of 1500 was formerly in the library at Bulstrode, and I was given by
the late Mr. Bradshaw to understand that the same copy (no other
being known) is probably at Longleat. By referring to Herbert's
"Typographical Antiquities," anyone may see that, if his account (so
far as it goes) is to be trusted, the printed copy varies from the
Holkham MS. in many verbal particulars, and gives the date of Nevile's
Feast as 1465.

The compilation usually known as the "Book of St. Albans," 1486, is,
perhaps, next to the "Noble Book of Cookery," the oldest receptacle
for information on the subject in hand. The former, however, deals
with cookery only in an incidental and special way. Like Arnold's
Chronicle, the St. Albans volume is a miscellany comprehending nearly
all the matters that were apt to interest the few educated persons
who were qualified to peruse its pages; and amid a variety of allied
topics we come here across a catalogue of terms used in speaking of
certain dishes of that day. The reference is to the prevailing methods
of dressing and carving. A deer was said to be broken, a cony unlaced,
a pheasant, partridge, or quail winged, a pigeon or a woodcock
thighed, a plover minced, a mallard unbraced. They spoke of a salmon
or a gurnard as chined, a sole as loined, a haddock as sided, an eel
as trousoned, a pike as splatted, and a trout as gobbeted.

It must, I think, be predicated of Tusser's "Husbandry," of which the
last edition published in the writer's lifetime is that of 1580, that
it seems rather to reproduce precepts which occur elsewhere than to
supply the reader with the fruits of his own direct observation. But
there are certain points in it which are curious and original. He
tells the ploughman that, after confession on Shrove Tuesday, he may
go and thresh the fat hen, and if he is blindfold, kill her, and then