At the end of the century, however, there was a rapid increase in the price, partly due to increased demand by spinners and weavers who, owing to machinery, were working more economically; and partly to the enclosure of commons, and the ploughing up of land for corn.[405]

Cheshire had long been famous for cheese.  Barnaby Googe, in the last quarter of the sixteenth century, says, ’in England the best cheese is the Cheshyre and the Shropshyre, then the Banbury cheese, next the Suffolk and the Essex, and the very worst the Kentish cheese.’  Camden, who died in 1623, tells us that ’the grasse and fodder (in Cheshire) is of that goodness and vertue that cheeses be made here in great number, and of a most pleasing and delicate taste such as all England again affordeth not the like, no though the best dairywomen otherwise and skillfullest in cheese making be had from hence;’ and a little later it was said no other county in the realm could compare with Cheshire, not even that wonderful agricultural country Holland from which England learnt so much.[406] In Lawrence’s time Cheddar cheese was also famous, and there it had long been a custom for several neighbours to join their milk together to make cheeses, which were of a large size, weighing from 30 lb. to 100 lb.  Good cheese came also from Gloucestershire and Warwickshire.  The Cheshire men sent great quantities by sea to London, a long and tedious voyage, or else by land to Burton-on-Trent, and down that river to Hull and then by sea to London.  The Gloucestershire men took it to Lechlade and sent it down the Thames; from Warwickshire it went by land all the way, or to Oxford and thence down the Thames to London.  Stilton, too, had lately become famous, and was considered the best of all, selling for the then great price of 1s. a lb. on the farm, and 2s. 6d. at the Bell Inn, Stilton, where it seems to have first been sold in large quantities, though Leicestershire perhaps claims the honour of first making it.[407]

The eastern side of Suffolk was, in Defoe’s time, famous for the best butter and perhaps the worst cheese in England, the butter being ’barrelled and sometimes pickled up in small casks’.[408]

Rabbits were occasionally kept in large numbers for profit; at Auborne Chase in Wilts, there was a warren of 700 acres surrounded by a wall—­a most effective way of preventing escape, but somewhat expensive.  In winter time they were fed on hay, and hazel branches from which they ate the bark.  They were never allowed to get below 8,000 head, and from these, after deducting losses by poachers, weazles, polecats, foxes, &c., 24,000 were sold annually.  These rabbits, owing to the quality of the grass, were famous for the sweetness of their flesh.  The proprietor, Mr. Gilbert, began to kill them at Bartholomewtide, Aug. 24, and from then to Michaelmas obtained 9s. a dozen for them delivered free in London; but those from Michaelmas to Christmas realized 10s. 6d. a dozen.