novelty as a field crop in most parts of England.[252] In Holland it had been used in the field universally, and this use with that of ‘great’, as it was called, or broad clover, Weston pressed on the English farmer.  But their progress was wofully slow.  At Hawsted in Suffolk clover and turnips were first sown about 1700, and the eastern portion of England was far ahead of the north and west; as late as 1772 Arthur Young wrote that ’sainfoin, cabbages, potatoes, and carrots are not common crops in England; I do not imagine above half or at most two-thirds of the nation cultivate clover.’[253] Yet their introduction must have been of the greatest benefit to the farmer and the public; his stock of hay was increased, he could utilize his fallows, and keep a much larger head of stock through the winter, who would give him a greater quantity of manure.  Every one where turnips were grown could now have fresh meat during the winter.  The slow progress of these great blessings is perhaps the strongest testimony in our history of the innate conservatism of the farmer.  The green crop was for long considered to be suited only to the garden, and as our forefathers were prejudiced against the spade it was difficult to get such crops cultivated even there; but it should also be remembered that no crop was possible in the common fields which did not come to maturity before Lammas, unless some special agreement was made as to it.[254] Clover, Sir Richard Weston said, thrives best when sown on the worst and barrenest ground, which was to be pared and burnt, and unslaked lime added to the ashes.  Then it was to be well ploughed and harrowed, and about 10 lb. of seed sown per acre in the end of March or in April.  ’It will stand five years, and then when ploughed up will yield three or four years running rich crops of wheat, and then a crop of oats, after which you may sow clover again.’

In the seventeenth century the practice of liming and marling, which had been largely discontinued since the fourteenth century, was revived (Westcote, in his View of Devon in 1630, calls liming, &c., a new invention), and there was also a great improvement in implements.  Patents were taken out for draining machines in 1628, for new manures in 1633-6, ploughs 1623-7 and 1634, mechanical sowing 1634-9.  Only six were taken out, however, between 1640 and 1760 that concerned agriculture.[255] The Civil War checked the improvement, for though the great mass of the people had nothing to do with either party, the country was of necessity in a very unsettled state, and both sides plundered indiscriminately.  Yet in some parts, as in Devonshire, so many of the able men served in the two armies, that few but old men, women, and children were left to manage the farms, and even they were afraid to grow more than enough to supply themselves since both armies seized the crops.[256] These bad effects lasted for some time afterwards; Chapple, a Devonshire land agent of the eighteenth century, says he had talked with people who remembered the state of husbandry in the last ten or twelve years of the reign of Charles II, when in many parts of Devonshire an acre or two of wheat was esteemed a rarity.