rse or
two kept with them, for the beasts delight to feed with them.
Fattening cattle were to have first bite at the pastures, then draught
cattle, and then sheep; after Midsummer, when there is an
extraordinary sweetness in the grass, suffer the cattle to eat the
grass closer till Lammas (August 1). Though some do not hold with him,
he thinks reading and writing not unprofitable to a husbandman, but
not much material 'to his bailiff'; for there is more trust in an
honest score chalked on a trencher than 'in a commen writen scrowle'.
Landowners derived a good income from their woods and coppices. An
acre of underwood of twenty-one years' growth, was at this time worth
from L20 to L30; of twelve years' growth, L5 to L6; but on many of the
best lands it was only cut every thirty years.[311]

In 1742-3 oak timber was worth from 15d. to 18d. per cubic foot and
ash about 10d. During the Napoleonic war oak sold for 4s. 6d. a foot.

In Blyth's _Improver Improved_ we have one of the first accounts of
covered drains. The draining trench was to be made deep enough to go
the bottom of the 'cold spewing moist water' that feeds the flags and
the rushes; as for the width 'use thine own liberty' but be sure make
it as straight as possible. The bottom was to be filled in with
faggots or stones to a depth of 15 inches, a method in some parts
retained till comparatively modern times, with the top turf laid upon
them grass downward, and the drain filled in with the earth dug out of
it.

A country gentleman at this date could keep up a good establishment on
an income which to-day would compel him to live economically in a
cottage. From the accounts of Mr. Master, a landowner near
Chiselhurst, it appears that a man with an income of L300 or L400 a
year could live in some luxury, keep a stud of horses, and a
considerable number of servants.[312] Some of them had no scruples
about adding to their incomes by turning corn-dealers, even selling
such small quantities as pecks of peas, bushels of rye, and half pecks
of oatmeal. From the accounts of one of them, Henry Best,[313] of
Elmswell, we learn many valuable details concerning farming in
Yorkshire about 1641. It was the custom to put the ram to the ewes
about October 18, but Best did so about Michaelmas, and generally used
one ram to 30 or 40 ewes, and he considered it necessary that the ewes
should be two-shear. 'Good handsome ewes', he says, could have been
bought at Kilham fair for 3s.