434 AGRICULTURE. 



The condition of a yeoman, before or about Elizabeth's time, 

 is exemplified in the case of Bishop Latimer's father. " My 

 father," says Hugh Latimer, " was a yeoman, and had no land 

 of his own ; only he had a farm of three or four pounds by the 

 year at the utmost ; and hereupon he tilled so much as kept 

 half-a-dozen men. He had a walk for a hundred sheep, and 

 my mother milked thirty kine, etc. He kept his son at school 

 till he went to the university, and maintained him there. He 

 married his daughters with five pounds, or twenty nobles apiece ; 

 he kept hospitality with his neighbors, and some alms he gave 

 to the poor ; and all this he did out of the said farm." 



Cattle were not plentiful in England, at the beginning of 

 Elizabeth's reign. In 1563, it was enacted that no one should 

 eat flesh on Wednesdays or Fridays, on forfeiture of $, unless 

 in case of sickness, or of a special license, neither of which was 

 to extend to beef or veal. . Great pains were taken in the act to 

 prove that it was a political, and not a religious measure. 



The vast number of parks in the kingdom are complained of 

 by Harrison. "There are not less," he says, "than a hundred 

 in Essex alone, where almost nothing is kept but a sorte of 

 wilde and savage beasts, cherished for pleasure and delight " ; 

 and, pursuing the same subject, he says that, " If the world last 

 awhile after this rate, wheate and rie will be no graine for a 

 poore man to feed on." In Scotland the civil dissensions, and 

 even anarchy, which prevailed until a late period in the six- 

 teenth century, operated as a harsh check on every improvement 

 in agriculture, and the total expulsion of ecclesiastical land- 

 holders increased this evil, as the monks were easy landlords, 

 and frequently not uninstructed in georgical knowledge. 



The tillers of the earth in Scotland had at least . their full 

 share of their country's misfortunes, when private vengeance 

 for private^ wrongs superseded the regular but timid proceedings 

 of public justice. A statute was then formed for their particu- 

 lar benefit, whereby "the slayers and houchers of horses and 

 uther cattle," with their employers and maintainers, are declared 

 "to have incurred the paine of death, and confiscation of alle 

 their gudes movvabil." A second act was passed in 1587, for 

 the further protection of husbandmen, declaring that "all such as 

 destroyed or maimed horses, oxen, etc., cut or destroyed plows 



