AGRICULTURE 



Gervase Markham, who lived from 1570 to 1655, gives the following picture of the working 

 hours of a farmer or ploughman of his day, which is as applicable to Lancashire as to any part of 

 England. He is to rise at four in the morning and feed his cattle and clean his stable. While 

 they are feeding he is to get his harness ready, which will take him two hours. Then he is to have 

 his breakfast, for which half an hour is allowed. Getting the harness on his horses or cattle he is to 

 start by seven to his work and keep at it till between two and three in the afternoon. He is then 

 to bring his team home, clean them and give them their food, dine, and at four go back to his cattle 

 and give them more fodder, and getting into his barn make ready their food for next day, not for- 

 getting to see them again before going to his own supper at six. After supper he is ' to mend his 

 shoes by the fireside for himself and his family, or beat and knock hemp and flax, or pitch and stamp 

 apples or crabs for cider or verjuice, or else grind malt, pick candle rushes, or do some husbandry 

 office within doors till it be full eight o'clock.' Then he shall take his lantern, visit his cattle once 

 more and go with all his household to rest. 



Markham says that Lancashire was one of the most barren counties in England, a country more 

 backvirard agriculturally than most of the countries of Europe, and it was for the improvement of 

 these barren counties that his book was written. 



Simon Hartlib,* a Dutchman by birth and a friend of Milton, writing about 1650, says 

 ' gardening and hoeing even now is scarcely known in the north and west of England, in which 

 places a few gardeners might have saved the lives of many poor people who starved these dear 

 years.' Probably many of these ' poor people ' were labourers for wages under the assessed rate, 

 which did not, as we have seen, suffice to buy food in dear years, and very dear the years from 1646 

 to 1650 were, the average price of wheat being 585. yfa?. a quarter, a price which, reckoned 

 according to the purchasing power of money at that time, seems prohibitive to any but the rich.' 

 Landowners at that date imagined that the use of the spade would spoil the ground. 



The value of land in Lancashire during the seventeenth century may be gauged from the 

 assessments to ship-money and to other objects made during the century. In the ship-money valua- 

 tion of 1636 the county was assessed at j^i,ooo, or at the rate of 1,219 acres to the £, by far the 

 lowest assessment in England in proportion to its area except Cumberland, where 1,251 acres were 

 needed for the j^. Devonshire was assessed at ^9,000, or 1 84 acres to the ;^, and Wiltshire at £'j,ooo, 

 or 123 acres to the £. In various other assessments of the counties of England made from 1641 

 to 1693 Lancashire, in all of them, is rated lower than any except the four counties of Northumber- 

 land, Westmorland, Cumberland and Durham, although the population was greater than that of 

 most counties in England.^" 



In 1660 liming land near Wigan cost ^^8 per acre, the price of each horse load being is. 6d., 

 and it yielded very good corn for twelve years after, ' and is like to continue,' while it is asserted 

 that marled land in the neighbourhood had produced 140 bushels of barley per acre." The rotation 

 of crops in the same district at that date was — (i) wheat ; (2) barley ; (3) fallow ; the three-course 

 system on which the arable land of England had been cultivated for four centuries,^^ and inevitably since 

 the farmer had no winter roots or artificial grasses to vary the system. They had both been introduced 

 from Holland early in the seventeenth century, but it was long before they were in general use. 



Mr. Blundell of Crosby, writing at this time, gives a quaint recipe for improving the flavour 

 of fruit. ' Bare the roots of your tree and make a hole in a principal root, and then put in a pretty 

 quantity of powder, made of such things as you desire your apple should taste of ; as of cloves, mace, 

 nutmeg and the like.' 



At Ormskirk in 1664 stirks and twinters were sold at from £1 ()s. ^d. to £\ 14^. lod. each. 

 Sheep were fed in the house with beans, ground round, and bran (' with some oats if you will ' ). 

 Plenty of water and hay was given them, and they were kept warm and became exceedingly fat in 

 fourteen days. 



The winter of 1683 was exceptionally severe, and in Lancashire killed many sheep and cattle as 

 well as human beings, all rivers and pools being frozen hard. 



In 1707 apples were selling at Liverpool at 2j. dd. a bushel, a very good price considering the 

 relative value of money.^' 



In 1 7 19, after a ' very droughty ' summer, when Lancashire people had to buy water for their 

 cattle,^* oats were as dear as wheat, 4J. ()d. a bushel. 



In 1727 after a wet spring and cold summer, corn was dear ; wheat 20s., barley iQs., oats "js., 



' In Hartlib's time an average crop of wheat was from twelve to sixteen bushels. 



' Thorold Rogers, Hist, of Agric. and Prices, v, 205. 



'" Ibid. V, 104 ; Eden, State of the Poor, i, 230. 



" VIotes and Observations of William Blundell of Crosby (ed. Rev. T. G. Gibson), 87. 



" Thorold Rogers, Six Centuries of Work and Wages, chap. 16. 



" BlundelPs Diary, 55. 



" Autobiographf ofWm. Stout (edited firom original MS. by J. Harland), 95. 



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