Thurxo, bishop of Uratislavo, went six days’ journey out of his way to see him.
William, earl of Eyrenberg, gave him a dagger, which by the inscription “he wished in the hearts of all his enemies.”
II.—Nicholas Wood, the Glutton.
One Nicholas Wood, of Harrison, in the county of Kent, yeoman, did eat with ease a whole sheep of sixteen shillings price, and that raw, at one meal. Another time he eat thirty dozen of pigeons. At sir William Sedley’s he eat as much as would have sufficed thirty men. At lord Wotton’s in Kent, he devoured in one meal eighty-four rabbits; another time eighteen yards of black pudding, London measure. He once eat sixty pounds of cherries, and said they were but wastemeat. He eat a whole hog, and afterwards swallowed three peck of damsons: this was after breakfast, at which he had taken a pottle of milk and pottage, with bread, butter, and cheese.
“He eat in my presence,” saith Taylor, the water-poet, “six penny wheaten loaves, three sixpenny veal-pies, one pound of fresh butter, one good dish of thornback, and a sliver of a peck household loaf, an inch thick, all within the space of an hour; the house yielding no more he retired unsatisfied.”
One John Dale, at Lenham, laid him a wager, he could fill his belly for him with good wholesome victuals for two shillings. He took this wager and said, when he had finished the two shillings worth, he would eat up a sirloin of beef. Dale, however, brought six pots of mighty ale and twelve new penny white loaves, which he sopped therein, the powerful fume whereof conquered this gluttonous conqueror, and laid him asleep before he had finished his meal, whereby the roast beef was preserved and the wager lost.
Wood spent all his estate in provender for his enormous stomach, and, although a landed man and a true labourer, he died very poor in 1630.
Sam Sam’s Son.