And Fletcher has "upse-freeze;" which Dr. Nott explains in his edition of Decker's "Gull's Hornbook," as "a tipsy draught, or swallowing liquor till drunk." Mr. Gifford says it was the name of Friesland beer; the meaning, however, was "to drink swinishly like a Dutchman."
We are indebted to the Danes for many of our terms of jollity, such as a rouse and a carouse. Mr. Gifford has given not only a new but very distinct explanation of these classical terms in his "Massinger." "A rouse was a large glass, in which a health was given, the drinking of which by the rest of the company formed a carouse. Barnaby Rich notices the carouse as an invention for which the first founder merited hanging. It is necessary to add, that there could be no rouse or carouse, unless the glasses were emptied." Although we have lost the terms, we have not lost the practice, as those who have the honour of dining in public parties are still gratified by the animating cry of "Gentlemen, charge your glasses."
According to Blount's "Glossographia," carouse is a corruption of two old German words, gar signifying all, and ausz, out; so that to drink garauz is to drink all out: hence carouse.
[159]"Pierce Pennilesse," sig. F 2, 1595.
[160]When Christian IV. of Denmark was at the court of our James I. on a visit, drinking appears to have been carried to an excess; there is extant an account of a court masque, in which the actors were too tipsy to continue their parts; luckily, their majesties were not sufficiently sober to find fault.
[161]These inventions for keeping every thirsty soul within bounds are alluded to by Tom Nash; I do not know that his authority will be great as an antiquary, but the things themselves he describes he had seen. He tells us, that "King Edgar, because his subjects should not offend in swilling and bibbing as they did, caused certain iron cups to be chained to every fountain and well-side, and at every vintner's door, with iron pins in them, to stint every man how much he should drink; and he who went beyond one of those pins forfeited a penny for every draught."
Pegge, in his "Anonymiana," has minutely described these peg-tankards, which confirms this account of Nash, and nearly the antiquity of the custom. "They have in the inside a row of eight pins one above another, from top to bottom; the tankard holds two quarts, so that there is a gill of ale, i.e., half a pint of Winchester measure between each pin. The first person that drank was to empty the tankard to the first peg or pin; the second was to empty to the next pin, &c.; by which means the pins were so many measures to the compotators, making them all drink alike, or the same quantity: and as the distance of the pins was such as to contain a large draught of liquor, the company would be very liable by this method to get drunk, especially when, if they drank short of the pin or beyond it, they were obliged to drink again. In Archbishop Anselm's Canons, made in the council at London in 1102, priests are enjoined not to go to drinking-bouts, nor to drink to pegs. The words are—"Ut Presbyteri non, eant ad potationes, nec AD PINNAS bibant." (Wilkins, vol. i. p. 388.) This shows the antiquity of this invention, which at least was as old as the Conquest.
[162]And yet a drawer-on too; i.e. an incitement to appetite: the phrase is yet in use. This drawer-on was also technically termed a puller-on and a shoeing-horn in drink.
On "the Italian delicate oil'd mushrooms," still a favourite dish with the Italians, I have to communicate some curious knowledge. In an original manuscript letter dated Hereford, 15th November 1659, the name of the writer wanting, but evidently the composition of a physician who had travelled, I find that the dressing of MUSHROOMS was then a novelty. The learned writer laments his error that he "disdained to learn the cookery that occurred in my travels, by a sullen principle of mistaken devotion, and thus declined the great helps I had to enlarge and improve human diet." This was an age of medicine, when it was imagined that the health of mankind essentially depended on diet; and Moffet had written his curious book on this principle. Our writer, in noticing the passion of the Romans for mushrooms, which was called "an Imperial dish," says, "he had eaten it often at Sir Henry Wotton's table (our resident ambassador at Venice), always dressed by the inspection of his Dutch-Venetian Johanna, or of Nic. Oudart, and truly it did deserve the old applause as I found it at his table; it was far beyond our English food. Neither did any of us find it of hard digestion, for we did not eat like Adamites, but as modest men would eat of musk-melons. If it were now lawful to hold any kind of intelligence with Nic. Oudart, I would only ask him Sir Henry Wotton's art of dressing mushrooms, and I hope that is not high treason,"—Sloane MSS. 4292.
[163]See Mr. Douce's curious "Illustrations of Shakspeare," vol. i. 457; a gentleman more intimately conversant with our ancient and domestic manners than, perhaps, any single individual in the country.
