"And for the better avoydyng of corruption and all uncleannesse out of the Kings house, which doth ingender danger of infection, and is very noisome and displeasant unto all the noblemen and others repaireing unto the same; it is ordeyned by the Kings Highnesse, that the three master cookes of the kitchen shall have everie of them by way of reward yearly twenty marks, to the intent they shall prouide and sufficiently furnish the said kitchens of such scolyons as shall not goe naked or in garments of such vilenesse as they now doe, and have been acustomed to doe, nor lie in the nights and dayes in the kitchens or ground by the fireside; but that they of the said money may be found with honest and whole course garments, without such uncleannesse as may be the annoyance of those by whom they shall passe

That our commonalty, at least, in Henry VIII.'s time did stink (as is the nature of man to do) may be concluded from Wolsey's custom, when going to Westminster Hall, of

"holding in his hand a very fair orange, whereof the meat or substance within was taken out, and filled up again with the part of a sponge, wherein was vinegar, and other confections against the pestilent airs; the which he most commonly smelt unto, passing among the press, or else when he was pestered with many suitors." (Cavendish, p. 43.)

On the dirt in English houses and streets we may take the testimony of a witness who liked England, and lived in it, and who was not likely to misrepresent its condition,-Erasmus. In a letter to Francis, the physician of Cardinal Wolsey, says Jortin,

"Erasmus ascribes the plague (from which England was hardly ever free) and the sweating-sickness, partly to the incommodious form and bad exposition of the houses, to the filthiness of the streets, and to the sluttishness within doors. The floors, says he, are commonly of clay, strewed with rushes, under which lies unmolested an ancient collection of beer, grease (?), fragments, bones, spittle, excrements [t. i. urine] of dogs and cats [t. i. men,] and every thing that is nasty, &c." (Life of Erasmus, i. 69, ed. 1808, referred to in Ellis, i. 328, note.)

The great scholar's own words are,

Tum sola fere sunt argilla, tum scirpis palustribus, qui subinde sic renovantur, ut fundamentum maneat aliquoties annos viginti, sub se fovens sputa, vomitus, mictum canum et hominum, projectam cervisiam, et piscium reliquias, aliasque sordes non nominandas. Hinc mutato cœlo vapor quidam exhalatur, mea sententia minime salubris humano corpori.

After speaking also De salsamentis (rendered 'salt meat, beef,

pork, &c.,' by Jortin, but which Liber Cure Cocorum authorises us in translating 'Sauces '), quibus vulgus mirum in modum delectatur, he says the English would be more healthy if their windows were made so as to shut out noxious winds, and then continues,

"Conferret huc, si vulgo parcior victus persuaderi posset, ac salsamentorum moderatior usus. Tum si publica cura demandaretur Edilibus, ut viæ mundiores essent a cœno, mictuque: Curarentur et ea quæ civitati vicina sint. Jortin's Life of Erasmus, ed. 1808, iii. 44 (Ep. 432, C. 1815), No. VIII. Erasmus Rot. Francisco. Cardinalis Eboracencis Medico, S.

If it be objected that I have in the foregoing extracts shown the dark side of the picture, and not the bright one, my answer is that the bright one-of the riches and luxury in England-must be familiar to all our members, students (as I assume) of our early books, that the Treatises in this Volume sufficiently show this bright side, and that to me, as foolometer of the Society, this dark side seemed to need showing. But as The Chronicle of May 11, 1867, in its review of Mr Fox Browne's English Merchants, seems to think otherwise, I quote its words, p. 155, col. 2.

