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There were many quite different printings of this Book of Husbandry. As the editor of this printing, Rev. Walter Skeat, notes in his Introduction: “The present volume contains a careful reprint of Berthelet’s edition of 1534” collated throughout “with the curious edition of 1598” that was authored by “I. R.”--his actual name is unknown.
This “careful reprint” retains all the spelling variations and inconsistencies of those original editions, and so does this etext. The Notes and Sidenotes produced by Skeat are of course in modern (1882) English. He has inserted some corrections to the reprinted text; these are shown in [brackets]. Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors in his Notes and Sidenotes have been corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within the text and consultation of external sources.
Some minor changes are listed at the end of the book.
Footnote anchors are denoted by [number], and the footnotes have been placed at the end of each major section of the book.
The line numbering on each section of the reprinted 1534 text has been retained and is shown as a number (4, 8, 12 etc) on the right side of the etext. Original line-breaks in the 1534 text have been retained.
The 3-star inverted asterism symbol is denoted by ***.
The right-pointing finger symbol is denoted by ==>.
A superscript is denoted by ^n or ^{ nn}, for example xxix^{ th}.
WITH AN INTRODUCTION, NOTES, AND GLOSSARIAL INDEX,
ELRINGTON AND BOSWORTH PROFESSOR OF ANGLO-SAXON IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE.
LONDON: PUBLISHED FOR THE ENGLISH DIALECT SOCIETY BY TRÜBNER & CO., LUDGATE HILL. 1882.
HERTFORD: PRINTED BY STEPHEN AUSTIN AND SONS.
One question of chief interest respecting the volume here printed is--who was the author? We know that his name was “Mayster Fitzherbarde” (see p. 125), and the question that has to be settled is simply this--may we identify him with Sir Anthony Fitzherbert, judge of the Common Pleas, the author of the Grand Abridgment of the Common Law, the New Natura Brevium, and other legal works?