Jethro Tull (agriculturist)

Jethro Tull (baptised 30 March 1674 – 21 February 1741, New Style) was an English agriculturist from Berkshire who helped to bring about the British Agricultural Revolution of the 18th century. He perfected a horse-drawn seed drill in 1701 that economically sowed the seeds in neat rows, and later developed a horse-drawn hoe. Tull's methods were adopted by many landowners and helped to provide the basis for modern agriculture. Tull was born probably in Basildon, Berkshire, to Jethro Tull, Sr, and his wife Dorothy, née Buckeridge. He was baptised there on 30 March 1674. He grew up in Bradfield, Berkshire and matriculated at St John's College, Oxford, at the age of 17. He trained for the legal profession, but appears not to have taken a degree. He became a member of Staple Inn, and was called to the bar on 11 December 1693 by the benchers of Gray's Inn. Tull married Susanna Smith of Burton Dassett, Warwickshire. They settled on his father's farm at Howberry, near Crowmarsh Gifford, Oxfordshire, where they had one son and two daughters. Soon after his call to the bar, Tull became ill with a pulmonary disorder and travelled to Europe in search of a cure. He was for a considerable period at Montpellier in the south of France. During his tour, Tull carefully compared the agriculture of France and Italy with that of his own country, and omitted no occasion to observe and note everything which supported his own views and discoveries. On more than one occasion, he alluded in his work to the similarity of his own horse-hoe husbandry to the practice followed by the vine-dressers of the south of Europe in constantly hoeing or otherwise stirring their ground. Finding that they did not approve of dunging their vineyards, Tull readily adduced the fact in favour of his own favourite theory: that manuring soil is an unnecessary operation. Returning to England, in 1709 he took into his own hands the farm called Prosperous, at Shalbourne (then in Berkshire, now in Wiltshire). Here, resuming the agricultural efforts he had commenced earlier, he wrote his Horse-hoeing Husbandry (1731).