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XVIII. — A View of the past and present State of Agi'iculture 

 in Northumberland. By John Grey^ of Dilston. 



In endeavouring to comply with the request conveyed to me by 

 Earl Spencer, from the Journal Committee, that I would give 

 some account of the present state of agriculture in the best dis- 

 tricts of Northumberland," it may not be unprofitable to occupy 

 a little time in taking a hasty retrospect of the state of this part of 

 the country, which continued in a great measure wild and uncul- 

 tivated so late as the beginning of the last century, when peace 

 and industry had produced their happy effects in the improved 

 appearance and increased productiveness of the more southern 

 provinces of the kingdom. And if it should excite surprise that 

 large districts, which even within the last eighty years were in a 

 state of nature, covered with broom, furze, or rushes — the indige- 

 nous productions of the soil ; which were the latest in attracting 

 the attention of the husbandman, and experiencing the benefit of 

 his skill and industry, should in the interval have outstripped 

 those in the march of agricultural improvement which had been 

 for centuries in a course of cultivation ; the fact may perhaps be 

 in some measure accounted for by the existence of the very cir- 

 cumstances which at first sight seem unfavourable to such a result. 

 Agriculture had begun to experience considerable encourage- 

 ment and to make considerable progress in different parts of 

 England, while the country on both sides of the Scottish borders 

 continued to be the scene of rapine and violence — of hostile in- 

 cursions and of predatory warfare. Such a state of society af- 

 forded no security for life, and no protection for property — the 

 fruits of industry were too uncertain and precarious to induce to 

 its exercise in the cultivation of the soil, and the habits and dispo- 

 sitions of the people were little fitted for the task. Nor did they 

 for a long time after that blessed union had been effected, which 

 put an end to the state of hatred and hostility which existed be- 

 tween the two countries, and which has contributed so essentially 

 to the happiness and prosperity of both, betake themselves to 

 settled and industrious habits.* They lived in houses of the 



* Such was the state of society in the part of the county traversed by the 

 Roman wall that those great antiquaries, Sir Robert Cotton and Mr. 

 Cambden, were deterred from following its course in the year 1600, as stated 

 in Cambden's own words : — " From hence the wall bends about by Iveston. 

 Forster and Chester on the wall near Busy-Gap, noted for robberies, where 

 we heard there were forts, but durst not go and view them for fear of the 

 Moss-Troopers." And Warburton, who was Somerset Herald to George 

 II., and published his " Vallum Romanum " i:i 1753, says, in reference to 

 the same subject, "such was the wild and barren state of this country, even 

 at the time 1 made niy survey (1715), that in those parts now called the 

 wastes, and heretofore the debateable grounds, I have frequently discovered 



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