dry and Trade_, ii. 468.

[244] _Six Centuries of Work and Wages_, p. 398.

[245] Cunningham, _Industry and Commerce_, ii. 38. The Statute of
Labourers of 1351 made the same effort, see p. 43.

[246] Thorold Rogers, _History of Agriculture and Prices_, iv. 120;
and _Work and Wages_, p. 389.

[247] See above.

[248] Thorold Rogers, _Work and Wages_, pp. 390-1.

[249] _Archaeologia_, xi. 200.

[250] Thorold Rogers, _Six Centuries of Work and Wages_, p. 396.

[251] Cullum, _Hawsted_, p. 215. It is strange to find food reckoned
so highly; if the common labourer at Hawsted received his food, he was
only paid 5d. a day in winter, and 6d. in summer; if one man's food
was reckoned at half his wages, how far did the other half go in
feeding and clothing his family?

CHAPTER XI

1600-1700

CLOVER AND TURNIPS.--GREAT RISE IN PRICES. MORE ENCLOSURE.--A FARMING
CALENDAR

The seventeenth century was one of considerable progress in English
agriculture. The decay of common-field farming was enabling individual
enterprise to have its way. The population was rapidly growing; by
1688 the returns of the hearth tax prove that the northern counties
were nearly as thickly populated as the southern, and prices during
the first half were continually rising, though after that they
remained almost stationary, since the effect of the influx of precious
metals from the New World was exhausted. In the first half of the
century John Smyth ascribes the advance of rents to the Castilian
voyages opening the New World, whereby such floods of treasure have
flowed into Europe that the rates of Christendom are raised near
twentyfold'.

But the greatest agricultural event of the century was the
introduction of clover and the encouragement of turnips as grown in
Holland, by Sir Richard Weston, about 1645. No doubt the turnip was
already well known in England. Tusser and Fitzherbert both mention it,
apparently as a garden root only; but Gerard in his _Herbal_, 1597,
says it grew in fields 'and divers vineyards or hoppe gardens in most
places of England', which certainly points to an effort having been
made generally to use it as a field crop whenever an enclosed space
gave it some protection from the depredations of the common herds.
However, its cultivation must have declined, as long after this it was
regarded as a novelty as a field crop in most parts of England.[252]
In Holland it had been used in the field universally, and this u