12 Jethro TuU : his Life, Times, and Teaching, 
dispersed industries were altogether superseded by the concen- 
trated and crowded manufactories of the huge cotton-spinning 
and other industrial communities. It has, moreover, been truly 
said : Deduct from agriculture all the practices that have made 
it flourishing, and you have precisely the management of very 
small farms. 
It was then without any doubt amongst the great and 
enlightened landowners — men devoted to landscape gardening 
and husbandry, the statesmen, the soldiers who ia " Anna's 
Wars " had served in Flanders, the scholars, and travellers, and, 
above all, in the most influential combinations of such men 
associated in the Scotch and Irish Societies of Improvers in 
Agriculture — that, as he himself cordially acknowledges,' TuU 
found in his endeavours appreciation, encouragement, and that 
which is the most sincere of all flattery, namely, intelligent 
and successful imitation. 
Jethro TuU, the scion of an ancient Berkshire and Oxford- 
shire family, and heir to a competent paternal estate, was 
bom at Basildon, in the county of Berks, in the fourteenth 
year of King Charles II. ; he was baptised at Basildon on March 
the 30th, 1674, as "Jethro, the sonue of Jethro and Dorothy 
Tull." The father represented a branch of the family that 
was long seated at Midgham, in the Kennet valley, between 
Newbury and Beading. A John Tull of Midgham died of the 
plague in 1603, and was buried in his orchard; shortly after- 
wards his wife Joan was carried off" by the same pestilence. lu 
1041 Giles Tull was churchwarden of that place. The grand- 
father of the subject of this biographical sketch was one Giles 
Tull of Midgham, and from him in due form a pedigree has 
been deduced. ^ The name of Tull to this day abounds on the 
borders of Berkshire and Oxfordshire and the regions round 
about. The antiquity of the family is further vouched by an 
extract from the public records,^ which establishes the fact that 
in the time of King Edward III. — 1327 — there was seated at 
that place a " Johns Tulle de Cobham." 
Jethro Tull, the agricultural author, matriculated from St. 
John's College, Oxford, on July 7, 1691, then aged 17 years. 
He does not appear to have taken a degree. He was admitted 
' Speaking of liis system, " If it be ever common it must be made so by 
gentlemen," — the great gentlemen farmers — "as other improvements have 
been." — Tull's Notes on the Preface. 
" By the author of JSasildon Notes : see note on p. 39. This learned gentleman 
cites authorities and says the name of Tull is Norman, from Tull-Noelant in 
Normandy. The name appears A.D. 1272 in connection with English manors. 
' Cuthbert Johnson MS, 
