[277] Quarterly Journal of Economics, xvii. 587.  Considering that the legislature of the sixteenth century was against enclosure and depopulation, it is hard to understand 31 Eliz., c. 7, which forbade cottages to be erected unless 4 acres of land were attached thereto, in order to avoid the great inconvenience caused by the ’buyldinge of great nombers and multitude of cottages, which are daylie more and more increased in many partes of this realme’.  How was it that cottages had increased so much in rural districts, which are of course alluded to, in spite of enclosure?

[278] Harwood, Erdeswick.

[279] Hasbach, op. cit. p. 44.

[280] Cunningham, Industry and Commerce, i. 187.

[281] General View of Hunts., p. 8.

[282] General View of Lincoln, p. 29.

[283] Farming Calendar, from an original MS., printed in Archaeologia, xiii. 373 et seq.

[284] Cf.  Tusser: 

‘October for wheat-sowing calleth as fast’;

and

’When wheat upon eddish (stubble), ye mind to bestowe Let that be the first of the wheat ye do sowe’;

and

‘Who soweth in raine, he shall reap it with tears’.

[285] The writer of the diary probably meant this work should be done in September.

CHAPTER XII

THE GREAT AGRICULTURAL WRITERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.—­FRUIT
GROWING.  A SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ORCHARD

The seventeenth century is distinguished by a number of agricultural writers whose works, as they afford the best account of the farming of the time, we may be pardoned for freely quoting.  The best known of them were, Sir John Norden, Gervase Markham, Sir Richard Weston, Blythe, Hartlib, Sir Hugh Plat, John Evelyn, John Worlidge, and Houghton.

Sir John Norden printed his Surveyor’s Dialogue in 1608, which is in the form of a conversation between a farmer and a surveyor, the former at the outset telling the latter that men of his profession were then very unpopular because ’you pry into men’s titles and estates, and oftentimes you are the cause that men lose their land, and customs are altered, broken, and sometimes perverted by your means.  And above all, you look into the values of men’s lands, wherefore the lords of manors do reckon their tenants to a higher rent, and therefore not only I but many poore tenants have good cause to speak against the profession’.[286]

The surveyor attributes the increase in prices to farmers outbidding one another for farms, for the rents of farms and prices grow together; a statement which seems to have been quite true and disposes of the assertion that the landlords raised the rents unfairly, for they were quite entitled to what rent they could get in the open market, the farmers being presumably wise enough not to offer rents which would preclude