142 HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE 



with a spitter or small spade ; and the turnips were to be 

 followed by clover. All these, says Weston, were already 

 grown in England, but ' there is as much difference between 

 what groweth here and there as is between the same thing which 

 groweth in a garden and that which groweth wild in the fields '. 

 Worlidge soon after recommended that clover be sown on 

 barley or oats about the end of March or in April, and 

 harrowed in, or by itself; and says, with optimism equal to 

 Weston's, one acre of clover will feed you as many cows as 

 6 acres of ordinary grass and make the milk richer.^ 



It has been noticed that the price of wool altered little 

 during the century, and from the private accounts of Sir Abel 

 Barker^ of Hambleton, in the County of Rutland, we learn 

 that in 1642 he sold his wool to his 'loving friend Mr. William 

 Gladstone' for ;^i a tod, though by 1648 it had gone up to 29^., 

 a good price for those days. During the Civil War some of 

 Barker's horses were carried off for the service of the State, 

 and he values them at ^8 a piece, a fair price then. Some 

 years later, for mowing 44 acres of grass he sets down in 

 his account £1 ']s. od., for making the same £2 ^s. od.^ and 

 stacking it 3^. 



Simon Hartlib, a Dutchman by birth and a friend of John 

 Milton, published his Legacy in 1651, containing both rash 

 statements and useful information. We certainly cannot 

 believe him when he states that pasture employs more hands 

 than tillage. His estimate of a good crop of wheat was from 

 12 to 16 bushels per acre, and he speaks strongly of the great 

 fluctuations in prices, for he had known barley sell at North- 

 ampton at 6d. a bushel, and within 13 months at 5^., and wheat 

 in London in one year varied from 3^. 6d. to i^s. a bushel. The 

 enormous number of dovecotes was still a great nuisance, and 

 the pigeons were reckoned to eat 6,000,000 quarters of grain 



^ Systema Agriculturae, p. 26- 



^ MS. accounts of Sir Abel Barker, in the possession of G. W. P. 

 Conant, Esq. 



