The seventeenth century was one of considerable progress in English agriculture. The decay of common-field farming was enabling individual enterprise to have its way. The population was rapidly growing; by 1688 the returns of the hearth tax prove that the northern counties were nearly as thickly populated as the southern, and prices during the first half were continually rising, though after that they remained almost stationary, since the effect of the influx of precious metals from the New World was exhausted. In the first half of the century John Smyth ascribes the advance of rents to the Castilian voyages.
