“Destruunt, ædificant, mutant quadrata rotundis,”
saith the poet. So that, if a man should well consider of all the odd crotchets in such a builder’s brain, he would think his head to have even enough of those affairs only, and therefore judge that he would not well be able to deal in any other. But such commonly are our work-masters that they have beside this vein aforementioned either great charge of merchandises, little less business in the commonwealth, or, finally, no small dealings otherwise incident unto them, whereby gain ariseth, and some trouble oft among withal. Which causeth me to wonder not a little how they can play the parts so well of so many sundry men, whereas divers other, of greater forecast in appearance, can seldom shift well or thrive in any one of them. But to our purpose.
We have many woods, forests, and parks, which cherish trees abundantly, although in the woodland countries there is almost no hedge that hath not some store of the greatest sort, beside infinite numbers of hedgerows, groves, and springs, that are maintained of purpose for the building and provision of such owners as do possess the same. Howbeit, as every soil doth not bear all kinds of wood, so there is not any wood, park, hedgerow, grove, or forest, that is not mixed with divers, as oak, ash, hazel, hawthorn, birch, beech, hardbeam, hull, sorb, quicken, asp, poplars, wild cherry, and such like, whereof oak hath always the pre-eminence, as most meet for building and the navy, whereunto it is reserved. This tree bringeth forth also a profitable kind of mast, whereby such as dwell near unto the aforesaid places do cherish and bring up innumerable herds of swine. In time of plenty of this mast, our red and fallow deer will not let to participate thereof with our hogs, more than our neat, yea, our common poultry also, if they may come unto them.[192] But, as this abundance doth prove very pernicious unto the first, so the eggs which these latter do bring forth (beside blackness in colour and bitterness of taste) have not seldom been found to breed divers diseases unto such persons as have eaten of the same. I might add in like sort the profit ensuing by the bark of this wood, whereof our tanners have great use in dressing leather, and which they buy yearly in May by the fadame, as I have oft seen; but it shall not need at this time to enter into any such discourse, only this I wish, that our sole and upper leathering may have their due time, and not be hasted on by extraordinary flights, as with ash, bark, etc. Whereby, as I grant that it seemeth outwardly to be very thick and well done, so if you respect the sadness thereof, it doth prove in the end to be very hollow, and not able to hold out water. Nevertheless we have good laws for the redress of this enormity, but it cometh to pass in these as in the execution of most penal statutes. For the gains to be got by the same being given to one or two hungry and unthrifty persons, they make a shew of great reformation at the first, and for a little while, till they find that following of suit in law against the offenders is somewhat too chargeable and tedious. This therefore perceived, they give over the law, and fall to the admission of gifts and rewards to wink at things past; and, when they have once gone over their ground with this kind of tillage, then do they tender licences, and offer large dispensations unto him that shall ask the same, thereby to do what he listeth in his trade for a yearly pension, whereby the briber now groweth to some certain revenues and the tanner to so great liberty that his leather is much worse than before. But is not this a mockery of our laws, and manifest illusion of the good subject whom they thus pill and poll? Of all oak growing in England the park oak is the softest, and far more spalt and brittle than the hedge oak. And of all in Essex, that growing in Bardfield Park is the finest for joiners’ craft; for oftentimes have I seen of their works made of that oak as fine and fair as most of the wainscot that is brought hither out of Denmark: for our wainscot is not made in England. Yet divers have essayed to deal without oaks to that end, but not with so good success as they have hoped, because the ab or juice will not so soon be removed and clean drawn out, which some attribute to want of time in the salt water. Nevertheless, in building, so well the hedge as the park oak go all one way, and never so much hath been spent in a hundred years before as is in ten years of our time; for every man almost is a builder, and he that hath bought any small parcel of ground, be it never so little, will not be quiet till he have pulled down the old house (if any were there standing) and set up a new after his own device. But whereunto will this curiosity come?
