USE OF CORN IN ENGLAND. 77 



bred right brown, made of rye.' Locke, travelling 

 in France, in 1678, says of the peasantry in his 

 journal, ' Their ordinary food, rye bread and water.' * 

 The English always disliked what they emphatically 

 termed, ' changing the white loaf for the brown.' 

 They would have paid little respect to the example 

 of Masinissa, the African general, who is described 

 by Polybius as eating brown bread with a relish at 

 the door of his tent. Their dislike to brown bread 

 in some degree prevented the change which they 

 proverbially dreaded. In the latter part of the six 

 teenth century, however, this change was pretty ge- 

 neral, whatever was the previous condition of the 

 people. Harrison says, speaking of the agricultural 

 population, ' As for wheaten bread, they eat it 

 when they can reach unto the price of it, contenting 

 themselves, in the mean time, with bread made of 

 oates or barlie, a poore estate, God wot !' In another 

 place, he says, ' The bread throughout the land is 

 made of such graine as the soil yieldeth ; nevertheless, 

 the gentilitie commonlie provide themselves suffi- 

 ciently of wheate for their own tables, whilst their 

 household and poore neighbours, in some shires, are 

 inforced to content themselves with rie or barlie.' 

 Harrison then goes on to describe the several sorts of 

 bread made in England at his day, viz. manchet, 

 cheat, or wheaten bread ; another inferior sort of 

 bread, called ravelled, and lastly, brown bread."f Of 

 the latter there were two sorts : ' One baked up as 

 it cometh from the mill, so that neither the bran nor 

 the floure are any whit diminished. The other hath 

 no floure left therein at all ; and it is not only the 

 worst and weakest of all the other sorts, but also 



* Lord King's Life of Locke. 



+ See Percy's Preface to the Northumberland Household 

 Book, Nieolas's edit. p. xiv. 

 VOL. XV. 7* 



