oatmeal), frumenty or barley milk,
barley broth, &c.[373]

The village of the first half of the eighteenth century contained a
much better graded society than the village of to-day. It had few
gaps, so that there was a ladder from the lowest to the highest ranks,
owing to the existence of many small holders of various degree, soon
to be diminished by enclosure and consolidation.[374]

There was a great increase in the number of live stock owing to the
spread, gradual though it was, of roots and clover, which increased
the winter food; 'of late years,' it was said in 1739, 'there have
been improvements made in the breed of sheep by changing of rams, and
sowing of turnips, grass seeds, &c.'[375] Crops, too, were improving;
and enclosed lands about 1726 were said to produce over 20 bushels of
wheat to the acre.[376]

Though the number of Enclosure Acts at the beginning of the century
was nothing like the number at the end, the process was steadily going
on, often by non-parliamentary enclosure, and was approved by nearly
every one. Some, however, were opposed to it. John Cowper, who wrote
an essay on 'Enclosing Commons' in 1732, said, a common was often the
chief support of forty or fifty poor families, and even though their
rights were bought out they were under the necessity of leaving their
old homes, for their occupation was gone; but he says nothing of the
well-known increased demand for labour on the enclosed lands. The
force of his arguments may be gauged from his answer to Lawrence's
statement that enclosure is the greatest benefit to good husbandry,
and a remedy for idleness. On the contrary, says he, who among the
country people live lazier lives than the grazier and the dairyman?
All the dairyman has to do is to call his cows together to be milked!

Worlidge in 1669 had lamented that turnips were so little grown by
English farmers in the field, and that it was a plant 'usually
nourished in gardens',[377] and in a letter to Houghton in 1684, he is
the first to mention the feeding of turnips to sheep.[378] However, in
1726 it was said that nothing of late years had turned to greater
profit to the farmer, who now found it one of his chief treasures; and
there were then three sorts: the round which was most common, the
yellow, and the long.[379] For winter use they were to be sown from
the beginning of June to the middle of August, on fallow which had
been brought to a good tilth, the seed harrowed in with a bus