[33]. The first printed Poetical Miscellany, in the English language, is the Collection of Poems, edited and published by Tottel, entitled “Songes and Sonnettes of Surrey, Wyat, and of uncertain Auctors, London, 1557.”—Another edition, 1565—others in 1574, 1585, 1587. The last edition was edited by Dr. George Sewell, in 1717.—This Dr. Sewell was a physician in London; he received his early education at Eton, which he afterwards completed at Cambridge, where he took the degree of Bachelor of Physic in 1709. From thence he went to Leyden, where he studied under the celebrated Boerhaave. Not being successful in the metropolis, he removed to Hampstead, where he died on the 8th of February, 1726. As an author he possessed a considerable share of genius, and wrote in concert with several of his contemporaries, particularly in the Spectator and Tatler; he was principally concerned in the ninth volume of the former, and in the fifth of the latter, as he was also in a translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and an edition of Shakespeare’s Poems. He was the author of a Tragedy, entitled “Sir Walter Raleigh,” published at London in 1719, and also of another, which he left unfinished, entitled “King Richard the First,” the fragments of which were printed in 1728.
[34]. Melancthon was born at Brette, a village of the Palatinate, on the 16th of February, 1497. In his childhood he made an astonishing progress in the acquisition of languages. Luther, and his doctrines, appeared about this time, and Melancthon stood forward as one of their most strenuous supporters; indeed the Lutheran system was in a great measure planned by him, and the famous instrument by which it was publicly declared, called the Confession of Augsburg, was the production of his pen. Melancthon was the intimate friend of Erasmus, and Erasmus the patron of Holbein. This connection will account for his appearance in a Collection of Portraits, drawn by Holbein, of the principal personages in the Court of Henry the Eighth, though Melancthon never was in this country. An engraving of him is among the Holbein Heads, published by Mr. Chamberlaine, and there is a full-length portrait of this great Reformer, with a fac-simile of his writing, in his Life, published by the Rev. F. A. Cox, London, 1815, 8vo.
[35]. Several of these were men remarkable for their talents and learning: among whom were Petyt, Tyrrel, Sir Robert Filmer, Dr. Brady, Prynne, Rymer, &c. &c.
Petyt and Prynne were keepers of the Records in the Tower; and Rymer, who was the king’s Historiographer, had a warrant not only to search the Records in every office in the kingdom, but to make copies of such as he should select for publication. How diligent he was in using this authority is evident from the invaluable collection of Records, &c. published by him, and from a large collection of others in manuscript, now in the Museum.
Petyt makes a direct charge, and not unfounded, against Prynne, for an intended omission of a reference to the Rolls of Parliament (2d Hen. V. p. 2. No. 10.) in the Abridgment of the Rolls made by Sir Robert Cotton, and printed by Prynne.
Even Sir Robert Atkyns, a man eminently distinguished for his integrity and learning, as well as for his deep research into the ancient History of Parliament, who had been a Judge of the Common Pleas, and was afterwards Chief Baron of the Exchequer and Speaker of the House of Lords, in his learned and elaborate argument in the year 1680, in the case of an information by the Attorney General against Williams, Speaker of the House of Commons, in asserting the antiquity of that House, fell into some mistakes, from not having resorted to the original records. He states, and insists much on it, that the Speaker of the House of Commons, Sir Thomas Hungerford, 51 Edward III. was Speaker of the Parliament; whereas the words in the Record are, “Monsieur Thomas de Hungerford, Chivaler, q’i avoit les Paroles pur les Communes d’ Engleterre.” Rolls of Parl. vol. ii. p. 374, a. In the first of Richard the Second, the Speaker, Sir Robert says again, was termed the Speaker of the Parliament; the words in the Record are, “Mons. Pere de la Mare Chivaler q’avoit les Paroles de Par la Commune.”—Vol. iii. p. 5, 6.
The same with respect to Sir John Bussey, 20 Richard II. The words in the Record are, “les Communes presenterent Mons. John Bussey pour leur Parlour.”—Page 338, a.—339, b.
[36]. In 1766, the late Thomas Astle, Esq. was consulted by the Sub-Committee of the House of Lords, concerning the printing of the Rolls of Parliament, and in 1768, on the death of Mr. Blyke, Mr. Astle introduced his father-in-law, the Rev. Philip Morant, author of the History of Essex, to succeed that gentleman in preparing the Rolls for the press. Mr. Morant died in November, 1770, after proceeding in them as far as the 16th of Henry the fourth, when Mr. Astle was appointed by the House of Lords to carry on the work, which he completed in 1775. They are printed in six volumes, folio.
[37]. Some reliance was placed by his Lordship on the Treatise “de Modo tenendi Parliamentum;” the authority of which, if not entirely destroyed by Prynne, will not at least in future have much weight.—Prynne’s Animadversions on 4 Inst. p. 1. to p. 8. and p. 331.
[38]. In the Parliament of the 18th of Edward the first there were no Citizens or Burgesses. There is a bundle of writs yet extant, by which this Parliament was summoned. They are directed to the sheriffs of several or most of the counties of England, by which two or three Knights were directed to be chosen for each county, and accordingly the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridge and Huntingdon, and Cumberland returned each of them three Knights, and the other counties two each. This Parliament gave the King a fifteenth of all their moveables as appears by the account of the same which is entered upon the Great Roll of the 23d of that king, in which account we have the style of this Parliament, namely, “The account of the fifteenth, granted to the king in his 18th year, by the Archbishops, Bishops, Abbots, Priors, Earls, Barons, and all others of the kingdom, assessed, collected, and levied,” &c.