lued his
property, and supervised the rents.

[206] _Booke of Husbandry_ (ed. 1568), fol. vi.

[207] Ibid. fol. xv.

[208] _Booke of Husbandry_ (ed. 1568), fol. xxix.

[209] Fitzherbert adds pigs and all manner of cornes, so altogether
the farmer's wife seems to have done as much as the farmer.

[210] Sir Jas. E. Smith, _English Flora_, iv. 241.

[211] _History of Kent_ (ed. 1778), i. 123.

[212] _Description of Britain_ (Furnivall ed.), p. 325.

[213] Thorold Rogers, _History of Agriculture and Prices_, iii. 254.

[214] See above.

CHAPTER IX

1540-1600

PROGRESS AT LAST.--HOP-GROWING.--PROGRESS OF ENCLOSURE.--HARRISON'S
'DESCRIPTION'

The period we have now reached was one of steady growth in the value
of land and its products. In 1543 Henry VIII, who had given away or
squandered, in addition to the great treasure left him by his thrifty
father, all the wealth obtained from the dissolution of the
monasteries, debased the coinage in order to get more money into his
insatiable hands, and prices went up in consequence. But there were
other causes: the influx of precious metals from newly discovered
America into Europe had commenced to make itself felt, and the
population of the country began to grow steadily. Also, it must not be
forgotten that the seasons, which in the early part of the century had
been normal, were for the next sixty years frequently rainy and bad.
It is unnecessary to say that this must have largely helped to raise
the price of corn. The average price of wheat from 1540-1583 was 13s.
10-1/2d. a quarter; from 1583-1702, 39s. 0-1/2d. Corn was still
subject to extraordinary fluctuations: in 1557, Holinshed says before
harvest wheat was 53s. 4d. a quarter, malt 44s. After harvest wheat
was 5s., malt 6s. 8d., the former prices being due to a terrible
drought in England. Oxen in the period 1583-1703 were worth 75s.
instead of under L1 in the period 1400-1540. Wool was from 9d. to 1s.
a lb. instead of about 3-1/2d., and all other farm products increased
with these.[215] Hops were from 1540-1582 about 26s. 8d. a cwt., and
from 1583-1700, 82s. 9-1/2d. In 1574 Reynold Scott published the first
English treatise on hops,[216] in which he says, 'one man may well
keep 2,000 hils, upon every hil well ordered you shall have 3 lb. of
hoppes at the least, one hundred pounds of these hoppes are commonly
worth 26s. 8d., one acre of ground and the third part of one man's
labour with small cost be