d, as long as the dearth of provisions continues, to give to the
poor who apply for it at the door on Sundays, twelve pounds of beef
every week, on the 11th of February 4lbs. more, in all 16lbs., and a
bushel of wheat and half a bushel of barley in 4 weeks."

[Sidenote: MERRY ANDREW]

From Borde Hill to the north-east of Cuckfield, is supposed to have come
Andrew Boord, the original Merry Andrew. Among the later Boords who
lived there was George Boord, in whose copy of _Natura Brevium_ and
_Tenores Novelli_, bound together (given him by John Sackville of
Chiddingly Park) is written:--

Sidera non tot habet Celum, nec flumina pisces,
Quot scelera gerit femina mente dolos.
Dixit Boordus;

which Mr. Lower translates:

Quoth Boord, with stars the skies abound,
With fish the flowing waters;
But far more numerous I have found
The tricks of Eve's fair daughters.

This Boord would be a relative of the famous Andrew, priest, doctor and
satirist (1490-1549) who may indeed have been the author of the distich
above. It is certainly in his vein.

Andrew Boord gave up his vows as a Carthusian on account of their
"rugorosite," and became a doctor, travelling much on the Continent.
Several books are known to be his, chief among them the _Dyetary_ and
_Brevyary of Health_. He wrote also an _Itinerary of England_ and is
credited by some with the _Merrie Tales of the Mad Men of Gotham_. Lower
and Horsfield indeed hold that the Gotham intended was not the
Nottinghamshire village but Gotham near Pevensey, where Boord had
property. That he knew something of Sussex is shown by _Boord's Boke of
Knowledge_, where he mentions the old story, then a new one, that no
nightingale will sing in St. Leonard's Forest. It is the _Boke of
Knowledge_ that has for frontispiece the picture of a naked Englishman
with a pair of shears in one hand and a piece of cloth over the other
arm, saying:

I am an English man and naked I stand here,
Musing in my mund what rayment I shall were;
For now I wyll were this, and now I wyl were that;
Now I wyl were I cannot tel what.

We shall see Andrew again when we come to Pevensey.

[Sidenote: OLD WILLS]

A glimpse of the orderly mind of a pre-Reformation Cuckfield yeoman is
given in a will quoted recently in the _Sussex Daily News_, in an
interesting series of articles on the county under the title of
"Old-time S