Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 553 pages of information about Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series).

Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 553 pages of information about Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series).
their houses from far, they are commonly so welcome till they depart as upon the first day of their coming; whereas in good towns and cities, as London, etc., men oftentimes complain of little room, and, in reward of a fat capon or plenty of beef and mutton largely bestowed upon them in the country, a cup of wine or beer with a napkin to wipe their lips and an “You are heartily welcome!” is thought to be a great entertainment; and therefore the old country clerks have framed this saying in that behalf, I mean upon the entertainment of townsmen and Londoners after the days of their abode, in this manner: 

    “Primus jucundus, tollerabilis estque secundus,
    Tertius est vanus, sed fetet quatriduanus.”

      [2] Neither “silent” nor “garrulous.”

The bread throughout the land is made of such grain as the soil yieldeth; nevertheless the gentility commonly provide themselves sufficiently of wheat for their own tables, whilst their household and poor neighbours in some shires are forced to content themselves with rye, or barley, yea, and in time of dearth, many with bread made either of beans, peas, of oats, or of altogether and some acorns among, of which scourge the poorest do soonest taste, sith they are least able to provide themselves of better.  I will not say that this extremity is oft so well to be seen in time of plenty as of dearth, but, if I should, I could easily bring my trial.  For, albeit that there be much more ground eared now almost in every place than hath been of late years, yet such a price of corn continueth in each town and market without any just cause (except it be that landlords do get licences to carry corn out of the land only to keep up the prices for their own private gains and ruin of the commonwealth), that the artificer and poor labouring man is not able to reach unto it, but is driven to content himself with horse corn—­I mean beans, peas, oats, tares, and lentils:  and therefore it is a true proverb, and never so well verified as now, that “Hunger setteth his first foot into the horse-manger."[3] If the world last awhile after this rate, wheat and rye will be no grain for poor men to feed on; and some caterpillars there are that can say so much already.

      [3] A famine at hand is first seen in the horse-manger, when
      the poor do fall to horse corn.—­H.

Of bread made of wheat we have sundry sorts daily brought to the table, whereof the first and most excellent is the manchet, which we commonly call white bread, in Latin primarius panis, whereof Budeus also speaketh, in his first book De asse; and our good workmen deliver commonly such proportion that of the flour of one bushel with another they make forty cast of manchet, of which every loaf weigheth eight ounces into the oven, and six ounces out, as I have been informed.  The second is the cheat or wheaten bread, so named because the colour thereof resembleth the grey or yellowish wheat, being clean

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Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.