128 HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE 



and their wives were content with mean dyet and base attire 

 and held their children to some austere government, without 

 haunting alehouses, taverns, dice, and cards ; now the hus- 

 bandman will be equal to the yeoman, the yeoman to the 

 gentleman, the gentleman to the squire, and there is at this 

 day thirty times as much vainely spent in a family of like 

 multitude and quality as was in former ages ' ; a complaint that 

 has been common in all ages. Contrary to what is the 

 practice to-day, and apparently to common sense, the sur- 

 veyor recommends that open drains be made as narrow above 

 as at the bottom, at the most not more than a foot and a half 

 broad.^ Hops, he says, were then grown in Suffolk, Essex, and 

 Surrey, ' in your loose and spongie grounds, trenched.' ' Carret ' 

 roots were raised in Suffolk and Essex, and beginning to 

 increase in all parts of the realm ^ ; but if he alludes to their 

 cultivation in the open field the statement must be taken with 

 considerable qualification, as they were not so grown generally 

 until the end of the eighteenth century or the beginning of 

 the next. 



Kent was then, as now, the great fruit county of England ; 

 'above all others I think the Kentishmen be most apt and 

 industrious in planting orchards with pippins and cherries, 

 especially near the Thames about Feversham and Sittingbourne.' 

 But Devon and Hereford were also famous ; Westcote about 

 1630 says the Devonshire men had of late much enlarged 

 their orchards, and ' are very curious in planting and grafting 

 all kinds of fruit '^ ; and John Beale in 1656 tells us Hereford 

 • is reputed the orchard of England ' * ; while Hartlib says there 

 were many orchards in Worcestershire and Gloucestershire.^ 

 He calls 'Tandeane' near Taunton the Paradise of England, 

 where the husbandry was excellent, the land fruitful by nature 

 and improved by the art and industry of the farmers ; * they 



^ Surveyor's Dialogue, p. 188. * Ibid. p. 207. 



' Victoria County History : Devon, Agriculture. 

 *■ Herefordshire Orchards a Pattern for All England {^^^. 1724). 

 ^ See infra, p. 136.. 



