GREAT AGRICULTURAL WRITERS 133 



another instance of the then isolation of country districts that 

 he speaks as if he had made a new discovery. He tells us 

 that ' having sojourned two years in his father's house, wearied 

 in doing nothing and fearing his fortunes had been overthrown, 

 he cast about what was best to be done to retrieve his reputa- 

 tion '. And one day he saw from a mole-hill on the side of 

 a brook on his property a little stream of water issuing down 

 the working of the mole, which made the ground 'pleasing 

 green ', and from this he was led on to what he calls ' the 

 drowning of his lands '. This was so successful that he im- 

 proved the value of his estate from ;^4o to ;^300 a year, 

 and his neighbours, who of course had first scoffed at him, came 

 to learn from him. Not many years after * drowning ' was said 

 to have become one of the most universal and advantageous 

 improvements in England.' Vaughan says that he had counted 

 as many as 300 persons gleaning in one field after harvest, 

 and that in the mountains near eggs were 20 a penny, and 

 a good bullock 26s. 3^., but this was a backward region.^ 



Between 161 7 and 1621 the price of wheat fell from 4^s. 3^. 

 to 21 J. a quarter, and immediately affected the payment of rent.^ 

 Mr. John Chamberlain, in February, 1620, wrote to Sir Dudley 

 Carleton, ' We are here in a strange state to complain of plenty, 

 but so it is that corn beareth so low a price that farmers are 

 very backward to pay their rents and in many places plead 

 disability : for remedy whereof the Council have written letters 

 into every shire to provide a granary with a stock to buy 

 corn and keep it for a dear year.' Sir Symonds D'Ewes 

 notes in his diary that 'at this time (1621) the rates of all sorts 

 of corn were so extremely low as it made the very prices of 

 land fall from twenty years' purchase to sixteen or seventeen. 

 For the best wheat was sold for 2s. Hd. and 2^^. 6d. the bushel, 

 the ordinary at 2s. Barley and rye at is. ^d. and \s. '^d. the 



' Most Approved and Long Experienced Waterworks. London, 1 610. 

 * See Worlidge, Systema Agriculturae (ed. 1669), p. 155. 

 ' Tooke, History of Prices, i. 23. 



