84 THE REIGN OF ELIZABETH 



The smaU copyholder's house is described by Bishop Hall as 

 being : 



" Of one bay's breadth, God wot, a silly cote 

 Whose thatched spars are furred with sluttish soote 

 A whole inch thick, shining hke blackmoor's brows 

 Through smoke that downe the headlesse barrel blows. 

 At his bed's feete feeden his stalled teame. 

 His swine beneath, his pullen o'er the beanie." 



The outside walls were made of timber uprights and cross-beams, 

 forming raftered panels which were thickly daubed with clay. 

 But the fare which the smaU copyholder enjoyed was at least as 

 plentiful as that of landless labourers in modern times. In one of 

 the Elizabethan pastoral poems a noble huntsman finds shelter 

 under a shepherd's roof. The food, even if something is allowed 

 for Arcadian hcence, was good, though, in the language of the day, 

 it consisted mamly of " white meat." The guest was supplied 

 with the best his host could provide : 



" Browne bread, whig, bacon, curds, and milke. 

 Were set him on the borde." 



Fresh butcher's meat was rarely seen on the table. Of the " Martyl- 



mas beef," hung from the rafters and smoked, Andrew Borde ^ 



thought httle. If, he says, a man have a piece hanging by his side 



and another in his belly, the piece which hangs by his side does 



him more good, especially if it is rainy weather. Bacon, souse, and 



brawn were the peasant's meat. " Potage," Borde elsewhere writes, 



'' is not so moch used in all Crystendom as it is used in England." 



It was part of the staple diet of the peasant, whether made of the 



hquor in which meat had been boiled, thickened ^vith oatmeal, and 



flavoured with chopped herbs and salt, or made from beans or 



pease. Oatmeal porridge, and " fyrmente," made of milk and 



wheat, were largely used. His bread was generally made of wheat 



and rye, often mixed, as Best states,^ with pease — a peck of pease 



to a bushel of rye, or two pecks of pease to the same quantity of 



rye and wheat. Even " horse-bread," as Borde calls it,^ made of 



pease and beans, was better than the mixture of acorns which 



Harrison says ^ was eaten in times of dearth. Yet the husbandman 



had his f eastings, such as " bridales, purifications of women and 



such od meetings, where it is incredible to tell what meat is 



consumed and spent." 



4 



^ Andrew Borde's Dyetary (1542), ch. xvi. " Farming Book, p. 104. 



^ Borde's Dyetary, ch. xi. * Description, ch. vi. 



