The evolution of British cattle and the fashioning of breeds/The Dutch Supremacy
IX
THE DUTCH SUPREMACY
We have already shown that, in Mortimer's time, 1716, there were Dutch cattle in Lincoln and Kent, and that by Culley's time, 1794, they had completely conquered the east coast from Lincolnshire to the borders of Scotland. Unfortunately there were no Culleys to record their progress in the midlands and the counties on the west, but we can infer from the English "Agricultural Surveys," published about the junction of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, that the Dutch conquest was almost as complete in the west as in the east. The impression conveyed by these surveys is that from Lincolnshire westwards to Warwick and Worcester, and from there up the western side of the Pennine Chain as far as North Lancashire and Westmoreland, the older inhabitants had been swept out for many years. Indeed, some of the writers of the surveys thought the Dutch cattle around them were the old native race. These circumstances, along with the Herefordshire belief that Lord Scudamore imported Dutch cattle in the seventeenth century—it must have been before 1671, for he died then—indicate that Dutch cattle may have been brought to the west coast almost as early as to the east. It may be doubted, however, whether the eastern and the western conquests were exactly alike. On the east coast the Dutch invaders seized the land almost for themselves alone, while in the midlands and in the west it was rather an amalgamation of the invader and the invaded. The cattle on the east retained the characteristics they had brought with them from Holland, and acquired no others, while the cattle in the midlands and west eventually acquired characteristics drawn from both Dutch and British sources. The cattle of Hereford and some neighbouring districts acquired their red colour from their Anglo-Saxon ancestors, and their size and their white faces and underlines from Holland; while the midland and Lancashire cattle—the Longhorns—acquired their size and white back-stripe from Holland, and their various colours—red, yellow, mulberry, plum, dun, the brindles, and so on—from the red cattle in the south of their territory and the Celtic and other cattle in the north. It is also highly probable that the long and peculiarly shaped horns of the Longhorns are a direct or indirect—perhaps both—legacy from the cattle brought to Britain by the Romans.
Thus these three kinds of cattle, the Herefords, the Longhorns, and the Shorthorns, the first two largely of Dutch descent, the last almost entirely so, were established in England in the first half of the eighteenth century. But the territories they occupied were too small for them. The Longhorns were the first to make this discovery, and, casting envious eyes on the fertile country to the south, they sent out wave after wave of their surplus population, until by the end of the eighteenth century they and their progeny by English cattle possessed it all as far south as the Sussex downs, leaving the comparatively less fertile outside rim to such as the Herefords, the Devons and Somersets, the Sussex, the Suffolks, and the Norfolks.[1] To the east they were balked by the Pennine Range and the Shorthorns; to the north the prospect was less encouraging, but across the I rish Channel they found a promising outlet.
Ireland was ripe for the importation of superior bovines. The seventeenth century had been a century of "plantations"—Elizabeth's, James's, and Cromwell's. Much of the land had become the property of the English and Scots. The cattle of the country were of the same race as the small black Celtic cattle of Scotland and Wales, excepting, perhaps, in the south, where there may have been some small red cattle of North Devon type. Knowing the superiority of the cattle in England, many owners of land in Ireland sent there for cattle, and Lancashire and the western counties being most convenient for transit, as well, perhaps, as possessing the most superior cattle, were naturally resorted to. Eventually, as in the south of England, the Longhorn overran the most desirable parts of the country, and, at the time of Arthur Young's visit (1776-78) they and their cousins that had been graded up from the original black Celtic stock, and were now for the most part pure Longhorns, were in possession of the great central plain of Ireland, from one side of the country to the other, and of the fertile valleys and smaller plains running into it from both sides: the native cattle having been driven into the higher and less fertile regions to the north and to the south. At the same time considerable numbers of Longhorn cattle were carried elsewhere for colonising purposes. They were carried into Wales, the north of England, Scotland, and even to the Orkney Islands, but in these at that time somewhat backward countries, although they left signs of their visits, they made no great progress.
Hemmed in on the south by the Longhorns, on the west by the Pennine Chain and the Longhorns, and on the north by the backward state of the country, the east country Dutch cattle—the Shorthorns—were prevented for a time from extending their territory. The state of the north in the beginning of the eighteenth century may be imagined from the fact that while there were many considerable provincial towns in the south, and two of them, Norwich and Bristol, had about 30,000 inhabitants, there were really only four important towns in the north, viz. York with 10,000 inhabitants, Edinburgh with 30,000, Glasgow with 12,000, and Aberdeen with about 10,000. In those days a traveller might have travelled from London to York by coach, but beyond that he must have used pack-horses. The means of communication may have been good enough even for cattle of an improved breed, but the deplorable lack of winter food, especially in Scotland, was sufficient to prevent the Shorthorns spreading northwards quickly. Brigadier Mackintosh, a partaker in several rebellions and in many continental fights, while lying prisoner in Edinburgh Castle somewhere between 17 19 and 1729, thus describes how cattle were treated in Scotland:[2] "Nor can it be otherwise in the supine ignorance our Farmers are in, in the Method of choosing the right ages of putting up to fatten their Beasts and the want of every Provender fit to raise them: For they generally never stall any, but such Oxen as are no longer fit for the Yoke; or Cows, but such as, the Goodwoman tells her Husband, are no longer good to breed or milk: These, for eight or ten weeks, they blow up with scalded Barley, Chaff, and Malt-grains; that lean Rickle of Bones, is all the Butchers can pick up in Fife and Lothian, from Candlemas to June, even for our Metropolis. No other town is so well served. … I am informed, that some Gentlemen of Edinburgh, send to Berwick for their Beef and Veal. … Methinks, it should raise the indignation, as well as Shame of all Scotsmen, as I cannot conceal it does very much mine, that our chief Town cannot, for 4 or 5 Months of the Year, furnish Meat for a Gentleman's Table, but we must send to England. … Let us inclose[3] and furnish Stock of proper Maintenance for our Cattle for Winter and Spring, of Turneps, Fog and Hay, my Life, we shall raise our Beasts as high and fat proportionable to their Bone, as their Valley of Essam, let be their Berwick. … And I believe now, a great many English Gentlemen, who, in our Highlands, in the Month of May, see the Leanness the Country Beasts are then in, to the Degree they must be helped up when they fall or ly down of themselves, &c., &c."
But as the desire for agricultural improvement, which had begun in the south and which had acquired such vigour after Tull and Townshend discovered how to grow turnips about 1730, crept northwards, an outlet was made for the Shorthorns which they quickly made use of. Before the end of the eighteenth century they and their crosses were masters of the east of England and the eastern lowlands of Scotland from Lincolnshire to the Forth. And not only so, but some of them had already penetrated into Fifeshire to improve the cattle of that country, while from others which had found their way westwards across the mountains the modern Ayrshires were ere long to emerge. In the last quarter of the eighteenth century the great struggle for the possession of Ireland, in which the Longhorns were eventually to be driven from the field, was begun by the importation of Shorthorns from Holderness and Teeswater. Arthur Young (1776-78) reports having seen at least two lots of those first imported to Ireland at Armagh in the north and Doneraile in the south.
The West Country Dutch Shorthorn Cattle—the Herefords—had to wait many years till they found an outlet for their surplus population. They extended their original territory westwards; towards the end of the eighteenth century they made a descent upon Ireland, in the midland counties of which they have retained their hold to the present day; but their great opportunity came in the nineteenth century when hardy grazing cattle were wanted for the ranches of North and South America and some British Colonies.