The Description of Love is an exceedingly scarce little "garland" which first appeared in 1620; but of that edition no copies are known to exist. Of the sixth edition, from which this example is taken, one copy is in the British Museum and another in the library collected by Henry Huth Esq. A somewhat similar ballad occurs in the Roxburgh Collection I, 42 (the chorus being almost identical), under the title of "The Cunning Northern Beggar". The complete title is A Description of Love. With certain Epigrams, Elegies, and Sonnets. And also Mast. Iohnson's Answere to Mast. Withers. With the Crie of Ludgate, and the Song of the Begger. The sixth Edition. London, Printed by M. F. for FRANCIS COULES at the Upper end of the Old-Baily neere Newgate, 1629.
Stanza II, line I. If a Bung be got by the Hie-law, i.e. by
Highway robbery.
The Maunder's Initation
John Fletcher(1579—1625), dramatist, a younger son of Dr. Richard Fletcher afterwards bishop of London, by his first wife Elizabeth, was born in December 1579 at Rye in Sussex, where his father was then officiating as minister. A 'John Fletcher of London' was admitted 15 Oct. 1591 a pensioner of Bene't (Corpus) College, Cambridge, of which college Dr. Fletcher had been president. Dycc assumes that this John Fletcher, who became one of the bible-clerks in 1593, was the dramatist. Bishop Fletcher died, in needy circumstances, 15 June 1596, and by his will, dated 26 Oct. 1593, left his books to be divided between his sons Nathaniel and John.
The Beggar's Bush was performed at Court at Christmas 1622, and was popular long after the Restoration.
Fletcher was buried on 29 Aug. 1625 at St. Saviour's, Southwark. 'In the great plague, 1625,' says Aubrey (Letters written by Eminent Persons, vol. ii. pt. i. p. 352), 'a knight of Norfolk or Suffolk invited him into the countrey. He stayed but to make himselfe a suite of cloathes, and while it was makeing fell sick of the plague and died.'
The High Pad's Boast
See Note to "The Maunder's, Initiation", ante.
The Merry Beggars
Little is known of the birth or extraction of Richard Brome, and whether he died in 1652 or 1653 is uncertain. For a time he acted as servant to Ben Jonson. The Jovial Crew was produced in 1641 at The Cock-pit, a theatre which stood on the site of Pitt Place running out of Drury Lane into Gt. Wild St.