FRUITS AND GARDEN PRODUCE 93 



farmer to sell at Michaelmas in order to pay his rent, and 

 when they had got the corn into their hands they raised 

 the price. The corn-dealers of the time were looked upon 

 with dislike by every one ; many of the dearths then so fre- 

 quent, and nearly always caused by bad seasons, were ascribed 

 to ' engrossers buying of corn and witholding it for sale '. By 

 a statute of 1552 the freedom of internal corn trade was 

 entirely suppressed, and no one could carry corn from one 

 part of England to another without a licence, and any one who 

 bought corn to sell it again was liable to two months' imprison- 

 ment and forfeited his corn. Although we shall see that this 

 policy was reversed in the next century, the feeling against 

 corn-dealers survived for many years and was loudly expressed 

 during the Napoleonic war; indeed, we may doubt if it is extinct 

 to-day. 



Many of the fruits and garden produce, which had been 

 neglected since the first Edward, had by now come into 

 use again, ' not onlie among the poor commons, I meane of 

 melons, pompions, gourds, cucumbers, radishes, skirets (pro- 

 bably a sort of carrot), parsneps, carrots, cabbages, navewes 

 (turnip radishes (?)), turnips,^ and all kinds of salad herbes, but 

 also at the tables of delicate merchants, gentlemen, and the 

 nobilitie.'^ 'Also we have most delicate apples, plummes, 

 pears, walnuts, filberts, &c., and those of sundrie sorts, 

 planted within fortie years past, in comparison of which most 

 of the old trees are nothing worth : so have we no less store 

 of strange fruite, as abricotes, almonds, peaches, figges, corne- 

 trees (probably cornels) in noblemen's orchards, I have seen 

 capers, orenges, and lemmons, and heard of wild olives growing 

 here, besides other strange trees.' ^ 



As a proof of the growth of grass in proportion to tillage 



^ Usually grown in gardens, until the middle of the seventeenth century. 

 Tusser also mentions them. 

 ' Description of Britain ^ ii. 324 (Fumivall ed.). 

 ^ Harrison, Description of Britain, ii. 329. 