Of elm we have great store in every highway and elsewhere, yet have I not seen thereof any together in woods or forests but where they have been first planted and then suffered to spread at their own wills. Yet have I known great woods of beech and hazel in many places, especially in Berkshire, Oxfordshire, and Buckinghamshire, where they are greatly cherished, and converted to sundry uses by such as dwell about them. Of all the elms that ever I saw, those in the south side of Dovercourt, in Essex, near Harwich, are the most notable, for they grow (I mean) in crooked manner, that they are almost apt for nothing else but navy timber, great ordinance, and beetles; and such thereto is their natural quality that, being used in the said behalf, they continue longer, and more long than any the like trees in whatsoever parcel else of this land, without cuphar, shaking, or cleaving, as I find.
Ash cometh up everywhere of itself, and with every kind of wood. And as we have very great plenty, and no less use of these in our husbandry, so are we not without the plane, the yew, the sorb, the chestnut, the lime, the black cherry, and such like. And although we enjoy them not in as great plenty now in most places as in times past, or the other afore remembered; yet have we sufficient of them all for our necessary turns and uses, especially of yew; as may be seen betwixt Rotherham and Sheffield, and some steads of Kent also, as I have been informed.
The fir, frankincense, and pine we do not altogether want, especially the fir, whereof we have some store in Chatley Moor in Derbyshire, Shropshire, Anderness, and a moss near Manchester, not far from Leicester’s house: although that in time past, not only all Lancashire, but a great part of the coast between Chester and the Solme, were well stored. As for the frankincense and the pine, they have been planted only in colleges and cloisters, by the clergy and religious heretofore. Wherefore (in mine opinion) we may rather say that we want them altogether: for, except they grew naturally, and not by force, I see no cause why they should be accounted for parcel of our commodities. We have also the asp, whereof our fletchers make their arrows. The several kinds of poplars of our turners have great use for bowls, trees, troughs, dishes, etc. Also the alder, whose bark is not unprofitable to dye black withal, and therefore much used by our country wives in colouring their knit hosen. I might here take occasion to speak of the great sales yearly made of wood, whereby an infinite quantity hath been destroyed within these few years: but I give over to travel in this behalf. Howbeit, thus much I dare affirm, that if woods go so fast to decay in the next hundred years of Grace as they have done and are like to do in this, sometimes for increase of sheepwalks, and some maintenance of prodigality and pomp (for I have known a well-burnished gentleman that hath borne threescore at once in one pair of galigascons to shew his strength and bravery[193]), it is to be feared that the fenny bote, broom, turf, gall, heath, furze, brakes, whins, ling, dies, hassacks, flags, straw, sedge, reed, rush, and also seacale, will be good merchandise even in the city of London, whereunto some of them even now have gotten ready passage, and taken up their inns in the greatest merchants’ parlours. A man would think that our laws were able enough to make sufficient provision for the redress of this error and enormity likely to ensue. But such is the nature of our countrymen that as many laws as are made, so they will keep none; or, if they be urged to make answer, they will rather seek some crooked construction of them to the increase of their private gain than yield themselves to be guided by the same for a commonwealth and profit to their country. So that in the end, whatsoever the law saith, we will have our wills, whereby the wholesome ordinances of the prince are contemned, the travel of the nobility and councillors (as it were) derided, the commonwealth impoverished, and a few only enriched by this perverse dealing. Thus many thousand persons do suffer hindrance by this their lewd behaviour. Hereby the wholesome laws of the prince are oft defrauded, and the good-meaning magistrate in consultation about the commonwealth utterly neglected. I would wish that I might live no longer than to see four things in this land reformed, that is, the want of discipline in the church, the covetous dealing of most of our merchants in the preferment of the commodities of other countries and hindrance of their own, the holding of fairs[194] and markets upon the Sundays be abolished and referred to the Wednesdays, and that every man in whatsoever part of the champaign soil enjoyeth forty acres of land and upwards (after that rate, either by free deed, copyhold, or free farm) might plant one acre of wood or sow the same with oak mast, hazel, beech, and sufficient provision be made that it may be cherished and kept. But I fear me that I should then live too long, and so long that I should either be weary of the world, or the world of me; and yet they are not such things but that they may easily be brought to pass.
