seventies, the flood of American competition in corn-growing was
reducing values of our own produce; and as all manufactured goods
which the farmer required had largely increased in price, he did not
see his way to incur a higher labour bill.

Arch sent a messenger to me a few years later, to ask permission to
hold a meeting in Aldington in one of my meadows. I saw at once that
opposition would only stimulate antagonism, and consented. The meeting
was held, but only a few labourers attended, and no farmers, and
agitation, so far as we were concerned, died down. One or two of my
men were, I think, members of the Union, but having already obtained
the increased wages there was nothing more to be gained for themselves
by so continuing, and they soon dropped out of the list. Eventually
the organization collapsed. Arch was a labourer himself, and
exceedingly clever at "laying" hedges, or "pleaching," as it is still
called, and was called by Shakespeare in _Much Ado About Nothing_:

"Bid her steal into the pleached bower,
Where honeysuckles, ripen'd by the sun,
Forbid the sun to enter."

Pleaching is a method of reducing and renovating an overgrown hedge by
which all old and exhausted wood is cut out, leaving live vertical
stakes at intervals, and winding the young stuff in and out of them in
basket-making fashion, after notching it at the base to allow of
bending it down without breakage. Arch was a native of Warwickshire,
the home of this art; it takes a skilled man to ensure a good result,
but when well done an excellent hedge is produced after two or three
years' growth. The quickset or whitethorn (May) makes the strongest
and most impervious hedge, and it flourishes amazingly on the stiff