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Haveth he nout of Walingford oferlyng,
Let him habbe, ase he brew, bale to dryng",
Maugre Wyndesore1.

Richard, thah thou, &c.

III.

The kyng of Alemaigne wende do ful wel,
He saisede the mulne for a castel',

With harem sharpe swerdes he grounde the stel,
He wende that the sayles were mangonel"

To help Wyndesore.
Richard, thah thou, &c.

IV.

The kyng of Alemaigne gederede ys host,
Makede him a castel of a mulne post,
Wende with is prude, ant is muchele bost,
Brohte from Almayne mony sori gost

To store Wyndesore.
Richard, thah thou, &c.

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Thought to do full well."

1 Some old chronicles relate, that at the battle of Lewes Richard was taken in a windmill. Hearne MSS. Coll.

vol. 106. p. 82. Robert of Gloucester mentions the same circumstance, edit. Hearne, p. 547.

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He brought with him many foreigners, when he returned to England,

The king of Alemaigne was in a wind- from taking possession of his dignity of

mulle inome.

Richard and prince Edward took shelter in the Grey-friars at Lewes, but were afterwards imprisoned in the castle of Wallingford. See Hearne's Langtoft, Gloss. p. 616; and Rob. Glouc. p.

king of the Romans. This gave great offence to the barons. It is here insinuated, that he intended to garrison Windsor-castle with these foreigners. The barons obliged him to dismiss most of them soon after he landed in England.

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V.

By God that is aboven ous he dude muche synne,
That lette passen over see the erl of Warynne:
He hath robbed Engelond, the mores, ant the fenne,
The gold, ant the selver, and y-boren henne,
For love of Wyndesore.
Richard, thah thou, &c.

VI.

Sire Simond de Mountfort hath suore bi ys chyn,
Hevede he nou here the erle of Waryn,

Shuld he never more come to is yn ",

Ne with sheld, ne with spere, ne with other gyn",
To help of Wyndesore:

Richard, thah thou, &c.

VII.

Syre Simond de Montfort hath swore bi ys cop,
Hevede he nou here Sire Hue de Bigot,
Al he shulde grante here twelfemoneth scot*
Shulde he never more with his fot pot,
To helpe Wyndesore.
Richard, thah thou, &c.

VIII.

[Be the luef, be the loht Sire Edward,
Thou shalt ride sporeless o thy lyard,
Al the ryhte way to Douere ward,
Shalt thou never more breke foreward,
And that reweth sore;

Edward, thou dudest ase a shreward,
Forsoke thyn emes* lore.
Richard, thah thou, &c.]

The earl of Warren and Surry, and Hugh le Bigot the king's justiciary, mentioned in the seventh stanza, had fled into France.

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year's tax. I had transcribed this ballad from the British Museum,and written these few cursory explanations, before I knew that it was printed in the second edition of Doctor Percy's Ballads, ii. 1. See MSS. Harl. ut supr. f. 58. b. • [uncle's.]

These popular rhymes had probably no small influence in encouraging Leicester's partisans, and diffusing his faction. There is some humour in imagining that Richard supposed the windmill to which he retreated, to be a fortification; and that he believed the sails of it to be military engines. In the manuscript from which this specimen is transcribed, immediately follows a song in French, seemingly written by the same poet, on the battle of Evesham fought the following year; in which Leicester was killed, and his rebellious barons defeated. Our poet looks upon his hero as a martyr; and particularly laments the loss of Henry his son, and Hugh le Despenser justiciary of England. He concludes with an English stanza, much in the style and spirit of those just quoted.

A learned and ingenious writer, in a work which places the study of the law in a new light, and proves it to be an entertaining history of manners, has observed, that this ballad on Richard of Alemaigne probably occasioned a statute against libels in the year 1275, under the title, "Against slanderous reports, or tales to cause discord betwixt king and people." That this spirit was growing to an extravagance which deserved to be checked, we shall have occasion to bring further proofs.

I must not pass over the reign of Henry the Third, who died in the year 1272, without observing, that this monarch entertained in his court a poet with a certain salary, whose name was Henry de Avranches. And although this poet was a Frenchman, and most probably wrote in French, yet this first instance of an officer who was afterwards, yet with sufficient impropriety, denominated a poet laureate in the English court, deservedly claims particular notice in the course of these annals. He is called Master Henry the Versifier: which

y f. 59. It begins, Chaunter mestoit | mon ever le voit | en

un duré langage, Tut en pluraunt fust fet le chaunt | de

noitre du Baronage, &c.

Z OBSERVATIONS UPON THE STATUTES,

CHIEFLY THE MORE ANCIENT, &c. edit. 1766. p. 71.

