With cattle, with conies and swine,
When thou hast bestowed thy cost
Look half of the same to be lost.
The flocks of the lords of the soil
Do yearly the winter corn wrong,
The same in a maner they spoil
With feeding so low and so long,
And therefore that champion field
Doth seldom good winter corn yield.
If it be urged that the two italicised lines are not necessarily to be read together, in view of the other topics touched on in the intermediate lines, the argument is not much affected, for Tusser shows no knowledge of any “champion” counties other than Leicestershire, Cambridgeshire, and Norfolk, and elsewhere in the poem he deals with the special evils afflicting the two former counties.