"All the nations of the world, says Matthew of Westminster, were kept warm by the wool of England, made into cloth by the men of Flanders. And while we gave useful clothing to other countries, we received festive garments from them in return. For most of our information on these subjects we are indebted to Matthew Paris, who tells us that when Alexander III. of Scotland was married to Margaret, daughter of Henry III., one thousand English knights appeared at the wedding in cointises of silk, and the next day each knight donned a new robe of another kind. This grand entertainment was fatal to sixty oxen, and cost the then Archbishop of York no less a sum than 4000 marks. Macpherson remarks on this great display of silk as a proof of the wealth of England under the Norman kings, a point which has not been sufficiently elaborated. In 1242 the streets of London were covered or shaded with silk, for the reception of Richard, the King's brother, on his return from the Holy Land. Few English

1 Prof. Brewer says that Erasmus, rejecting the Medieval Latin and adopting the Classical, no doubt used salsamenta in its classical sense of salt-meat, and referred to the great quantity of it used in England during the winter, when no fresh meat was eaten, but only that which had been killed at the annual autumn slaughtering, and then salted down. Stall-fattening not being practised, the autumn was the time for fat cattle. Salsamentum, however, is translated in White and Riddle's Dictionary, "A. Fish-pickle, brine; B. Salted or pickled fish (so usually in plural).".

men are aware of the existence of such magnificence at that early period; while every story-book of history gives us the reverse of the picture, telling us of straw-covered floors, scarcity of body linen, and the like. Long after this, in 1367, it is recorded, as a special instance of splendour of costume, that 1000 citizens of Genoa were clothed in silk; and this tale has been repeated from age to age, while the similar display, at an earlier date, in England, has passed unnoticed."

Turning at last to notice the several pieces in the present volume, I have only to say of number 1, The Babees Boke, that I have not had time to search for its Latin original, or other copies of the text. Its specialty is its attributing so high birth to the Bele Babees whom it addresses, and its appeal to Lady Facetia to help its writer. Of the short alphabetic poems that follow,-The A B C of Aristotle, Nos. 2 and 3,-copies occur elsewhere; and that in Harl. MS. 1304, which has a different introduction, I hope to print in the companion volume to this, already alluded to. No. 4, Vrbanitatis, I was glad to find, because of the mention of the booke of urbanitie in Edward the Fourth's Liber Niger (p. ii. above), as we thus know what the Duke of Norfolk of "Flodden Field" was taught in his youth as to his demeanings, how mannerly he should eat and drink, and as to his communication and other forms of court. He was not to spit or snite before his Lord the King, or wipe his nose on the table-cloth. Nos. 5 and 6, The Lytylle Chyldrenes Lytil Boke or Edyllys Be1 (a title made up from the text) and The Young Children's Book, are differing versions of one set of maxims, and are printed opposite one another for contrast sake. The Lytil Boke was printed from a later text, and with an interlinear French version, by Wynkyn de Worde in Here begynneth a lytell treatyse for to lerne Englisshe and Frensshe.' This will be printed by Mr Wheatley in his Collection of Early Treatises on Grammar for the Society, as the copy in the Grenville Library in the Brit. Mus. is the only one known. (By the way, what member will find some additional tracts for this volume ? There must be some lying about somewhere.)

1 What this Edyllys Be means, I have no idea, and five or six other men I have asked are in the same condition. A.S. apel is noble, apeling, a prince, a noble ; that may do for edyllys. Be may be for A B C, alphabet, elementary grammar of behaviour.

Other copies of this Lytil Boke are at Edinburgh, Cambridge, and Oxford. Of two of these Mr David Laing and Mr Henry Bradshaw have kindly given me collations, which are printed at the end of the Prefaces here. Of No. 7, Stans Puer ad Mensam, attributed to Lydgate