[164]This term is used in Bancroft's "Two Books of Epigrams and Epitaphs," 1639. I take it to have been an accepted one of that day.
[165]"A delicate Diet for daintie mouthed Dronkardes, wherin the fowle Abuse of common carowsing and quaffing with hartie Draughtes is honestlie admonished." By George Gascoigne, Esquier. 1576.
[166]I shall preserve the story in the words of Whitelocke; it was something ludicrous, as well as terrific.
"From Berkshire (in May, 1650) that five drunkards agreed to drink the king's health in their blood, and that each of them should cut off a piece of his buttock, and fry it upon the gridiron, which was done by four of them, of whom one did bleed so exceedingly, that they were fain to send for a chirurgeon, and so were discovered. The wife of one of them hearing that her husband was amongst them, came to the room, and taking up a pair of tongs laid about her, and so saved the cutting of her husband's flesh."—Whitelocke's Memorials, p. 453, second edition.
[167]Burnet's Life of Sir Matthew Hale.
[168]Calamities of Authors, vol. ii. p. 313.
[169]It first appeared in a review of his "Memoirs."
[170]The words are, "Une derrière la scène." I am not sure of the-meaning, but an Act behind the scenes would be perfectly in character with this dramatic bard.
[171]The exact reasoning of Sir Fretful, in the Critic, when Mrs. Dangle thought his piece "rather too long," while he proves his play was "a remarkably short play."—"The first evening you can spare me three hours and a half, I'll undertake to read you the whole, from beginning to end, with the prologue and epilogue, and allow time for the music between the acts. The watch here, you know, is the critic."
[172]Again, Sir Fretful; when Dangle "ventures to suggest that the interest rather falls off in the fifth act;"—"Rises, I believe you mean, sir."—No, I don't, upon my word."—"Yes, yes, you do, upon my soul; it certainly don't fall off; no, no, it don't fall off."
[173]See ante. vol. i. p. 71.
[174]The plates of the original edition are in the quarto form; they have been poorly reduced in the common editions in twelves.
[175]The establishment could originally accommodate no more than six lunatics. In 1644, the number had only increased to forty-four; and the building had nearly perished for want of funds, when the city raised a subscription and repaired it. After the great fire, it was re-established on a much larger scale in Moorfields.
[176]Stowe's "Survey of London," Book i.
[177]"The Academy of Armory," Book ii. c. 3, p. 161. This is a singular work, where the writer has contrived to turn the barren subjects of heraldry into an entertaining Encyclopædia, containing much curious knowledge on almost every subject; but this folio more particularly exhibits the most copious vocabulary of old English terms. It has been said that there are not more than twelve copies extant of this very rare work, which is probably not true. [It is certainly not correct; the work is, however, rare and valuable.]
[178]In that curious source of our domestic history, the "English Villanies" of Decker, we find a lively description of the "Abram cove," or Abram man, the impostor who personated a Tom o' Bedlam. He was terribly disguised with his grotesque rags, his staff, his knotted hair, and with the more disgusting contrivances to excite pity, still practised among a class of our mendicants, who, in their cant language, are still said "to sham Abraham." This impostor was, therefore, as suited his purpose and the place, capable of working on the sympathy, by uttering a silly maunding, or demanding of charity, or terrifying the easy fears of women, children, and domestics, as he wandered up and down the country: they refused nothing to a being who was as terrific to them as "Robin Good-fellow," or "Raw-head and Bloody-bones." Thus, as Edgar expresses it, "sometimes with lunatic bans, sometimes with prayers," the gestures of this impostor were "a counterfeit puppet-play: they came with a hollow noise, whooping, leaping, gambolling, wildly dancing, with a fierce or distracted look." These sturdy mendicants were called "Tom of Bedlam's band of mad-caps," or "Poor Tom's flock of wild geese." Decker has preserved their "Maund," or begging—"Good worship master, bestow your reward on a poor man that hath been in Bedlam without Bishopsgate, three years, four months, and nine days, and bestow one piece of small silver towards his fees, which he is indebted there, of 3l. 13s. 7½d." (or to such effect).
