l,
energy, and perseverance worked a revolution in the crops; his own
wheat crops were from 10 to 12 coombs an acre, his barley sometimes
nearly 20. The annual income of timber and underwood was L2,700, and
from 1776 to 1816 he increased the rent roll of his estate from L2,200
to L20,000, which, even after allowing for the great advance in prices
during that period, is a wonderful rise. It is a very significant fact
that there was not an alehouse on the estate, and in connexion with
this, and with the fact that his improvements made a constant demand
for labour, we are not surprised to learn that the workhouse was
pulled down as useless, for it was always empty, and this at a time
when the working-classes of England were pauperized to an alarming
degree. The year 1818 was one of terrible distress all over England in
country and town, yet at his sheep-shearing of that year Coke was
enabled to say he had trebled the population of his estate and not a
single person was out of employment, though everywhere else farmers
were turning off hands and cutting down wages. Principally through his
agency, between 1804 and 1821, no less than 153 enclosures took place
in Norfolk, while between 1790 and 1810, 2,000,000 acres of waste land
in England were brought under cultivation largely by his efforts. He
is said, indeed, to have transformed agriculture throughout England,
and, but for that, the country would not have been able to grow enough
food for its support during the war with Napoleon, and must have
succumbed.

FOOTNOTES:

[440] _Northern Tour_, i. 9. For an interesting account of Young, see
_R.A.S.E. Journal_ (3rd Series), iv. 1.

[441] In 1726 Bradley had urged the use of liquorice, madder, woad,
and caraway as improvers of the land in the Preface to the _Country
Gentleman_.

[442] _Rural Economy_ (1771), pp. 173-5. Trusler, who wrote in 1780,
mentions 'the general rage for farming throughout the
kingdom.'--_Practical Husbandry_, p. I.

[443] In 1780 Sir Thomas Bernard, travelling through Northumberland,
saw 'luxuriant plantations, neat hedges, rich crops of corn,
comfortable farmhouses' in a county whereof the greater part was
barren moor dearly rented at 1s. 6d. an acre thirty years before, and
he said the county had increased in annual value fourfold,
(Contemporary MS., unpublished.)

[444] _Rural Economy_, p. 26.

[445] _Farmer's Letters_ (3rd ed.), p. 89.

[446] Slater, _English Peasantry and Enclosure_, p.