LIFE OF LORD SCUDAMORE. 
83 
The result of this application is not recorded. The very next month (December, 1655,) a 
return is made to the Committee in London shewing the annual income derived from Lord 
Scudamores Estate in Herefordshire to be ,£1,062 19s. 4d., but the date of this return was only a 
coincidence, since it is endorsed “ My particulars for the extraordinary tax for Herefordshire.” 
(Scudamore MSS., at Holme Lacy , and St. Michael's Priory.) 
So far as his own freedom went the application could not have been altogether successful; 
since some fifteen months later, he was obliged to obtain a special order to visit London for his 
health. This order is also at St. Michael’s Priory, as follows : 
‘‘Saturday, 6th of March, 1657, 
At the Councell at Whitehall. 
Ordered by his Highness the Lord Protector and the Councell, that John, Lord Viscount Scudamore, have liberty to 
remayne in and about the citye of London and Westminster for recovery of his health, the late proclamation to the contrary 
notwithstanding. 
Hen. Scobell, Clerk 
of ye Councell. 
Lord Scudamore seems to have lived at Holme Lacy for the remainder of his days, and to 
have solaced himself by the exercise of good deeds, and by his attention to all matters of rural 
interest. Dr. Beale, in a letter, dated May 3rd, 1656, writing of the “admirable contrivers for the 
publick good ” in Herefordshire, say “ Lord Scudamore may well begin to us : a rare example for 
the well ordering of all his family : a great preserver of Woods against the day of England's need : 
maintaining laudable hospitablity, bounded with due sobriety: and always keeping able servants to 
promote the best expediences of all kinds of agriculture.” 1 
Lord Scudamore was very attentive to the animals on his Estate, and took great pains to im¬ 
prove them. “ His flock of sheep on one occasion amounted to six hundred, a very great number 
in those days ; and in the old house at Holme Lacy, as was customary in large country houses of 
that period, there was a large room set apart as a wool chamber.” (Rev. John Webb.) , 
It was during the later years of his life that Lord Scudamore imported the live stock from the 
Continent from which our celebrated breed of Herefordshire Cattle have been derived. There is 
no evidence that any special care was taken as to the breeding of cattle before this time : indeed 
there is a passage in a letter from John Ellyott to John Scudamore, Esq., grandfather of Lord 
Scudamore, dated November nth, 1564, which shows, that in that reign no particular attention was 
given to their herds. It is this : “ Althoughe we be no breders in Herefordshire, yet we be 
accompted to be ffeders of oxen.” (Scudamore MS., quoted by Rev. Jno. Webb.) 
The Tradition is, that in the reign of Charles II Lord Scudamore imported seven cows 
with white faces and red bodies from the Low Countries. It is now near a century since Mr. 
Thos. Andrew Knight put this tradition on record, and expressed his belief in its correctness. 
He noticed the curious fact, that the cattle represented in the pictures of Cuyp and other Flemish 
painters, often show the familiar colours of our own meadows. 
The importation of these cows must have been a very difficult as well as a very expensive 
1 Dr. Beale also names other orchard planters of that time, “ Sir Henry Lingen : our learned Mr. Bennet Hoskins of 
Harewood ; Mr. Reed, of Lugwardine ; Mr. Smith, of the Weir; Mr. Freeman, of Brockhampton : Mr. Charles Morgan, of 
Blakemere; and many others,” as men, who “ metamorphise the Wilderness to be like the Orchards of Alcinus.” 
