ABSTRACT
English society until the mid-eighteenth century was a predominantly rural and a peasant society. The difficulty of finding abundant documents will always remain, for the English peasant was not given to penmanship. But at least it has become possible to sketch the outlines of peasant husbandry, and in so doing, to reveal much diversity of farming practice. This chapter shows that every part of England will yield in time a remarkable harvest of local ingenuity and eccentricity, it would be dishonest to claim for Lincolnshire exceptional merit as a field of study. Lincolnshire has failed, even in these days of easy travel, to attract sufficient visitors to dispel the notion that it is a flat, dull county, entirely without scenic attractions. Its chalk wolds, its limestone edgethe ' Cotswolds' of Lincolnshireare forgotten, and it is known instead by its marshes and fens. Such country is not spectacular, and not everyone's taste in scenery.
