AGRICULTURE Agriculture England’s leading Industry—Has provided the most vigorous stock of English race—Division into three classes:— (A) _Farmers._ Portraits of Farmers’ Wives—Fitzherbert’s “Prologue for the Wyves Occupacyon.” Size of household—The Wife who “doth not take the pains and charge upon her.” Financial aptitude—Market—Occupation of gentlewomen with Dairy and Poultry—Expectation of the wife’s ability to work and do service. (B) _Husbandmen._ Economy of their Small Holding—The more they worked for wages the greater their poverty—Strenuous but healthy life of the women—Extent to which they worked for wages—Character of work—Best’s account of Yorkshire Farms—other descriptions. Spinning—The wife’s industry no less constant when not working for wages, but more profitable to her family, whom she clothed and fed by domestic industry. (C) _Wage-earners._ Maximum rates of wages fixed at Assizes represent generally those actually paid. Common labourers’ wage, winter and summer—Women’s wages seasonal—Not expected when married to work week in, week out. Cost of living—Cost of labourers’ diet—Pensions and Allowances—Poor Relief—Cost of clothes and rent—Joint wages of father and mother insufficient to rear three children—Recognised insolvency of Labourers’ Family—Disputes concerning labourers’ settlements. Farmers’ need for more labourers—Demoralisation—Demand for sureties by the Parish. Infant mortality—Life history of labourers’ wives—Explanation for magistrates’ action in fixing maximum wages below subsistence level—Proportion of wage-earning families. ALTHOUGH the woollen trade loomed very large upon the political horizon because it was a chief source of revenue to the Crown and because rapidly acquired wealth gave an influence to clothiers and wool merchants out of proportion to their numbers, agriculture was still England’s chief industry in the seventeenth century. The town population has had a tendency to wear out and must be recruited from rural districts. The village communities which still persisted at this period in England, provided a vigorous stock, from which the men whose initiative, energy and courage have made England famous during the last two centuries were largely descended. Not only were the farming families prolific in numbers but they maintained a high standard of mental and moral virtue. It must be supposed therefore that the conditions in which they lived were upon the whole favourable to the development of their women-folk, but investigation will show that this was not the case for all members alike of the agricultural community, who may be roughly divided into three classes: (a) Farmers. (b) Husbandmen. (c) Wage-earners. (a) _Farmers_ held sufficient land for the complete maintenance of the family. Their household often included hired servants and their methods on the larger farms were becoming capitalistic.