226 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. 



authority on fruit-trees also mentions the " Grosse 

 Reinette d'Angleterre." The more delicate apples 

 for the table, such as the pippins were probably 

 very little known here till the latter part of the 

 sixteenth century. Fuller states that one Leonard 

 Maschal, in the sixteenth year of the reign of Henry 

 VIII., brought pippins from over sea, and planted 

 them at Plumstead in Sussex. Pippins are so called 

 because the trees were raised from the pips, or seeds; 

 and bore the apples which gave them celebrity, with- 

 out grafting. In the thirty-seventh year of the same 

 king we find the barking of apple-trees declared a fe- 

 lony ; and the passing of the law had probably a rela- 

 tion to the more extended growth of the fruit through 

 the introduction of pippins. l Costard-monger' is an 

 old English term for the dealers in vegetables, derived 

 from their principal commodity of apples; the cos- 

 tard being a large apple, round and bulky as the 

 head, or ' costard.' If we may deduce any meaning 

 from this name, which is the same as ' coster,' it 

 would appear that the costard or large apple, was 

 the sort in common use, and that hence the name of 

 the variety became synonymous with that of the 

 species; the more delicate sorts were luxuries un- 

 known to the ordinary consumers of our native fruits, 

 till they were rendered common by the planting of 

 orchards in Kent, Sussex, and other parts of the 

 kingdom. 



The growth of the more esteemed apple-trees had 

 made such a general progress in half a century, that 

 we find Shakspeare putting these words in the mouth 

 of Justice Shallow, in his invitation to Falstaff: 

 " You shall see mine orchard, where, in an arbour, we 

 will eat a last year's pippin of my own grafting." Sir 

 Hugh Evans, in the ' Merry Wives of Windsor,' says, 

 " I will make an end of my dinner there's pippins 



