A very interesting point is the author’s love of farming and of horses. As to horses, he tells us how he first went to Ripon to buy colts (p. 65); how many secrets of horse-dealing he could tell; how, in buying horses, he had been beguiled a hundred times and more (p. 63); how he used to say to his customers that, if ever they ventured to trust any horse-dealer, they had better trust himself (p. 73); and how he had in his possession at one time as many as sixty mares, and five or six horses (p. 60). In this connection, it becomes interesting to inquire if Sir Anthony Fitzherbert was fond of horses likewise.
It so happens that this question can certainly be answered in the affirmative; and I have here to acknowledge, with pleasure and gratitude, the assistance which I have received from one of the family,[9] the Rev. Reginald Fitzherbert, of Somersal Herbert, Derbyshire. He has been at the trouble of transcribing Sir Anthony’s will, a complete copy of which he contributed to “The Reliquary,” No. 84, vol. xxi. April, 1881, p. 234. I here insert, by his kind permission, his remarks upon the subject, together with such extracts from the will as seem most material for our present purpose.
“The following will of Sir Anthony Fitzherbert, of Norbury, is transcribed from the Office Copy at Somerset House (Dingley, fol. 20), and is now printed, as I believe, for the first time. The contractions have been written out _in extenso_.
“Sir Anthony married, secondly, the co-heir of Richard Cotton, and with her he acquired the estate of Hampstall Ridware, which he probably kept in his own hands, and farmed himself. He succeeded his brother John at Norbury in 1531, and died there in 1538, aged 68.
“Fuller, in his _Worthies_, says that Sir Anthony Fitzherbert’s books are ‘monuments which will longer continue his Memory than the flat blew marble stone in Norbury Church under which he lieth interred.’ Camden (Gibson’s ed. 1753, vol. i. p. 271) calls him _Chief Justice_ of the Common Pleas; but Thoroton (Notts., ed. 1677, p. 344) says, ‘I do not find that Anthony Fitzherbert was ever Chief Justice;’ and it does not appear that he was more than, as he describes himself, ‘oon of the kings Justices.’”