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Straw Bracken and the Wicklow Whale The Exploitation of Natural Resources in Straw, Bracken and the Wicklow Whale: The Exploitation of Natural Resources in England Since 1500 Donald Woodward Past and Present, No. 159. (May, 1998), pp. 43-76. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-2746%28199805%290%3A159%3C43%3ASBATWW%3E2...

Straw Bracken and the Wicklow Whale The Exploitation of Natural Resources in
Straw, Bracken and the Wicklow Whale: The Exploitation of Natural Resources in England Since 1500 Donald Woodward Past and Present, No. 159. (May, 1998), pp. 43-76. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-2746%28199805%290%3A159%3C43%3ASBATWW%3E2.0.CO%3B2-K Past and Present is currently published by Oxford University Press. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/journals/oup.html. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers, and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community take advantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. http://www.jstor.org Thu Jul 12 22:47:31 2007 STRAW, BRACKEN AND THE WICKLOW WHALE: THE EXPLOITATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES IN ENGLAND SINCE 1500* In January 1679 Sir William Petty, FRS, informed his friend Sir Robert Southwell, FRS, 'that a whale of great bigness (and con- sequently worth) was cast up in Wicklow about 17 miles from this place [Dublin]'. Immediately the local people 'began to break her up and divide her', but Petty believed that she would prove to be of little value partly because of 'the want of all manner of utensils to make oil of her'. He was, however, impressed by the whale's gills which consisted of 'about 200 small flakes of that substance or matter which we commonly call whale bone'. Many people 'took one or two a piece out of curiosity, being of no real value or use we know of'. Petty's final comment is probably unique in seventeenth-century literature; he had discovered a natural product which appeared to have no practical use.' In contrast, early modern society was characterized by the ability to find some purpose for virtually every natural material and agricultural by-product. The subject explored in this article is not entirely new. Other historians have written about the use of holly as a winter fodder for livestock, especially in the northern uplands, the exploitation of sedge in the Cambridgeshire fens and, on a broader canvas, the use of England's shrinking woodland^.^ The collection of wild * I am extremely grateful to Chris Smout for reading and commenting on an earlier draft of this article. I have also benefited from the comments of my colleagues at Hull. An earlier version was presented as the inaugural Ken Connell Lecture at the conference of the Irish Economic History Society held at Dublin in September 1996. The Petty-Southz~ell Correspondence, 1676-1687, ed. Marquis of Lansdowne (New York, 1967), 64-6. This was probably a rorqual whale, the baleen of which is relatively thin and brittle and of little use for making whip handles and such: Arthur Credland, Curator, Hull Docks Museum, ex in/. Great disappointment also lies behind the final comment. For Petty and the rest of the Hartlib circle, the utility of the natural world was something to be elevated and built upon: see Charles Webster, The Great Instauration: Sctence, Medicine and Reform, 1626-1660 (London, 1975), 324-483. M. Spray, 'Holly as a Fodder in England', Agric. Hist. Rev., xxix (1981); T . A. Rowell, 'Sedge in Cambridgeshire: Its Use and Production since the Seventeenth Century', Agric. Hist. Rev., xxxiv (1986); 0.Rackham, Ancient Woodland: Its History, Vegetatton and Uses in England (London, 1980), passzm; also his The History of the Countryside (London, 1990), 62 ff. 44 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 159 foods and herbs from hedgerows, commons and wastes has been the central theme of recent work by Richard Mabey; and Keith Thomas succinctly discussed the consumption of such items in Man and the Natural World. He also touched on a range of plants used for other practical purposes, including reeds for thatching and rushes for lights. Others - such as the use of thistledown in pillows and cushions; of burdock leaves to carry butter to market; and of the abrasive horse-tail plant to scour pans -were probably of more limited value, although they were all recommended by at least one contemporary herbalist or b~ t an i s t . ~ These and other themes will be explored in the article that follows, but not by studying the contemporary advice literature heavily used by others; rather, evidence will be drawn chiefly from eyewitness accounts: from autobiographies, diaries, farm and estate accounts, letters, probate inventories and travelogues. These sources intro- duce us to a world