1. The author does not speak of husbandry _only_, but of _other points_. The other points are the breeding of horses (not a necessary part of a farmer’s business), the selling of wood and timber, grafting of trees, a long discourse upon prodigality, remarks upon gaming, a discussion of “what is riches,” and a treatise upon practical religion, illustrated by Latin quotations from the fathers, and occupying no small portion of the work. This is not the work of a practical farmer, in the narrow acceptation of the term, meaning thereby one who farms to live; but it is clearly the work of a country gentleman, rich in horses and in timber, acquainted with the extravagant mode of life often adopted by the wealthy, and at the same time given to scholarly pursuits and to learned and devout reading. Indeed, the prominence given to religious teaching can hardly fail to surprise a reader who expects to find in the volume nothing more than hints upon practical agriculture. One chapter has a very suggestive heading, viz. “A lesson made in Englysshe verses, that _a gentylmans seruaunte_ shall forget none of his gere _in his inne behynde hym_” (p. 7). This is obviously the composition of a gentleman himself, and of one accustomed to take long journeys upon horseback, and to stay at various inns on the way.[1]
2. Again he says, “it is the best way that euer I coude proue by experyence, the whiche ... haue assaied _many and dyuers_ wayes, and done my dyligence to proue by experyence which shuld be the beste waye.” Certainly this is not the language of one who farmed for profit, but of the _experimental_ farmer, the man who could afford to lose if things went wrong, one to whom farming was an amusement and a recreation, and who delighted in trying various modes that he might benefit those who, unlike himself, could not afford to try any way but that which had long been known.
3. We must note the language in which he describes himself. He does not say that he had “exercised husbandry” for forty years, but that he had “been a householder” during that period. The two things are widely different. His knowledge of agriculture was, so to speak, accidental; his real employment had been to manage a household, or, as we should rather now say, to “keep house.” This, again, naturally assigns to him the status of a country gentleman, who chose to superintend everything for himself, and to gain a practical acquaintance with everything upon his estate, viz. his lands, his cattle, his horses, his bees, his trees, his felled timber, and the rest; not forgetting his duties as a man of rank in setting a good example, discouraging waste, giving attention to prayer and almsgiving, and to his necessary studies. “He that can rede and vnderstande _latyne_, let hym take his booke in his hande, and looke stedfastely vppon the same thynge that he readeth and seeth, _that is no trouble to hym_,” etc. (p. 115). Are we to suppose that it could be said generally, of farmers in the time of Henry VIII., that Latin was “no trouble to them”? If so, things must have greatly changed.