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The first subject of reprobation arises from the order for burning Tyndal's testament at Paul's-Cross, 1526. As this is the first object of rebuke, it was, probably, the primary cause of this satire's appearance. The reputed author of the tract was associated with Tyndall in that translation,* and was joined with him in an injunction afterwards issued by Henry, forbidding any person to keep in their possession any of the works of Tyndall, Wickliffe, Roy, and others. The cause therefore of Tyndall was his own. The cardinal is afterwards charged in succession with extortion, avarice, whoredom, and in general or particular with every crime that comes within the scope of human turpitude. The word of a satirist should be cautiously received; but he was, it should be remembered, charged with many of these crimes in the articles preferred against him by the lords.

The satire, so far from being confined to Wolsey, is in a great measure levelled at the Romish church in general; and the gluttony and idleness of its members are lashed with wit and vigour :

As for preaching they take no care,
They wolde se a course at an hare
Rather than make a sermon:
To follow the chace of wylde dere,
Passinge the tyme with joly chere,
Among them all is common.

To playe at the cardes and dice,
Some of them are nothing nyce,

Both at hasard and momchance,

*Vide Tanneri Bibliotheca, sub voce Roy.

Fox's Martyrology, Vol. II. p. 587, Ed. 1641; and Collier' Eccl. Hist. Vol. II. p. 70.

He adds

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- they eat theyr belies full,

Every man as moche as he wull,

And none sayth blacke is his eye!*

These gentlemen seem, like Sir Andrew Ague-cheek, to have cared more for good living than good life, and perhaps the satirist, if they were not beyond his reach, notwithstanding his elevated nose, would have preferred the good things he railed at rather

Than sing, "my mind to me a kingdom is,"
When the lank hungry belly barked for foodt.

In fact, three fourths of the pages are lavished on the profligacy and insolence of the clergy in general ; ́ towards the conclusion, however, he quits the meaner multitude, and bestows what remains on the immediate object of his vengeance.

Sans autre écart revenons au Hèros.

The burning of Tyndall's translation, with which he began his attack, is renewed near the end, and a "brief oracion" is pronounced to his stateliness, more furious and vehement than any thing that precedes it.

Agaynst thine ambicion all people do cry,

Pompously spendinge the sustenance of the pore; Thy haughte honours highly to magnify,

Maketh theeves, traytors, and many a whore.

"Then having estraunged themselves thus for a small space, they return again, not to their pristine cursed life (I dare say) but to their countrey, and then no man say black is their eye, but all is well, and they as good christians, as those that suffer them unpunished.". Stubbes's Anatomy of Abuses, 1595, p. 65.

Ben Jonson's Every Man out of his Humour, Act I. Sc. i.
Of the pomp with which Wolsey appeared publicly, a curious

In the course of the satire the Cardinal's amorous propensities are descanted upon in language not over delicate, and also his insolence to the nobles which was singularly tyrannical. Skelton's description of Wolsey at the council-board is well known, and in Lodge's Illustrations of British History, Vol. I. Page 28, is a curious eccount of his intolerable haughtiness by a personal sufferer.

Och! there is neither duke ne barone,
Be they never of so grett power,
But they are constrained to crouche
Before this butcherly slouche,

As it ware unto an Emperoure.

That there were great grounds for complaints of this kind is evident from the articles exhibited against Wolsey, more particularly the charges urged against him in the fifteenth clause.

I find from the transactions of the society of Antiquaries, of which three MS volumes, in folio, are in my possession, that this tract has been twice exhibited at the meetings of that society, and as often attributed to Skelton: again by Anstis in a letter to Dr. Fiddes; and the latter in his ponderous tome of indis

account may be found in Stow's Chronicle, pa. 502, ed. 1631, And his magnificence and pride were not overlooked by Skelton.

Set up the wretche on hye

In a trone triumphantly.

Make him a great state,

And he will play checke mate

With royall majestie

Count himself as good as hee;

A prelatt potential, &c.

"Why come ye not to court?"

criminate apology, miscalled "The Life of Cardinal Wolsey," speaks of it as "a scandalous libel written by one Skelton, poet laureat," evidently confounding it with "Why come ye not to court?" Bale, however, a labourer in the same vineyard with Roy, asserts him to have been the author of it. From the preface to the "Parable of the wicked Mammon" he appears to have been an ecclesiastick; he resided some time with Tindall, whom he assisted in his studies; he afterwards went to Strasburg when he wrote inter patrem Christianum et filium contumacem dialogum Christianum. Perhaps, says Tanner,* he was the same Roy whom Sir Thomas More remembered to have written "an exposition on the seventh chapter of the Epistle to the Corinthians." He flourished about 1528, and suffered in Portugal, by the faggot. Stamford. O. G.

ART. VIII. The Boke.

Reade me frynde and be not wrothe For I saye nothynge but the trothe. The Byshoppes speake in the Cardynall. I wyll ascende makynge my state so hye, That my pompouse honoure shall neuer dye. [Cardinals arms, as before described, not coloured.] The Christen Congregation speaketh. O catife, whan thou thynkest least of all, Wyth confusyon thou shalt haue a fall.

* Bibliotheca Britannico-Hibernica, Pa. 645. Folio, 1748.

Colophon; Prynted at Wesell in the Yeare of our Lorde 1546, on the last of June, by Henry Nycolson.

This work is certainly too rare to make an apology necessary for the little now to be added to the full account given of the first edition, in the preceding article. Indeed my task is limited to one leaf, as this is the second edition, described by Herbert, p. 1560: but his copy wanted the title, and his coined one of Burying of the Mass," may now be corrected as above. The two editions appear to vary in orthography, and probably in many other instances, upon collation. The fifth and sixth lines of "The description of the Armes," at the back of the title, given in p. 40, are thus materially altered.

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"Which hathe devowred all that he may or can, Mortall enemy unto the worthy Reade lyon."

At the end of this description, on the same page, are the following lines, which do not appear to be noticed by Herbert, or in the above account, and therefore I presume are not in the first edition.

An Exhortation to the Papistes.

"O ye byshoppes and prestes, that yet be alyve, Repent from your tyranny after Iohn's counsell, Least ye be served as the folyshe virgynes fyve,

And utterly be condempned to the pytte of hell, Therefor put all your affiaunce in the pure Gospell,

Dyspise the worlde and cast your selves downe, Than shall ye receyve of God an immortall crowne." Conduit street.

J. H.

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