SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 201 



Gardeners from all times have had j:jreat difficulties to 

 contend with, in the extirpation of garden pests. Their minds 

 were chiefly exercised in devising schemes for keeping down 

 the moles. When Queen Elizabeth paid a visit to Theobalds, 

 and Lord Burghley prepared a Masque in her honour in May, 

 1591, speeches were recited before her, composed by George 

 Peele, describing the processes of making the garden, and 

 comparing its beauties to the virtues of the Queen. The first 

 speech was that of the " Molecatcher," which began thus : — 

 " I cannot discourse of knots and mazes, sure I am that the 

 ground was so knotty that the gardener was amazed to see it, 

 and as easy had it been, if I had not been, to make a shaft of 

 a cammock"^ as a garden of that croft. "f The ordinary mole- 

 catchers were paid by the number of moles they caught, 

 " usually i2d. a dozen for all the olde moles they catch, and 

 6d. a dozen for younge ones. Now as for those who send 

 purposely for a mole-catcher to gette a single mole in a 

 howse, garden or the like, they will seldom take lesse than 

 2d. and sometimes 3d. for her if they gette her, because they 

 have payment onely for those they catch and if they misse 

 the lose is theires."J The farmer, Henry Best, in the East 

 Riding of Yorkshire, who made these notes, has also left the 

 account of what he paid himself to the mole-catchers. In 

 " 1628, April 28, paid to John Pearson for killing moules in 

 the carre one and a half dozen olde ones I3id., two dozen 

 young ones 6d.," and so on. Several curious recipes for 

 killing moles are found in old gardening books. Sharrock 

 gives the following "Remedies against Moles" §: — "By watering 

 moles are drowned or driven up into so narrow a compass 

 that they may be easily taken. Mr. Blith relates one 

 spring, about March, a mole-catcher and his boy in about ten 

 dayes time, in a ground of go acres, took 3 bus[hels] old and 

 young. Among Mr. Speed's notes there are these receipts : 



* = a crooked tree. 



f Dramatic and Poetical Works of R. Greene and G. Peele. By Dyce, 1861. 

 X Rural Economy in Yorkshire, 1641. Surtees Society, 1857. 

 ^ An Improvement in the Art of Gardening. By Robert Sharrock, 3rd 

 Kd., 1694. 



