[218] Harrison, Description of Britain, p. 110.

[219] Usually grown in gardens, until the middle of the seventeenth century.  Tusser also mentions them.

[220] Description of Britain, ii. 324 (Furnivall ed.).

[221] Harrison, Description of Britain, ii. 329.

[222] State of the Poor, i. 48-9.  Blomefield’s Norfolk, iv. 569, i. 51, i. 649.  Dugdale, Warwickshire, p. 557.

[223] Description of Britain, iii. 5.

[224] Description of Britain (ed.  Furnivall), ii. 243.

[225] Froude, History of England, v.  III.

[226] ’A compendious or brief examination of certain ordinary complaints’, quoted by Eden, State of the Poor, 1. 119.

[227a] Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (New Series), xix. 103.

[227b] Ibid. xi. 74 sq.

[228] Nasse, Agricultural Community of the Middle Ages, p. 9. Archaeologia, xxxiii. 270.

[229] In the still surviving open fields at Laxton, mentioned above, there are certain unploughed portions called ‘sicks’, or grassy patches, never cultivated.—­Slater, op. cit. p. 9.

[230] Archaeologia, xlvi. 374.

[231] Description of Britain, ii. 150.

[232] In the reign of Mary, ’the plain poor people did make very much of acorns.’  Cullum, Hawsted, p. 181.

[233] Eden, State of the Poor, i. 116.

[234] Itinerary, iii. 140.

[235] Rutland Magazine, i. 64.

[236] Victoria County History:  Lincolnshire, ii. 331.

[237] See Records of Cust Family, i. 56.

CHAPTER X

1540-1600

LIVE STOCK.—­FLAX.—­SAFFRON.—­THE POTATO.  THE ASSESSMENT OF WAGES

The cattle and sheep of this period have generally been described as poor animals, and no doubt they would seem small to us.  To Jacob Rathgib, a traveller, writing in 1592, they seemed worthy of praise:  ’England has beautiful oxen and cows, with very large horns, low and heavy and for the most part black; there is abundance of sheep and wethers, which graze by themselves winter and summer without shepherds.’  The heaviest wethers, according to him, weighed 60 lb. and had at the most 6 lb. of wool, a much heavier fleece than is generally ascribed to them; others had 4 or 5 lb.  Horses were abundant, and, though low and small, were very fleet; the riding horses being geldings and generally excellent.  Immense numbers of swine were in the country, ‘larger than in any other.’  Six years later another traveller, Hentzner, noticed that the soil abounded with cattle, and the inhabitants were more inclined to feeding than ploughing.  He saw, too, a Berkshire harvest-home:  ’As we were returning to our inn (at Windsor)