Book I. AGRICULTURE OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 45 



242. Of the state of agriculture in Scotland during the greater part of the seventeenth 

 centuiy very little is known ; no professed treatise on the subject appeared till after the 

 revolution. The south-eastern counties were the earliest improved, and yet, in 1660, 

 their condition seems to have been very wretched. Ray, who made a tour along the 

 eastern coast in that year, says, " AVe observed little or no fallow grounds in Scotland ; 

 some ley ground we saw, which they manured with sea wreck. The men seemed to be 

 very lazy, and may be frequently observed to plough in their cloaks. It is the fashion of 

 tliem 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 could 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 win- 

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

 good com, but especially bears barley or bigge and oats, but rarely wheat and rye." 

 {Select Remains of John Ray. Lond. 1760.) 



2i-3. // is probable that no great change had taken place in Scotland from the end of the fifteenth century^ 

 except that tenants graduaUy became possessed of a little stock of their own, instead of having their 

 farms stocked by the landlord. " The minority of James V., the reign of Mary Stewart, 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 husbandman." {Chalmers's Caledonia, vol il p. 73^. ; Encyc. Brit, 

 art. Jgr.) t 



244. The accession of James VI. to the crown of England is understood to have been 

 unfavourable to the agricultural interest of Scotland ; inasmuch as the nobles and gentry, 

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

 whilst the very circumstance which occasioned 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 

 enh'ghten the nation which Aey had subdued. The soldiers of Cromwell's army were 

 regularly paid at the rate of eightpence per day, a sum equal at least to the money value 

 of two shillings of our 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 that time in a higher state of improvement than at any former period. In the 

 counties of Lanark, Renfrew, Ayr, and Kirkcudbright, the rentals of various estates 

 were greater in 1660, than they were seventy years afterwards; and the causes which 

 brought about a declension in value are ascertained without diflSculty. The large fines 

 exacted from country gentlemen and tenants in these counties, during the reign of 

 Charles II. and his brother James, were almost sufficient to impoverish both proprietors 

 and cultivators, had they even been as wealthy as they are at the present day. In addi> 

 tion to those fines, the dreadful imprisonments, and other oppressive measures pursued by 

 those in power, equally contrary to sound policy and to justice and humanity, desolated 

 large tracts, drove the oppressed gentry and many of their wealthy tenants into foreign 

 countries, and extinguished the spirit of industry and improvement in the breasts of those 

 who were left behind. 



245. Yet in the seventeenth century xvere those laws made which paved the way for the 

 present improved system of agriculture in Scotland. By statute 1633, landholders were 

 enabled to have their tithes valued, and to buy them either at nine or at six years' pur- 

 chase, according to the nature of the property. The statute 1685, conferring on land- 

 lords a power to entail their estates, was indeed of a very different tendency, in regard to 

 its effects on agriculture ; but the two acts in 1695, for the division of commons, and 

 separation of intermixed properties, have facilitated in an eminent degree the progress of 

 improvement. (Encyc. Brit., art. Agr.) 



246. The literary history of agriculture, during the seventeenth century, is of no great 

 interest till about the middle of that period. For more than fifty years after the appear- 

 ance of Googe's work, there are no systematic works on husbandry, though several trea- 

 tises on particular departments of it. From these it is evident, that all the different 

 operations of the farmer were performed with more care and correctness than formerly ; 

 that the fallows were better worked ; the fields kept free of weeds ; and much more 

 attention paid to manures of every kind. A few of the writers of this period deserve to 

 be shortly noticed. 



247. Sir John Nordens Surveyor s Dialogue, printed in 1607, is a work of consider- 

 able merit. The first three books of it relate to the rights of the lord of the manor, 

 and the various tenures by which landed property was then held, and the obligations 

 which they imposed : among others, we find the singular custom, so humorously described 

 in the Spectator, about the incontinent widow riding upon a ram. In the fifth book, 

 there are a good many judicious observations on the " different natures of grounds, how 



