These knowledges, he then states, should consist in an intimacy with domestic physic, with cookery, with the distillation of waters, with the making and preserving of wines, with the making and dying of cloth, with the conduct of dairies, and with malting, brewing, and baking; for all which he gives very ample directions. Markham, indeed, seems to have taken the greater part of this picture from his predecessor Tusser, in whose poems on husbandry may be found, among many others, the following excellent precepts for the conduct of the good house-wife:—
"In Marche and in Aprill from morning to night:
in sowing and setting good huswives delight.
To have in their garden or some other plot:
to trim up their house and to furnish their pot.
Have millons at Mihelmas, parsneps in lent:
in June, buttred beanes, saveth fish to be spent.
With those and good pottage inough having than:
thou winnest the heart of thy laboring man.
From Aprill begin til saint Andrew be past: