The Honour of the Law 1596.

Jane Shore, mistress to King Edward iv.

A Tragical Discourse of the unhappy Man’s Life.

A Discourse of Virtue.

Churchyard’s Dream.

A Tale of a Fryar and a Shoemaker’s Wife,

The Siege of Edinburgh Castle.

Queen Elizabeth’s reception into Bristol.

These twelve several pieces he bound together, calling them Churchyard’s Chips, which he dedicated to Sir Christopher Hatton.  He wrote beside,

The Tragedy of Thomas Moubray Duke of Norfolk.  Among the rest by fortune overthrowne, I am not least, that most may waile her fate:  My fame and brute, abroad the world is blowne, Who can forget a thing thus done so late?  My great mischance, my fall, and heavy state, Is such a marke whereat each tongue doth shoot That my good name, is pluckt up by the root,

[Footnote 1:  Winst. 61.]

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JOHN HEYWOOD

One of the first who wrote English plays, was a noted jester, of some reputation in poetry in his time.  Wood says, that notwithstanding he was stiled Civis Londinensis, yet he laid a foundation of learning at Oxford, but the severity of an academical life not suitng with his airy genius, he retired to his native place, and had the honour to have a great intimacy with Sir Thomas More.  It is said, that he had admirable skill both in instrumental and vocal music, but it is not certain whether he left any compositions of that sort behind him.  He found means to become a favourite with King Henry VIII on account of the quickness of his conceits, and was well rewarded by that Monarch.[1] After the accession of Queen Mary to the throne, he was equally valued by her, and was admitted into the most intimate conversation with her, in diverting her by his merry stories, which he did, even when she lay languishing on her death-bed.  After the decease of that princess, he being a bigotted Roman Catholic, and finding the protestant interest was like to prevail under the patronage of the renowned Queen Elizabeth, he sacrificed the enjoyment of living in his own country, to that of his religion:  For he entered into a voluntary exile, and settled at Mechlin in Brabant.

The Play called the Four P’s being a new and and merry interlude of a Palmer, Pardoner, Poticary, and Pedler—­printed in an old English character in quarto, has in the title page the pictures of four men in old-fashioned habits, wrought off, from a wooden cut.  He has likewise writ the following interludes.

Between John the Husband and Tib the Wife.  Between the Pardoner and the Fryer, the Curate and neighbouring Pratt.  Play of Gentleness and Nobility, in two parts.  The Pindar of Wakefield, a comedy.  Philotas Scotch, a comedy.

This author also wrote a dialogue, containing the number in effect of all the proverbs in the English tongue, compact in a matter concerning two manner of marriages.  London 1547, and 1598, in two parts in quarto, all writ in old English verse, and printed in an English character.