in the second place of nourishment. The other hath
little or no flour left therein at all, howbeit he calleth it _Panem
Cibarium_, and it is not only the worst and weakest of all the other
sorts, but also appointed in old time for servants, slaves, and the
inferior kind of people to feed upon. Hereunto likewise, because it is
dry and brickle in the working (for it will hardly be made up
handsomely into loaves), some add a portion of rye meal in our time,
whereby the rough dryness or dry roughness thereof is somewhat
qualified, and then it is named _miscelin_, that is, bread made of
mingled corn, albeit that divers do sow or mingle wheat and rye of set
purpose at the mill, or before it come there, and sell the same at the
markets under the aforesaid name.

[4] The size of bread is very ill kept or not at all looked
unto in the country towns or markets.--H.

In champaign countries much rye and barley bread is eaten, but
especially where wheat is scant and geson. As for the difference that
it is between the summer and winter wheat, most husbandmen know it
not, sith they are neither acquainted with summer wheat nor winter
barley; yet here and there I find of both sorts, specially in the
north and about Kendal, where they call it March wheat, and also of
summer rye, but in so small quantities as that I dare not pronounce
them to be greatly common among us.

Our drink, whose force and continuance is partly touched already, is
made of barley, water, and hops, sodden and mingled together, by the
industry of our brewers in a certain exact proportion. But, before our
barley do come into their hands, it sustaineth great alteration, and
is converted into malt, the making whereof I will here set down in
such order as my skill therein may extend unto (for I am scarce a good
maltster), chiefly for that foreign writers have attempted to describe
the same, and the making of our beer, wherein they have shot so far
wide, as the quantity of ground was between themselves and their mark.
In the meantime bear with me, gentle reader (I beseech thee), that
lead thee from the description of the plentiful diet of our country
unto the fond report of a servile trade, or rather from a table
delicately furnished into a musty malt-house; but such is now thy hap,
wherefore I pray thee be contented.

Our malt is made all the year long in some great towns; but in
gentlemen's and yeomen's houses, who commonly make sufficient for
their own