A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK A turnip crop first occurs in the Friston records in 1 694 : ^'* CuUum "' mentions their cultivation at Hawstead in 1700, some thirty years before it was to become general all over England. ^*° With these signs of enter- prise may be compared the condition of property in Framlingham,^" w^here under the lordship of Pembroke College the ' coliar holders ' are found in 1712 paying rents of 2ld. per acre and where the customs ' having no foundation in reason, conscience or law ' include the payment of tithe in kind or by compounds of totally inadequate value. The tenth and seventh lamb or 4J. ; if under seven, each y. The tenth or seventh pig or zs. ; if under seven, each Id. Or as at Saxtead, for ' every gast or grazing beast zd., for every skep of bees y: "' During the 1 6th century agriculture in Suffolk was but the handmaiden of the dominant industry of cloth-making, but with the slow decay of the cloth-trade throughout the succeeding century it began itself to take the fore- most place : the export of cloth to the foreign market gradually yielded in importance to the export of dairy produce for consumption in London. The Privy Council answered the petitions of distressed cloth workers with futile attempts to coerce the dying trade into activity by well-directed legislation ; the Suffolk landowners were more concerned to press forward Acts for the draining of the fens and the reclamation of sea-board,^" and so to increase the grazing capacity of their properties.^** The hearth tax returns^*' at this period (1662-8) show Suffolk to have had a population of approximately 142,000, which by 1700 increased to 172,1 10. But East Bergholt, Hadleigh, Halesworth, Woodbridge, with their long lists of empty houses bear witness to decaying trade no less than do Aldeburgh, Dunwich, Gorleston, Southwold, and Walberswick to encroaching seas and dwindling fisheries. The Civil War may for a time have hampered agricultural activities : so rich a source of supply as Suffolk was not likely to be overlooked where troops were to be fed : the direct exaction of ship-money, which in the last reign had pressed very heavily upon the small farmer,"* was replaced by the seizure for the use of the Parliamentary army of ' billingers of barley ' and the commandeering of hundreds of tons of cheese."^ But in 1722 when Defoe made his tour "' High Suffolk was full of rich feeding grounds and large farms, employed in making the best butter and (in his opinion) the worst cheese in England, and in fattening great quantities of beef and mutton, turkeys, fowls and geese for the London market."' From the middle of the i8th century with the wider introduction of turnips and clover crops, and the consequent avoidance of the necessity of leaving the fields to fallow, the cultivation of the arable entered on a fresh stage. CuUum"" notices the provision in leases from 1732 onwards for the im- provement of the soil by the use of manures, e.g. the tenant of Pinford End '"Add. MS. 22249, ^'- '44- '• ^' <^te of entry cf. fol. 13, 147. "Cullum, op. cit. 218. '" Cf. Defoe, Tour in Eastern Counties, 1 20. "'MS. Hist, of Framlingham (Add. MS. 33247), fol. 452. '"Ibid. fol. 377. '" Cal. S.P. Dom. 1631-3, p. 115 ; 1638-9, p. 326. ^"Suff. Green Books, no. xi, vol. 13, p. 29. '"Suckling, Introd. 27. "*C<j/. S.P. Dom. 1648-9, p. 382. '"Ibid. 1650, p. 590. '" Tour in the Eastern Counties, 1 10. '" Ibid. 1 20 et seq. "* Op. cit. 2 1 6. 670