Certes every small occasion in my time is enough to cut down a great wood, and every trifle sufficeth to lay infinite acres of ground unto pasture. As for the taking down of houses, a small fine will bear out a great many. Would to God we might once take example of the Romans, who, in restraint of superfluous grazing, made an exact limitation how many head of cattle each estate might keep, and what number of acres should suffice for that and other purposes. Neither was wood ever better cherished, or mansion houses maintained, than by their laws and statutes. Such also was their care in the maintenance of navigation that it was a great part of the charge of their consuls yearly to view and look unto the hills whereon great timber did grow, lest their unnecessary faults for the satisfaction of the private owner and his covetous mind might prove a prejudice unto the commonwealth in the hindrance of sufficient stuff for the furniture of their navy. Certes the like hereof is yet observed in Venice. Read also, I pray you, what Suetonius writeth of the consulship of Bibulus and Cæsar. As for the wood that Ancus Martius dedicated toward the maintenance of the common navy, I pass it over, as having elsewhere remembered it unto another end. But what do I mean to speak of these, sith my purpose is only to talk of our own woods? Well, take this then for a final conclusion in woods, that besides some countries are already driven to sell their wood by the pound, which is a heavy report, within these forty years we shall have little great timber growing about forty years old; for it is commonly seen that those young staddles which we leave standing at one and twenty years fall are usually at the next sale cut down without any danger of the statute, and serve for fire bote, if it please the owner to burn them.
Marshes and fenny bogs we have many in England, though not now so many as some of the old Roman writers do specify, but more in Wales, if you have respect unto the several quantities of the countries. Howbeit, as they are very profitable in the summer half of the year, so are a number of them which lie low and near to great rivers to small commodity in the winter part, as common experience doth teach. Yet this I find of many moors, that in times past they have been harder ground, and sundry of them well replenished with great woods that now are void of bushes. And, for the example hereof, we may see the trial (beside the roots that are daily found in the deeps of Monmouth, where turf is digged, also in Wales, Abergavenny, and Merioneth) in sundry parts of Lancashire, where great store of fir hath grown in times past, as I said, and the people go unto this day into their fens and marshes with long spits, which they dash here and there up to the very cronge into the ground. In which practice (a thing commonly done in winter), if they happen to smite upon any fir trees which lie there at their whole lengths, or other blocks, they note the place, and about harvest time (when the ground is at the driest) they come again and get them up, and afterward, carrying them home, apply them to their uses. The like do they in Shropshire with the like, which hath been felled in old time, within seven miles of Salop. Some of them foolishly suppose the same to have lien there since Noah’s flood: and other, more fond than the rest, imagine them to grow even in the places where they find them, without all consideration that in times past the most part, if not all, Lhoegres and Cambria was generally replenished with wood, which, being felled or overthrown upon sundry occasions, was left lying in some places still on the ground, and in process of time became to be quite overgrown with earth and moulds, which moulds, wanting their due sadness, are now turned into moory plots. Whereby it cometh to pass also that great plenty of water cometh between the new loose swart and the old hard earth, that being drawn away by ditching and drains (a thing soon done, if our countrymen were painful in that behalf) might soon leave a dry soil to the great lucre and advantage of the owner. We find in our histories that Lincoln was sometime builded by Lud, brother to Cassibelan, who called it Cair Ludcoit, of the great store of woods that environed the same: but now the commodity is utterly decayed there, so that if Lud were alive again he would not call it his city in the wood, but rather his town in the plains: for the wood (as I hear) is wasted altogether about the same. The hills called the Peak were in like sort named Mennith and Orcoit—that is, the woody hills and forests. But how much wood is now to be seen in those places, let him that hath been there testify if he list; for I hear of no such store there as hath been in time past by those that travel that way. And thus much of woods and marshes, and as far as I can deal with the same.