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The Contribution of the Propagandist to Eighteenth-Century Agricultural Improvement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Pamela Horn
Pamela Horn
Affiliation:
Oxford Polytechnic
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Extract

Were the knowledge of the ablest farmers in the best-cultivated parts of the island collected, - English Agriculture would be found, at this day, to be far advanced towards perfection… In short, the art of agriculture must ever remain imperfect while it is suffered to languish in the memory, and die with the practitioner: RECORD, only, can perpetuate the art; and SYSTEM, alone, render the science comprehensive. William Marshall, The rural economy of Norfolk, 1 (London, 1787), vi–vii.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , June 1982 , pp. 313 - 329
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1982

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References

1 Quoted in Marshall, William, The review and abstract of the county reports to the board of agriculture: Vol. 3, eastern department (York, 1811), 356Google Scholar. Chambers, J. D. and Mingay, G. E., The agricultural revolution, 1750–1850 (London, 1966), 56–7.Google Scholar

2 Young, Arthur, General view of the agriculture of Oxford shire (London, 1813), p. 35.Google Scholar

3 Marshall, William, The review and abstract of the county reports to the board of agriculture: Vol. i, northern department (York, 1808), 182Google Scholar, quoting from the board of agriculture report on Cumberland written by J. Bailey and G. Culley.

4 Mingay, G. E., The agricultural revolution (London, 1977), p. 7.Google Scholar

5 Habakkuk, H.J., ‘Economic functions of English landowners in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’, in Explorations in Entrepreneurial History, vi (1953), 93.Google Scholar

6 ‘The farms - Windsor Great Park’: journal in the Royal Library at Windsor and quoted from by gracious permission of Her Majesty the Queen.

7 Information on the organization and running of the royal farms at Windsor has been obtained from Kent's journals, which are preserved in the Royal Library at Windsor.

8 Martins, Susanna Wade, A great estate at work (Cambridge, 1980), p. 74Google Scholar. Holkham estate audit book, 1795–1803, on MS Film 955, at the Bodleian Library, Oxford.

9 ‘Memoranda and examination of Kent and Claridge's account and their answers, 1797- 1823’: Yorkshire estates, Egremont MSS 404, preserved at Pet worth and consulted at West Sussex Record Office.

10 William Marshall, The review and abstract…northern department, p. 87.

11 H. J. Habakkuk, ‘Economic functions’, pp. 92, 99.

12 Kerridge, Eric, The farmers 0f old England (London, 1973), pp. 134–6.Google Scholar

13 Marshall, William, The rural economy of the midland counties, 1 (London, 1790), 123.Google Scholar

14 Parker, R. A. C., Coke of Norfolk (Oxford, 1975), p. 115.Google Scholar

15 ‘Plan submitted, with great deference to His Majesty upon the present state and future improvement, of the Great Park at Windsor, 1791’, p. 5. Quoted by gracious permission of Her Majesty the Queen. The plan is preserved in the Royal Library at Windsor.

16 Young, Arthur, A six months' tour through the north of England, 2nd edn, iv (London, 1771), 372.Google Scholar

17 Young, Arthur, On the husbandry of three celebrated British farmers, Messrs. Bakewell, Arbuthnot, and Ducket (London, 1811), pp. 29–30.Google Scholar

18 Ibid. pp. 30–1.

19 Walton, John R., ‘Mechanization in agriculture’ in Change in the country side, ed. Fox, H. S. A. and Butlin, R. A. (London, 1979), p. 34.Google Scholar

20 Macdonald, Stuart, ‘The diffusion of knowledge among Northumberland farmers, 1780- 1815’, Agricultural History Review, xxvii, pt. 1 (1979), 32.Google Scholar

21 Fussell, G. E., More old English farming books: 1731 to 1793 (London, 1950), p. 28.Google Scholar

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25 Quoted in the Monthly Review, XXII (1797), 192.

26 Clarke, Desmond, The unfortunate husbandman: to which is prefaced a short account of Charles Varley's life and times (London, 1964), p. 21.Google Scholar

27 Marshall, William, The review and abstract…midlands department, iv (York, 1815), 606–7.Google Scholar

28 Young, Arthur, The farmer's calendar (London, 1771)Google Scholar, introduction; Gazley, John G., Arthur Young, p. 471.Google Scholar

29 Gazley, John G., Arthur Young, pp. 156–7.Google Scholar

30 Ibid. p. 226.

31 Ibid. p. 156.

32 Ibid. p. 156.

33 Macdonald, Stuart, ‘The role of the individual in agricultural change: the example of George Culley of Fenton, Northumberland’, in Change in the country side, ed. Fox, H. S. A. and Butlin, R. A., P. 9.Google Scholar

34 Stuart Macdonald, ‘The Role of the Individual’, pp. 9–10.

35 George Culley to Matthew Culley, 23 Dec. 1784, ZCU. 9, at Northumberland Record Office.

36 William Mure to George Culley, 14 March 1793, ZCU. 18, at Northumberland Record Office.

37 John Arbuthnot to Arthur Young, Add. MS 35, 126, f0. 169.

38 Diaries of Samuel Pipe-Wolferstan, D. 1527, at Staffordshire County Record Office, entries for 8, 12 and 13 July 1784.

