536 The Berkshire Farm Prize Compelition, 1882. 
beyond a few fragments of the walls, the structure having beer* 
demolished by the Parliamentary army during the Civil Wars, 
It was in the collegiate chapel of this castle that Thomas Tusser^ 
the author of ' Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry,' was a 
scholar and chorister about the year 1520, and of whom Fuller 
says, " he was successively a musician, schoolmaster, serving- 
man, husbandman, grazier, poet ; more skilful in all than 
thriving in any vocation. He traded at large in oxen, sheep, 
dairies, grain of all kinds, to no profit. Whether he bought or 
sold, he lost, and when a renter, impoverished himself, and never 
enriched his landlord. Yet hath he laid down excellent rules 
in his book of husbandry (so that the observer thereof must be 
rich) in his own defence. He spread his bread with all sorts 
of butter, yet none would stick thereon, none being better at 
theory, or worse at the practice of Husbandry." Lord Moles- 
worth, in his ' Considerations for Promoting Agriculture, 1723,' 
says, " As to agriculture, I should humbly propose that a school 
for husbandry were erected in every county, wherein an expert 
master of the methods of agriculture should teach at a fixed 
salary, and that Tusser's old ' Book of Husbandry ' should be 
taught to the boys to read, to copy, and to get by heart, to 
which end it might be reprinted and distributed. I doubt not 
but that some such method as this would make husbandmen, 
and prevent the increase of the poor." Tusser's book, first 
printed in 1557, passed through more than twenty editions 
before 1700. Dr. Mavor, an honorary member of the Board of 
Agriculture, who published a new edition of the work in 1812, 
remarks, " Happy should I be to find that my labours have in 
any degree contributed to realise the speculations of Lord 
Molesworth." The writer of this Report cannot help thinking 
that the want of skilful and trained workmen is likely to 
become more and more a difficulty with English farmers of the 
present day ; for, as Tusser quaintly puts it :- — 
" Good shepherd, good tillman, good Jack and good Gill, 
Make husband and huswife their coffers to fill." 
In various other branches of industry technical schools have 
been established, to keep pace with the competition and growing 
requirements of the times ; and to my mind, the question of 
formulating a scheme for training boys in rural districts, to 
qualify them for agricultural employment, is one of the most im- 
portant that can engage the attention of the Royal Agricultural 
Society of England. 
Berkshire has also produced a distinguished author on agri- 
cultural affairs in Jethro Tull, who at Prosperous Farm, in the 
parish of Shelbourn, practised and wrote upon imjiroved 
