“That held Engelond in good lawe,
“Ther fell a wondyr cas
“Of a ley that was ysette——.”
The first lines that I have met with of Hardynge’s Chronicle of England unto the reigne of king Edward the Fourth, in verse, [composed about the year 1470, and printed in 1543, 4to] are as follows:
“Truly I heard Robert Ireliffeè say,
“Clarke of the Greené Cloth, and that to the houshold
“Came every daye, forth most part alway,
“Ten thousand folke, by his messes told—.”
The following is the only specimen that I have seen of The Ordinal, a poem written by Thomas Norton, a native of Bristol, in the reign of King Edward IV.
“Wherefore he would set up in higth