352 PARLIAMENTARY COLBERTISM
specially successful in improving the breed of sheep. During
this period, the high price of corn and facilities for feeding
stock rendered agricultural improvement profitable, and it
also became fashionable, King George IIL devoted himself
enthusiastically to the concerns of his Windsor farm; he
wrote articles which he signed Ralph Robinson, and many
of the nobility in different parts of the country followed
him in these pursuits?,and set an example which found many
imitators and which proved exceedingly profitable at all
events to those who had sufficient capital.
The pro- 235. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centu-
Jessop ion: ries, the enclosure of common waste and common fields was
aden an outward and visible sign of the progress of improvement
in the management of land. The primitive method of
laying out the land of the freeholders and tenants as scattered
strips in common fields, with pasture rights on the common
waste?, presented an obstacle to any changes for the better.
The existence of common fields, cultivated by common
custom was a hindrance to improved husbandry®; and the
pasturage on common wastes was often spoiled from lack of
better management’ When the land was devoted to its
most profitable uses, there was an increased food supply, and
a mich larger fund from which taxation could be drawn, so
‘hat the increase in national wealth was undoubted®: but
‘he effects on the rural population are much more difficult to
A.D. 1639
1776.
| The Duke of Bedford was one of the leaders in this movement; and the
sheep-shearings of Woburn were remarkable gatherings of gentry who were
nterested in encouraging the breeding of sheep. Prizes were given for this
pbject as well as for the improvement of agricultural implements. There was an
sven more celebrated meeting, instituted by Mr Coke of Holkham in Norfolk,
where the prizes offered included rewards for labourers who showed special skill
in particular departments of farm work (Annals of Agriculture, xxx1%. 42, 61).
2 For an excellent map of this arrangement as it survived in 1905 at Upton
S. Leonards, see Victoria County History, Gloucester, IX. 167; also for maps of
Walthamstow, Bestmoor, Barton-le-Street, Donisthorpe, and Shilton in 1844, see
Report from the Select Committee on Common Enclosure 1844. v. 489—497.
8 §. Taylor, Common Good, p- 18.
+ Worlidge, Systema Agriculturae (1687), 10.
# John Lawrence, rector of Bishop's Wearmouth, wrote decidedly in favour of
the change in his New System of Agriculture (1726), p. 45; so too Edward
Laurence, Duty of a Steward to kis Lord (1727), p. 87; and John Mortimer,
Art of Husbandry, p. 1 (1707); and the anonymous authors of the Great Im-
provement of Commons that are enclosed (1732), Brit. Mus, T. 1856 (7), and an
01d Almanack (1735). Brit. Mus. T. 1856 (9). See p. 558, n. 2 below.
