Jo. Shakespeare's wife, of Worplesdowne in Surrey, a North Wiltshire woman, and an excellent 

 huswife, does assure me that she makes as good cheese there as ever she did at Wraxhall or 

 Bitteston, and that it is meerly for want of art that her neighbours doe not make as good ; they send 

 their butter to London. So it appeares that, some time or other, when there in the vale of Sussex 

 and Surrey they have the North Wiltshire skill, that halfe the cheese trade of the markets of 

 Tedbury and Marleborough will be spoiled. 



Now of late, sc. about 1680, in North Wiltshire, they have altered their fashion from thinne cheeses 

 about an inch thick, made so for the sake of drying and quick sale, called at London Marleborough 

 cheese, to thick ones, as the Cheshire cheese. At Marleborough and Tedbury the London cheese- 

 mongers doe keep their factors for their trade. [At the close of the last century Reading was the 

 principal seat of the London cheese factors, who visited the different farms in Wiltshire once in each 

 year to purchase the cheese, which was sent in waggons to Reading : often by circuitous routes in 

 order to save the tolls payable on turnpike roads. J. B.] 



Maulting and Brewing. It is certain that Salisbury mault is better than any other in the West ; 



P 



