Old English Ballads 1553-1625
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Old English Ballads 1553-1625 Chiefly from Manuscripts EDITED BY HYDER E. ROLLINS, Ph.D. ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH NEW YORK UNIVERSITY CAMBRIDGE AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1920 pft Printed in Great Britain ty Turnbull & Spears, Edinburgh TO PROFESSOR C. H. FIRTH THIS BOOK IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED. Contents PAGB INTRODUCTION ix BALLADS RELATING TO QUEEN MARY I. (Nos. 1-6) . i BALLADS ON PROTESTANT MARTYRS (Nos. 7-9) . 33 CATHOLIC BALLADS (Nos. 10-25) . .62 PROTESTANT AND MORALIZING BALLADS (Nos. 26-63) l ^ MISCELLANEOUS BALLADS (Nos. 64-75) . 322 I. : . APPENDIX THE PARLIAMENT OF DEVILS . 384 II. : APPENDIX A SINGULAR SALVE FOR A SICK SOUL . 405 INDEX OF FIRST LINES, TITLES, AND TUNES . 407 GLOSSARIAL INDEX . .411 Acknowledgment For permission to reprint the ballads and broadsides in this volume grateful acknowledg ment is made to the authorities of the Society of Antiquaries, London ; Corpus Christi the College, Cambridge ; Pepysian Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge ; the Bodleian Library ; and the British Museum. Thanks are due also to my friend Dr Alwin Thaler for some help with the MS. and to Professor C. Firth H. for his kindness in reading the proof-sheets of the Introduction. H. E. R. May 1920 Introduction i THROUGHOUT the history of the black-letter ballad no subject has called forth so many rhymes as the struggle between Protestants and Catholics. One of the earliest broadside ballads extant deals with riots that grew out of the dissolution of the monasteries in Cornwall and Devon. This paean of rejoicing is, unhappily, preserved 1 only in a fragment of four (or parts of four) stanzas, but is worth reprinting : There hartes ware so roted in the popes lawes 2 They be gane the laste yere when they slew bodye All England reioysethe at ther ouer throwse For only the Lorde is oure Kynges victorye They had falce prophetes which brought thi[n]ges to passe Cleane contrary to ther owne expectation Ther hope was for helpe in ther popishe masse They wolde nedes haue hanged vp a reseruacion The vicare of pon wdstoke with his congeracio Commanded them to sticke to ther Idolatry They had muche proui[s]ion and great preperacion Yet God hath gyuen our Kynge the victorye They did robe and spoule al the Kynges frendes They called them heritekes with spight & disdayne They toffled a space lyke tirantes and F[e]indes They put some in preson & sume to greate payne 1 This ballad, which I have never seen reprinted or alluded to, is preserved in the British Museum, press mark Cup. 651. e. 2. It is in Black Letter throughout. All the stanzas on the left side of the sheet have been torn off, though a few scattering letters remain. 2 " " William Body, gentleman, one on the King's side, was slain in the Cornish Popish rebellion of April, 1548 (Strype, Ecclesiastical Froude's Memorials, 1822, II., ii., 143 ; cf. History of England, 1870, V., 97). I cannot identify the martyr William Hilling mentioned in the third stanza. ix OLD ENGLISH BALLADS And sume fled a waie or else they had bene slayne As was Wyllam hilling that marter truly Whiche they killed at sandford mowre in the playne Where yet god hath giuen oure Kynge the victory They Came to plumwo with the Kynges trusty towne . Ballads of this type were pleasing to Henry VIII. and his advisers. But the extraordinary popularity of ballads, and the no less extraordinary versatility of the ballad-writers, not infrequently resulted in songs to which the King bitterly objected and to suppress which he spared no pains. He was particularly displeased with the attacks made on Cardinal Wolsey and Lord Cromwell. He complained, also, in 1537, to James V. of Scotland, through the agency of Sir Thomas Wharton, Warden of the West Marches, of various ballads by Scotch subjects in which he himself, no less than the true Protestant religion, was satirized. James replied " to Wharton that he had to all " given sharp charges parts of our borders for the ballads to be thoroughly suppressed and for their authors to be sought out, but added that, because he personally had never before heard of such ballads, he suspected them to have been " l written by some of your own nation." Hardly a year later, Wharton informed Lord Cromwell that a ballad deriding the English for living in the false religion was Scotland circulating through ; and, " subsequently, he reported that his espial," Mungo Armstrong, had secured a copy of the ballad and believed it to have been 2 written by the Scotch Bishops or else at their direction. Armstrong's suspicion was probably well-founded. Men of prominence and education throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries used ballads to disseminate their views or to ridicule their opponents. 