TURNIP TOWNSHEND
[To the Editor of Tim SPECTATOR] SIR,—In his article on " Turnip Townshend " in your last week's issue, Mr. D. H. Robinson restates Townshend's claim to fame as an agricultural pioneer. It is, however, inaccurate to say that he was the " first man to grow turnips upon a field scale in England." What later became known as the Norfolk four-course shift, had long been practised by the Hertfordshire farmers, who, according to William Ellis (Chiltern and Vale Farming, 1745), had cultivated turnips in open fields since about 1680. By the beginning of the eighteenth century and long before Townshend forsook politics for agriculture, turnip cultivation, as the basis of winter feeding of cattle and the cleaning of arable land, was spreading in the eastern counties. Writing at least four years before Townshend set about the improvement of his Norfolk estate, John Lawrence (New System of Agriculture, 1726), maintained that " There is nothing which of late Years hath turned to greater Profit to the Farmer, than sowing of Turneps in his Fields, which not only give quicker Feed to Cattle than Grass, but also enrich the Land and dispose it for good Crops of Corn afterwards." Far from being regarded as an " inferior plant " as Mr. Robinson asserts, Lawrence states that though " the Turnep hath been formerly thought to be a Root only fit for the Garden and Kitchen Use . . . the industrious Farmer finds it now to be one of his chief Treasures, as (if rightly managed) it brings him in the greatest Profit." If we may believe Lawrence, turnips were being winter-fed to cattle in Suffolk some time before Townshend took to farming seriously.
Townshend popularised rather than introduced turnip culti- vation. Taking in hand his hitherto neglected acres, he was quick to see the economic advantages to be derived from turnip cultivation. By the weight of an illustrious name and the remarkable results he achieved on his Raynham estate, Town-. shend was able to advertise the turnip with more success than Many an " industrious Farmer " who had shown him the way. Toivnshend's fame, acknowledged by Pope and made permanent by Arthur Young, rests on the myth coined by the latter, that only the gentry could afford to be agricultural pioneers.
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