CHAPTER XI 



I 600-1 700 



CLOVER AND TURNIPS.—GREAT RISE IN PRICES. 

 MORE ENCLOSURE.— A FARMING CALENDAR 



The seventeenth century was one of considerable progress 

 in English agriculture. The decay of common-field farming 

 was enabling individual enterprise to have its way. The 

 population was rapidly growing; by 1688 the returns of the 

 hearth tax prove that the northern counties were nearly as 

 thickly populated as the southern, and prices during the first 

 half were continually rising, though after that they remained 

 almost stationary, since the effect of the influx of precious 

 metals from the New World was exhausted. In the first half 

 of the century John Smyth ascribes the advance of rents to 

 * the Castilian voyages opening the New World, whereby such 

 floods of treasure have flowed into Europe that the rates 

 of Christendom are raised near twentyfold '. 



But the greatest agricultural event of the century was the 



introduction of clover and the encouragement of turnips as 



grown in Holland, by Sir Richard Weston, about 1645. No 



doubt the turnip was already well known in England. Tusser 



and Fitzherbert both mention it, apparently as a garden 



root only; but Gerard in his Herbal, i597j says it grew in 



fields ' and divers vineyards or hoppe gardens in most places 



of England ', which certainly points to an effort having been 



made generally to use it as a field crop whenever an enclosed 



space gave it some protection from the depredations of the 



common herds. However, its cultivation must have declined, 



as long after this it was regarded as a novelty as a field crop 



in most parts of England.^ In Holland it had been used in 



> ' R. A. S.E. Journal, 1896, pp. ^^ sq., and Gerard, Herbal {^^l. 1633), 

 P- 232. 



