sheepmasters

And there is never a husbandman (for now I speak not of our great sheepmasters, of whom some one man hath 20,000) but hath more or less of this cattle feeding on his fallows and short grounds, which yield the finer fleece.

Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) Thomas Malory Jean Froissart

And there is never a husbandman (for now I speak not of our great sheepmasters, of whom some one man hath 20,000) but hath more or less of this cattle feeding on his fallows and short grounds, which yield the finer fleece.

Of Cattle Kept for Profit. Chapter XII. [1577, Book III., Chapter 8; 1587, Book III., Chapter 1 1909

For after that so much ground was inclosed for pasture, an infinite multitude of sheep died of the rot, such vengeance God took of their inordinate and insatiable covetousness, sending among the sheep that pestiferous murrain, which much more justly should have fallen on the sheepmasters’ own heads.

The First Book. The First Book of the Communication of Raphael Hythloday, Concerning the Best State of a Commonwealth 1909

'I am sorie to report it,' says Harrison, [224] 'but most sorrowful of all to understand that men of great port and countenance are so far from suffering their farmers to have anie gaine at all that they themselves become graziers, butchers, tanners, sheepmasters, and woodmen, thereby to enrich themselves.'

A Short History of English Agriculture 1893