Page:Elizabethan People.djvu/186

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140
THE ELIZABETHAN PEOPLE

and, although not commonly of such huge greatness as in other places of the main, yet, if you respect the easiness of their pace it is hard to say where their like are to be had. Our land doth yield no asses, and therefore we want the generation of mules and somers, and therefore the most part of our carriage is made by these, which, remaining stone [ungelded], are either reserved for the cart or appointed to bear such burdens as are convenient for them. Our cart or plough horses (for we use them indifferently) are commonly so strong that five or six of them (at the most) will draw three thousand weight of the greatest tale with ease for a long journey, although it be not a load of common usage, which consisteth only of two thousand, or fifty foot of timber, forty bushels of white salt, or six and thirty of hay, or five quarters of wheat, experience daily teacheth, and I have elsewhere remembered. Such as are kept also for burden will carry four hundred weight commonly without any let or hindrance. This, furthermore, is to be noted, that our princes and the nobility commonly have their carriage made by carts, thereby it Cometh to pass that when the Queen's majesty doth remove from any one place to another, there are usually four hundred carewares, which amount to the sum of two thousand four hundred horses,