Bristol, Southampton, and other major towns. These trains also carried wool, cloth, and any other manufactured goods that could be lashed to the ponies. While on the road, they stopped to talk with chapmen, men who sold penny books, utensils and patent medicines. The Baron bought a chapbook from one of these men for Hugh, who read while he was riding his own pony, and saw that it contained some news, anecdotes, biblical sayings, and folk wisdom. They also met with “riders,” men employed by city merchants to visit tradesmen in the towns with samples of cloth patterns and other household goods, and who took orders and filled them. The idea so fascinated Garnet Kenrick that he on several occasions bought the riders lunch in nearby taverns in trade for information on the workings of this new profession.
Danvers was five thousand acres. The Earl took no active role in managing them, other than approving his brother’s decisions. Much of Danvers was tilled or occupied by leaseholders, or tenant farmers, who paid rent to the Earl in money or in kind, or a portion of their harvest or produce. In exchange for farming for the likes of the Earl and the Baron, the tenants were allowed small private plots on which they grew or pastured what they pleased. But largely they acted on the Baron’s instructions.
Garnet Kenrick owned a much-thumbed copy of Jethro Tull’s
Horse-Hoeing Husbandry
, a classic in the science of agriculture, and kept a journal thick with his own observations and endeavors. And he had long ago entered into a correspondence with a Norfolk gentleman farmer, trading ideas about how to mix soils, about paring and burning fields, the best way to abolish rack-rents, the efficacy of various kinds of manure and dung, the novelty of burying clay trunks to drain marshy soil, and improving the stock of Dorset red cattle. At one point on their venture, the Baron stopped atop a hill and waved to the panorama below them, which was a third of the Kenricks’ holdings, and lectured Hugh on the breeds of sheep and cattle they could see dotting the rolling meadows. “Ryelands and Herefords yield superb wool for fine broadcloth, Hugh. Sussex and Southdowns have a finesoft curly wool, you see, highly prized by the factors in London. Other sheep I have introduced from the north are long-wooled Cheviots, Northumberland Muggs, and the Lancashire Silverdales, which, incidentally, account for over one-third of the country’s annual clipping.” His father stopped speaking, and took out his journal to make some notes.
Hugh looked from the panorama to his father. “It is a grand enterprise! You are a great man, Pater.”
His father leaned on the pommel of his saddle to study his son. There was a set, subdued smile on his face, a smile that wished it could be more. “Thank you, Hugh. However, you mustn’t forget that all this is your uncle’s.”
Hugh’s face turned red. He had forgotten the Earl, and he wished he had no reason to remember him. “No, Pater. I shan’t forget it.”
When they came to farms, the Baron said, “Turnips, you see, do not deduct from the soil. They add healthiness to it. My plan is to have all the tenants let crop fields lie fallow and sown with turnips, and instead of feeding the cattle by letting them wander over a fallow field, require the tenants to harvest turnips and feed their stock in pens and stables. This will prevent damage by stock to the fields. It will also simplify the care of stock in winter. I plan to eliminate untreated dung from the fields—and with it flies, which are thought by some to cause certain ailments.”
His father, Hugh learned, encouraged the cultivation of clover, sainfoin, and lucerne grasses for fair-weather cattle grazing, and mandated the practice of sowing seed by hoe and drill. The Danvers sheep population was evenly divided among the Cheviots, Muggs, and Silverdales. In the town, the Baron had established a “factory” which used a fly-shuttle and hosiery
Danvers was five thousand acres. The Earl took no active role in managing them, other than approving his brother’s decisions. Much of Danvers was tilled or occupied by leaseholders, or tenant farmers, who paid rent to the Earl in money or in kind, or a portion of their harvest or produce. In exchange for farming for the likes of the Earl and the Baron, the tenants were allowed small private plots on which they grew or pastured what they pleased. But largely they acted on the Baron’s instructions.
Garnet Kenrick owned a much-thumbed copy of Jethro Tull’s
Horse-Hoeing Husbandry
, a classic in the science of agriculture, and kept a journal thick with his own observations and endeavors. And he had long ago entered into a correspondence with a Norfolk gentleman farmer, trading ideas about how to mix soils, about paring and burning fields, the best way to abolish rack-rents, the efficacy of various kinds of manure and dung, the novelty of burying clay trunks to drain marshy soil, and improving the stock of Dorset red cattle. At one point on their venture, the Baron stopped atop a hill and waved to the panorama below them, which was a third of the Kenricks’ holdings, and lectured Hugh on the breeds of sheep and cattle they could see dotting the rolling meadows. “Ryelands and Herefords yield superb wool for fine broadcloth, Hugh. Sussex and Southdowns have a finesoft curly wool, you see, highly prized by the factors in London. Other sheep I have introduced from the north are long-wooled Cheviots, Northumberland Muggs, and the Lancashire Silverdales, which, incidentally, account for over one-third of the country’s annual clipping.” His father stopped speaking, and took out his journal to make some notes.
Hugh looked from the panorama to his father. “It is a grand enterprise! You are a great man, Pater.”
His father leaned on the pommel of his saddle to study his son. There was a set, subdued smile on his face, a smile that wished it could be more. “Thank you, Hugh. However, you mustn’t forget that all this is your uncle’s.”
Hugh’s face turned red. He had forgotten the Earl, and he wished he had no reason to remember him. “No, Pater. I shan’t forget it.”
When they came to farms, the Baron said, “Turnips, you see, do not deduct from the soil. They add healthiness to it. My plan is to have all the tenants let crop fields lie fallow and sown with turnips, and instead of feeding the cattle by letting them wander over a fallow field, require the tenants to harvest turnips and feed their stock in pens and stables. This will prevent damage by stock to the fields. It will also simplify the care of stock in winter. I plan to eliminate untreated dung from the fields—and with it flies, which are thought by some to cause certain ailments.”
His father, Hugh learned, encouraged the cultivation of clover, sainfoin, and lucerne grasses for fair-weather cattle grazing, and mandated the practice of sowing seed by hoe and drill. The Danvers sheep population was evenly divided among the Cheviots, Muggs, and Silverdales. In the town, the Baron had established a “factory” which used a fly-shuttle and hosiery
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