under the protection of Islip the Abbot, where he died in the year 1529.  It appears by his poem entitled, The Crown of Laurel, that his performances were numerous, and such as remain are chiefly these, Philip Sparrow, Speak Parrot, the Death of King Edward iv, a Treatise of the Scots, Ware the Hawk, the Tunning of Elianer Rumpkin.  In these pieces there is a very rich vein of wit and humour, tho’ much debased by the rust of the age he lived in.  His satires are remarkably broad, open and ill-bred; the verse cramped by a very short measure, and encumbered with such a profusion of rhimes, as makes the poet appear almost as ridiculous as those he endeavours to expose.  In his more serious pieces he is not guilty of this absurdity; and confines himself to a regular stanza, according to the then reigning mode.  His Bouge of Court is a poem of some merit:  it abounds with wit and imagination, and shews him well versed in human nature, and the insinuating manners of a court.  The allegorical characters are finely described, and well sustained; the fabric of the whole I believe entirely his own, and not improbably may have the honour of furnishing a hint even to the inimitable Spencer.  How or by whose interest he was made Laureat, or whether it was a title he assumed to himself, cannot be determined, neither is his principal patron any where named; but if his poem of the Crown Lawrel before mentioned has any covert meaning, he had the happiness of having the Ladies for his friends, and the countess of Surry, the lady Elizabeth Howard, and many others united their services in his favour.  When on his death-bed he was charged with having children by a mistress he kept, he protected that in his conscience he kept her in the notion of a wife:  And such was his cowardice, that he chose rather to confess adultery than own marriage, a crime at that time more subjected to punishment than the other.

The prologue to the Bouge courts.

  In autumne, whan the sunne in vyrgyne,
  By radyante hete, enryped hath our corne,
  When Luna, full of mucabylyte,
  As Emperes the dyademe hath worne
  Of our Pole artyke, smylynge half in scorne,
  At our foly, and our unstedfastnesse,
  The tyme when Mars to warre hym did dres

    I, callynge to mynde the great auctoryte
  Of poetes olde, whiche full craftely,
  Under as couerte termes as coulde be,
  Can touche a trouthe, and cloke subtylly
  With fresh Utterance; full sentcyously,
  Dyverse in style:  some spared not vyce to wryte,
  Some of mortalitie nobly dyd endyte.

His other works, as many as could be collected are chiefly these: 

Meditations on St. Ann.

--------on the Virgin of Kent.

Sonnets on Dame Anne,

Elyner Rummin, the famous alewife of England, often printed, the last edition 1624.

The Peregrinations of human Life.

Solitary Sonnets.