The English Husbandman (The Second Booke)

In Short

Gervase Markham’s 1614 treatise serves as a complete manual for managing an early modern English estate. Covering the second book of his agricultural project, it details the seasonal reading of weather signs, garden design, livestock care, woodland preservation, and veterinary medicine. Markham details practical techniques for sowing herbs, grafting flowers, plashing hedges, and curing equine ailments. Lasting through its comprehensive scope and vivid prose, the work preserves the working knowledge of Renaissance husbandry. It bridges traditional folk wisdom and methodical land management, presenting a holistic vision of self-sufficient rural life rooted in labor, patience, and observation.

The Story

The work unfolds as a progressive journey through the agrarian calendar and the systematic physical structure of a self-sustaining estate, beginning with the sky itself. Markham opens by teaching the husbandman how to read the natural world to anticipate weather patterns and protect crops. Rain, frost, wind, and tempests are predicted through close observation of cloud shapes, the sun, animal behaviors—such as pigs playing or water-fowls bathing—and physical signs like sweating marble or sparkling oil.

From the open skies, the narrative moves into the enclosed perimeter of the kitchen garden. Markham outlines the selection and preparation of soils, advising how to enrich barren ground and mellow rich earth using autumn trenching, manure, and spring frost. He prescribes precise methods for planting pot-herbs, salad roots, and medicinal plants like rue, angelica, and blessed thistle, detailing specific soil depths and lunar phases for sowing. The garden’s narrative expands into aesthetics and delight, showing how to cultivate and graft exotic flowers like velvet flowers, Indian eyes, and multi-colored gilliflowers bound with silk and red wax.

The author then addresses the persistent threats that endanger these agricultural efforts. He outlines strategic defenses against natural hazards, prescribing bay trees to ward off lightning, ash-and-urine mixtures for caterpillars, and stag fat to repel venomous toads and frogs.

The focus then widens from the garden to the broader estate landscape: timber, woodland, and pasture. Markham outlines the establishment of high woods and underwood, instructing readers to sow mixed seeds like acorns, ash-keys, and chestnuts in deep furrows. He details how to select specialized timber for mill wheels, support beams, or water piles based on grain patterns. To protect these investments, he details the art of plashing hedges—half-cutting living branches and weaving them into impenetrable living boundaries—and curing mossy or waterlogged pastures through drainage and livestock treading.

Finally, the treatise culminates in the management and health of the estate's working animals. Markham explains how to harvest and season hay to feed laboring oxen or fatten livestock for market. He concludes with a rigorous veterinary regimen, offering twelve universal remedies for broken bones, hooves, and internal sicknesses. The arc finishes with a firm reminder that diligence and study are the husbandman’s ultimate duty to ensure prosperity.

How It Unfolds

Reading the sky The husbandman begins by reading environmental signs, predicting rain, wind, and disease through the movements of birds, the habits of beasts, and the behavior of inanimate objects like salt, chimney soot, and sweating stone.

Ordering the garden The work turns to the earth, detailing how to dig, trench, and manure kitchen garden beds in autumn so winter frosts can mellow the soil before spring planting.

Sowing herbs and flowers Markham outlines the specific soil, moisture, and lunar conditions required for pot-herbs and decorative flowers, explaining techniques for grafting gilliflowers to produce double blooms of varied colors.

Defending the crops The narrative establishes methods to protect plants from pests and natural threats, using bay trees against lightning, smothering smoke against caterpillars, and stag fat to drive away poisonous toads.

Planting and harvesting wood The scope expands to forestry, offering instructions for plowing deep furrows to sow mixed tree seeds and selecting twisted, straight, or knotty timber for construction and waterworks.

Ordering hedges and pastures Markham explains the technical art of plashing quickset hedges to create living walls, along with methods for draining marshy ground and using livestock to tread out mossy pastures.

Tending livestock and cures The treatise concludes with the management of hay for fattening or laboring stock, followed by practical veterinary treatments for broken bones, foundered hooves, and internal animal diseases.

The People

Rather than characters in a narrative, the figures in this non-fiction text consist of the rural roles and living elements that define the estate:

• The Husbandman: The central figure of the book, who desires complete estate self-sufficiency, maximum productivity, and protection against agricultural loss. Stood in his way are unpredictable weather, pestilence, poor soils, and his own potential sloth; he transforms from a passive observer into an active, disciplined steward of the land.
• The Gardiner: The specialist responsible for the kitchen garden and flower beds, whose goal is the successful cultivation of delicate herbs, roots, and foreign blooms. He struggles against weeds, severe frosts, and destructive poultry, succeeding through careful trenching, exact sowing depths, and delicate grafting arts.
• The Grazier: The livestock manager focused on breeding, working, and fattening cattle and horses for labor or market. He faces animal diseases, poor winter fodder, and spoiled pastures, overcoming these through targeted hay selection, field rotation, and veterinary remedies.
• The Living Land and Beasts: The crops, timber trees, soil types, and livestock act as dynamic forces that resist neglect but yield rich rewards when managed with knowledge and diligence.

In Its Own Voice

"If you shall perceiue your Oxen to eate more gréedly, and with a more earnest stomacke then their vsuall custome: if your Kine gaze and looke much vpward: if Swine shall play and gambole vp and downe: if Horses being at grasse shall scope, course, and chase one another: or if the Cat shall wash behinde her eare, all are certaine signes of raine to follow."

"This Timber which is thus twound or wrythen, will by no meanes ryue or cleaue asunder, and therefore is estéemed the best to support and beare burthen, and the heart thereof will endure and last the longest."

"And you shall vnderstand that the grafting of Gylliflowers maketh them excéeding great, double, and most orient of colour."

What It's Really About

Underneath its practical instructions, the book argues that nature operates according to accessible rules that yield to human industry and structured observation. Markham presents land management as a moral and practical duty, holding that no soil is inherently useless if matched with the correct crop or treatment. The text explores the harmony between human artifice and natural forces, showing how deliberate intervention—such as plashing a hedge or grafting a flower—improves upon raw nature. It addresses fundamental questions of stewardship: how to preserve health and fertility across generations, how to mitigate environmental risk, and how a landholder can achieve independence through comprehensive knowledge of his environment.

Why Read It Today

The English Husbandman appeals to modern readers interested in social history, historical gardening, traditional crafts, and early modern prose. Reading it feels like stepping directly into the seventeenth-century English countryside, guided by a mentor who observes every detail of the natural world—from the croak of a raven to the grain of a tree's bark. The writing possesses a grounded cadence that turns agricultural routine into an engaging study of early modern life.

The primary difficulty for contemporary readers lies in the Jacobean typography and erratic period spelling, such as the interchange of 'u' and 'v' or 'i' and 'j', alongside archaic vocabulary and folk remedies based on older theories of plant humors. Readers must also navigate long, rolling sentences loaded with early modern technical terminology. Yet for those who persevere, the text offers an authentic window into how historic landscapes were actually built, planted, and maintained. It leaves you with a deep appreciation for the intense observational skills and manual labor that sustained historic rural life.