SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



Michaelmas, 1855, the expenditure on relief of all kinds was 2,962 less 

 than in the corresponding period of the previous year ; while on I January, 

 1856, the numbers in receipt of relief throughout the county were 1,029 ^ ess 

 than on I January, 1855. By the year 1883, moreover, the number of 

 paupers of all classes in receipt of relief on i July throughout the county was 

 exactly the same as the number in receipt of relief on the corresponding day 

 of the year 1856, excluding the Gilbert unions and the parishes still adminis- 

 tered under the poor-law of 1601 ; while by I July, 1884, the numbers had 

 fallen from 16,922 of i July, 1883, to 16,766, out-door relief being decreased 

 by 152 cases, and indoor by 4. 82 ' In the half-year ending July, 1882, the 

 total number of vagrants relieved was 1,600, while in the half-year ending 

 July, 1883, the numbers were reduced to i,456. S3 



It was well that a more efficient administration was able to effect these 

 improvements, for though the agricultural depression was never so severely 

 felt in the county as it has been in other parts of the kingdom, yet the Weald 

 farmers were ill able to bear the burden of heavy rates. As early as 1798 

 William Marshall remarked upon the fewness of the inhabitants and the 

 unproductive course of husbandry pursued in the district. The land was 

 almost entirely arable, though in Marshall's opinion far better suited for 

 permanent grass. The rotation adopted was fallow, wheat, oats, ley herbage 

 as long as it would last, oats, fallow, &c., which he condemned as ' probably 

 the oldest and certainly the worst course of management in the island,' 

 while he considered the tenantry, notwithstanding the lowness of their 

 rents, ' as poor, weak, and spiritless as their lands ; drawn down as for ages 

 they have been, with exhausting crops, without sufficiency of stock, or of 

 extraneous manures to make up for this endless exhaustion.' With good 

 roads, and a suitable course of practice, however, he believed there were 

 men who had substance and spirit enough to raise the Weald lands to twice 

 their existing value. 331 



The rest of the county, however, was in a far more prosperous condition. 

 In the district between Pulborough and Midhurst, though ' a large portion of 

 ill-placed prejudice ' was prevalent, the farmers were on the whole wealthy 

 and intelligent. The land was chiefly arable, but a considerable number of 

 early lambs were reared for the London markets. The sea-coast and the 

 Downs he regarded as being intelligently and successfully farmed, the chief 

 produce being corn and sheep. The flocks of the South Downs he noted as 

 having ' of late years grown into high repute.' 332 



The distress which followed the Napoleonic wars and the sheep-rot of 

 the close of the second decade of the nineteenth century contributed not a 

 little to the further depression of the Weald farmers. In 1833 it was said 

 that land which had formerly been let at 12s. or 14^. an acre had fallen to 

 5-r., and in spite of this it was difficult to get tenants. Several farms between 

 Tonbridge and East Grinstead were untenanted, a good deal of poor land had 

 gone out of cultivation, and since 1822 the remainder had deteriorated 

 considerably, chiefly because it was not so well farmed as it had been, and had 

 become sterile from over-cropping. It was stated that throughout the Weald 

 of Surrey, Kent, and Sussex, there was scarcely a farmer who was solvent, a 



*" Accts. and Papers, 1856, xlix ; 1884, Ixviii. *" Ibid. 1884, Ixviii. 



*" Marshall, Rural Economy of the Southern Counties, ii, 133-45. *" Ibid - 2 3> 3 6 3- 



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