See Carew's Surv. Cornw. p. 58. edit. 1602.

b Henry of Huntingdon says, that Walo Versificator wrote a panegyric on Henry the First; and that the same Walo Versificator wrote a poem on the park which that king made at Woodstock. Apud Leland's Collectan. vol. ii. 303. i. 197. edit. 1770. Perhaps he was in the department of Henry mentioned in the text. One Gualo, a Latin poet, who flourished about this time,

appellation perhaps implies a different character from the royal Minstrel or Joculator. The king's treasurers are ordered to pay this Master Henry one hundred shillings, which I suppose to have been a year's stipend, in the year 1251°. And again the same precept occurs under the year 1249d. Our master Henry, it seems, had in some of his verses reflected on the rusticity of the Cornish men. This insult was resented in a Latin satire now remaining, written by Michael Blaunpayne, a native of Cornwall, and recited by the author in the presence of Hugh abbot of Westminster, Hugh de Mortimer official of the archbishop of Canterbury, the bishop elect of Winchester, and the bishop of Rochester. While we are speaking of the Versifier of Henry the Third, it will not be foreign to add, that in the thirty-sixth year of the same king, forty shillings and one pipe of wine were given to Richard the king's harper, and one pipe of wine to Beatrice his wife f.

is mentioned by Bale, iii. 5. and Pitts, p. 233. He is commended in the POLICRATICON. A copy of his Latin hexametrical satire on the monks is printed by Mathias Flacius, among miscellaneous Latin poems De corrupto Ecclesiæ statu, p. 489. Basil. 1557. oct.

"Magistro Henrico Versificatori." See Madox, Hist. Excheq. p. 268.

Ibid. p. 674. In MSS. Digb. Bibl. Bodl. I find, in John of Hoveden's Salutationes quinquaginta Mariæ, "Mag. Henricus, VERSIFICATOR MAGNUS, de B. Virgine," &c.

e MSS. Bibl. Bodl. Arch. Bodl. 29.

in pergam. 4to. viz. "Versus magistri Michaelis Cornubiensis contra Mag. Henricum Abricensem coram dom. Hugone abbate Westmon. et aliis." fol. 81. b. Princ. “ARCHIPOETA vide quod non sit cura tibi de." See also fol. 83. b. Again, fol. 85.

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Os leporis, catuli nasus, dens et gena muli:

Frons vetulæ, tauri caput, et color undique mauri.

In a blank page of the Bodleian ma-
nuscript, from which these extracts are
made, is written, "Iste liber constat

ffratri Johanni de Wallis monacho Ra..
meseye." The name is elegantly en-
This manuscript
riched with a device.
contains, among other things, Planctus
de Excidio Troja, by Hugo Prior de
Montacuto, in rhyming hexameters and
pentameters, viz. fol. 89. Camden cites
other Latin verses of Michael Blaun-
pain, whom he calls "Merry Michael
the Cornish poet." Rem. p. 10.
He wrote
also p. 489. edit. 1674.
many other Latin pieces, both in prose

Pendo poeta prius te diximus ARCHI- and verse.

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See

[Compare Tanner in JOANNES CORNUBIENSIS, who recites his other pieces. BIBL. p. 432. Notes f 8.-ADDITIONS.] f Rot. Pip. an 36 Henr. iii. "Et in Ricardo Citharista regis, xl. sol. per uno dolio vini empto et dato magistro Br. Reg. Et in uno dolio empto et dato Beatrici uxori ejusdem Ricardi."

But why this gratuity of a pipe of wine should also be made to the wife, as well as to the husband, who from his profession was a genial character, appears problematical according to our present ideas*.

The first poet whose name occurs in the reign of Edward the First, and indeed in these annals, is Robert of Glocester, a monk of the abbey of Glocester. He has left a poem of considerable length, which is a history of England in verse, from Brutus to the reign of Edward the First. It was evidently written after the year 1278, as the poet mentions king Arthur's sumptuous tomb, erected in that year before the high altar of Glastenbury church: and he declares himself a living witness of the remarkably dismal weather which distinguished the day on which the battle of Evesham above mentioned was fought, in the year 1265%. From these and other circumstances this piece appears to have been composed about the year 1280. It is exhibited in the manuscripts, is cited by many antiquaries, and printed by Hearne, in the Alexandrine measure; but with equal probability might have been written in four-lined stanzas. This rhyming chronicle is totally destitute of art or imagination. The author has cloathed the fables of Geoffrey of Monmouth in rhyme, which have often a more poetical air in Geoffrey's prose. The language is not much more easy or intelligible than that of many of the Norman Saxon poems quoted in the preceding section: it is full of Saxonisms, which indeed abound, more or less, in every writer before Gower and Chaucer. But this obscurity is perhaps owing to the western dialect, in which our monk of

[Beatrice may possibly have been a jugleress, whose pantomimic exhibitions were accompanied by her husband's harp, or who filled up the intervals between his performances. This union of professional talents in husband and wife was not uncommon. In a copy of the ordonnances for regulating the minstrels, &c. residing at Paris, a document drawn up by themselves in the year 1321, and signed by thirty-seven

persons on behalf of all the menestreur jougleurs et jougleresses of that city, we find among others the names of Iehanot Langlois et Adeline, fame de Langlois Jaucons, fils le moine et Marguerite, la fame au moine. See Roquefort de la Poesie Françoise dans les xii. et xiii. Siècles. p. 288.-EDIT.]

f Pag. 224. edit. Hearne. Oxon. 1724.

8 Pag. 560.

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