1922.] Wisdom and Folly of Ancient Book-Farmers. 205 



by which they are enforced, strike us as antiquated. Both are 

 now everywhere accepted : but it takes a heavy hammer and 

 many blows to drive a nail through hearts of oak. It was two 

 centuries and a half before they were recognised in practice. 

 He insists on the advantages of a farm in individual occupa- 

 tion, divided by hedges and ditches into separate enclosures. 

 In the first instance, he admits, the expenditure would be 

 considerable, but it would pay any farmer with a twenty years' 

 lease to make the outlay. He would get his money back with 

 interest by saving the charges to common herdsmen and 

 shepherds and the expenses of hurdles and stakes, by enjoy- 

 ing the longer season on the grass which the enclosed land 

 allowed, and by gaining a greater choice of the time for 

 marketing his calves and lambs. Enclosed land was better 

 for the stock and better for the corn. 



Fitzherbert did not believe in the abandonment of tillage or 

 the adoption of ranching. He advocates mixed husbandry. 

 If a farmer is to prosper, stock and corn must go together. A 

 man, he says, cannot thrive by corn unless he has live-stock, 

 and he who tries to keep stock without corn must either be 

 " a buyer, a borrower, or a beggar." Though his resources 

 were limited, though winter-keep remained an unsolved pro- 

 blem, and roots and artificial grasses were still unknown, he 

 sees with a prophetic eye the verification of the maxim that 

 " a full bullock-yard and a full fold make a full stack yard." 

 If his advice had been heeded in the years 1480-1640, England 

 might have escaped some of the misery which was caused by 

 the transformation of common arable farms into sheep-walks, 

 and by the consequent loss of employment, rural depopulation 

 and destruction of houses and farm buildings. 



Half a century later than Fitzherbert came Thomas Tusser, 

 whose Hundred Points of Husbandry (1557), afterwards ex- 

 panded into Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry (1573). 

 was written in doggerel verse. The book was so popular and 

 so frequently republished that his name cannot be omitted. 

 It is a valuable storehouse of information on existing practices, 

 habits and customs. Tusser was a recorder rather than an 

 improver. He makes no new suggestions, and has no theories 

 to expound. With him begins the long line of agricultural 

 writers, who failed in the business before they turned to litera- 

 ture, and thus strengthened the prejudice against book-fanning. 

 He was " a musician, schoolmaster, serving man, husband- 

 man, grazier, poet — more skilful in all than thriving in bis 



