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.
本文档为【Straw Bracken and the Wicklow Whale The Exploitation of Natural Resources in】,请使用软件OFFICE或WPS软件打开。作品中的文字与图均可以修改和编辑,
图片更改请在作品中右键图片并更换,文字修改请直接点击文字进行修改,也可以新增和删除文档中的内容。
该文档来自用户分享,如有侵权行为请发邮件ishare@vip.sina.com联系网站客服,我们会及时删除。
[版权声明] 本站所有资料为用户分享产生,若发现您的权利被侵害,请联系客服邮件isharekefu@iask.cn,我们尽快处理。
本作品所展示的图片、画像、字体、音乐的版权可能需版权方额外授权,请谨慎使用。
网站提供的党政主题相关内容(国旗、国徽、党徽..)目的在于配合国家政策宣传,仅限个人学习分享使用,禁止用于任何广告和商用目的。