was not improbably written whilst its author was safe in sanctuary under Bishop Islip. William Thynne, court favourite though he was, could never have kept Skelton's head on his shoulders after so terrible a provocation.

Wherever he may be placed, John Skelton stands alone amongst satirists; there is no one like him. Possibly from a feeling that he was writing on the winning side, and sure of sympathy and protection, he scorns to hide his pearls under a dunghill like Rabelais, and utters fearlessly and openly what he has to say. Even in our own time,

Thynne's note on the family of Gower (p. 12) is of value as agreeing with later theories, which deny that Gower the poet was of the Gowers of Stittenham, the ancestors of the present houses of Sutherland and Ellesmere. The question is not, however, finally decided, and we have reason to believe that all the Gowers of Great Britain are descended from the same family of Guers still flourishing in Brittany. Early coatarmours are not much to be depended on, and Thynne as a Herald may lean a little too much towards them. question is, however, in good hands, and I hope that before long some fresh light may be thrown upon it.

The

The old story of Chaucer's having been fined for beating a Franciscan friar in Fleet Street is doubted by Thynne, though hardly, I think, on sufficient grounds.1 Tradition (when it agrees with our own views) is not lightly to be disturbed, and remembering with what more than feminine powers of invective "spiritual" men seem to be not unfrequently endowed, and also how atrociously insolent a Fran

'I look on the story as gammon.-F. J. F.

ciscan friar would be likely to be (of course from the best motives) to a man like Chaucer, who had burnt into the very soul of monasticism with the caustic of his wit, I shall continue to believe the legend for the present. If the mediæval Italians are to be believed, the cudgelling of a friar was occasionally thought necessary even by the most faithful, and I see no reason why hale Dan Chaucer should not have lost his temper on sufficient provocation. Old men have hot blood sometimes, and Dickens does not outrage probability when he makes Martin Chuzzelwit the elder fell Mr Pecksniff to the ground.

Much of the tract is taken up by corrections of etymologies, and the explanation of obscure and obsolete words. It is a little curious that the word "orfrayes," which had gone so far out of date as to be unintelligible to Master Speght, should, thanks to the new rage for church and clergy decoration, have become reasonably common again. The note on the "Vernacle" is another bit of close and accurate antiquarian knowledge worth noting. It is most tantalizing that after all he says about that mysterious question of "The Lords son of Windsor," a question as mysterious as that demanding why Falstalf likened Prince Henry's father to a "singing man" of the same place, we should be left as wise as we were before. We have here and there, too, hints as to what we have lost from Thynne's great storehouse of information; how valuable would have been "that long and no common discourse" which he tells us he might have composed on that most curious form of judicial knavery, the ordeal; and possibly much more so is that of his "collections" for his edition of Chaucer! This last may, however, be still recovered by some fortunate literary mole.

The notice, by no means clear, but certainly not complimentary, of "the second editione to one inferior personne, than my father's editione was," may refer to the edition of

Chaucer which was printed about 1550, (says Mr Bradshaw, though the British Museum Catalogue says '1545?') more or less from William Thynne's second edition of 1542; but from another passage hinting that Speght followed "a late English corrector whom I forbear to name," I suspect that the "inferior personne was poor John Stowe, and that the edition sneered at was that edited by him in 1561, the nearest in point of date to that of Speght.

The manuscript from which the present tract is reprinted is, like most of the treasures of the Bridgewater Library, wonderfully clean and in good order. It is entirely in the Autograph of Francis Thynne, and was evidently written purposely for the great Lord Chancellor Egerton, and bears his arms emblazoned on the back of title-page. Master Speght most probably got his copy of the Animadversions in a more humble form.1

In conclusion may I remark that, as usual, the green silk ribands, originally attached to the vellum and gold cover, are closely cut away, probably for the purpose of being converted into shoe-ties, which Robert Greene informs us was the usual destination of ribands appended to presentation copies. He hints at the same time that those appendages were generally the only solid advantage gained by the dedicatee from the honour done him.

