PARLIAMENTARY COLBERTISM
the curious and complicated local measures to a common
standard, for the convenience of his readers it is true, but
to the loss of those who are curious in metric systems.
2uniss There are, however, many passages in his writings which
ing syr- describe the survival of primitive practices’. Thus at
Mya . . . .
Boynton, in Yorkshire?, he found remains of extensive
culture’. He was informed by Sir Digby Legard that the
farmer on the wolds of the East Riding “every year has
oeen accustomed to plough up a fresh part of his sheep
walk, to take a crop or two, and then let it He fifteen or
twenty years till the natural grass has again formed a kind
of turf, but it will sometimes be forty years before the land
is completely sodded over. This ruinous practice is but too
common ; and where it has long prevailed, the farmer seldom
has a three-fold increase®.”
There were other cases where the two-field or three-field
system was still in vogue; thus in the neighbourhood of
Ecclesfield, in Hallamshire, the usual course was as follows :
first fallow, second wheat, third clover, and fourth wheat®.
This is obviously the two-field system, with the introduction
of clover in place of every second fallowing. His comment
is a sweeping condemnation of the early middle ages, “ This
is very bad husbandry.” At Beverley® there was a similar
modification of the two-field system, with the use of peas
in place of clover. He notes the three-field system at
Ecclesfield, first fallow, second wheat. third oats. but does
not criticise it.
He severly ~~ What, however, roused his strongest condemnation was
Titses the extravagance of the ploughing? Near Woburn “they
oloughind. oo four or five horses at length in their ploughs, and yet
do no more than an acre a day. The reader will not forget

548

A.D. 1689
1776.

1 These were genuine survivals. The primitive character of English Agriculture
n the seventeenth century, is shown from the nature of the arrangements which
were transplanted to New England ; see the accounts of common field cultivation,
ommon fencing, herding, etc., in Weeden, Economic and Social History of New
England, 58. But these practices in the plantations might be to some extent
revivals, rather than survivals, since the special conditions of the new country
would make reversion to primitive practice advisable.
8 Northern Tour, 1. 7. 8 Vol. 1. p. 33. 4 Ib. mn. 14.
$ Ib. 1. 126. 6 Ih. m. 1. 7 Ib. 1. 126.
8 A six weeks Tour through the Southern Counties. 298. 300.