ountry, wherein, beside that they are often comparable
herein to the nobility of the land, they will seldom regard anything that
the butcher usually killeth, but reject the same as not worthy to come in
place. In such cases also jellies of all colours, mixed with a variety in
the representation of sundry flowers, herbs, trees, forms of beasts, fish,
fowls, and fruits, and thereunto marchpane wrought with no small
curiosity, tarts of divers hues, and sundry denominations, conserves of
old fruits, foreign and home-bred, suckets, codinacs, marmalades,
marchpane, sugar-bread, gingerbread, florentines, wild fowls, venison of
all sorts, and sundry outlandish confections, altogether seasoned with
sugar (which Pliny calleth _mel ex arundinibus_, a device not common nor
greatly used in old time at the table, but only in medicine, although it
grew in Arabia, India, and Sicilia), do generally bear the sway, besides
infinite devices of our own not possible for me to remember. Of the
potato, and such venerous[136] roots as are brought out of Spain,
Portugal, and the Indies to furnish up our banquets, I speak not, wherein
our mures[137] of no less force, and to be had about
Crosby-Ravenswath,[138] do now begin to have place.

But among all these, the kind of meat which is obtained with most
difficulty and costs, is commonly taken for the most delicate, and
thereupon each guest will soonest desire to feed. And as all estates do
exceed herein, I mean for strangeness and number of costly dishes, so
these forget not to use the like excess in wine, insomuch as there is no
kind to be had, neither anywhere more store of all sorts than in England,
although we have none growing with us but yearly to the proportion of
20,000 or 30,000 tun and upwards, notwithstanding the daily restraints of
the same brought over unto us, whereof at great meetings there is not some
store to be had. Neither do I mean this of small wines only, as claret,
white, red, French, etc., which amount to about fifty-six sorts, according
to the number of regions from whence they came, but also of the thirty
kinds of Italian, Grecian, Spanish, Canarian, etc., whereof vernage,
catepument, raspis, muscadell, romnie, bastard lire, osy caprie, clary,
and malmesey, are not least of all accompted of, because of their strength
and valour. For, as I have said in meat, so, the stronger the wine is, the
more it is desired, by means whereof, in old time, the best was called
_theologicu