thin the upper
park of Windsor, and sold some part to his people. The wine made in
England was sweetened with honey, and probably flavoured and coloured
with blackberries.[328] At the dissolution of the monasteries there
was a vineyard at Barking Nunnery. 'We might have a reasonable good
wine growing in many places of this realme', says Barnaby Googe, about
1577, 'as doubtless we had immediately after the Conquest, tyll,
partly by slothfulnesse, partly by civil discord long continued, it
was left, and so with time lost.... There is besides Nottingham an
ancient house called Chylwel in which remaineth yet as an ancient
monument in a great wyndowe of glasse, the whole order of planting,
proyning, stamping, and pressing of vines. Upon many cliffes and hills
are yet to be seen the rootes and old remaines of vines.' Plot, in his
_Natural History of Staffordshire_,[329] says 'the vine has been
improved by Sir Henry Lyttelton at Over (Upper) Arley, which is
situate low and warm, so that he has made wine there undistinguishable
from the best French by the most judicious palates, but this I suppose
was done only in some over hot summer, and Dr. Bathurst made very good
claret at Oxon in 1685, a very mean year for the purpose.' In 1720 the
famous vineyard at Bath of 6 acres, planted with the 'white muscadene'
and the 'black Chester grape,' produced 66 hogsheads of wine worth L10
a hogshead, but in unfavourable years grew very little.'[330] Mr.
Peter Collinson, writing from Middlesex in 1747, says, 'the vineyards
turn to good profit, much wine being made this year in England;' and
again in 1748, 'my vineyards are very ripe; a considerable quantity of
wine will this year be made in England.'[331] However, the attempt
made to grow vines on the undercliff at Ventnor at the end of the
eighteenth century by Sir Richard Worsley ended in dismal failure, and
it is probable that the English climate in its normal years seldom
produced good grapes out of doors whatever it may have done in
exceptionally hot ones, unless we assume that it has changed
considerably, for which there is little ground.

Hartlib was no friend of commons; they made the poor idle and trained
them for the gallows or beggary, and there were fewest poor where
there were fewest commons,[332] as in Kent--a statement re-echoed by
many observant writers; he also recommends enclosures, because they
gave warmth and consequent fertility to the soil. He tells us that an
effort h