Highways and Byways in Sussex

by E. V. Lucas

Quot scelera gerit femina mente dolos.

Dixit Boordus;

which Mr. Lower translates:

Quoth Boord, with stars the skies abound,

With fish the flowing waters;

But far more numerous I have found

The tricks of Eve's fair daughters.

This Boord would be a relative of the famous Andrew, priest, doctor and satirist (1490-1549) who may indeed have been the author of the distich above. It is certainly in his vein.

Andrew Boord gave up his vows as a Carthusian on account of their "rugorosite," and became a doctor, travelling much on the Continent. Several books are known to be his, chief among them the Dyetary and Brevyary of Health. He wrote also an Itinerary of England and is credited by some with the Merrie Tales of the Mad Men of Gotham. Lower and Horsfield indeed hold that the Gotham intended was not the Nottinghamshire village but Gotham near Pevensey, where Boord had property. That he knew something of Sussex is shown by Boord's Boke of Knowledge, where he mentions the old story, then a new one, that no nightingale will sing in St. Leonard's Forest. It is the Boke of Knowledge that has for frontispiece the picture of a naked Englishman with a pair of shears in one hand and a piece of cloth over the other arm, saying:

I am an English man and naked I stand here,