Nature and Art, July 1, 18G(>.] 
ENGLISH FARMING IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 
35 
expected them. To see high farming carried on 
with most success and vigour nowadays, we should 
go to the eastern and north-eastern counties : in 
earlier times the south and the west were most 
advanced. Indeed, no student of English history 
can have failed to remark the leading position 
which the western counties held in the sixteenth 
and, in a less degree, in the seventeenth century. 
Old Aubrey sa.ys, “ The Devonshire men were the 
earliest improvers (in farming). I heard Oliver 
Cromwell, Protector, at dinner at Hampton Court, 
1G57 or 8, tell the Lord Arundell of W ardour, 
and the Lord Fitzwilliam, that he had been in 
all the counties of England, and that the Devon- 
shire husbandry was the best.”'"' Cromwell, it must 
be remembered, besides possessing the keen and 
rapid eye essential to a general, had also the special 
knowledge of a practical farmer, and his judgment 
upon such a matter as this is very valuable. 
Nothing, however, tended so much to check this 
favourable state of agriculture as the very 
wars in which Cromwell engaged. The cultivation 
of the soil was left “ to none blit a few weak 
women and children, assisted by such infirm old 
men as were unfit to be soldiers;” and so rapidly 
had the farming deteriorated in Devonshire, that, 
in the reign of Charles II., “in many parts of the 
county, an acre or two of wheat was esteemed a 
rarity ; barley and rye being then the most 
common tillage, and such a quantity of oats as 
would then be sufficient for their hogs and geese, 
and perhaps sometimes for exportation.” (Chappie’s 
Notes to Risdon’s Devon, p. 17.) 
It ought, however, to be noticed that Tusser, the 
well-known author of “ Five Hundred Points of 
Good Husbandrie,” was a native of Suffolk, and his 
judicious influence must have been somewhat felt 
in that and the adjoining counties. Indeed, the 
cultivation of hops during the reign of Henry VIII. 
was as successful in the eastern counties as it now 
is in Kent, Surrey, Sussex, and the western shires. 
Bullein, in his Government of Health, observes, that 
“ tho’ there cometh many good hops from beyond 
sea, yet it is known that the goodly stilles and 
fruitful grounds of England do bring forth, unto 
man’s use, as good hops as grovveth in any place in 
this world, as by proof I know in many places in 
the countie of Suffolke, whereas they brew their 
own beere with the hops that growe upon their 
owne grounds.” Carrots, also, which are still a 
favourite crop in the Sandlings of Suffolk, were in 
high repute three centuries ago ; and the East of 
England generally especially Cambridgeshire, was 
celebrated for its saffron. This plant which was 
once cultivated to a very great extent, both as an 
article of cookery and of medicine, has now fallen 
into disfavour. 
The North of England, abounding in forest, moor, 
and fen, needed, as it developed, all the energy and 
skill of its inhabitants to bring it to the front rank. 
But even 300 years ago, it had acquired that 
* Aubrey’s Natural History of Wiltshire, Part II. 
chap, viii, 
reputation for its breed of horses which it still 
enjoys ; and Fitzherbert (who tells us that his 
stock of mares was more than forty !) speaks of 
going to Ripon to buy colts. 
Three centuries ago, England presented some 
points of curious resemblance to the new countries 
of our own day. The dissolution of monasteries, 
the policy of Henry VII. and Henry VIII., and 
the impulse given to trade, had reduced estates in 
size, and encouraged a more profitable cultivation 
of them. Woods were felled, and inclosures made 
upon a large scale, though, even as late as the end 
of the seventeenth century, a considerable tract of 
country, including much of Wiltshire and Glouces 
tershire, is described as “ Campania.” This virgin 
nature of the soil may, perhaps, account for the 
high average of produce which tillage lands then 
yielded. Holinshed places it at from 1 6 to 20 bushels 
of wheat, 36 bushels of barley, and 4 or 5 quarters 
of oats per acre : results which Mr. Mechi, with all 
his appliances, would have some difficulty in beat- 
ing. Notwithstanding these productive powers, 
land was decidedly cheap. Twenty years’ purchase 
was regarded as an exceptionally high price, and 
Sir Symonds D’Ewes tells us that, in 1597, it had 
fallen as low as sixteen or seventeen years’ pur- 
chase. We can, therefore, readily understand 
what Markham quotes as the general estimate of 
farming in his days, viz.: “the onely or principall 
and greatest game that is, because no other thing 
bringeth more gaine unto the master thereof than 
the earth, if it be well husbanded and reasonably 
maintained.” And the same writer, in recom- 
mending a landowner to be his own farmer if he 
wishes for profit, speaks of “ the greater spoile ” 
that will otherwise accrue to “ the grosse-headed 
peasants who, notwithstanding that . they are alto- 
gether ignorant, grow rich at our costs and 
charges.” This charge of ignorance, by the way, 
comes with rather bad grace from one who, shortly 
after, begs his readers to observe that, “for writing 
and reading, it skilleth not whether the bailiff be 
able to do it or no ; and that as to the other R, a 
good memory is the best account-book, for paper 
will admit anything.” 
Certainly the processes of agriculture at this 
period were neither complex nor manifold, though 
they did imply some branches of knowledge which 
are wholly omitted in the teaching of the Boyal 
Agricultural College. For instance, the “ Boke of 
Husbandrie” gives us the following advice : — '■‘•How 
to make harraine ground bring foorth good come. 
If thou sowest any pease, beanes, barley, and oates, 
sowe them upon the 8 day of April], which is the 
Equinoctiall vernal], when Libra draweth the 
houres of the daye and night to an even and just 
proportion but if thou wilt be assured that 
no come shall faile, then take salt-peeter and mingle 
it in with thy corne, and sow it, and thy labor shall 
never be frustrate.” The first clause of this advice 
shows that Sir Antony had not forgotten his 
V irgil ; and the second really evinces some notion 
of the peculiar properties of nitrates, even though 
it is expressed in such a way as to imply that agri- 