Or, "Now dame, well and wisely, what will you give poor Tom? One pound of your sheep's-feathers to make poor Tom a blanket? or one cutting of your sow's side, no bigger than my arm; or one piece of your salt meat to make poor Tom a sharing-horn; or one cross of your small silver, towards a pair of shoes; well and wisely, give poor Tom an old sheet to keep him from the cold; or an old doublet and jerkin of my master's; well and wisely, God save the king and his council." Such is a history drawn from the very archives of mendicity and imposture; and written perhaps as far back as the reign of James the First: but which prevailed in that of Elizabeth, as Shakspeare has so finely shown in his Edgar. This Maund, and these assumed manners and costume, I should not have preserved from their utter penury, but such was the rude material which Shakspeare has worked up into that most fanciful and richest vein of native poetry, which pervades the character of the wandering Edgar, tormented by "the foul fiend" when he
And the poet proceeds with a minute picture of "Bedlam beggars." See Lear, Act ii. Sc. 3.
[179]Aubrey's information is perfectly correct; for those impostors who assumed the character of Tom o' Bedlams for their own nefarious purposes used to have a mark burnt in their arms, which they showed as the mark of Bedlam. "The English Villanies" of Decker, c 17. 1648.
[180]I discovered the present in a very scarce collection, entitled "Wit and Drollery," 1661; an edition, however, which is not the earliest of this once fashionable miscellany.
[181]Harman, in his curious "Caveat, a warning for Common Cursitors, vulgarly called Vagabones," 1566, describes the "Abraham Man" as a pretended lunatic, who wandered the country over, soliciting food or charity at farm-houses, or frightening and bullying the peasantry for the same. They described themselves as cruelly treated in Bedlam, and nearly in the words of Shakspeare's Edgar.
[182]Dr. James, the translator of "Pauli's Treatise on Tea," 1746, says: "According to the Chinese, tea produces an appetite after hunger and thirst are satisfied; therefore, the drinking of it is to be abstained from." He concludes his treatise by saying: "As Hippocrates spared no pains to remove and root out the Athenian plague, so have I used the utmost of my endeavours to destroy the raging epidemical madness of importing tea into Europe from China."
[183]Edinburgh Review, 1816, p. 117.
[184]Modern collectors have gone beyond this, and exhibited "Elizabethan tea-pots," which are just as likely to be true. There is no clear proof of the use of tea in England before the middle of the seventeenth century. This ante-dating of curiosities is the weakness of collectors.
[185]Aubrey, speaking of this house, then in other hands, says that Bowman's Coffee-house in St. Michael's Alley, established 1652, was the first opened in London. About four years afterwards, James Farr, a barber, opened another in Fleet-street, by the Inner Temple gate. Hatton, in his "New View of London," 1708, says it is "now the Rainbow," and he narrates how Farr "was presented by the Inquest of St. Dunstan's-in-the-West, for making and selling a sort of liquor called coffee, as a great nuisance and prejudice to the neighbourhood." The words of the presentment are, that "in making the same he annoyeth his neighbours by evill smells." Hatton adds, with naïveté, "Who would then have thought London would ever have had near 3000 such nuisances, and that coffee would have been (as now) so much drank by the best of quality and physicians." It is, however, proper to note that coffee-houses had been opened in Oxford at an earlier date. Anthony Wood informs us that one Jacob, a Jew, opened a coffee-house in the parish of St. Peter-in-the-East, at Oxford, as early as 1650.
[186]This witty poet was not without a degree of prescience; the luxury of eating spiders has never indeed become "modish," but Mons. Lalande, the French astronomer, and one or two humble imitators of the modern philosopher, have shown this triumph over vulgar prejudices, and were epicures of this stamp.
[187]"Not only tea, which we have from the East, but also chocolate, which is imported from the West Indies, begins to be famous."—Dr. James's "Treatise on Tobacco, Tea, Coffee, and Chocolate." 1746.
[188]Gerbier was in Antwerp at Rubens' death, and sent over an inventory of his pictures and effects for the king's selection.
[189]Sloane MSS. 5176, letter 367.
[190]See Gregorio Panzani's Memoirs of his agency in England. This work long lay in manuscript, and was only known to us in the Catholic Dodd's "Church History," by partial extracts. It was at length translated from the Italian MS. and published by the Rev. Joseph Berington; a curious piece of our own secret history.
[191]Hume's "History of England," vii. 842. His authority is the "Parl. Hist." xix. 88.
[192]Whitelocke's "Memorials."
[193]Harl. MSS. 4898.
[194]One of these pictures, "A Concert," is now in our National Gallery.
[195]They were secured by Cromwell, who had intended to reproduce the designs at the tapestry-factory established in Mortlake, but the troubles of the kingdom hindered it. Charles II. very nearly sold them to France; Lord Danby intercepted the sale; when they were packed away in boxes, until the time of William III., who built the gallery at Hampton Court expressly for their exhibition.
