e given
over their enterprises without any consideration that, as in all
other things, so neither the ground itself in the beginning, nor
success of their travel, can answer their expectation at the first,
until such time as the soil be brought as it were into acquaintance
with this commodity, and that provision may be made for the more
easiness of charge to be employed upon the same.

If it be true that where wine doth last and endure well there it will
grow no worse, I muse not a little wherefore the planting of vines
should be neglected in England. That this liquor might have grown in
this island heretofore, first the charter that Probus the Emperor
gave equally to us, the Gauls, and Spaniards, is one sufficient
testimony. And that it did grow here (beside the testimony of Beda,
lib. 1., cap. 1) the old notes of tithes for wine that yet remain in
the accounts of some parsons and vicars in Kent, elsewhere, besides
the records of sundry suits, commenced in divers ecclesiastical
courts, both in Kent, Surrey, etc., also the enclosed parcels almost
in every abbey yet called the vineyards, may be a notable witness, as
also the plot which we now call East Smithfield in London, given by
Canutus, sometime king of this land, with other soil thereabout, unto
certain of his knights, with the liberty of a Guild which thereof was
called Knighton Guild. The truth is (saith John Stow, our countryman
and diligent traveller in the old estate of this my native city) that
it is now named Portsoken Ward, and given in time past to the
religious house within Aldgate. Howbeit first Otwell, the archovel,
Otto, and finally Geffrey Earl of Essex, constables of the of London,
withheld that portion from the said house until the reign of King
Stephen, and thereof made a vineyard to their great commodity and
lucre. The Isle of Ely also was in the first times of the Normans
called Le Ile des Vignes. And good record appeareth that the bishop
there had yearly three or four tun at the least given him _nomine
decimae_, beside whatsoever over-sum of the liquor did accrue to him
by leases and other excheats whereof also I have seen mention.
Wherefore our soil is not to be blamed, as though our nights were so
exceeding short that in August and September the moon, which is lady
of moisture and chief ripener of this liquor, cannot in any wise
shine long enough upon the same: a very mere toy and fable, right
worthy to be suppressed, because experience convi