39 Quoted in Marshall, William, The review and abstract…western department, vol. 2 (York, 1810), 17–18.Google Scholar

40 Austen, Jane, Emma (New York: Signet Classic edn, 1964), p. 24.Google Scholar

41 See, for example, Young, Arthur, The farmer's calendar, 8th edn (London, 1809), pp. 641–2Google Scholar. The list included twenty volumes of the Transactions of the Society of Arts, sixteen volumes of Marshall's works, and a long list of specialist texts, such as Culley's book on livestock, Twamley's on dairying, and Billing's on the cultivation of carrots.

42 Arthur Young, The farmer's calendar, 1st edn, introduction.

43 Stone, Thomas, A review of the corrected agricultural survey of Lincolnshire (London, 1800), pp. 428–9.Google Scholar

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45 Arthur Young, The farmer's calendar, 8th edn, p. 616, for example. ‘The convenience and use of such a field are exceedingly great’, wrote Young. For ‘if any new seed, whatever it may be, is put into a man's hand who has no such field, he must either sow it in the corner of some field, where, if it be a perennial plant, it will probably arrange very badly with successive cultivation, or into his garden, the richness of which may deceive him.’

46 William Marshall, The review and abstract…eastern department, p. 396.

47 William Marshall, The minutes of agriculture, Digest, p. 120.

48 Young, Arthur, ‘Of the new husbandry’ in Rural oeconomy, p. 167.Google Scholar

49 Ducket was the subject of a letter written by the king to the Annals of agriculture, vol. 7 (1787), 65–71. The king wrote under the nom-de plume ‘Ralph Robinson, of Windsor’.

50 Dossie, Robert, Memoirs of agriculture, 1 (London, 1768), 14Google Scholar. In the same year the Society gave a fifty-guinea premium to Cuthbert Clarke of Belford, Northumberland, for inventing a drain plough; and £20 to James Edgell of Frome, Somerset, for inventing a machine for slicing turnips.

51 William Mure to George Culley, 14 March 1793, ZCU. 18, at Northumberland Record Office.

52 Kent's journal of Windsor Great Park in the Royal Library at Windsor, 1 (1791 and 1792), entry for 14–17 Dec. 1791, quoted by gracious permission of Her Majesty the Queen.

53 William Marshall, The review and abstract…northern department, p. 64.

54 G. E. Mingay, Agricultural revolution, pp. 18–19.

55 ‘Transactions of the Odiham Society’, meeting at the George Inn, Odiham, 15 February 1785, in Annals of agriculture, iii (1785), 309. Minute book of the Odiham Society for the Encouragement of Agriculture and Industry, at the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons’ Wellcome Library, entry for 8 Jan. 1785.

56 Minute Book of the Odiham Society, entries for 10 June 1783 and 3 Apr. 1785. On the latter occasion, a visit from Arthur Young was expected and members resolved that they would ‘attend him on the day of his arrival at Odiham, and that an invitation be given to all other Gentlemen skilled in Agriculture to favor the Society with their Company on that date’.

57 Hudson, Kenneth, Patriotism with profit (London, 1972), pp. 11–18.Google Scholar

58 William Marshall, The minutes of agriculture, Digest, p. 112.

59 Letter to the Society of Arts, 9 Feb. 1780, in the Society's ‘Transactions of Agriculture 1779–1780’, at the Library of the Royal Society of Arts, f0. 5. Minutes of the Agriculture Committee of the Society of Arts, meeting 13 Feb. 1780, at the Library of the Royal Society of Arts, fos. 23–6.

60 William Marshall, The rural economy of the midland counties, 1, 122.

61 Hartlib, Samuel, The compleat husband-man (London, 1659)Google Scholar, introduction. Hartlib noted that he was making these suggestions because ‘of the known untowardness of the major part of the people, who being wonderfully wedded to old customes, are not easily wonne to any new course’.

62 Kames, Lord, The gentleman farmer (Edinburgh, 1776), pp. 370–2.Google Scholar

63 Mitchison, Rosalind, ‘The Old Board of Agriculture, 1793–1822’, E.H.R. LXXIV (1959), 42.Google Scholar

64 Ibid. p. 47.

65 Marshall, William, Proposals for a rural institute or college of agriculture and the other branches of rural economy (London: pamphlet, 1799).Google Scholar

66 Minute Book of the board of agriculture, 1798–1805, B. vi, at the Museum of English Rural Life, Reading, entry for 4th Mar. 1800.

67 Gentleman's Magazine, LXXXI pt. 1 (1811), 182.