1 1st Henry Ellis, Original Letters, Series, II., 103 ; Maidment's Book of Scottish Pasquils, p. 418. 2 Calendar of State Papers, Henry Fill., XIII., Pt. II., Nos. 1129, 1145. INTRODUCTION Cromwell himself had done so. Foxe reckoned as John " one of Cromwell's chief services that by his industry and ingenious labours, divers excellent ballads and books were contrived and set abroad, concerning the " suppres sion of the and all and pope idolatry ; printed, popish " as a specimen, a ballad of fifty stanzas called The Fantassie of Idolatrie." l This was the work of William Gray, a man of some ability, who wrote ballads at the dictation of high officials in the reigns of both Henry VIII. and Edward VI. His best-known work, " however, was a non-political ballad, The Hunt Is Up." But, as Gray found to his sorrow, there was no real liberty for the ballad-press. In 1540 he indulged in a ballad-flyting v/ith Thomas Smyth (Sir Thomas of in a libel Smyth, Secretary State ?) that originated against the deceased Lord Cromwell, but soon degener 2 ated into personalities. On December 30, 1540, the Privy Council sent letters to Banks and Grafton, whose names appeared on the colophons of the ballads, and to Gray, directing them to appear before the Council on the following Sunday. Gray and Smyth gave an unsatisfactory explanation of why they had written ballads against each other, and were instructed to appear for a re-examination at 7 a.m. on the following morning. Interrogated the Council, Banks denied by " that he had printed any of the ballads, or invectives," " laying the fault to Robert Redman deceased and Richard Grafton." The latter confessed to a share in the printing, and was sent to the Porter's ward. As a result of their further examination, Gray and Smyth were committed to the Fleet. 3 An Act for the Advancement of True Religion and for 1 Acts and Monuments, First Edition, p. 598. 2 For the ballads 212 see Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, XVI., ; Hazlitt's Fugitive Tracts, ist Series, Nos. VI.-XIII. ; Kingdon's Incidents in the Lives ofPoyntz and Grafton, p. 84. 3 Calendar State Acts the of Papers, Domestic, XVI., No. 366 ; of Privy Council, ed. Nicolas, VII., 103, 105, 107. xi OLD ENGLISH BALLADS the Abolishment of the Contrary, of 1543, specifically " " named ballads, and songs among the printed rhymes " instruments used by malicious persons to subvert the true and doctrine, and declara very " perfect exposition, tion of the Scriptures, and provided that printers and sellers of such matter were, for a first offence, to be fined .10 and imprisoned three months, for a second offence to suffer confiscation of property and life im 1 prisonment. In April of this year eight London printers were brought before the Privy Council for violations of the statute. A fortnight later, five of them were released, on the condition that they would furnish a complete list of all books and ballads bought and sold by them within the past three years. On April 25 2 twenty-five other booksellers were similarly bound. No better proof of the popularity of the ballad could be asked for. Though under Edward VI. the Statute of 1543 was 3 repealed, yet, as always, the Privy Council kept a watchful eye on the printing of ballads. Thus on June 7, 1552, William Marten was summoned to ex plain why he had printed a seditious ballad written by John Lawton. After the hearing, he was placed under bond of ;ioo to to the Council until further report " daily orders, and instructed in the meantime to bring in 4 as many of the same ballates as he may come by." Controversial ballads (like those of the Churchyard- Camell 5 abounded Edward's flyting ) during reign ; and a number of anti-Catholic ballads have been 6 preserved. 1 Statutes of the Realm, III., 894. 2 E. G. Duft's Century of the English Book Trade, pp. xxiv ff. 3 Statutes of the Realm, IV., 19. 4 Acts of the Privy Council, ed. Dasent, IV., 69. 5 These are in reprinted H. L. Collmann's Ballads and Broadsides, Roxburghe Club, 1912. 6 ed. Collier's Percy's Reliques, Wheatley, II., 125, 133 ; Old Ballads, from Early Printed Coties, 1 840, p. 9. xii INTRODUCTION No English sovereign has ascended to the throne among more sincere rejoicings than Mary I. General sympathy had been aroused by the unscrupulous methods the Duke of Northumberland had employed in dis puting both her legitimacy and her accession. What ever sympathy existed for Lady Jane Grey was thoroughly neutralized by the fear and hatred felt for the Duke. A striking description of this feeling is given in the first ballad in this volume. Ballad-writers, whatever may have been true of the country as a whole, had no fears that would introduce changes in religion and Mary " state policy.