Introduction. ix 



had forty years' experience in farming. But thi^ is not what 

 we should deduce from the more careful statement of the 

 author. We should rather notice these points. 



1. The author does not speak of husbandry only, but of 

 other points. The other points are the breeding of horses 

 (not a necessary part of a farmer's business), the selling of 

 wood and timber, grafting of trees, a long discourse upon 

 prodigality, remarks upon gaming, a discussion of "what is 

 riches," and a treatise upon practical religion, illustrated by 

 Latin quotations from the fathers, and occupying no small 

 portion of the work. This is not the work of a practical 

 farmer, in the narrow acceptation of the term, meaning 

 thereby one who farms to live ; but it is clearly the work of 

 a country gentleman, rich in horses and in timber, acquainted 

 with the extravagant mode of life often adopted by the 

 wealthy, and at the same time given to scholarly pursuits 

 and to learned and devout reading. Indeed, the prom.i- 

 nence given to religious teaching can hardly fail to surprise 

 a reader who expects to find in the volume nothing more 

 than hints upon practical agriculture. One chapter has a 

 very suggestive heading, viz. " A lesson made in Englysshe 

 verses, that a gentyhnans seruaunte shall forget none of his 

 gere in his imie behynde hyin " (p. 7). This is obviously the 

 composition of a gentleman himself, and of one accustomed 

 to take long journeys upon horseback, and to stay at various 

 inns on the way.^ 



2. Again he says, " it is the best way that euer I coude 

 proue by experyence, the whiche . . . haue assaied many 

 and dyuers wayes, and done my dyligence to proue by 

 experyence which shuld be the beste waye." Certainly this 

 is not the language of one who farmed for profit, but of 



* " And [I give] to euery of my seruentes that be used to Ryde with me," etc. ; 

 Sir A. FiUherbert's Will, quoted below at p. xviii. 



