1086 



Ploughing and Ploughing Matches. 



[Map.., 



the landowners and those who served them. No one who has 

 read Mr. Hammond's recent article in this Journal* — no one who 

 has an acquaintance with the novels of Fielding, to mention no 

 other writers — will be under any illusion as to the amount of 

 freedom which the farm labourer enjoyed in the eighteenth cen- 

 tury; no one who has read the Husbandry of Walter of Henley t 

 will be under any illusion as to the attitude of the mediaeval 

 labourer to his task. Imperfect as the eighteenth century may 

 have been it held out an immeasurably greater promise than the 

 thirteenth ; the teaching of the seventeenth century, which 

 at the time must have seemed often ineffective and futile, 

 was not lost. 



In the eighteenth century the passion for agricultural improve- 

 ment grew and spread until nearly every landowner and many 

 farmers at least affected to be imbued with it. The progress of 

 inclosure at once stimulated and was stimulated by the move- 

 ment. To an increasing extent men set themselves to devise new 

 and improved implements. So far as the plough was concerned 

 many of the modifications had long been anticipated, for already 

 at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and probably centuries 

 before, there had been great diversity of types to meet the 

 different conditions of different districts,} Lord John Somerville. 

 writing in the early years of the nineteenth century, stated on 

 the evidence of drawings published in the middle of the 

 seventeenth century by Walter Blith,§ that little originality of 

 invention or improvement had been manifested in the greater 

 part of the swing and wheel ploughs constructed since that date. 

 He will only admit that two or three improvements "have 

 really borne the test of practice with credit and success." II How- 

 ever this may be, there was a great interchange of ideas and 

 conscious effort towards improvement : doubtless there were 

 " numberless fancied improvements," but it cannot be doubted 

 that the general level of plough design was greatly improved. 

 The Rotherham plough, which was highly esteemed in the 

 latter part of the eighteenth century, was itself of Dutch origin : 

 hut there were abundance of types in England itself which might 



* Oct., 1921, p. 586. 



f Ed. Lamond and Cunningham, esp. pp. 10, 11. 



I See the commencement of Fitzherbert's Book of Husbandry ; the relevant 

 passages may be found in McDonald's AgriculturalWriters, p. 14. 

 £ Reproduced by McDonald, op, cit. p. 102. 



! [ Facts and Observations on Sheep, Wool, Plough*, and (Keen. 

 pp. 129, 130. 



