The middle of the seventeenth century was the Golden Age of the yeoman who owned and farmed his land; even at the end of the Stuart period, when their decline had already begun, Gregory King estimated their numbers at 160,000 families, or about one-seventh of the population. The class included all those between the man who owned freehold land worth 40s. a year and the wealthier yeoman who was hardly distinguishable from the small gentleman. Owning their own land they were a sturdy and independent class, and they 'took a jolly pride in voting as in fighting on the opposite side of the neighbouring squire'. 'The yeomanry', wrote Fuller, 'is an estate of people almost peculiar to England;' he 'wears russet clothes but makes golden payment, having tin in his buttons and silver in his pocket He seldom goes abroad, and his credit stretches farther than his travel.' The tenant farmers were nearly as numerous, King estimating them at 150,000 families; economically they were about on a level with the yeoman, their social standing, however, was considerably inferior. The greatest improvement of the seventeenth century, the introduction from Holland of turnips and clover, was over-estimated by its author, Sir Richard Weston; for he tells his sons that by sowing flax, turnips, and clover they might in five years improve 500 acres of poor land so as to bring in L7,000 a year.[317] To bring about this desirable consummation, he provides his sons with accounts as to the cost, one of which shows the cost of growing an acre of flax and the profit thereon, though this gentleman's estimates are clearly optimistic: DR. L s. d. Devonshiring, i.e. paring and burning 1 0 0 Lime 0 12 0 Ploughing and harrowing 0 6 0 3 bushels of seed 2 0 0 Weeding 0 1 0 Pulling and binding 0 10 0 Grassing the seed from the flax 0 6 0 Watering, drying, swinging, and beating 4 10 0 ---------- L9 5 0 ========== CR. L s. d. 900 lb. of flax 40 0 0 9 5 0 ----------- Balance profit L30 15 0 ===========