In the days
of my own boyhood, nearly seventy years ago, I spent some time at a
solitary farmhouse in North Wiltshire, with a grandfather and his
family, and can remember the various occupations and practices of the
persons employed in the dairy, and on the grazing and corn lands. I
never saw either a book or newspaper in the house; nor were any
accounts of the farming kept. - J. B.]
The Devonshire men were the earliest improvers. I heard Oliver
Cromwell, Protector, at dinner at Hampton Court, 1657 or 8, tell the
Lord Arundell of Wardour and the Lord Fitzwilliams that he had been in
all the counties of England, and that the Devonshire husbandry was the
best: and at length we have obtained a good deal of it, which is now
well known and need not to be rehearsed. But William Scott, of
Hedington, a very understanding man in these things, told me that
since 1630 the fashion of husbandry in this country had been altered
three times over, still refining.
Mr. Bishop, of Merton, first brought into the south of Wiltshire the
improvement by burn-beking or Denshiring, about 1639. He learnt it in
Flanders; it is very much used in this parish, and their neighbours
doe imitate them: they say 'tis good for the father, but naught for
the son, by reason it does so weare out the heart of the land.
[The reader will find many observations of this nature, and on
analogous subjects, in the manuscript, which it has not been thought
desirable to print.
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