in which almost every natural material was put to some practical use. There appears to have been no limit to the ingenuity of our early modern forebears in their exploita- tion of natural resources and agricultural by-products, and the story is considerably richer and more varied than previously suspected. Paradoxically, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries wit- nessed both the high point of such practices and the build up of pressures which would ultimately lead to their abandonment. The drive to make more intensive use of all available resources came in part from the increase in population which led to a significant deterioration of the man:resources ratio following its dramatic improvement in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in the aftermath of the Black Death. The squeeze placed on living standards by the price revolution of the sixteenth and early seven- teenth centuries, especially for those in the lower reaches of the social order, also played its part in the intensified use of natural resources. This led to greater competition for access to materials and, in some instances, to the development of more careful com- mercial exploitation; a good example of this was the increasingly painstaking management of woodlands and other resources such as gorse and bracken. The intensified utilization of natural resources also had the advantage of creating extra income for the thousands drawn into the activity. 'Richard Mabey, Food for Free (London, 1975); also his Flora Britannica (London, 1996); Keith Thomas, Man and the ~Vatural World (1983; London, 1984), 72-3. 45 STRAW, BRACKEN AND THE WICKLOW WHALE The main subject matter of this article is the exploitation of materials which occurred naturally in the English countryside (such as bracken, gorse, moss or peat), together with various by-products of agriculture (such as feathers and straw). Straw was the by-product of grain production and feathers of white meat production. Large amounts of land and capital would not have been devoted to the production of feathers or straw alone; it was the production of grain and meat that made such secondary products available. In each case, naturally produced alternatives were available -although not always in the desired quantity - had these by-products not existed. The discussion that follows is arranged in six major sections. The first deals with the gathering of wild foods and herbs which were needed to supplement monotonous and sometimes barely adequate diets. This is followed by separate discussions of the materials used for fuel and shelter which were so essential for survival, especially in northern climes. The fourth section chron- icles the raw materials employed in the construction of household and farm furnishings. The penultimate discussion relates to the use of naturally occurring materials in industry to achieve a range of chemical reactions. Finally, a number of heterogeneous mat- erials and their uses are revealed, although it is recognized that the list is by no means complete. The conclusion explores the various forces which have led to a massive reduction in the level of natural resource exploitation by the end of the twentieth century. They include: population growth and urbanization; rising levels of personal wealth; changing attitudes to traditional usages and use rights; the development of man-made substitutes; and improvements in transportation. The consumption of wild foods and herbs needs less emphasis than the utilization of many other natural resources, since it is increasingly recognized that such practices were widespread in pre-modern times. Recent work by Richard Mabey - his Food for Free of 1972 and his magnificent Flora Britannica published in the autumn of 1996 - has opened up a world to delight the most discerning of palates. The enticing fare includes huge quant- ities of edible fungi and roots, green vegetables, salad herbs and 46 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 159 seaweed, not to mention berries and other fruit^.^ Such studies echo the rising tide of works of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries which detailed the availability of wild foods and herbs: Thomas Tusser listed large numbers of 'seeds and herbs for the kitchen', 'herbs and roots for salads and sauce', and other such foods; William Langham in his Garden of Health of 1597 extolled the virtues of all herbs and plants which 'can be gotten without any cost or labour, the most of them being such as grow in most places and are common among us'; and, in the seventeenth century, the works of Nicholas Culpeper became indispensible for anyone interested in herbalism. As late as the early nineteenth century, William Cobbett declared that 'a variety of food is a great thing; and, surely, the fields and gardens and hedges