1. 1. 93 Cokeley. Whalley says that he was the master of a puppet show, and this has been accepted by all authorities (Gifford, ed.; Nares, Gloss.; Alden, ed. of Bart. Fair). He seems, however, to have been rather an improviser like Vennor, or a mountebank with a gift of riming. He is mentioned several times by Jonson: Bart. Fair, Wks. 4. 422, 3: ‘He has not been sent for, and sought out for nothing, at your great city-suppers, to put down Coriat and Cokely.’ Epigr.129; To Mime, Wks. 8. 229:
Or, mounted on a stool, thy face doth hit On some new gesture, that’s imputed wit? —Thou dost out-zany Cokely, Pod; nay Gue: And thine own Coryat too.
1. 1. 94 Vennor. Gifford first took Vennor to be a juggler, but corrected his statement in the Masque of Augurs, Wks. 7. 414. He says: ‘Fenner, whom I supposed to be a juggler, was a rude kind of improvisatore. He was altogether ignorant; but possessed a wonderful facility in pouring out doggrel verse. He says of himself,
Yet, without boasting, let me boldly say I’ll rhyme with any man that breathes this day Upon a subject, in extempore, etc.
He seems to have made a wretched livelihood by frequenting city feasts, &c., where, at the end of the entertainment, he was called in to mount a stool and amuse the company by stringing together a number of vile rhymes upon any given subject. To this the quotation alludes. Fenner is noticed by the duchess of Newcastle: “For the numbers every schoolboy can make them on his fingers, and for the rime, Fenner would put down Ben Jonson, and yet neither boy nor Fenner so good poets.” This, too, is the person meant in the Cambridge answer to Corbet’s satire:
A ballad late was made, But God knows who the penner; Some say the rhyming sculler, And others say ’twas Fenner. p. 24.
Fenner was so famed for his faculty of rhyming, that James, who, like Bartholomew Cokes, would willingly let no raree-show escape him, sent for him to court. Upon which Fenner added to his other titles that of his “Majesty’s Riming Poet.” This gave offense to Taylor, the Water poet, and helped to produce that miserable squabble printed among his works, and from which I have principally derived the substance of this note.’—G.
‘In Richard Brome’s Covent Garden Weeded (circ. 1638), we have: “Sure ’tis Fenner or his ghost. He was a riming souldier.” (p. 42.)’—C.
The controversy referred to may be found in the Spenser Society’s reprint of the 1630 folio of Taylor’s Works, 1869, pp. 304-325. Here may be gathered a few more facts regarding the life of Fenner (or Fennor as it should be spelled), among them that he was apprenticed when a boy to a blind harper. In the quarrel, it must be confessed, Fennor does not appear markedly inferior to his derider either in powers of versification or in common decency. The quarrel between the poets took place in October, 1614, and Fennor’s admittance to court seems to be referred to in the present passage.
1. 1. 95 a Sheriffes dinner. This was an occasion of considerable extravagance. Entick (Survey 1. 499) tells us that in 1543 a sumptuary law was passed ‘to prevent luxurious eating or feasting in a time of scarcity; whereby it was ordained, that the lord-mayor should not have more than seven dishes at dinner or supper,’ and ‘an alderman and sheriff no more than six.’