INEDITED LETTER OF THE DUKE OF MONMOUTH
Several notices of the Duke of Monmouth having appeared in "NOTES AND QUERIES," you may be glad to have the following letter, which I copied literatim some years ago in the State Paper Office from the domestic papers of the year 1672. The letter was written to Lord Arlington, then Secretary of State. Monmouth was at the time commanding the English force serving under Louis XIV. against the Dutch, and was in his twenty-third year. Mr. Ross had been his tutor; and was at this time, I believe, employed in the Secretary of State's office.
"ffrom the Camp nigh
"Renalle the 29 Jun
"Mr Ross has tolld mee how mutch I am obliged to you for your kindness wch I am very sensible of and shall try to sho it upon all occations. I will asur you the effects of your kindness will make me live within compas for as long as I receave my mony beforehand I shall do it wth a greadell of easse.
"I wont trouble you wth news becaus Mr. Aston will tell you all ther is. I will try to instrokt him all as well as I can. I wont trouble you no longer, only I doe asur you ther is nobody mor your humble servant than I am.
"MONMOUTH."
LYDGATE AND COVERDALE, AND THEIR BIOGRAPHERS
Dan John Lydgate, as Warton truly observes, was not only the poet of his monastery, but of the world in general. Yet how has he been treated by his biographers? Ritson, in his Bibliographia Poetica, says, "he died at an advanced age, after 1446." Thomson, in his Chronicles of London Bridge, 2nd edition, p. 11., says, "Lydgate died in the year 1440, at the age of sixty;" and again, at p. 164. of the same work, he says, "Lydgate was born about 1375, and died about 1461!" Pitt says that he died in 1482; and the author of the Suffolk Garland, p. 247., prolongs his life (evidently by a typographical blunder), to about the year 1641! From these conflicting statements, it is evident that the true dates of Lydgate's birth and decease are unknown. Mr. Halliwell, in the preface to his Selection from the Minor Poems of John Lydgate, arrives at the conclusion from the MSS. which remain of his writings, that he died before the accession of Edward IV., and there appears to be every adjunct of external probability; but surely, if our record offices were carefully examined, some light might be thrown upon the life of this industrious monk. I am not inclined to rest satisfied with the dictum of the Birch MS., No. 4245. fo. 60., that no memorials of him exist in those repositories.
The only authenticated circumstances in Lydgate's biography (excepting a few dates to poems), are the following:—He was ordained subdeacon, 1389; deacon, 1393; and priest, 1397. In 1423 he left the Benedictine Abbey of Bury, in Suffolk, to which he was attached, and was elected prior of Hatfield Brodhook; but the following year had license to return to his monastery again. These dates are derived from the Register of Abbott Cratfield, preserved among the Cotton MSS. Tiber, B. ix.
My object in calling the attention of your readers to the state of Lydgate's biography is, to draw forth new facts. Information of a novel kind may be in their hands without appreciation as to its importance.
I take this opportunity of noticing the different dates given of Myles Coverdale's death.
Strype says he died 20th May, 1565, (Annals of Reformation, vol. i. pt. ii. p. 43., Oxf. ed.), although elsewhere he speaks of his as being alive in 1566. Neale (Hist of Pur., vol. i. p. 185.) says, the 20th May, 1567. Fuller (Church Hist., p. 65. ed. 1655) says he died on the 20th of January, 1568, and "Anno 1588," in his Worthies of England, p. 198., ed. 1662.
The following extract from "The Register of Burials in the Parish Church of St. Bartholomew's by the Exchange" sets the matter at rest. "Miles Coverdall, doctor of divinity, was buried anno 1568., the 19th of February."
That the person thus mentioned in the register is Miles Coverdale, Bishop of Exeter, there can be no doubt, since the epitaph inscribed on the tomb-stone, copied in Stow's Survey, clearly states him to be so. It is, perhaps, unnecessary to observe that the date mentioned in the extract is the old style, and, therefore, according to our present computation, he was buried the 19th of February, 1569.
Can any of your correspondents throw any light upon the authorship of a work frequently attributed to Myles Coverdale, and thus entitled, "A Brieff discours off the Troubles begonne at Frankford in Germany, Anno Domini, 1554. Abowte the Booke off common prayer and Ceremonies, and continued by the Englishe Men theyre, to the ende off Q. Maries Raigne, in the which discours, the gentle reader shall see the verry originall and beginninge off all the contention that hathe byn, and what was the cause off the same?" A text from "Marc 4." with the date MDLXXV. Some copies are said to have the initials "M.C." on the title-page, and the name in full, "Myles Coverdale," at the end of the preface; but no notice is taken of this impression in the excellent introductory remarks prefixed by Mr. Petheram to the reprint of 1846. If the valuable work was really written by Myles Coverdale (and it is much in his style), it must have been interspersed with remarks by another party, for in the preface, signed, as it is said by Coverdale, allusion is made to things occuring in 1573, four years after his death.
QUERIES
SPECULUM EXEMPLORUM:—EPISTOLA DE MISERIA CURATORUM
Who was the compiler of the Speculum Exemplorum, printed for the first time at Deventer, in 1481? A copy of the fourth edition, Argent, 1490, does not afford any information about this matter; and I think that Panzer (v. 195.) will be consulted in vain. Agreeing in opinion with your correspondent "GASTROS" (No. 21. p. 338.) that a querist should invariably give an idea of the extent of his acquaintance with the subject proposed, I think it right to say, that I have examined the list of authors of Exempla, which is to be found in the appendix to Possevin's Apparatus Sacer, tom. i. sig. β 2., and that I have read Ribadeneira's notice of the improvements made in this Speculum by the Jesuit Joannes Major.
Who was the writer of the Epistola de Miseria Curatorum? My copy consists of eight leaves, and a large bird's-cage on the verse of the last leaf is evidently the printer's device. Seemiller makes mention of an Augsburg edition of this curious tract. (Biblioth. Acad. Ingolstad. Incunab. typog. Fascic. ii. p. 142. Ingolst. 1788.)
THE SECOND DUKE OF ORMONDE
The review of Mr. Wright's England under the House of Hanover, illustrated by the Caricatures and Satires of the Day, given in the Athenæum (No. 1090.), cites a popular ballad on the flight and attainder of the second Duke of Ormonde, as taken down from the mouth of an Isle of Wight fishmonger. This review elicited from a correspondent (Athenæum, No. 1092.) another version of the same ballad as prevalent in Northumberland. I made a note of these at the time; and was lately much interested at receiving from an esteemed correspondent (the Rev. P. Moore, Rochenon, co. Kilkenny), a fragment of another version of the same ballad, which he (being at the time ignorant of the existence of any other version of the song) had taken down from the lips of a very old man of the neighbourhood, viz.:—
"My name is Ormond; have you not heard of me?
For I have lately forsaken my own counterie;
I fought for my life, and they plundered my estate,
For being so loyal to Queen Anne the great.
Queen Anne's darling, and cavalier's delight,
And the Presbyterian crew, they shall never have their flight.
I am afraid of my calendry; my monasteries are all sold,
And my subjects are bartered for the sake of English gold.
But, as I am Ormond, I vow and declare,
I'll curb the heartless Whigs of their wigs, never fear."
I do not quote the versions given