SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY Farm is to be allowed 2s. for every wagon-load of dung or cinder-ash which he should bring from Bury to lay on the lands. This allowance was, however, only once claimed in 2 1 years, and in other cases the tenant was more pru- dently given no option in the matter. This period of agriculture in Suffolk is marked by a further considerable rise in the value of land. The largest estate in the county, [writes Arthur Young in 1794,] is supposed not to exceed j^8,ooo, or j^8,500 a year .... there are three or four other estates which rise above ;^5,000 a year, and about 30 others which are about ^^3,000 a year and upwards. Under this are numbers of all sizes, but the most interesting circumstance is of a different complexion. I mean the rich yeomanry as they were once called being numerous, farmers occupying their own lands of a value rising from ;f lOO to ;^400 a year : a most valuable set of men who havmg the means and the most powerful inducements to good husbandry carry agriculture to a high degree of perfection."* The farms of largest size were to be found in the south-east sand district, one of the best cultivated in England and a most profitable one to farm in. The light soils were best understood : in the district of strong wet loam farms were smaller and the fortunes made upon them ' comparatively inconsider- able.'^'^ The gentry, like Arthur Young himself, took a leading part in the cul- tivation of experimental crops and the improvement of grass lands. Land rents in Young's day were as follows : — I. </. Strong or wet loam, per acre . . . . . , . .130 Rich loam . . . . . . . . . . .140 Maritime sand district . . . . . . . . .100 Western » » .........50 Fen 26 In some districts were tracts letting at 20s. to 25J. per acre, and at even higher rents, meadow land being highest of all."' In few counties had the value of long leases been more conclusively proved ; the tenant-farmer, secure in the investment of his money, had been active in the conversion of warren and sheep walks into cultivated inclosures. In 1798, 100,000"* acres of uninclosed waste still remained. A further obstacle to agricultural progress also existed in some districts ; the greater part of the county was freehold, but copyholds were still numerous and extensive, and often included peculiar rights of commonage and pasture."* Young quotes an instance at Troston on the borders of the western sand district, where open field lands, on which the course consisted of one crop to two fallows, were left to weeds for the flock of one farmer, he being by prescription the only person able to keep sheep, and having even the right of sheep-feeding in many inclosed pastures and meadows after the hay harvest."' Numerous Inclosure Acts at the close of the 1 8th and early in the 19th century to a great extent obviated these difficulties. For example, the parish of Coney Weston was inclosed by Act of Parliament in 1777, and the land-rents immediately doubled."^ The drainage of the fens was also pressed forward, and 14,000 acres in Burnt Fen alone brought under cultivation."' "' Ge». View of Agric. of County ofSuff. (1794), Sect, iv, p. 14. "•Young, op. cit. 15. '" Ibid. 17. "* Ibid. 19. ■"Ibid. 14. '"Ibid. 15. '"Ibid. 54. '"Ibid. 13. 671
