8 
Landma/i'ks in British Farming. 
was a necessary preliminary to agricultural progress. Without 
enclosures, and individual occupation, no advance could be 
effected. Towards the end of the reign of Elizabeth, the equi- 
librium was re-established between labour and capital. An 
extraordinary impulse was given to the study of the practice of 
farming. Before the sixteenth century no agricultural litera- 
ture existed. Within the period from 1523 to 1600, Fitzherbert, 
De Benese, Malbie, Hill, Tusser, Scot, Googe, Plat, Lambard, 
Partridge, and several others, had all written upon farming 
topics. Googe mentions thirteen other writers, whose works 
have perished. Substantial farmers profited by the low wages 
of hired labour and the high prices of agricultural produce. 
Harrison mentions theii’ growing luxury, and the chimneys, 
beds, sheets, pillows, pewter, tin, and silver which now for the 
first time found a place in their houses. Sir John Oglander 
notices a change in the Isle of Wight which was universal 
throughout England. “ Money,” he says, “ was as plentiful in 
the yeomen’s purses as now in the best of the gentry, and all 
the gentry full of money, and out of debt.” 
It was under the stimulus of enclosures that an attack was 
made upon the forests, fens, heaths, and marshes, which still 
occupied the greater part of England. In the southern counties, 
the forests of Sussex, Wilts, Hants, Dorset, had shrunk in extent. 
But from Lincoln to the !Mersey, and northwards from the Mersey 
to the Solway and the Tweed, there stretched an unbroken line of 
swamp and woodland. Here and there patches of corn-land and 
pasture, surrounding remote parishes, towns, and monasteries, 
broke the sweep of forest. Between the Thames and the Trent lay 
the best cultivated and most fruitful districts of England. Norden 
calls Essex the ‘‘Englische Goshen, the fattest of the Lande ; 
comparable to Palestina, that floweth with inilke and hunnye.” 
So “ manie and sweete ” were its “ commodities,” that they com- 
pensated for “ the most cruell quarterne fever,” which he caught 
in its low-lying fields. Suffolk was famous for its “ Punches ” 
and its dairy produce, and, like Essex, was early enclosed. The 
superior cultivation of these two counties is alleged in proof of 
the advantages of enclosures ; drainage, marling, and manuring 
were extensively practised ; ploughing was economically con- 
ducted ; horses, and not oxen, were generally employed. The 
other eastern counties were to a great extent under water ; “ the 
Aer nebulous, grosse, and full of rotten Harres ; the water putrid 
and muddy, yea, full of loathsome vermine ; the Earth spuing, 
unfast, and boggie ; the Fire noysome turfe and hassocks ; such 
are the inconveniences of the Drownings.” 
Considering that the area of forest-lands was but little re- 
