A HISTORY OF ESSEX 



manor of ' Eadwulfsness,' in which they were included. 1 At Belchamp 

 St. Paul's 10 head went to the team in 1222, and at Heybridge, but at 

 the latter an equal number of oxen and horses were employed. At 

 Tillingham the two teams were composed of 1 2 oxen and 8 horses in all, 

 while at Barling there were only 8 in the team, ' half horses and half 

 oxen.' 2 But of the use of the horse for this purpose Domesday 

 apparently knows nothing. A quarter of a ploughland it describes as 

 ' land for 2 oxen.' 3 The plough-oxen, ' small, with short horns and 

 high fore-feet,' * reign among its live stock supreme. 



Yet so complete, if gradual, was the disappearance of the ox in 

 favour of the horse at the plough that, seven centuries after the Conquest, 

 the use of oxen for ploughing was deemed a bold innovation, a novelty 

 full of promise. It was only, in his eagerness said Arthur Young, the 

 stupidity of Essex farmers that stood in the way of its adoption. Lord 

 Clare's Gosfield estate he mentioned (1767) 



chiefly on account of a stroke in agriculture most unusual in Essex, which is the 

 using of oxen instead of horses for all the purposes of draught. . . . This scheme you 

 may be very sure was highly ridiculed by all the neighbouring farmers, who would as 

 soon believe that an ox could speak as draw. . . . His lordship used them for the 

 culture of his farm as long as he kept it in his hands and had once near 30 in constant 

 work. . . . But notwithstanding the clear superiority none of the farmers have 

 followed the example. . . . 



You will excuse my being thus particular in my account of this introduction of 

 oxen into Essex ; but the novelty of the thing in that county (his lordship's being 

 the only team in it), the ridicule cast on it by the farmers, and the uninterrupted 

 success it met with, has induced me to be more minute than otherwise I should 

 have been. 6 



But this eager if unconscious reversion to ' the wisdom of our fore- 

 fathers ' was doomed to share the fate of other agricultural ' reforms ' in 

 the county of Tusser and of Mechi. Mr. Montague Burgoyne aban- 

 doned the experiment in 1786," and the famous parson, Bate Dudley, 

 who was an advocate for oxen, seems to have only worked them for 

 five years at Tillingham. 7 Yet some landowners and farmers continued 

 to use them, and one at least was absolutely confident of their superiority 

 to horses in every respect at the plough. 8 



One of the great pecularities of the Domesday of the eastern 

 counties is that, like the 'Exon Domesday' in the south-west of England, 



1 Rale's Domesday of St. Paul's. 



2 Ibid. Compare Seebohm's English Village Community, pp. 64-5, 74. The horses, doubtless, as 

 in later times, were more powerful for ploughing than oxen, if more expensive to keep. 



3 See examples in the text below. * Andrews' The OU English Manor, p. 254. 

 6 A Six Weekf Tour through the Southern Counties (1772), pp. 73-5. 



6 Young's Agriculture of the County of Essex (1807), ii. 449. 



7 Ibid. ii. 358. In his letter to Vancouver (1794 f) he had insisted on the need for using them 

 at Bradwell : ' Independently of the ordinary savings, the introduction of oxen on farms where grazing 

 and tillage are so generally blended, would prove extremely productive, but the difficulty of weaning the 

 prejudices of a country from an old system, however erroneous, and the risk of throwing an extensive 

 business out of its regular course, deter those who experience the loss from attempting a reformation. 

 Having full-aged oxen from the yoke to graze on the spot, without the loss attendant on over-driven 

 beasts, would give a saving of full twenty-five per cent in addition to the advantages derived from their 

 draught' (Vancouver's General View of the Agriculture of the County of Essex, p. 191). 



8 Young's Agriculture of the County of Essex, ii. pp. 357-60. 



366 



