The most important novelty of this century was the potato, which the colonists, sent out in 1586 by Sir Walter Raleigh, brought from Virginia to Ireland, though it had been introduced into Europe by the Spaniards before this.  According to Gerard, the old English botanist, it was, on its first introduction from America, only cultivated in the gardens of the nobility and gentry as a curious exotic; and in 1606 it occurs among the vegetables considered necessary for a nobleman’s household.[241] It is curious to find Gerard comparing it to what he calls the ‘common potato’, in reality the sweet potato brought to England by Drake and Hawkins earlier in the century.  In James I’s reign the root was considered a great delicacy, and was sold to the queen’s household at 2s. a lb., an enormous price.

Like most agricultural novelties it spread very slowly, but about the middle of the seventeenth century began to be planted out in the fields in small patches in Lancashire, whence it spread all over the kingdom and to France.[242] At this date it was looked upon as a very second-rate article of food, if we may judge by the Spectator (No. 232), which alludes to it as the diet of beggars.  About 1690, Houghton says, ‘now they begin to spread all the kingdom over,’ and recommends them boiled or roasted and eaten with butter and sugar.[243] Eden notes its increasing popularity during the eighteenth century, and by his time (the end of that century) in many parts it was the staple article of food for the poor; in Somerset the children mainly subsisted on it, and in Devon it was made into bread.  Its cultivation on a large scale in the field did not, however, spread all over England till the Napoleonic war, and the ignorance and prejudice against it lasted for long; even Cobbett called it ‘the lazy root,’ and whole potatoes were used for seed regardless of the number of eyes.

In 1563 was passed the famous Act, 5 Eliz., c. 4, which Thorold Rogers has asserted to be the commencement of a conspiracy for cheating the English workman of his wages, to tie him to the soil, to deprive him of hope, and to degrade him into irremediable poverty.[244] The violence of this language is a prima facie reason for doubting the correctness of his assertion, which on examination is found to be grossly exaggerated.  Under Richard II the justices were authorized to fix the rate of wages, provided they did not exceed the maximum fixed by Parliament.  The Elizabethan statute abolished the maximum and left the justices to fix reasonable rates.  So far from being an attempt to keep wages down it seems to have been an honest effort to regulate them according to prices,[245] whereas most previous statutes had merely reduced wages.  The preamble of the Act states this clearly enough, saying that the existing laws with regard to the hiring and wages of servants were insufficient; chiefly because the wages ’are in dyvers places to small and not answerable to this time respecting