DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.22140#0269
LARGE AND SMALL HOLDINGS.
253
Parliamentary Puritan, his in Suffolk. It may be that records of
such practice are still existent in old muniment rooms. But in
the nature of things, the interest in such old accounts was very
transient. " Etiam perierunt ruinse." After the chaos and orgie of
the Restoration, all agricultural industry becomes obscure. Even
the literature of the art retrogrades. Worlidge, the authority
of the time, is not such a valuable authority as Hartlib.
Gregory King estimates that in his time there were 310,000
small freeholders and farmers. He gives a little under sixty-eight
acres of arable and pasture to each family, or a little over twenty-
nine acres arable. It would appear, then, that at the close of the
seventeenth century, the average size of a holding did not differ
materially from that which I have found it stand at in the fifteenth
century, and that England was, and remained, a country of small
occupiers well into the eighteenth century. The proportion of
pasture to arable in this estimate is entirely in accordance with
the state of agriculture at the time, for winter roots were
practically unknown, and artificial grasses very exceptionally
cultivated. Hence there was no real rotation of crops, and
little winter feed beyond hay and straw. Nor could a beneficial
change, I truly admit, have been expected from* these small
occupiers. Low as the rents were, they were severe rack-rents,
paid with disficulty and the subject of incessant complaint. As I
have mentioned before, Gregory King credits the English farmer
with the least possible power of saving from his meagre income.
I suspect, however, that as he was the principal consumer of his
own produce, his condition was more comfortable than King
makes out.
I do not as yet know, perhaps I shall never exactly find out,
where the new agriculture was first seriously taken up and by
whom. It was certainly not known in 1721, the date of Mor-
timer's Essays on Agriculture, for he knows nothing of it. It
certainly was known in 1730, for Lord Lovell, subsequently the
first Lord Leicester of the Coke family, practised it. It was
known to Tull in 1731, for he describes it, and dwells on its
advantages. But, again, it is not clear whether he or Lord
Townshend of Raynham, began it. At any rate it was adopted
on a large scale in Norfolk, the original home of many a great
253
Parliamentary Puritan, his in Suffolk. It may be that records of
such practice are still existent in old muniment rooms. But in
the nature of things, the interest in such old accounts was very
transient. " Etiam perierunt ruinse." After the chaos and orgie of
the Restoration, all agricultural industry becomes obscure. Even
the literature of the art retrogrades. Worlidge, the authority
of the time, is not such a valuable authority as Hartlib.
Gregory King estimates that in his time there were 310,000
small freeholders and farmers. He gives a little under sixty-eight
acres of arable and pasture to each family, or a little over twenty-
nine acres arable. It would appear, then, that at the close of the
seventeenth century, the average size of a holding did not differ
materially from that which I have found it stand at in the fifteenth
century, and that England was, and remained, a country of small
occupiers well into the eighteenth century. The proportion of
pasture to arable in this estimate is entirely in accordance with
the state of agriculture at the time, for winter roots were
practically unknown, and artificial grasses very exceptionally
cultivated. Hence there was no real rotation of crops, and
little winter feed beyond hay and straw. Nor could a beneficial
change, I truly admit, have been expected from* these small
occupiers. Low as the rents were, they were severe rack-rents,
paid with disficulty and the subject of incessant complaint. As I
have mentioned before, Gregory King credits the English farmer
with the least possible power of saving from his meagre income.
I suspect, however, that as he was the principal consumer of his
own produce, his condition was more comfortable than King
makes out.
I do not as yet know, perhaps I shall never exactly find out,
where the new agriculture was first seriously taken up and by
whom. It was certainly not known in 1721, the date of Mor-
timer's Essays on Agriculture, for he knows nothing of it. It
certainly was known in 1730, for Lord Lovell, subsequently the
first Lord Leicester of the Coke family, practised it. It was
known to Tull in 1731, for he describes it, and dwells on its
advantages. But, again, it is not clear whether he or Lord
Townshend of Raynham, began it. At any rate it was adopted
on a large scale in Norfolk, the original home of many a great