furnish this variety!" Accounts, autobiographies and diaries provide many references to the use of herbs to cure the ills of both man and beast.'j Unfortunately, details relating to the consumption of wild foods are less common and, in general, we probably know rather less about the diets of early modern folk than those of their late medieval forebean7 One contemporary observer indicated that Mabey, Food for Free; also Flora Britannica. See also Thomas, Man and the lVatural World, 72-3; L. A. Clarkson, Death, Disease and Famine in Pre-Industrial England (London, 1975), 95-7; M. Evans, Herbal Plants: History and CTses (London, 1991). For Scotland, see A. J. S. Gibson and T. C. Smout, Prices, Food and Wages in Scotland, 1550-1780 (Cambridge, 1995), 241. Thomas Tusser, Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie, ed. W. Payne and S. J. Herrtage (Eng. Dialect Soc., xxi, London, 1878), 91-7; G. B. Harrison, A Second Elizabethan Journal (London, 1974), 190; Evans, Herbal Plants, 16-17; William Cobbett, Cottage Economy (Oxford, 1979), 140. The Lzfe of Adam Martindale, ed. R. Parkinson (Chetham Soc., 1st ser., iv, Manchester, 1845), 21; The Dzary of Richard Kay, 1716-51, ed. W. Brocklebank and F. Kenworthy (Chetham Soc., 3rd ser., xvi, Manchester, 1968), 28; The Autobiography of Henry A\'ewcome, ed. R. Parkinson, 2 vols. (Chetham Soc., 1st ser., xxvi-xxvii, Manchester, 1852), i, 43; Travels in Holland, the United Provinces, England, Scotland and Ireland, 1634-5, by Sir William Brereton, ed. E. Hawkins (Chetham Soc., 1st ser., i, Manchester, 1844), 129-32; John Aubrey, Three Prose Whrks, ed. J. Buchanan- Brown (Fontwell, 1972), 40 -1, 87-8, passim; The Farming and Memorandum Books of Henrj' Rest of Elmsu~ell, 1642, ed. Donald Woodward (Brit. Acad., Records of Econ. and Social Hist., new ser., viii, London, 1984), 200-1. 'C. Dyer, Standards oJLiving in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1989), 151-60. Joan Thirsk has recently conducted a series of seminars at the Folger Institute in Washington on early modern diet and is currently writing a book on the subject; for a taste of things to come, see Joan Thirsk, 'The Preparation of Food in the Kitchen, in Europe North of the Alps, 1500-1700', in S. Cavaciocchi (ed.), Alimenrazione e nutrizione secc. XI I I -XVII I (Istituton Internazionale di Storia Economica 'F. Datini', 2nd ser., xxviii, Prato, 1997). See also Peter King, 'Gleaners, Farmers and the Failure of Legal Sanctions in England, 1750-1850', Past and Present, no. 125 (Nov. 1989); B. Bushaway, By Kite: Custom, Ceremony and Community in England, 1700-1880 (London, 1982), 25-6, 138-48. 47 STRAW, BRACKEN AND THE WICKLOW WHALE the poor often ate inferior cereals and added peas to their bread, and there is indirect evidence derived from mice movements to suggest that the availability of a wide range of alternative food- stuffs -both wild and cultivated -helped to eke out the diets of many of the poorer sort during the late spring and early summer, especially after supplies acquired by gleaning had been exhausted.' Thirty years ago Peter Bowden discussed the seasonal movement of grain prices in sixteenth- and early seventeenth- century England; he expected to find prices rising from a low point immediately after harvest-home to a high point on the eve of the next harvest. In fact, he discovered that the price of wheat began to fall after late spring. 'The only feasible explanation of this', he wrote, 'must be that growing scarcity was more than offset by declining demand', itself a reflection of the extreme poverty of many who were 'living desperately from one meagre harvest to a n ~ t h e r ' . ~ His assumptions may have been correct, but it is also possible that the demand for grain was dampened down from spring onwards by the appearance of considerable alternat- ive supplies of food gathered both from the wild and from cottage gardens. Other foods were available for the taking in many parts of the country. Many country folk derived benefit from hunting for small mammals and taking fish from neighbourhood streams, although the dividing line between legal exploitation and poaching was often indistinct and liable to misinterpretation. Along the coast the eggs of seagulls were harvested from cliff tops; mussels and other sea-food were gathered from rocks along the shore; and everywhere wild birds were taken for the pot. According to George Owen, gulls provided 'very dainty meat', and Richard Carew gave a long list of edible wild birds that he considered best eaten when young. lo After a 'long and sharp frost, and great Farming and Memorandum Books of Henry Best, ed. Woodward, 109; Fernand Braudel, Civtlizatton and Capttalism, 3 vols. (London, 1985), i, 112-13, 134. Joan Thirsk (ed.), The Agrarian History of England and Wales, iv, 1500-1640 (Cambridge, 1967), 619-20. For a much more subtle analysis of the seasonal movement of grain prices, see Gibson and Smout, Prices, Food and Wages in Scotland, 133-4. 