The Day the Universe Changed - James Burke [82]
The company received the full £1.2 million in ten days, and Paterson became a director of the Bank. On 27 July 1694 the Bank of England charter was sealed at Powis House in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London. The Bank began lending money to the Crown immediately and the National Debt instantly rose sharply.
Two years later the Board of Trade was set up to promote the interests of merchants and industry. By this time there was a thriving financial market in the City of London, centred on the new coffee houses, where information about shipping and stock was published. Cheques had been circulating since 1675. The rates of exchange were printed twice a week from 1697. The new, commercial approach was apparent in every transaction. The state was no longer primarily an ideological or religious institution but an economic power.
In the new, dynamic, entrepreneurial atmosphere, the principal aim in life was to make money, found a dynasty, and buy a landed position. ‘Without money,’ the novelist Smollett was to say, ‘there is no respect, honour or convenience to be acquired in life.’ Both the newly rich merchants and the great landlords who could now borrow against the value of their acres began to look for ways of taking advantage of the profits brought by land enclosure.
The most urgent need was to find a way to avoid farm animals having to be slaughtered in winter because they could not be fed. There was also need for improvement of all land including wild heath so that more and better crops could be produced. Some of the ideas that would make these developments possible came from Holland, where the Dutch had been reclaiming and improving land for centuries.
Perhaps the earliest improvement was, however, English in origin. It was a technique for producing more hay to feed animals by the use of water meadows. Originally, hay had come either from uplands or from wet bottom-lands. From about 1635 on, these lands were deliberately flooded by the damming of streams (flowing water was needed if the grass were not to rot). If the water carried sewage or dung, so much the better. The grass was kept covered throughout winter, protected from frosts and snow by the water. An inch of water was enough. By mid-March the grass was six inches high, the sheep were let into the meadow and by the end of April they had cropped the grass. It was then watered again. By June the hay was ready for mowing. The quality was high, and a floated meadow gave four times more hay than a dry one. Sometimes second and even third crops could be produced through rewatering. In September more grass would be ready for the cattle and the flood waters of November would cover the meadow once more. By the end of the seventeenth century this highly productive method was in general use throughout England.
Most of the new crops produced at the time were for winter feed. The first was probably the carrot, grown initially in East Anglia and left in the ground all winter to be pulled when needed for the horses. But the wonder crop of the seventeenth century was the turnip. This vegetable had been introduced from the Continent decades before - references to it first appeared in 1662 - but had hitherto only been grown in market gardens. The widespread use of turnips as fodder began in north Suffolk. As soon as the corn had been harvested the land would be ploughed and turnips sown. At intervals they would be hoed by hand. By autumn they were ready, either to be stored in sheds or left in the ground. If milking cows