e unto him that doth buy and purchase the same. But
to proceed.

In some places beyond the sea a garnish of good flat English pewter
of an ordinary making (I say flat, because dishes and platters in my
time begin to be made deep like basins, and are indeed more
convenient both for sauce, broth, and keeping the meat warm) is
esteemed almost so precious as the like number of vessels that are
made of fine silver, and in manner no less desired amongst the great
estates, whose workmen are nothing so skilful in that trade as ours,
neither their metal so good, nor plenty so great, as we have here in
England. The Romans made excellent looking-glasses of our English
tin, howbeit our workmen were not then so exquisite in that feat as
the Brundusians, wherefore the wrought metal was carried over unto
them by way of merchandise, and very highly were those glasses
esteemed of till silver came generally in place, which in the end
brought the tin into such contempt that in manner every dishwasher
refused to look in other than silver glasses for the attiring of her
head. Howbeit the making of silver glasses had been in use before
Britain was known unto the Romans, for I read that one Praxiteles
devised them in the young time of Pompey, which was before the coming
of Caesar into this island.

There were mines of lead sometimes also in Wales, which endured so
long till the people had consumed all their wood by melting of the
same (as they did also at Comeriswith, six miles from Stradfleur),
and I suppose that in Pliny's time the abundance of lead (whereof he
speaketh) was to be found in those parts, in the seventeenth of his
thirty-fourth book; also he affirmeth that it lay in the very sward
of the earth, and daily gotten in such plenty that the Romans made a
restraint of the carriage thereof to Rome, limiting how much should
yearly be wrought and transported over the sea.[3]

[3] Here follow two stories about crows and miners.--W.

Iron is found in many places, as in Sussex, Kent, Weredale, Mendip,
Walshall, as also in Shropshire, but chiefly in the woods betwixt
Belvos and Willock (or Wicberry) near Manchester, and elsewhere in
Wales. Of which mines divers do bring forth so fine and good stuff as
any that cometh from beyond the sea, beside the infinite gains to the
owners, if we would so accept it, or bestow a little more cost in the
refining of it. It is also of such toughness, that it yieldeth to the
making of claricord wi