What here ye of Mutrell?]
—Mutrell is Montreuil; and the allusion must be to some attack intended or actual on that town, of which I can find no account agreeing with the date of the present poem. To suppose that the reference is to the siege of Montreuil in 1544, would be equivalent to pronouncing that the passage is an interpolation by some writer posterior to the time of Skelton.
v. 375. mell] i. e. meddle.
v. 380.
For drede of the red hat
Take peper in the nose]
i. e. For dread that the Cardinal, Wolsey, take offence.
“Hee taketh pepper in the nose, that I complayne
Vpon his faultes.”
Heywood’s Dialogue, &c. sig. G.,—Workes, ed. 1598.