[331] Tooke, _History of Prices_ i. 44. Brandy was made in the eighteenth century from grapes grown in the Beaulieu vineyards in Hampshire, and a bottle of it long kept at the abbey.--_Hampshire Notes and Queries_, vi. 62. There are two vineyards to-day, of 2-3/4 and 4 acres respectively, on the estates of the Marquis of Bute in Glamorganshire; but a vintage is only obtained once in four or five years from them, and they are not profitable. [332] _Compleat Husbandman_, 1659, p, 42. [333] _Compleat Husbandman_, 1659, p. 57. [334] Ibid. p. 73. [335] In this apparently repeating Davenant's statement. See McCulloch, _Commercial Dictionary_, 1852, p. 271. [336] Thorold Rogers, _History of Agriculture and Prices_, v. 332. [337] Houghton, _Collections for Improvement of Husbandry_, i. 294. [338] Ibid., _Collections for Husbandry and Trade_ (ed. 1728), iv. 336. CHAPTER XIII THE EVILS OF COMMON FIELDS.--HOPS.--IMPLEMENTS.--MANURES.--GREGORY KING--CORN LAWS From what has been said in the preceding pages, it will be gathered that a vast amount of compassion has been wasted on the enclosure of commons, for it is abundantly evident from contemporary writers that there were a large number of people dragging out a miserable existence on them, by living on the produce of a cow or two, or some sheep and a few poultry, with what game they could sometimes catch, and refusing regular work. Dymock, Hartlib's contemporary, questions 'whether commons do not rather make poore by causing idlenesse than maintaine them;' and he also asks how it is that there are fewest poor where there are fewest commons. In the common fields, too, there was continual strife and contention caused by the infinite number of trespasses that they were subject to.[339] The absence of hedges, too, in these great open fields was bad for the crops, for there was nothing to mitigate drying and scorching winds, while in the open waste and meadows the live stock must have sadly needed shelter and shade, 'losing more flesh in one hot day than they gained in three cool days.' Worlidge, a Hampshire man, joins in the chorus of praise of enclosures, for they brought employment to the poor, and maintained treble 'the number of inhabitants' that the open fields did; and he gives further proof of the enclosure of land in the seventeenth century, when he mentions 'the great quantities of land that have within our memories lain open, and in common of little value, yet when enclosed have proved excellent good land.' Why then was this most obvious improvement not more generally effected? Because there was a great impediment to it in the numerous interests and diversity of titles and claims to almost every common field and piece of waste land in England, whereby one or more envious or ignorant persons could thwart the will of the majority.[340] Another hindrance, he says, was that many roads passed over the commons and wastes, which a statute was needed to stop.