se and with cattle what rode
is made thorowe erie man's come.

But the rich graziers boasted that they did not grow corn because
they could buy it cheaper in the market; and they are said to have
traded on the necessity of the poor farmer to sell at Michaelmas in
order to pay his rent, and when they had got the corn into their
hands they raised the price. The corn-dealers of the time were looked
upon with dislike by every one; many of the dearths then so frequent,
and nearly always caused by bad seasons, were ascribed to 'engrossers
buying of corn and witholding it for sale'. By a statute of 1552 the
freedom of internal corn trade was entirely suppressed, and no one
could carry corn from one part of England to another without a
licence, and any one who bought corn to sell it again was liable to
two months' imprisonment and forfeited his corn. Although we shall
see that this policy was reversed in the next century, the feeling
against corn-dealers survived for many years and was loudly
expressed during the Napoleonic war; indeed, we may doubt if it
is extinct to-day.

Many of the fruits and garden produce, which had been neglected since
the first Edward, had by now come into use again, 'not onlie among the
poor commons, I meane of melons, pompions, gourds, cucumbers,
radishes, skirets (probably a sort of carrot), parsneps, carrots,
cabbages, navewes (turnip radishes (?)), turnips,[219] and all kinds
of salad herbes, but also at the tables of delicate merchants,
gentlemen, and the nobilitie.'[220]

'Also we have most delicate apples, plummes, pears, walnuts, filberts,
&c., and those of sundrie sorts, planted within fortie years past, in
comparison of which most of the old trees are nothing worth: so have
we no less store of strange fruite, as abricotes, almonds, peaches,
figges, cornetrees (probably cornels) in noblemen's orchards. I have
seen capers, orenges, and lemmons, and heard of wild olives growing
here, besides other strange trees.'[221]

As a proof of the growth of grass in proportion to tillage between
the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, Eden gives several
examples,[222] of which the following are significant:--

Arable. Grass.
acres. acres.

1339. 18 messuages in Norfolk had 160 60
1354. a Norfolk manor 300 59
1395. 2 messuages in Warwickshire