GREAT RISE IN PRICES 115 



most happy restoration the whole land hath been fermented 

 and stirred up by the profitable hints it hath received from 

 the Royal Society, by which means parks have been disparked, 

 commons enclosed, woods turned into arable, and pasture 

 lands improved by clover, St. foine, turnips, cole-seed, and 

 many other good husbandries, so that the food of cattle is 

 increased as fast, if not faster, than the consumption, and by 

 these means the rent of the kingdom is far greater than ever 

 it was.* ^ The century was distinguished also for the curious 

 number of cycles of good and bad seasons ; 1646-50 were 

 years of prolonged dearth, wheat reaching an enormous price, 

 and 1661-2, were famine years, while the end of the century 

 was long famous for its barren years. 



With the prices of produce rents rose enormously. Very 

 early in the century ^ rents of arable land had increased nine- 

 fold, since the fifteenth century, and by 1688 Davenant and 

 King estimated the average rent of arable land in England 

 at 5^. 6d. per acre and of permanent grass at 8^. 8d. Perhaps 

 this is too high an estimate, as on the Belvoir estate of 17,837 

 acres in 1693 the rental all round was ^s. g\d. an acre for 

 land above the average in quality, though it must be remem- 

 bered that the Earls and Dukes of Rutland were indulgent 

 landlords. 



The History of Hawsied affords a valuable index of the 

 increase of rents at this period.^ In 1500 the average rent 

 was ij. 4<f. an acre ; in 157^1, 39 acres of arable, meadow, and 

 pasture were let for %s. ^d. an acre, the landlord, it is interesting 

 to notice, reserving the right of hawking, netting rabbits, 

 hunting, and fowling; and about the same date other lands 



1 Houghton, Collections, &'c., ii. 448. 



' Thorold Rogers, History of Agriculture and Prices, v, p. vii. Cf. 

 p. 139 infra. 



' CuUum, Hawsted, pp. 196 et seq. In the Hawsted leases, at the end 

 of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries, it is note- 

 worthy that there were, at a time of repeated cpmplaints against laying 

 down land to pasture, clauses against breaking up pasture land. 



I 2 