[196]This picture is now one of the ornaments of Windsor Castle.
[197]These would appear to be copies of Andrea Mantegna's "Triumphs of Julius Cæsar," the cartoons of which are still in the galleries of Hampton Court.
[198]Some may be curious to learn the price of gold and silver about 1650. It appears by this manuscript inventory that the silver sold at 4s. 11d. per oz. and gold at £3 10s.; so that the value of these metals has little varied during the last century and a half.
[199]This poem is omitted in the great edition of the king's works, published after the Restoration; and was given by Burnet from a manuscript of his "Memoirs of the Dukes of Hamilton;" but it had been previously published in Perrenchief's "Life of Charles the First." It has been suspected that this poem is a pious fraud, and put forth in the king's name—as likewise was the "Eikon Basilike." One point I have since ascertained is, that Charles did write verses, as rugged as some of these. And in respect to the book, notwithstanding the artifice and the interpolations of Gauden, I believe that there are some passages which Charles only could have written.
[200]This article was composed without any recollection that a part of the subject had been anticipated by Lord Orford. In the "Anecdotes of Painting in England," many curious particulars are noticed: the story of the king's diamond seal had reached his lordship, and Vertue had a mutilated transcript of the inventory of the king's pictures, &c., discovered in Moorfields; for, among others, more than thirty pages at the beginning relating to the plate and jewels were missing. The manuscript in the Harleian Collection is perfect. Lord Orford has also given an interesting anecdote to show the king's discernment in the knowledge of the hands of the painters, which confirms the little anecdote I have related from the Farrars. But for a more intimate knowledge of this monarch's intercourse with artists, I beg to refer to the third volume of my "Commentaries on the Life and Reign of Charles the First," chapter the sixth, on "The Private Life of Charles the First.—Love of the Arts."
[201]Hume, vol. vi. p. 234. Charles seems, however, to have constantly consulted his favourite minister, the Duke of Buckingham, on the subject, though his letters express clearly his own determination. In Harleian MSS., 6988, is a letter written to Buckingham, dated Hampton Court, 20th November, 1625, he declares, "I thought I would have cause enough in short time to put away the Monsieurs," from the quarrels they would ferment between himself and his wife, or his subjects, and begs of him to acquaint "the queen-mother (Mary de Medicis) with my intention; for this being an action that may have a show of harshness, I thought it was fit to take this way, that she to whom I have had many obligations may not take it unkindly." In another long letter, preserved among the Rawlinson MSS. in the Bodleian Library, he enters minutely into his domestic grievances—"What unkindnesses and distastes have fallen between my wife and me"—which he attributes to the "crafty counsels" of her servants. On 7th August, 1626, he writes a final letter to the duke, ordering him to send them all away, "if you can by fair means (but stick not long in disputing), otherwise force them away, driving them away like so many wild beasts, until ye have shipped them, and so the devil go with them."
[202]Lord Hardwicke's State-papers, II. 2, 3.
[203]Sloane MSS. 4176.
[204]Harl. MSS. 646.
[205]Ambassades du Maréchal de Bassompierre, vol. iii. p. 49.
[206]A letter from Dr. Meddus to Mr. Mead, 17th Jan. 1625. Sloane MSS. 4177.
[207]Sir S. D'Ewes's "Journal of his Life," Harl. MS. 646. We have seen our puritanic antiquary describing the person of the queen with some warmth; but "he could not abstain from deep-fetched sighs, to consider that she wanted the knowledge of true religion," a circumstance that Henrietta would have as zealously regretted for Sir Symonds himself!
[208]A letter to Mr. Mead, July 1, 1625. Sloane MSS. 4177.
[209]At Hampton Court there is a curious picture of Charles and Henrietta dining in the presence. This regal honour, after its interruption during the Civil Wars, was revived in 1667 by Charles the Second, as appears by "Evelyn's Diary." "Now did his majesty again dine in the presence, in ancient style, with music and all the court ceremonies."
[210]The author of the Life of this Archbishop and Lord Keeper, a voluminous folio, but full of curious matters. Ambrose Phillips the poet abridged it.
[211]A letter from Mr. Mead to Sir Martin Stuteville, October, 1625. Sloane MSS. 4177.
[212]There is a very rare print, which has commemorated this circumstance.
