IMPROVEMENTS IN TILLAGE 545 
Justices of the Peace insisted that those who had stocks of AD 10% 
corn should give a preference to local markets, the well- 
informed producer could not always hope to reap the reward 
of his enterprise; but the conditions of the corn trade had ne 
completely changed before the eighteenth century opened: Canny 
Under the influence of increasing commerce, large amounts 
of capital were applied to the management of land and the 
cultivation of the soil, and there was room for the energies 
of an employing class of tenant farmers. 
234. During the seventeenth century? there had been a In the 
7 ” seventeenth 
very decided increase of knowledge as to the best methods of century 
burning the land to good account ; and the suggestions which a 
are found in the agricultural treatises of the time appear to yy 
bave been put in practice to some extent. As in regard methods 
to so many other sides of Economic life, Dutch methods were 
held up as an example®, The people of Holland were not 
1 In the period after the Restoration the character of the seasons tended to 
render farming a very uncertain business. There were one or two years of 
excessive dearth, notably 1661-62, when those who had managed to save their 
crops would realise unusual prices, but the century was curiously remarkable for 
the way in which the seasons ran in successive periods, of longer and shorter 
duration, of good years and of bad years. Good years meant but little remunera- 
tion for the farmer, as prices were low; bad years might bring in a profit, or 
might ruin him altogether. No similar run of seasons has been traced by Professor 
Thorold Rogers in the three centuries and a half which preceded it; and the 
eighteenth century presented a remarkable succession of fairly good harvests, 
followed by a long period of great irregularity. In the seventeenth century only, 
“the good and bad seasons lie in groups of more or less extent. The fact was 
recognised in a rough way by the agriculturists of the time” (Agriculture and 
Prices, v. 173). The business of the farmers was accordingly a highly specu- 
lative one; it might be profitable, or it might be the reverse. 
2 This is especially noticeable in the recommendations of the use of various 
substances for improving the land. Markham refers to the use of marl as it had 
been understood from very early ages; and Dymock gives a long list of suitable 
manures which were available in many parts of England, but which were unknown 
in Flanders (Hartlib's Legacy, p. 43); such as chalk, lime, snagg-root, Cornish sea- 
sand (7 Jas. I c. 18), ashes, salt, fish, and even woollen rags. The judicious 
application of these various fertilisers was an art that seemed to be but little 
understood, and there are a whole series of writers who dwell upon the advantages 
which may acerne from the proper use of marl and lime (Blith, The English 
Improver or a new Survey of Husbandry, 60; Platt, Jewell House, Part 11. Diverse 
new sorts of Soyle, 21; Markham, Farewell to Husbandry, 32). 
8 The Dutch were noted for their horticulture, and there is every reason to 
believe that, under the guidance of the seventeenth century writers on rural affairs, 
A great improvement took place in English gardening. See Worlidge, Systema 
Agriculturae, 164, Compare also Adam armed; an essay presented by the Gar- 
deners’ Company which was chartered in 1606. Serious efforts were made under