Devonshiring, i.e. paring and burning 1 0 0
  Lime 0 12 0
  Ploughing and harrowing 0 6 0
  3 bushels of seed 2 0 0
  Weeding 0 1 0
  Pulling and binding 0 10 0
  Grassing the seed from the flax 0 6 0
  Watering, drying, swinging, and beating 4 10 0
          
                                      ----------
                                                L9 5 0
          
                                      ==========

CR.  L s. d.

900 lb. of flax 40 0 0
9 5 0
-----------
Balance profit L30 15 0
===========

Turnips were to come after flax, and were to be given to the cows as they did in Flanders; that is, wash them clean, put them in a trough where they were to be stamped together with a spitter or small spade; and the turnips were to be followed by clover.  All these, says Weston, were already grown in England, but ’there is as much difference between what groweth here and there as is between the same thing which groweth in a garden and that which groweth wild in the fields’.  Worlidge soon after recommended that clover be sown on barley or oats about the end of March or in April, and harrowed in, or by itself; and says, with optimism equal to Weston’s, one acre of clover will feed you as many cows as 6 acres of ordinary grass and make the milk richer.[318]

It has been noticed that the price of wool altered little during the century, and from the private accounts of Sir Abel Barker[319] of Hambleton, in the County of Rutland, we learn that in 1642 he sold his wool to his ‘loving friend Mr. William Gladstone’ for L1 a tod, though by 1648 it had gone up to 29s., a good price for those days.  During the Civil War some of Barker’s horses were carried off for the service of the State, and he values them at L8 a piece, a fair price then.  Some years later, for mowing 44 acres of grass he sets down in his account L2 7s. 0d., for making the same L2 3s. 0d., and stacking it 3s.

Simon Hartlib, a Dutchman by birth and a friend of John Milton, published his Legacy in 1651, containing both rash statements and useful information.  We certainly cannot believe him when he states that pasture employs more hands than tillage.  His estimate of a good crop of wheat was from 12 to 16 bushels per acre, and he speaks strongly of the great fluctuations in prices, for he had known barley sell at Northampton at 6d. a bushel, and within 12 months at 5s., and wheat in London in one year varied from 3s. 6d. to 15s. a bushel.  The enormous number of dovecotes was still a great nuisance, and the pigeons were reckoned to eat 6,000,000 quarters of grain annually.