Dictionary of National Biography, 1901 supplement/Blith, Walter
BLITH, WALTER (fl. 1649), agricultural writer, issued in 1649 a work entitled 'The English Improver, or a new Survey of Husbandry. . . . Held forth under Six Peeces of Improvement. By Walter Blith, a Lover of Ingenuity,' London, 1649. This edition has two dedications: one ' To thole of the High and Honourable Houses of Parliament; ' and another 'To the Ingenuous Header.' Of this book Thorold Rogers says in his 'Six Centuries of Work and Wages' (p. 458): 'The particulars are those commonplaces of agriculture which are found in all treatises of the time.' In 1652 it was re-issued in a revised form as * The English Improver Improved, or the Survey of Husbandry Surveyed,' with 'a second part containing six newer peeces of improvement,' and with an engraved titlepage headed 'Vive la Republick,' which contained representations of horse- and footsoldiers, and of agricultural operations. The edition of 1652 contains seven dedications or preliminary epistles: to 'The Right Honourable the Lord Generall Cromwell, and the Council of State;' to 'The Nobility and Gentry;' to 'The Industrious Reader;' to 'The Houses of Court and Universities; ' to 'The Honourable the Souldiery of these Nations of England, Scotland, and Ireland;' to 'The Husbandman, Farmer, or Tenant;' to 'The Cottager, Labourer, or meanest Commoner.' In the first dedication Blith refers to eight 'prejudices to improvements,' the first of which is interesting from the point of view of the history of tenant-right and Agricultural Holdings Acts. 'If a tenant be at never so great paines or cost for the Improvement of his Land, he doth thereby but occasion a greater Rack upon himself, or else invests his Land-Lord into his cost and labour gratis, or at best lyes at his Land-Lord's mercy for requitall, which occasions a neglect of all good Husbandry, to his owne, the land, the Land-Lord, and the Common wealth's suffering. Now this I humbly conceive may be removed, if there were a Law Inacted by which every Land-Lord should be obliged either to give him reasonable allowance for his cleare Improvement, or else suffer him or his to enjoy it so much longer as till he hath had a proportionable requitall.' In the fifth dedication Blith signs himself 'Your quondam brother, fellow-souldier, and very servant, Walter Blith,' and some commendatory verses prefixed to the book, signed ' T. C.,' are addressed 'To Captain W. Blith upon his Improvement.' He would therefore seem to have been a captain in the parliamentary army. There was a 'Captain Blith' of the king's ship Vanguard in 1642.
[Blith's English Improver, 1649, 1652.]