"What be God's commandments."
By all which it may be seen that Sir Anthony took as broad a view of husbandry as did Xenophon.
Among other advices to the "young gentyleman that entendeth to thryve" he counsels him to rise betime in the morning, and if "he fynde any horses, mares, swyne, shepe, beastes in his pastures that be not his own; or fynde a gap in his hedge, or any water standynge in his pasture uppon his grasse, whereby he may take double herte, bothe losse of his grasse, & rotting of his shepe, & calves; or if he fyndeth or seeth anything that is amisse, & wold be amended, let him take out his tables & wryte the defautes; & when he commeth home to dinner, supper, or at nyght, then let him call his bayley, & soo shewe him the defautes. For this," says he, "used I to doo x or xi yeres or more; & yf he cannot wryte, lette him nycke the defautes uppon a stycke."
Sir Anthony is gracious to the wife, but he is not tender; and it may be encouraging to country-housewives nowadays to see what service was expected of their mothers in the days of Henry VIII.
"It is a wives occupacion to winow al maner of cornes, to make malte, wash & wring, to make hey, to shere corne, & in time of neede to helpe her husbande to fyll the mucke wayne or donge carte, dryve the plough, to lode hay corne & such other. Also to go or ride to the market to sell butter, chese, mylke, egges, chekens, kapons, hennes, pygges, gees & al maner of corne. And also to bye al maner of necessary thinges belonging to a household, & to make a true rekening & accompt to her husband what she hath receyved & what she hathe payed. And yf the husband go to market to bye or sell as they ofte do, he then to shew his wife in lyke maner. For if one of them should use to disceive the other, he disceyveth himselfe, & he is not lyke to thryve, & therfore they must be true ether to other."
I come next to Master Tusser,—poet, farmer, chorister, vagabond, happily dead at last, and with a tomb whereon some wag wrote this:—
"Tusser, they tell me, when thou wert alive,
Thou teaching thrift, thyself could never thrive;
So, like the whetstone, many men are wont
To sharpen others when themselves are blunt."
I cannot help considering poor Tusser's example one of warning to all poetically inclined farmers.
He was born at a little village in the County of Essex. Having a good voice, he came early in life to be installed as singer at Wallingford College; and showing here a great proficiency, he was shortly after impressed for the choir of St. Paul's Cathedral. Afterward he was for some time at Eton, where he had the ill-luck to receive some fifty-four stripes for his shortcomings in Latin; thence he goes to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he lives "in clover." It appears that he had some connections at Court, through whose influence he was induced to go up to London, where he remained some ten years,—possibly as singer,—but finally left in great disgust at the vices of the town, and commenced as farmer in Suffolk,—