10 Thomas, Man and the lVatural World, 275; A Sixteenth-Century Suroey and Year's Account of the Estates of Hornby Castle, Lancashire, ed. W. H . Chippindall (Chetham Soc., new ser., cii, Manchester, 1939), 82; Elizabethan Pembrokeshire: The Evidence of George Owen, ed. B. E. Howells (Pembroke Rec. Soc., ii, Haverfordwest, 1973), 21-2; R. Carew, The Suroey of Cornwall (London, 1811), 108-9; Rackham, History of the Countryside, 37. For the consumption of small birds, see also Devon Household Accounts, 1627-59, ed. T. Gray (Devon and Cornwall Rec. Soc., new ser., xxxviii, Exeter, 1995), xxiii, xxxvi, 74, 188, 228. 48 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 159 abundance of snow' in January 1659, Ralph Josselin observed that 'this frost brought up wonderful plenty of wildfowl on the coast, sold cheap and plenty'.'' Extra supplies of animal feed -beyond the usually consumed hay, oats, peas, beans and straw -were also gathered from the wild and stored. Apart from the use of holly as a winter fodder, other accounts make it plain that stock were often fed the leaves of other varieties of trees.12 Gorse or furze was also used as a winter fodder since it kept 'green all the winter and the tops of them are good food for the cattle'. Similarly, ling or heather was regarded as excellent forage for sheep and, after hard winters, moss could give the animals a good head start.13 I1 If many early modern folk struggled to put sufficient food on the table and benefited from the ability to forage for provisions, they were also hard-pressed to obtain sufficient supplies of fuel. In fifteenth-century England there were 'few people and many acres'; as a result, fuel was cheap and in plentiful supply. Coal was used in some places, but other fuels, especially wood and peat, played a more significant part in warming the population and heating cooking pots. In the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- turies the situation changed dramatically; population growth put pressure on existing supplies of fuel and, despite the increasingly commercial exploitation of some woodland resources, created ideal market conditions for the rise of the coal industry.14 This was the message hammered home by J. U. Nef over sixty years ago and, after two generations of adverse criticism, it has been reasserted recently with telling force by John Hatcher. He estim- ates that by 1700 'coal was supplying over half of the nation's fuel needs, and that coal may have become the leading source of l 1 The Diary of Ralph Josselin, 1616-1683, ed. Alan Macfarlane (Brit. Acad., Records of Econ. and Social Hist., new ser., iii, London, 1976), 418. l2 Spray, 'Holly as a Fodder'; Mabey, Flora Britannica, 245-51; Rackham, Ancient Woodland, 174, 345; Rackham, History of the Countryside, 120; Joan Thirsk, The Rural Economy of England (London, 1984), 317. l3 Elizabethan Pembrokeshire, ed. Howells, 53; Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism, i, 120; A. Harris, 'Gorse in the East Riding of Yorkshire', Folk Lqe, xxx (1991-2), 21-4; Mabey, Flora Britannica, 230-3; Rackham, History oj' the Countryside, 321; E. Pontefract, Sz'aledale (London, 1944), 34. l4 John Hatcher, The History oj' the British Coal Industry, i, Before 1700 (Oxford, 1993), 1-55. 49 STRAW, BRACKEN AND THE WICKLOW WHALE supply well before 1650'. Without coal, the English economy would have faced a major fuel crisis.'' Despite coal's growing popularity, wood and other fuels con- tinued to be widely used in early modern society, either because coal was unavailable or too expensive, or because cheaper altern- atives were at hand.16 In many rural areas some fuels could be obtained simply for the cost of collection, a great advantage to the underemployed poor. And it seems highly likely, given the erosion of living standards for many towards the foot of the social ladder, that such alternatives were pursued in various areas with renewed vigour in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Coal may have been dominant by 1700, but for much of the period alternative fuels played a crucial role in the survival strategies of a significant portion of the population. Some knowledge of the distribution and use of different types of fuel can be derived from probate inventories, although their social selectivity poses problems - the very poor and their fuel supplies are not represented -and, unfortunately, many surviv- ing inventories do not refer to fuel at all. Out of more than 1,400 inventories consulted for twelve different places less than a quar- ter specifically refer to fuel. l7 Coal is mentioned in all the collec- 'j Ibid., 55, 550; J. U.
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