[401] Memoirs of Wool, ii. 243.

[402] Ibid. ii. 399.

[403] Farmer’s Letters (3rd ed.), p. 27.

[404] Cunningham, Industry and Commerce, ii. 384.

[405] Cunningham, Industry and Commerce, ii. 458.

[406] Ormerod, Cheshire, i. 129.  These words were written about 1656.

[407] See Victoria County History:  Rutland, Agriculture.  Stilton was eaten in the same condition as many prefer it now, ’with the mites round it so thick that they bring a spoon for you to eat them.’

[408] Defoe, Tour, i. (1) 78.  Cheshire cheese was 2d. to 2-1/2d. per lb., Cheddar 6d. to 8d. in 1724, an extraordinary difference.

[409] Bradley, i. 172.

[410] Preface to Horse-hoeing Husbandry, (ed. 1733).

[411] Horse-hoeing Husbandry, p. vi.

[412] The West Country Farmer, above quoted, says wheat growing (in 1737) paid little.  Before a bushel can be sold it costs L4 an acre, and the crop probably fetches half the money.

[413] R.A.S.E.  Journ. (3rd Ser.), ii. 20.

[414] Cullum, Hawsted, p. 216.

[415] Tooke, History of Prices, i. 35.

[416] Wheat averaged: 

1718-22 about 27s. 1730 about 30s. 1750 about 30s. 1724 " 36s. 1732 " 24s. 1755 " 35s. 1725 " 46s. 1736 " 30s. 1760 " 38s. 1726 " 35s. 1740 " 42s. 1765 " 42s. 1728 " 52s. 1744 " 23s.

[417] Ellis, Chiltern and Vale Farming, p. 209.  Nothing is charged for tithe and taxes.

[418] Ibid. p. 352.

[419] See above, p. 177, also p. 199 for Young’s estimate in 1770.

[420] Nothing is charged for the manure which was carted and spread.

[421] John Trusler, Practical Husbandry, p. 28.

[422] Country Gentleman and Farmer’s Director (1726), p. xiii.

CHAPTER XV

1700-1765

TOWNSHEND.—­SHEEP-ROT.—­CATTLE PLAGUE.  FRUIT-GROWING

In 1730 Charles, second Viscount Townshend, retired from politics, on his quarrel with his brother-in-law Walpole, who remarked that ’as long as the firm was Townshend and Walpole the utmost harmony prevailed, but it no sooner became Walpole and Townshend than things went wrong’.  He devoted himself to the management of his Norfolk estates and set an example to English landlords in wisely and diligently experimenting in farm practice which was soon followed on all sides, the names of Lords Ducie, Peterborough, and Bolingbroke being the best known of his fellow-labourers.  A generation afterwards Young wrote, ’half the County of Norfolk within the memory of man yielded nothing but sheep feed, whereas those very tracts of land are now covered with as fine barley and rye as any in the world and great quantities of wheat besides.’[423]