I 



ELKINGTON 213 



time, and the farmer's mode of living greatly improved. Farm- 

 houses in England, it was noticed, were in general well furnished 

 with every convenient accommodation. Into many of them a 

 ' barometer had of late years been introduced '. The teapot 

 and the mug of ale jointly possessed the breakfast table, and 

 meat and pudding smoked on the board every noon. For- 

 merly one might see at church what was the cut of a coat 

 half a century ago, now dress was spruce and modern.^ As a 

 proof of the spirit of improvement among farmers, Marshall 

 instances the custom in the Midlands of placing their sons as 

 pupils on other farms to widen their experience. ' Their 

 entertainments are as expensive as they are elegant, for it is no 

 uncommon thing for one of these new-created farmers to spend 

 ^10 or £11 at one entertainment, and to have the most 

 expensive wines ; to set off the entertainment in the greatest 

 splendour an elegant sideboard of plate is provided in the 

 newest fashion.'^ As to dress, no one could tell the farmer's 

 daughter from the duke's. Marshall noticed that in War- 

 wickshire the harness of the farmer's teams was often ridicu- 

 lously ornamented, and the horses were overfed and under- 

 worked to save their looks. Before enclosure the farmer 

 entertained his friends with bacon fed by himself, washed 

 down with ale brewed from his own malt, in a brown jug, or a 

 glass if he was extravagant. He wore a coat of woollen stuff, 

 the growth of his own flock, spun by his wife and daughters, 

 his stockings came from the same quarter, so did the clothes 

 of his family. 



Some of these farmers were doing their share in helping the 

 progress of agriculture. In 1764 Joseph Elkington, of Prince- 

 thorpe in Warwickshire, was the first to practise the under 

 drainage of sloping land that was drowned by the bursting of 

 springs. He drained some fields at Princethorpe which were 

 very wet, and dug a trench 4 or 5 feet deep for this purpose ; 



* CuIIum, History of Harustedy p. 225. 



' Thoughts on Enclosure^ by a Country Farmer (1786), p. 21. 



