t all consideration that in times past the most part, if
not all, Lhoegres and Cambria was generally replenished with wood, which,
being felled or overthrown upon sundry occasions, was left lying in some
places still on the ground, and in process of time became to be quite
overgrown with earth and moulds, which moulds, wanting their due sadness,
are now turned into moory plots. Whereby it cometh to pass also that great
plenty of water cometh between the new loose swart and the old hard earth,
that being drawn away by ditching and drains (a thing soon done, if our
countrymen were painful in that behalf) might soon leave a dry soil to the
great lucre and advantage of the owner. We find in our histories that
Lincoln was sometime builded by Lud, brother to Cassibelan, who called it
Cair Ludcoit, of the great store of woods that environed the same: but now
the commodity is utterly decayed there, so that if Lud were alive again he
would not call it his city in the wood, but rather his town in the plains:
for the wood (as I hear) is wasted altogether about the same. The hills
called the Peak were in like sort named Mennith and Orcoit--that is, the
woody hills and forests. But how much wood is now to be seen in those
places, let him that hath been there testify if he list; for I hear of no
such store there as hath been in time past by those that travel that way.
And thus much of woods and marshes, and as far as I can deal with the
same.

CHAPTER XX.

OF PARKS AND WARRENS.

[1577, Book II., Chapter 15; 1587, Book II., Chapter 19.]

In every shire of England there are great plenty of parks, whereof some
here and there, to wit, well near to the number of two hundred, for her
daily provision of that flesh, appertain to the prince, the rest to such
of the nobility and gentlemen as have their lands and patrimonies lying in
or near unto the same. I would gladly have set down the just number of
these enclosures to be found in every county; but, sith I cannot so do, it
shall suffice to say that in Kent and Essex only are to the number of an
hundred, and twenty in the bishopric of Durham, wherein great plenty of
fallow deer is cherished and kept. As for warrens of conies, I judge them
almost innumerable, and daily like to increase, by reason that the black
skins[195] of those beasts are thought to countervail the prices of their
naked carcases, and this is the only cause why the grey are less esteemed.
Near unto London their q