This inconvenience hath grown altogether to the church by
appropriations made unto monasteries and religious houses--a terrible
canker and enemy to religion.
But to leave this lamentable discourse of so notable and grievous an
inconvenience, growing as I said by encroaching and joining of house
to house and laying land to land, whereby the inhabitants of many
places of our country are devoured and eaten up, and their houses
either altogether pulled down or suffered to decay little by little,
although some time a poor man per adventure doth dwell in one of them,
who, not being able to repair it, suffereth it to fall down--and
thereto thinketh himself very friendly dealt withal, if he may have an
acre of ground assigned unto him, wherein to keep a cow, or wherein to
set cabbages, radishes, parsnips, carrots, melons, pompons,[4] or such
like stuff, by which he and his poor household liveth as by their
principal food, sith they can do no better. And as for wheaten bread,
they eat it when they can reach unto the price of it, contenting
themselves in the meantime with bread made of oats or barley: a poor
estate, God wot! Howbeit, what care our great encroachers? But in
divers places where rich men dwelled some time in good tenements,
there be now no houses at all, but hop-yards, and sheds for poles, or
peradventure gardens, as we may see in Castle Hedingham, and divers
other places.
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