AGRICULTURE on the side of a brook a little stream of water issuing down the working of the mole which made the ground < pleasing green,' and from this he was led on to what he quaintly calls the ' drown- ing of his lands' to the no small astonishment of his neighbours. By this he improved the value of his estate at New Court from ,^40 to £,2)'^o a year, and came to be looked on as a teacher in agricultural matters by those who had first scoffed at him. Vaughan also tells us that when harvest was over he had counted as many as three hundred persons gleaning in one field, and that in the mountains near twenty eggs were sold for a penny, and a good bullock for 2bs. id. A little while after this Lord Scudamore set a noble example to the landowners of the county when, after the assassination of his friend the Duke of Buckingham, he retired to Holme Lacy and there devoted his energies to the culture of fruit trees, particularly the Red Streak apple, which he seems to have introduced to public favour. Owing to his exertions and those of 'some other public-spirited gentlemen all Herefordshire is become in a manner but one intire orchard.' " About the same time the rye of Clehonger and of some other parts of Archenfield was said to be as good as ' the Muncorne or Miscellane of many other counties, and our wheat upon the ground far richer than I saw any in the fair vale of Esome in Worcestershire and Warwickshire as in my travels I sometimes examined it in the company of other more skilful husbandmen.' ^^ The pastures were being ' improved daily,' and there were a great number of ' contrivers of the public good ' in the county, among them Lord Scudamore, who, besides helping fruit culture, was a ' great preserver of woods against the day of England's need ' ; another gentleman had metamorphosed his wilderness to be ' like the orchards of Aloinas.' Touching on the subject of manures Beale said he had not seen pastures so benefited by com- post in Herefordshire as elsewhere, and lime was seldom tried on pastures, though its use in England at this time was widespread ; ashes they found excellent if sifted on the ground in February. Graziers and butchers objected to the ' gilt cups ' in the otherwise excellent pastures that they made the fat of the beef turn yellow ' as if it were of an old beef.' The richest land in the shire was deemed to be on Frome banks, the pastures very rich, the arable a stiff clay bearing the best wheat, the said clay, howeverj being very unkind for gardens as it devoured much compost. Yet this rich land was considered slow for orchards, and the arable was much ' inclinable to the mildews,' nor was it any good to turn into pasture, for * I have seen that in twenty years it gathers not a turf or a sward.' The sourer grass they used for the young cattle, the harder and stronger for labouring oxen, and what was rough and ' little better than sheep pasture ' was given to saddle horses to ' mend the breed.' Beale records that a nag fed on high and dry ground was for travel as much beyond one bred in the low grounds ' as a lion exceedeth a cow in activity.' The wool was still the finest in England, but the sheep were small and did not generally bear a fleece of more than I lb. ; they were usually housed at night, winter and summer, which made them nice and liable to two kinds of rot, one only of the liver which ' could be cured by the butcher's knife,' the other ' prevails over the whole body and makes the flesh fit for nothing but dogs.' For the composition in lieu of purveyance paid by the different counties in 1593 Herefordshire was assessed at 15 fat oxen worth ^^3 each or ^^45,-" one of the lowest assessments in England, Worces- tershire being assessed at £20() y. d., yet in the 17th century, judging by the national assessments made for various purposes, the county had grown wealthier relatively to the other counties of England. In the famous assessment for ship-money made in 1 636 there were seventeen counties with a lower assessment, Herefordshire being assessed at ;^3,Soo, or about 150 acres to the / ; Worcestershire at the same sum, or 135 acres to the £; and Shropshire at j^4,5oo, or liT,^ acres to the £. In the proposed assessment of November, 1660, in lieu of wardship, Herefordshire was put at j^i,8oo, or 334 acres to the ^T; Worcestershire at the same, or 262 acres to the £ ; and Shropshire atj^i,goo, or 434 acres to the ^^ ; there were thirteen counties lower than Herefordshire. The best county, apart from Middlesex, which, as it contained London, is useless for purposes of comparison, was Suffolk, which only required 197 acres to the £, the worst was Cumberland, which required 2,503. However, towards the end of the century the county had almost resumed the position it occupied in the 15th century, only eleven counties having lower amounts in the assessment made for the Land Tax in 1693, when its assessment was ,^20,409.^* In the 17th century we borrowed the use of winter roots from Holland, and of artificial grasses yet so conservative were English farmers that these great improvements were strenuously resisted and did not become general till the latter half of the i8th century. At the end of the 17th " Evelyn, Pomona (ed. 1664), 2. " John Beale, Herefs. Orchards, a Pattern for All England {^d.. 1724), 22. Muncorne or mungcorn was a mixture of different seeds sown together so as to come up as one crop. Miscellane was apparently similar. " Eden, &tate of the Poor (ed. 1797), i, 115. The prices in the assessment are below the market price, that of a fat ox was about ^6 i y. d. " Thorold Rogers, Hist, ofjgrie. and Prices, v, 104-19. In the Hearth Tax of 1690 its position was about the same, and it possessed 1 6,744 houses, with a little more than three hearths to every two houses. I 409 52
