322 CORDEAUX: LINCOLNSHIRE AGRICULTURE, 
When the cultivation of barley had become general on the high 
lands, it was not always easy to find a market for it. The price 
made at Lincoln was often three to five shillings in excess of the 
Louth market. The Louth woldsmen were in the habit of attending 
Lincoln, and it took four horses and a wagon to deliver ten quarters 
of barley, leaving home at 8 o’clock at night and returning on the 
following night. 
he average tithe of the county was one-fifth of the rent. There 
can be no doubt that the first great incentive to improved farming— 
the drainage and marling of the land—was the Tithe Commutation 
Act. A very great drawback to progress was the want of leases: in 
the vast majority of cases, we believe, in those days, the difference 
between a lease and no lease was one of profit and no profit. It was 
against human nature for a man to make the best of his holding, 
farming with a sword over his head, in the shape of a possible 
increase of rent. 
In 1798, the average rent of the low lands, which includes all 
sorts of land, was £1 3s. od. an acre; of the Wolds, 8s. 6d.; the 
heath, 8s. ; and the average rent of the whole county, 16s. gd. an acre. 
The cropping was very varied, but on turnip soils the rotation 
was usually such as permitted a green crop alternately. Much less 
wheat, however, was grown in rotation than is now the case, oats and 
peas and barley being substituted for a fourth crop. Gradually, the 
four-course rotation became the rule—a system good in its day, 
before foreign competition had become so keen, but the rigorous 
adherence to which by landlords and tenants in late years, has 
probably helped much to accentuate the present state of agricultural 
depression. 
The management of the hay crop was execrable—invariably out 
late—as the keep was required late in the spring for sheep. Even 
now, in the present day, the treatment of the hay leaves much to be 
desired in Lincolnshire. 
The county possessed some excellent herds of cattle—longhorns 
and shorthorns, and a valuable cross between these. Mr. Tyndall, 
of Ewerby, had the best herd of old Lincolns. Lincolnshire graziers 
were then much exercised as to the respective merits of the old 
Lincoln and the new Leicester breed of sheep, but it was generally 
admitted these latter could be run thicker and fed quicker ; not that 
it mattered, when three to four-shear wethers were kept. A fout- 
year-old wether, of the old Lincoln breed, was killed near Boston, 
which weighed 67 lbs. a quarter. The skin, hung by the nose, 
measured ro feet 2 inches to tip of tail. This sheep never had corn 
or oil-cake, but was made up with sow-thistles for two or three months. 
scene 
