Walter Blith

Blith was baptised in Allesley, Warwickshire, as the fourth and youngest son of John Blith (died 1626), yeoman, a prosperous cereal and dairy farmer, and Ann, daughter of Barnaby Holbeche of Birchley Hall, Fillongley. Walter's elder brother Francis became a lawyer and married into the gentry. Blith and his wife Hannah, daughter of John Waker of Snitterfield, near Stratford upon Avon had three sons and four daughters. ==Career==

Blith farmed his land diligently and carefully. During the English Civil War he became a captain in the parliamentary army and also solicitor and sequestrator of royalist land in Warwickshire and Coventry, as well as a rent collector from lands of the bishop and dean and chapter of Worcester, and in 1649 and 1650 a surveyor of confiscated crown lands in Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire and Norfolk. He himself bought confiscated crown land at Potterspury, Northamptonshire and was described in the conveyance as a gentleman of Cotesbach, Leicestershire. ==Writings==

Blith's books on husbandry show notable good sense, based on the author's and others' farming experience. He presents his judgements and opinions carefully, and made textual changes in subsequent editions to describe new farming practices. His The English Improver, or, A New Survey of Husbandry was dedicated to both houses of Parliament and to the "ingenuous reader". A second edition appeared in the same year, and third, "much augmented" in 1652, with a second part containing "Six Newer Pieces of Improvement". This was dedicated to Cromwell, the council of state, nobility, gentry, soldiers, husbandmen, cottagers, labourers, and the meanest commoner. The new information concerned new crops such as woad, clover, sainfoin, lucerne, etc. Yet another edition appeared in 1653. Blith intended to write a further book on animal husbandry, but apparently did not complete it. His Parliamentarian sympathies prevented any of his work reappearing after the Restoration of 1660. The books were written "in our own natural country language and in our ordinary and usual home-spun terms". Blith's ideas brought some improvement in techniques, but the period of peace under the Commonwealth was short-lived, and general, substantial improvement had to wait for the Agricultural Revolution of the next century. ==Notes==