[213]Mr. Pory to Mr. Mead, July, 1626. Harl. MSS. No. 383. The answer of the king's council to the complaints of Bassompierre is both copious and detailed in vol. iii., p. 166, of the "Ambassades" of this marshal.
[214]A letter from Mr. Pory to Mr. Mead contains a full account of this transaction. Harl. MSS. 383.
[215]A letter among Tanner's MS. in the Bodleian Library notes—"When they were turned away from Somerset House the passage was somewhat rough;" and adds, "I know not what revilings took place betwixt them and the king's guard, but one of the soldiers told me that for furious speech, he would rather have taken common thieves to prison." A stanza of a popular song of the day testifies to the joy of the Commons of England on the event:—
A letter from the Earl of Dorchester, 27th May, 1630. Harl. MSS. 7000 (160).
[217]The letters he sent to Buckingham are full of tender respect for the queen, lamenting her (certainly unwarrantable) neglect of reciprocity of attention, and silly squabbles in favour of her servants.
[218]Clarendon details the political coquetries of Monsieur La Ferté; his "notable familiarity with those who governed most in the two houses;" ii. 93.
[219]Hume seems to have discovered in "Estrades' Memoirs" the real occasion of Richelieu's conduct. In 1639 the French and Dutch proposed dividing the Low Country provinces; England was to stand neuter. Charles replied to D'Estrades, that his army and fleet should instantly sail to prevent these projected conquests. From that moment the intolerant ambition of Richelieu swelled the venom of his heart, and he eagerly seized on the first opportunity of supplying the Covenanters in Scotland with arms and money. Hume observes, that Charles here expressed his mind with an imprudent candour; but it proves he had acquired a just idea of national interest, vi. 337. See on this a very curious passage in the Catholic Dodd's "Church History," iii. 22. He apologises for his cardinal by asserting that the same line of policy was pursued here in England "by Charles I. himself, who sent fleets and armies to assist the Huguenots, or French rebels, as he calls them; and that this was the constant practice of Queen Elizabeth's ministry, to foment differences in several neighbouring kingdoms, and support their rebellious subjects, as the forces she employed for that purpose both in France, Flanders, and Scotland, are an undeniable proof." The recriminations of politicians are the confessions of great sinners.
[220]"Grotii Epistolæ," 375 and 380, fo. Ams. 1687. A volume which contains 2500 letters of this great man.
[221]"La Vie du Cardinal Duc de Richelieu," anonymous, but written by Jean le Clerc, vol. i. 507. An impartial but heavy life of a great minister, of whom, between the panegyrics of his flatterers and the satires of his enemies, it was difficult to discover a just medium.
[222]Mem. Rec. vol. vi. 131.
[223]It is quoted in the "Remarques Critiques sur le Dictionnaire de Bayle," Paris, 1748. This anonymous folio volume was written by Le Sieur Joly, a canon of Dijon, and is full of curious researches, and many authentic discoveries. The writer is no philosopher, but he corrects and adds to the knowledge of Bayle. Here I found some original anecdotes of Hobbes, from MS. sources, during that philosopher's residence at Paris, which I have given in "Quarrels of Authors."
[224]Montresor, attached to the Duke of Orleans, has left us some very curious memoirs, in two small volumes; the second preserving many historical documents of that active period. This spirited writer has not hesitated to detail his projects for the assassination of the tyrannical minister.
[225]At page 154 of this work is a different view of the character of this extraordinary man: those anecdotes are of a lighter and satirical nature; they touch on "the follies of the wise."
[226]In "The Disparity." to accompany "The Parallel" of Sir Henry Wotton; two exquisite cabinet-pictures, preserved in the Reliquiæ Wottonianæ; and at least equal to the finest "Parallels" of Plutarch.
[227]The singular openness of his character was not statesmanlike. He was one of those whose ungovernable sincerity "cannot put all their passions in their pockets." He told the Count-Duke Olivarez, on quitting Spain, that "he would always cement the friendship between the two nations; but with regard to you, sir, in particular, you must not consider me as your friend, but must ever expect from me all possible enmity and opposition." The cardinal was willing enough, says Hume, "to accept what was proffered, and on these terms the favourites parted." Buckingham, desirous of accommodating the parties in the nation, once tried at the favour of the puritanic party, whose head was Dr. Preston, master of Emanuel College. The duke was his generous patron, and Dr. Preston his most servile adulator. The more zealous puritans were offended at this intimacy; and Dr. Preston, in a letter to some of his party, observed that it was true that the duke was a vile and profligate fellow, but that there was no other way to come at him but by the lowest flattery; that it was necessary for the glory of God that such instruments should be made use of; and more in this strain. Some officious hand conveyed this letter to the duke, who, when Dr. Preston came one morning as usual, asked him whether he had ever disobliged him, that he should describe him to his party in such black characters. The doctor, amazed, denied the fact; on which the duke instantly produced the letter, then turned from him, never to see him more. It is said that from this moment he abandoned the puritan party, and attached himself to Laud. This story was told by Thomas Baker to W. Wotton, as coming from one well versed in the secret history of that time.—Lansdowne MSS. 872, fo. 88.
