138 LATER STEWARTS AND THE REVOLUTION 



and fittest for their uses." So far Markham. Mortimer adds 

 other breeds. " A good hardy Sort for fatting on barren or 

 middling Sort of Land are your Angleseys and Welch. The hardiest 

 are the Scotch.'' The best breed for milking, in his opinion, was 

 '' the longlegged short-horn'd Cow of the Dutch breed," chiefly 

 found in Lincolnshire and Kent. 



Both Markham and Mortuner have much to say about sheep, which 

 were reckoned as the most profitable of hve-stock. Their manifold 

 uses inspired Leonard Mascall ^ to rhyme in " praise of sheep " : 



" These cattle (sheep) among the rest, 

 Is counted for man one of the best, 

 No harmful beast, nor hurt at all ; 

 His fleece of wool doth cloath us all. 

 Which keeps us all from extream cold ; 

 His flesh doth feed both young and old : 

 His tallow makes the candles white. 

 To bum and serve us day and night : 

 His skin doth pleasure divers ways, 

 To write, to wear, at all assaies ; 

 His guts, thereof we make wheel-strings ; 

 They use his bones for other tilings ; 

 His horns some shepherds will not lose. 

 Because therewith they patch their shooes ; 

 His dung is chief, I understand. 

 To help and dung the Plowman's land ; 

 Therefore the Sheep among the rest, 

 He is for man a worthy beast." 



But Mascall makes no attempt to distinguish varieties of breed. 

 Like many of the Stewart writers, he would probably have answered 

 as the Cumberland shepherd replied to the question — where he 

 got his rough-legged, ill-formed sheep — " Lor', sir, they are sik as 

 God set upon the land ; we never change any." Markham, how- 

 ever, distinguishes the various breeds by the quahty of their wool. 

 The finest short wool came from the small black-faced Hereford- 

 shire sheep in the neighbourhood of Leominster, and in parts of 

 Worcestershire and Shi'opshire. The Cots wold breed was heavier, 

 but the wool was longer and straighter in the staple, and the fleece 

 coarser. Parts of Warwickshire and Worcestershire, " all Leicester- 

 shire, Buckinghamshire, and part of Northamptonshire, and that 

 part of Nottinghamshire which is exempt from Sherwood Forest " 

 produced " a large-boned Sheep, of the best shape and deepest 



^ Mascall's book on the Government of Cattell, originally pubhshed in 1591, 

 was still in circulation nearly a century later, under the title of The Countrey- 

 rnan's Jewel. The edition of 1680 is said to be " Gathered at first by Leonard 

 Mascal, but much Inlarged by Richard Ruscam, Gent." 



