Boox lI. AGRICULTURE OF THE MIDDLE AGES. t] = parently eluded by the partial exception of hereditary opulence. Had the restraints ay imposed on the exportation of corn been transferred to wool, the internal consumption

would have soon regulated the respective prices of those articles; the proportion between arable and pasture lands would soon have been adjusted, and the declining cultivation nth of the country prevented. An improved cultivation was reserved, however, for a future period, when Lah aan extirpated manufactures from the Netherlands; when the exportation of English wool had subsided, and its price diminished, the farmer or land- holder, disappointed of bis former exuberant profits, discovered the necessity of resuming the plough, and again restoring his pastures to culture.(Henry, xil. 261.

215. The first English treatise on husbandry appeared during nee VILI.’s reign, by Sir A. Fitzherbert, judge of the common pleas. It is entitled The Book of Husbandry, and contains directions for draining, clearing, and enclosing a farm; and for enriching and reducing the soil to tillage. Lime, marl, and fallowing are ee recommended.

The landlords are advised to grant leases to farmers who will surround their farms, and divide them by hedges into proper enclosures; by which operation, he says,‘‘if an acre of land be worth six pens(folds of sheep), before it be enclosed, it will be worth eight pens when it is enclosed, by reason of the compest and dunging of the cattle.”‘Another reason is, that it will preserve the corn without the expence‘of aherdsman. From the time of the appearance of this work, in 1534, Harte dates the revival of husbandry in England.

216. The culture of hops in the present period was either introduced or revived in England; and flax was atter npted, but without success, though enforced by law.(Hol- inshead, p. 110,111. 24 Hen.8.c.4.) Legislature at th at time endeavored to exe- cute, by means of penalties, those rational improvements which have since been fostered and cherished by bounties; or what is better pursued from the common motive of self- interest.

217. The breeding of horses was now much encouraged. To the passion of the age, and the predilection of the monarch for splendid tournaments, may be attributed the attention bestowed on a breed of horses of a strength and stature adapted to the weight of the complicated panoply with which the knight and his courser were both invested. Statutes of a singular nature were enacted, allotting for deer parks a certain proportion of breeding mares, and enjoining, not the prelates and nobles only, but those whose wives wore velvet bonnets,.to have stallions of a certain size for their saddle. The legal standard was, fifteen hands in horses, thirteen in mares, and ‘‘unlikely tits’? were, without distinction, consigned to execution.(27 Hen. 8. cap. 6. $6 Hen. 8. cap. 13. Vide Barrington’s Observations on the Statutes, p. 443. James the Fourth, with more propriety, imported horses from foreign countries to improve the degenerate breed of his own.(Pitscottie, p. 153.) Artificial grasses for their winter provender were still unknown; nor were asses propagated in England till a subsequent period.(Holinshead, p. 220. Polydore, Virgil, p.1S. Henry, xii. 268.

218. Of the state of agriculture»in Scotland during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries little can be stated. Aree to Major(Historia Britannica, Paris, 1526.), a native of Berwick,“the peasants neither enclosed nor planted, nor endeavored to ameliorate the sterility of the soil.” Such wheat as was required, must have been supplied from other countries; for, according to Fynnis Moryson, the produce of the country con- sisted chiefly of oats and barley. Different laws were enacted for planting groves and hedges, and pruning orchards, gardens, and parks for deer: but it is not the barren injunctions of statutes that will excite a spirit of improvement in a country.

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=e Ser rerooinn tesrtaee a po TEN TAT Ec aes EE IO Sa sa

} 4 :|

Sussect. 4. History of Agriculture from the Death of Henry VIII. in 1547, to the

Revolution in 1688.

ee 219. Agriculture, soon after the beginning of th teenth century, partook of the general en improvement which followed the inyention of= art of printing, the revival- lite- am rature, and the more settled authority of government; and, instead of the occasional Lo notices.of historians, we can now refer to regular treatises, written by men who engaged ee“ae eagerly in this neglected, and hitherto degraded, occupation. z wio Hat 220. The first and best of early agricultural w wks is, The Book of Husbandry, already 4se, and JOSE ESTEE(215.), printed in 1534. This was followed, in 1539, by The Book of € baron Surveying and Improvements, by the same author. In the former treatise we have a enalty to clear and minute description of the rural practices of that period; and from the latter

may be learned a good deal of the economy of the fet idal system in its decline. The author of Th> Book of Husbandry w rites from his own experience of more than forty years; and, if we except his biblical allusions, and some vestiges of the superstition of the Roman writers about the influence of the moon, there is very little of his work that should be omitted, and not a great deal that ne»ed be added, in so far as regards the

“Nether: culture of corn, in a manual of husb: andry adapted to the present time. It may sur- county: prise some of the agriculturists of the present day, an eminent agricultural writer re- ] 1 ware eae 1 1 7= a=== nd; a larks, to be told, that, after the lapse of almost three centuries, Fitzherbert’s practice,