HERRING. 
lOS 
And tills reward the ferryman regards as of high value — 
“Thou talk’st like a Lord of wealth and power.” 
The Herrings must have been carried with him as food, as he 
actually gives them on the spot to the giant ferryman. 
In Blount s “History of Strange Tenures of Land,” we are 
told that in the charter of the town of Yarmouth, which town 
has ever been famous for its share in the Herring fishery, the 
corporation are required to send a hundred Herrings, baked 
in twenty-four pasties, to the Sheriffs of ISl orwich, who were to 
deliver them to the Lord of the Manor of East Carlton. And 
at the same time Eustace de Carme and others, who probably 
weie the same Sheriffs, are said to have held thirty acres of 
land by the service of carrying to the king, wherever he should 
happen to be in England, twenty-four pasties of fresh Herrings 
at their first coming in. But in still more ancient times they 
formed an important source of income; for Sir Henry Ellis 
informs us in his Introduction to Domesday Book, that Hugh 
de Montfort’s manors in Suffolk yielded numerous rents of 
Herrings; and the manor of Beccles, in that county, in the 
time of King Edward the Confessor, yielded thirty thousand 
Herrings to the Abbey of Saint Edmond, and in the days of 
the first William this number was increased to sixty thousand. 
But the Abbey of Saint Edmondsbury was not so fortunate; 
since in the fourteenth year of Edward the First, the expen- 
diture of the monks in the fast of Lent for Herrings was 
£25., when the yearly expenditure of the kitchen for food in 
general, including other fish, was £520., and a fat ox was 
purchased for four shillings. 
That we may not further extend this reference to ancient 
customs, we come down to Tusser, who says — 
Lot Lent, well kept, offend not thee, 
For March and April breeders be; 
Spend Herring first, save salt-fish last. 
For salt-fish is good when Lent is past. 
The most usual manner of fishing for Herrings does not differ 
greatly from that already described, as employed in the open 
sea for Pilchards; but the meshes of these drift-nets are a 
little larger; the distance being allowed of an inch and a quarter 
