ABSTRACT
Historians of rural society and agricultural change have found difficult to unravel how innovation was transmitted through rural communities which are often viewed as being cautious and conservative in their attitude to change. In 1811 Arthur Young printed a lecture on three eminent improving farmers of his day given to the Board of Agriculture as part of his endeavour to speed the diffusion of agricultural innovation. Farmers have left relatively few personal accounts of their enterprises, and when they have, have rarely projected themselves overtly as improvers'. Farmers often moved to take new farms, but usually only within a 15-mile radius. Farmers in inland Lincolnshire or in Kentish parishes accessible to Romney Marsh rented pasture on coastal marshes that could be 20 or 30 miles away. Carrington was as much a businessman as a farmer, yet he began life at a fairly low social status, and despite considerable success remained within the lower echelons of the middling sort.