-as nearly everything in the first half of the 15th century was-I have printed two copies, with collations from a third, the Jesus (Cambridge) MS. printed by Mr Halliwell in Reliquiæ Antiquæ, v. 1, p. 156-8, and reprinted by Mr W. C. Hazlitt in his Early Popular Poetry, ii. 23-8. Mr Hazlitt notices 3 other copies, in Harl. MS. 4011, fol. 1, &c. ; Lansdowne MS. 699; and Additional MS. 5467, which he collated for his text. There must be plenty more about the country, as in Ashmole MS. 61, fol. 16, back, in the Bodleian.' Of old printed editions Mr Hazlitt notes one "from the press of Caxton, but the only copy known is imperfect. It was printed two or three times by Wynkyn de Worde. Lowndes mentions two, 1518, 4to, and 1524, 4to; and in the public library at Cambridge there is said by Hartshorne (Book Rarities, 156) to be a third without date. It is also appended to the various impressions of the Boke of Nurture by Hugh Rhodes." This is printed below, and its Stans Puer is Rhodes's own expansion of one of these shorter versions of the original Latin2 (Part II. p. 30). No. 8 is an incomplete poem on Manners from the Lambeth MS. 853. Nos. 9 and 10 are short bits that Mr W. Aldis Wright was kind enough to send me. Of the latter of these Mr Thomas Wright says, "The verses at the bottom of p. 35, 'with this bytel,' &c., belong to a medieval story, which you will find, with the verses, in my 'Latin Stories' (printed for the Percy Society), pp. 23, 29. It is, in fact, the same story as King Lear and his Dauthers. You will find more about it in the note at the end of my volume, and another copy of the verses."

No. 11, The Good Wijf, is a mother's advice to her daughter as to her behaviour generally, her choice of a husband, and the management of her household. It bears trace of the greater freedom of action allowed to women in early times than now, a freedom shown

1 P.S. Mr Hazlitt, iv. 366, notices two others in MS. Ashmole 59, art. 57, and in Cotton MS. Calig. A II. fol. 13, the latter of which and Ashmole 61, are, he says, of a different translation.

See Hazlitt, iv. 366.

in Langlande's 'Cesse the souteresse' and 'Rose the dyssheres' in the celebrated alehouse scene (Vision of Piers Pl.), in Chaucer's Wif of Bathe, in women's membership of gilds, &c. The injunction not to get drunk often, as that would be shameful (1. 39), is a sign of the times. And the advice to the girl to scorn no wooer, whatsoever he might be (11. 32-3), looks as if husbands were as scarce an article then as they are now. In 1838, Sir Frederic Madden printed a few copies of this poem for private distribution from a Henry the Sixth MS., which contained 35 stanzas against our 31, but the text is inferior to our Lambeth one, especially in the tags of the stanzas. This text Mr Hazlitt reprinted in the 1st volume of his most interesting collection of Early Popular Poetry (4 vols. J. R. Smith, £1), and I have not collated it with the text printed in the present collection, because Mr Hazlitt's volumes should be in all our members' hands. The Trinity College (Cambridge) MS. of the poem, Mr Aldis Wright has kindly collated with our text, in the notes to it. Another version of it, different in almost every stanza, is in the Porkington MS. No. 10, and this I hope to print for the Society some day or other. Mr Lumby will, I believe, print yet another version for us this year from the Lancelot-of-the-Laik MS.; and a MS. also containing the poem, Ashmole 61, fol. 7, has not been examined for or by me. Lastly, Mr Hazlitt notes that a poor copy of the text was printed in 1597 (in 33 stanzas) under the title of The Northern Mothers Blessing. The Way of Thrift'. Written nine years before the death of G. Chaucer. This latter date is possible, for I feel certain that all the copies above mentioned are but variations from some original type that has not yet turned up. The Good Wijf contains an odd instance of how even good editors are sometimes thrown off the scent. In it occurs the proverb, " aftir þe wrenne hap veynes, Men must lete hir blood," that is, bleed her according to her tiny veins, or as we say, 'cut your coat according to your cloth,' spend according to your income. On this Proverb in his Text, Mr Hazlitt says (Early Popular Poetry, vol. i. p. 187),

This is a separate poem which I shall print. The vol. is 238 a. 13, in Brit. Mus.

6

2 Cp. Ask your purse what you should buy'; 'Ken when to spend and when to spare, and ye needna be busy, and ye'll ne'er be bare,' from Hislop.