r roads through the
centre, crossing both ways, so that there should be a thousand acres in
each division, exclusive of the land contained in the said cross-roads.
Then it was proposed to since out twenty men and their families, who
should be recommended as honest industrious men, expert in, or at least
capable of being instructed in husbandry, curing and cultivating of land,
breeding and feeding cattle, and the like. To each of these should be
parcelled out, in equal distributions, two hundred acres of this land, so
that the whole four thousand acres should be fully distributed to the
said twenty families, for which they should have no rent to pay, and be
liable to no taxes but such as provided for their own sick or poor,
repairing their own roads, and the like. This exemption from rent and
taxes to continue for twenty years, and then to pay each 50 pounds a year
to the queen--that is to say, to the Crown.
To each of these families, whom I would now call farmers, it was proposed
to advance 200 pounds in ready money as a stock to set them to work; to
furnish them with cattle, horses, cows, hogs, &c.; and to hire and pay
labourers to inclose, clear, and cure the land, which it would be
supposed the first year would not be so much to their advantage as
afterwards, allowing them timber out of the forest to build themselves
houses and barns, sheds and offices, as they should have occasion; also
for carts, waggons, ploughs, harrows, and the like necessary things: care
to be taken that the men and their families went to work forthwith
according to the design.
Thus twenty families would be immediately supplied and provided for, for
there would be no doubt but these families, with so much land given them
gratis, and so much money to work with, would live very well; but what
would this do for the support of the rest, who were supposed to be, to
every twenty farmers, forty or fifty families of other people (some of
one trade, some of another), with women and children? To this it was
answered that these twenty farmers would, by the consequence of their own
settlements, provide for and employ such a proportion of others of their
own people that, by thus providing for twenty families in a place, the
whole number of Palatinates would have been provided for, had they been
twenty thousand more in number than they were, and that without being any
burden upon or injury to the people of England; on the contrary, they
would have be
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