[228]A well-known tract against the Duke of Buckingham, by Dr. George Eglisham, physician to James the First, entitled "The Forerunner of Revenge," may be found in many of our collections. Gerbier, in his manuscript memoirs, gives a curious account of this political libeller, the model of that class of desperate scribblers. "The falseness of his libels," says Gerbier, "he hath since acknowledged, though too late. During my residence at Bruxelles, this Eglisham desired Sir William Chaloner, who then was at Liege, to bear a letter to me, which is still extant: he proposed, if the king would pardon and receive him into favour again, with some competent subsistence, that he would recant all that he had said or written to the disadvantage of any in the court of England, confessing that he had been urged thereunto by some combustious spirits, that for their malicious designs had set him on work." Buckingham would never notice these and similar libels. Eglisham flew to Holland after he had deposited his political venom in his native country, and found a fate which every villanous factionist who offers to recant for "a competent subsistence" does not always; he was found dead, assassinated in his walks by a companion. Yet this political libel, with many like it, are still authorities. "George Duke of Buckingham," says Oldys, "will not speedily outstrip Dr. Eglisham's 'Forerunner of Revenge.'"
[229]The misery of prime ministers and favourites is a portion of their fate which has not always been noticed by their biographers; one must be conversant with secret history to discover the thorn in their pillow. Who could have imagined that Buckingham, possessing the entire affections of his sovereign, during his absence had reason to fear being supplanted? When his confidential secretary, Dr. Mason, slept in the same chamber with the duke, he would give way at night to those suppressed passions which his unaltered countenance concealed by day. In the absence of all other ears and eyes he would break out into the most querulous and impassioned language, declaring that "never his despatches to divers princes, nor the great business of a fleet, of an army, of a siege, of a treaty, of war and peace both on foot together, and all of them in his head at a time, did not so much break his repose as the idea that some at home under his majesty, of whom he had well deserved, were now content to forget him." So short-lived is the gratitude observed to an absent favourite, who is most likely to fall by the creatures his own hands have made.
[230]Sloane MSS. 4181.
[231]Gerbier gives a curious specimen of Grondomar's pleasant sort of impudence. When James expressed himself with great warmth on the Spaniards, under Spinola, taking the first town in the Palatinate, under the eyes of our ambassador, Gondomar, with Cervantic humour, attempted to give a new turn to the discussion, for he wished that Spinola had taken the whole Palatinate at once, for "then the generosity of my master would be shown in all its lustre, by restoring it all again to the English ambassador, who had witnessed the whole operations." James, however, at this moment was no longer pleased with the inexhaustible humour of his old friend, and set about trying what could be done.
[232]Hacket's Life of Lord Keeper Williams, p. 115, pt. 1, fo.
[233]The narrative furnished by Buckingham, and vouched by the prince to the parliament, agrees in the main with what the duke told Gerbier. It is curious to observe how the narrative seems to have perplexed Hume, who, from some preconceived system, condemns Buckingham "for the falsity of this long narrative, as calculated entirely to mislead the parliament." He has, however, in the note [T] of this very volume, sufficiently marked the difficulties which hung about the opinion he has given in the text. The curious may find the narrative in Frankland's Annals, p. 89, and in Rushworth's Hist. Col. I. 119. It has many entertaining particulars.
[234]Letter from J. Mead to Sir M. Stuteville, June 5, 1628. Harl. MSS. 7000.
[235]Memoirs of James II. vol. ii. p. 163.
[236]This was afterwards reduced to the sum of 1500 marks, and was collected by an assessment and fine. The old account-books of the City companies afford many items of the monies thus paid to the general fund. The Carpenters' Company, for instance, have this entry in their books: "Paid in January, 1632, for an assessment imposed on our Companie, by reason of the death of Dr. Lambe ... V. li."
[237]Rushworth has preserved a burthen of one of these songs:—