AGRICULTURE with much success. The average fleece of the Ryelands was about two pounds, and the shearing was done by women. Instead of folding them in the open, the farmers, as in Beak's time, shut them up at night in a building, a practice which was termed ' cotting,' which was said to fine the wool and keep away the rot, though Beale said it was encouraged by this practice. Horses had been much altered during the last generation, their height and bulk having been largely increased, but it was doubtful if their strength had improved thereby. With regard to the respective merits of horses and oxen as draught animals, an account in which a team of four oxen is contrasted with three horses in 1 803, showed that the former had a balance of £44. in their favour, chiefly owing to the increase in value of the ox and the depreciation of the horse. Oxen were generally worked for four years and then sold to the butcher ; they were worked under a yoke, but harness for them was coming into fashion. Farmers were congratulating themselves on the fact that poultry had increased greatly in price within the previous twenty years. In 1740 a fat goose brought lod. in Hereford market, in 1760 i^, and in 1804 4^. A couple of fowls sold for 6d. in 1740, for jd. in 1760, and for 2s. 4^. in 1804. A 'roasting pig' in the same period had increased from lo^. to 4.S. The labourer's wages in 1805, according to Duncumb, were miserably low, averaging, except in harvest time, 6s. a week in winter and js. in summer, with ' liquor and two dinners,' not much higher than those paid forty years before ; but, owing to the increase in the cost of every necessary of life, the labourer was worse ofF.^' It is difficult to understand these figures, for the average wages in England now were 1 2s. a week. The consequence was that the labourers resorted to parochial relief to sup- plement their scanty pay, which usually came out of the pocket of the farmer, and mightjustas well have come as wages. In some instances the price of labour rose and fell according to the price of wheat. The hours of labour were from daylight to dark in winter, and from six in the morning to the same hour in the evening in summer. Of course, in harvest time wages were increased, and hours of work lengthened. If servants were kept in the house by the farmer, the average wages were : — Wagoner . . . . . . . . . I o to 1 2 guineas per annum Cattleman 8 to 10 „ „ Dairy maid ......... 6 to 7 „ „ Under maid 2 to 3 „ „ The county roads, once proverbially bad, said by Marshall in 1796 to be 'such as one might meet with in the marshes of Holland or the mountains of Switzerland,' ^* are described as capable of being made much better, in spite of recent efforts, coarse limestone being the material generally used for making and repairing them. The by-roads were universally bad, often sunk many feet below the surface of the adjoining lands owing to the floods having carried away the soil in the course of ages. The wretched state of the roads, not only in Herefordshire but throughout England, all through the 1 8th and until the commencement of the 1 9th century, was largely due to the law which compelled each parish to maintain its own roads by statute labour, nor did the establishment of turnpike trusts work much improvement until Telford and Macadam brought scientific principles to bear on road-making. Marshall attributes the badness of the Herefordshire roads partly to the fact that the county had been inclosed from ' the forest state,' with the result that crooked fences and winding narrow lanes were the rule. During the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, which lasted from 1793 to 1815, the prices of agricultural produce increased enormously. Wheat sold as high as a guinea a bushel, with the result that a quantity of land of the poorest kind was converted into corn land, rents were raised and farming was in an unhealthy and inflated condition. When peace came, after the battle of Waterloo, the reaction was violent and immediate, and twenty years of almost unprecedented distress set in. Between January 1819 and July 1822, wheat, which had already fallen enormously in price dropped from 74^ to 43^. per quarter, beef from 4s. 6d. per stone to 2s. 5^., and mutton from fj. 8d. to 2s. 2d. During this period the yeomanry, one of the sturdiest and best of English classes practically disappeared ; many had sold their lands at high prices during the war, many had over- mortgaged and were ruined with the advent of low prices. The change from prosperity during the war to distress when it was ended was remarkably sudden. In 18 16 rents in Herefordshire had already fallen from 10 to 33 per cent., many farms were unoccupied, and labourers were out of work. Mr. T. A. Knight wrote that the tenants upon almost every farm in his part of the county had stated their inability to pay their rents and probably not more than one-half of last year's rents had been paid, even by farmers whose rents had " Wheat in 1 69 1 in Herefordshire was 3/. a bushel, and the same price in 1760 ; but in 1804, 10/. 6a'. Butcher's meat vyas i^. per lb. in 1760, 7^. in 1804 ; fresh butter 4fa'. per lb. in 1760, is. 3a'.'in 1804. Coals, 14/. in 1760, £1 41. in 1804. John Duncumb, Gen. Fiew, 140. " Marshall, Rural Ecm. of G hue. ii, 189. 413