MARK NOBLE'S ACCOUNT OF FRANCIS THYNNE, FROM HIS HISTORY OF THE COLLEGE OF ARMS, LONDON, 1804, p. 213.

LANCASTER. ELIZ. FRANCIS THYNNE, ESQ.

Descended from a branch of the ennobled family, now having the title of Marquis of Bath. The ancient name was

The alterations in Speght's Glossary, &c. of 1602 show that he did have a copy of Thynne's criticism of him: see the Notes to the text in the following pages, and Speght's words, p. x, n., above.—F.

THYNNE.

b

Botteville, taken from a place in Poitou, whence they came to assist John in the barons' wars. Settling at Stretton, in Shropshire, and losing their old name, they acquired that of le Thynne, literally the Inn, a significant term for their large spacious mansion at Stretton; the houses of the great being in former ages called inns. William le Thynne, of Stretton, by Joan, daughter of John Higgons of that place, had issue two sons; Thomas le Thynne seated at Stretton, from whom descended the Marquis of Bath, and William le Thynne, Chief Clerk of the Kitchen to Henry VIII., afterwards Master of the Household to that Monarch. He was father to Lancaster Thynne, who was born at Stretton, and educated at Tonbridge School, under Mr Proctor, the historian, commended by Holingshed; from thence he went to Oxford. Upon his leaving that University, he was sent to Lincoln's Inn to study the law; but fond of heraldic and genealogical pursuits, he presented a petition to Lord Burleigh, then presiding at the head of the commission for executing the office of Earl Marshal, requesting to be admitted into the College, desiring a previous examination, even in the deepest points of armoury which could be obtained, without the knowledge of philosophy and history, mentioning, as a recommendation in his own favour, that he had drawn out a "series" of the lord treasurers and composed "certain circularly pedigrees of the earls and viscounts of England." His acquirements were acknowledged; he was raised to the office of an herald without having ever been a pursuivant. He was then 57 years old. He died in 1608, not in 1611, as Wood mentions, who has fallen into many mistakes about him. Camden calls him "an excellent antiquary and a gentleman, painful and well-deserving of his office whilst he lived." Garter Dethick put his name down as a fit person to be raised to be Norroy. His arms were Or, five bars Sable. Hearne published "A Discourse of the Dutye and Office of an Heraulde of Armes, written by him the third day

of March 1605." In the year 1651 were printed his "Histories concerning Ambassadors and their Functions," dedicated to his good friend William, Lord Cobham. He continued the Chronicle, known by the name of Holingshed's, finishing the Annals of Scotland, from 1586 down to where they now end. He drew up a list of English Cardinals, added to the reign of Mary I. He wrote the Catalogue of English Historical Writers. His "Discourses" upon the Earls of Leicester, Archbishops of Canterbury, Lords Cobham, and the Catalogue of the Wardens of the Cinque Ports, were suppressed. He also wrote his History of Dover Castle and the Cinque Ports; the Genealogical History of the Cobhams; Discourses of Arms, concerning the Bath and Batchelor Knights; the History and Lives of the Lord Treasurers, mentioned in a MS. life of him, now in the collection of Sir Joseph Ayleffe, Bart. Numerous as these works are, yet there are various other literary productions of his: some of them are preserved in the Cotton Library, others were possessed by Anstis, sen. Garter. His heraldic collections are in the College of Arms, and in the Ashmoleian Museum at Oxford. Some of his manuscripts are collections of antiquities, sepulchral inscriptions, taken by him from English churches, and elsewhere. He intended to have published an edition of Chaucer's works, but declining that, gave his labours relative to it to Speght, who published them in his edition of that poet's works, with his own notes, and those of his father, who printed the first edition of this ancient writer in 1542, being the oldest of any except Caxton's. Thynne, Lancaster, had meant to have written a comment upon the text: some verses of his are prefixed to Speght's edition.