FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES. 4! 



labour, illustrates the functions of the various members of the 

 Commonwealth by the moralities of chess, which divides all 

 into six degrees, the king, the queen, the bishops, the knights, 

 the judges, and the yeomen, and highly commends the picture 

 of civil government and order which the game represents. 

 After a table of contents, and an exordium on the principal 

 objects of the husbandman's labours, he refers to the plough, 

 stating that there are different sorts of ploughs, one kind being 

 employed in Somerset, another in Kent, a third in Bucks, and 

 others in Leicester, Lancashire, Yorkshire, Lincoln, Norfolk, 

 Cambridge, &c. He then describes the plough of his experience, 

 his account of its parts not differing from that given three 

 centuries before by Walter de Henley, and a century later by 

 Gervase Markham, but he advises that the working parts of the 

 instrument be well steeled. 



Like the older writer, too, he debates the question whether 

 horses or oxen are the most economical beasts for ploughing. 

 He observes that the answer depends on the character of the 

 soil, and on the husbandman's resources. An ox in work must 

 have abundant pasture after his work is over, while a horse can 

 be fed well under cover. Again, oxen are best to plough tough 

 clay, and on hilly ground, where a horse will refuse. But 

 horses go faster than oxen on even or light ground. Oxen, 

 again, can do without shoeing, and can work in light harness, 

 while a horse must be shod all round, and wears out a costlier 

 harness in quicker time. The fodder of an ox, too, when the 

 pasture is gone, is cheap, that of the horse dear. And he con- 

 cludes, ' And if any sorance come to the horse, or waxe olde, 

 broysed, or blynde, then he is lyttell worthe. And if any 

 sorance come to an oxe, waxe old, broysed, or blinde, for ij s. 

 he may be fedde, and thanne he is mannes meate and as good 

 or better than ever he was. And the horse, whan he dyethe, is 

 but caryon. And therefore me seemeth, all thynges consydered, 

 the ploughe of oxen is moche more profytable, than the ploughe 

 of horses/ Fitzherbert is of the same mind with Henley. 



A husbandman ought to be ploughing at all times of the year, 



