Reign of King George ll (1727 to 1760) and King George lll (1760 to 1820)
Agriculture. Until around 1750, farmers were still using techniques that had barely changed for 200 years. They typically kept one third of their land fallow at any one time to recover, ploughed it with a large team of oxen, and broadcast the seed by hand from a large basket. This was all to change over the next 100 years as an agricultural technical revolution swept across England. A new Townshend crop rotation system, growing dissimilar crops sequentially, and alternating deep rooted crops like turnips with shallow rooted ones, increased yields by over 60%. A new plough-drill-harrow combination developed by Jethro Tull replaced the centuries-old broadcasting of seed by hand. Newly designed ploughs could be pulled with smaller teams of oxen or horses. The mechanical threshing machine was to follow. All these innovations greatly increased agricultural productivity in large farms, while also reducing some of the more arduous aspects of work for the farm labourer. In theory any saving of manpower was offset by growing national demand for agricultural produce to meet the expanding population in towns and cities as the industrial revolution and gathered pace. But the process was gradual and in the short term it meant more unemployment for farm labourers on larger farms. By1802 in Willingham there were two large farms of around 250 acres,15 of over 50 acres and many smallholdings. In total they employed 250 farm labourers out of a village population of 800.
Poverty. Wages in rural areas had not kept pace with those in the expanding cities and towns, and the result was widespread poverty. Willingham was no exception, where almost one third of the population were dependent on poor relief support. No fewer than 78 adults and 94 children were receiving permanent poor relief, and a further 77 were being supported on an occasional basis. Four charities in Willingham had come into existence from legacies over the preceding 300 years to provide poor relief. They were based on legacies by William Greaves (1505), William Smith (1615), Robert Osborne (1693), and Samuel Saywell (1709). All these charities still exist today, amalgamated within ‘Willingham Combined Charities’ for the benefit of the people of Willingham.
Alcohol consumption grew to become a national issue at this time too. Unemployment and destitution helped increase a need to escape, and gin became the ‘drink of the poor’. By using cheap low quality barley rejected by the breweries, gin became cheap to produce. Contemporary cartoons by Hogarth and others showed drunken men and women slumped in doorways in large cities. Villages were affected too, although beer consumption remained well ahead of gin in rural areas. Ten ale houses were licensed in Willingham between 1764 and 1828.
War and peace. England was at war with France for virtually all this period, and not always on the winning side, The American colonies were lost, although Canada was gained. Meanwhile the French Revolution had led to the rise of Napoleon, and although the Royal Navy won through at Trafalgar and the Army at Waterloo, defence costs were high. The peace which followed was coloured by a series of poor harvests, especially in 1816, ‘the year without a summer’.
However, there were good times too. Willingham had not had to live in fear of conscription by press gangs into the navy and army like some towns and villages elsewhere, and rural life continued season by season. Indeed Herbert Norris noted in his history of Willingham that there was ‘an extremely fine row of chestnut trees adjoining Berrycroft in this period which provided one of the best walks in the area and was much used by the young for climbing and the older for walking and talking’. He quotes a popular village verse about it:
How sweet is the summer air,
Which steals down the chestnut walk
When the children are playing there,
While lovers wander and talk.
Next: A Rector of Some notoriety