hem. He must, I think, himself have been a copyholder in
his day, so feelingly does he deal with the detriments of a
champion-holding. The need, for example, of watching the beasts
straying at will over the open fields!

Where champion wanteth a swineherd for hog
There many complaineth of naughty man's dog.
Where each his own keeper appoints without care,
There corn is destroyed ere men be aware

And again more bitterly:

Some pester the commons with jades and with geese,
With hog without ring, and with sheep without fleece.
Some lose a day's labour with seeking their own,
Some meet with a booty they would not have known.
Great troubles and losses the champion sees,
And even in brawling, as wasps among bees:
As charity that way appeareth but small;
So less be their winnings, or nothing at all.

The probabilities are that he was quite right; but so long as copyhold
endured so long lasted the open fields.

Tusser's holding, and that of every husbandman in England in his time,
was self-sufficient. Not only did you eat your own mutton, make your
own souse, your own beer, cheese, butter, wine, cordials, and physic;
you built your own house, made your own roads, fenced your own lands,
contrived your own plows, wains, wagons, wheelbarrows, and all manner
of tools. But much more than that. You grew your own hemp, had your
own ropewalk, twisted your own twine; you grew your flax and wove your
linen; you tanned and dressed your own leather, cut and spun your own
wool, made, no doubt, your own clothes. Indeed, you stood four-square
to fate in Tusser's time; and in that particular, as well as in
another which I must speak of next, you were much nearer to Hesiod's
farmer than to ours. This precept of his upon the uses of your
woodland recalls Hesiod directly:

Save elm, ash and crabtree for cart and for plow;
Save step for a stile of the crotch of the bough;
Save hazel for forks, save sallow for rake;
Save hulver and thorn, whereof flail to make.

Hulver is holly. In the same section (April) he has a verse about
stone-picking which will show his encyclopaedic grip of his matter:

Where stones be too many, annoying thy land,
Make servant come home with a stone in his hand:
By daily so doing, have plenty ye shall,
Both handsome for paving and good for a wall.

He bought little or nothing, trafficked very much by barter, and had
scarcely any need for money. His men and maids lived