able witness, as also the plot which we now call East Smithfield in
London, given by Canutus, sometime king of this land, with other soil
thereabout, unto certain of his knights, with the liberty of a Guild which
thereof was called Knighton Guild. The truth is (saith John Stow, our
countryman and diligent traveller in the old estate of this my native
city) that it is now named Portsoken Ward, and given in time past to the
religious house within Aldgate. Howbeit first Otwell, the archovel, Otto,
and finally Geffrey Earl of Essex, constables of the Tower of London,
withheld that portion from the said house until the reign of King Stephen,
and thereof made a vineyard to their great commodity and lucre. The Isle
of Ely also was in the first times of the Normans called Le Ile des
Vignes. And good record appeareth that the bishop there had yearly three
or four tun at the least given him _nomine decimae_, beside whatsoever
over-sum of the liquor did accrue to him by leases and other excheats
whereof also I have seen mention. Wherefore our soil is not to be blamed,
as though our nights were so exceeding short that in August and September
the moon, which is lady of moisture and chief ripener of this liquor,
cannot in any wise shine long enough upon the same: a very mere toy and
fable, right worthy to be suppressed, because experience convinceth the
upholders thereof even in the Rhenish wines.

The time hath been also that woad, wherewith our countrymen dyed their
faces (as Caesar saith), that they might seem terrible to their enemies in
the field (and also women and their daughters-in-law did stain their
bodies and go naked, in that pickle, to the sacrifices of their gods,
coveting to resemble therein the Ethiopians, as Pliny saith, lib. 22, cap.
1), and also madder have been (next unto our tin and wools) the chief
commodities and merchandise of this realm. I find also that rape oil hath
been made within this land. But now our soil either will not, or at the
leastwise may not, bear either woad or madder. I say not that the ground
is not able so to do, but that we are negligent, afraid of the pilling of
our grounds, and careless of our own profits, as men rather willing to buy
the same of others than take any pain to plant them here at home. The like
I may say of flax, which by law ought to be sown in every country town in
England, more or less; but I see no success of that good and wholesome
law, sith it is rather contemptuously r