CONTENTS.
| PAGE | |
| Introduction | [vii] |
| The Author’s Prologue | [1] |
| The Table (which see) | [3] |
| The Book of Husbandry | [9] |
| Notes | [127] |
| Glossarial Index | [149] |
INTRODUCTION.
One question of chief interest respecting the volume here printed is—who was the author? We know that his name was “Mayster Fitzherbarde” (see p. 125), and the question that has to be settled is simply this—may we identify him with Sir Anthony Fitzherbert, judge of the Common Pleas, the author of the Grand Abridgment of the Common Law, the New Natura Brevium, and other legal works?
The question has been frequently discussed, and, as far as I have been able to discover, the more usual verdict of the critics is in favour of the supposed identity; and certainly all the evidence tends very strongly in that direction, as will, I think, presently appear.
Indeed, when we come to investigate the grounds on which the objections to the usually received theory rest, they appear to be exceedingly trivial; nor have I been very successful in discovering the opposed arguments. Bohn’s edition of Lowndes’ Bibliographer’s Manual merely tells us that “the treatises on Husbandry and Surveying are by some attributed to the famous lawyer Sir Anthony Fitzherbert, by others to his brother John Fitzherbert.”
In the Catalogue of the Huth Library, we find this note: “The Rev. Joseph Hunter was the first person to point out that the author of this work [Fitzherbert’s Husbandry] and the book on Surveying was a different person from the judge of the same name.” It will be at once observed that this note is practically worthless, from the absence of the reference. After considerable search, I have been unable to discover where Hunter’s statement is to be found, so that the nature of his objections can only be guessed at.
In Walter Harte’s Essays on Husbandry (ii. 77) we read—“How Fitzherbert could be a practitioner of the art of agriculture for 40 years, as he himself says in 1534, is pretty extraordinary. I suppose it was his country amusement in the periodical recesses between the terms.” We are here presented with a definite objection, grounded, as is alleged, upon the author’s own words; and it is most probable that Harte is here stating the objection which has weighed most strongly with those who (like Hunter) have objected to the current opinion. The answer to the objection is, I think, not a little remarkable, viz. that the alleged statement is not the author’s at all. By turning to p. 125, it will be seen that it was Thomas Berthelet the printer who said that the author “had exercysed husbandry, with greate experyence, xl. years.” But the author’s own statement, on p. 124, is differently worded; and the difference is material. He says: “and, as touchynge the poyntes of husbandry, and of other artycles conteyned in this present boke, I wyll not saye that it is the beste waye and wyll serue beste in all places, but I saye it is the best way that euer I coude proue by experyence, the whiche haue ben an housholder this xl. yeres and more, and haue assaied many and dyuers wayes, and done my dyligence to proue by experyence which shuld be the beste waye.” The more we weigh these words, the more we see a divergence between them and the construction which might readily be put upon the words of Berthelet; a construction which, in all probability, Berthelet did not specially intend. Any reader who hastily glances at Berthelet’s statement would probably deduce from it that the author was a farmer merely, who had had forty years’ experience in farming. But this is not what we should deduce from the more careful statement of the author. We should rather notice these points.