in old time for
servants, slaves, and the inferior kind of people to feed upon. Hereunto
likewise, because it is dry and brickie in the working (for it will hardly
be made up handsomely into loaves), some add a portion of rye meal in our
time, whereby the rough dryness or dry roughness thereof is somewhat
qualified, and then it is named _miscelin_, that is, bread made of mingled
corn, albeit that divers do sow or mingle wheat and rye of set purpose at
the mill, or before it come there, and sell the same at the markets under
the aforesaid name.

In champaign countries much rye and barley bread is eaten, but especially
where wheat is scant and geson. As for the difference that is between the
summer and winter wheat, most husbandmen know it not, sith they are
neither acquainted with summer wheat nor winter barley; yet here and there
I find of both sorts, specially in the north and about Kendal, where they
call it March wheat, and also of summer rye, but in so small quantities as
that I dare not pronounce them to be greatly common among us.

Our drink, whose force and continuance is partly touched already, is made
of barley, water, and hops, sodden and mingled together, by the industry
of our brewers in a certain exact proportion. But, before our barley do
come into their hands, it sustaineth great alteration, and is converted
into malt, the making whereof I will here set down in such order as my
skill therein may extend unto (for I am scarce a good maltster), chiefly
for that foreign writers have attempted to describe the same, and the
making of our beer, wherein they have shot so far wide, as the quantity of
ground was between themselves and their mark. In the meantime bear with
me, gentle reader (I beseech thee), that lead thee from the description of
the plentiful diet of our country unto the fond report of a servile trade,
or rather from a table delicately furnished into a musty malt-house; but
such is now thy hap, wherefore I pray thee be contented.

Our malt is made all the year long in some great towns; but in
gentlemen's and yeomen's houses, who commonly make sufficient for their
own expenses only, the winter half is thought most meet for that
commodity: howbeit the malt that is made when the willow doth bud is
commonly worst of all. Nevertheless each one endeavoureth to make it of
the best barley, which is steeped in a cistern, in greater or less
quantity, by the space of three days and three nights, until it be