“You use me very rudely,” said the man.
“You dunghole—will you outface me!” roared Peele, and snatching up a second rabbit threw it at his head, and then a loaf. After that he drew his dagger and made as though he would stab the man, but his friends interposed. The fellow picked up the rabbits and the bread and ran away with them. So, by this shift, Peele helped his friend to a supper, and was not suspected by the company.
Peele’s Merry Conceited Jests was first published in 1607. Other editions appeared in 1626, 1627, 1657, and 1671. There is also an undated edition. The latest reprint is in Bullen’s Works of George Peele, London, J. C. Nimmo, 1878.
His Merry Conceited Jests shows him to have been a great rogue. That he was a clever man and well educated is undoubted. He wrote several plays, but only some have been preserved, such as The Arraignment of Paris, 1584; The Old Wives’ Tale, 1595; Edward I, 1593; David and Bathsheba, 1599; The Turkish Mahomet and Hiren the Fair Greek, not published at the time. The Battle of Alcazar has been already mentioned. He also composed pageants that were performed at the inauguration of the chief magistrates of the city of London. One composed for Sir Wolstone Dixie, Lord Mayor of London, 29 October, 1595, is curious, as it describes the flourishing condition of the metropolis in the days of Queen Elizabeth. About 1593 Peele seems to have been taken into the patronage of the Earl of Northumberland, to whom he dedicated in that year The Honour of the Garter. In The Puritan, a play attributed but erroneously to Shakespeare, and acted by the children of S. Paul’s, printed in 1607, is a character, George Pieboard, that was meant to be George Peele. Peele died before the year 1598, and left behind him a widow and a daughter.
In 1591 Queen Elizabeth visited Theobalds. Lord Burleigh had lost his mother in 1587, and his wife, to whom he was deeply attached, in 1589; and his daughter, Lady Oxford, had also expired, and depressed by his misfortunes, he retired in 1591 to Theobalds. Queen Elizabeth, to revive his spirits, visited him there; and Peele was commissioned to write the speeches delivered by Robert Cecil, dressed as a hermit, and others, to be addressed to the Queen. Besides the hermit, another performer was the gardener, and a third the molecatcher. The latter begins, “Good Lady, and the best that ever I saw, or any shall, give me leave to tell a plain tale in which there is no device, but desert enough,” and it ends, “Now, for that the Gardiner twitteth me with my vocation, I could prove it a mystery not mechanical, and tell a tale of the Giant’s daughter which was turned to a mole because she would eat fairer bread than is made of wheat, wear finer clothes than is made of wool, drink sweeter wine than is made of grapes; why she was blind, and yet light of hearing; how good clerks told me that moles in fields are like ill subjects in commonwealths, which are always turning up the place in which they are bred. But I will not trouble your Majesty, but every day pray on my knees that those that be heavers at your state may come to a mole’s blessing—a knock on the pate and a swing on a tree.”
PETER PINDAR
John Wolcot, who published his poems under the sobriquet of Peter Pindar, was perhaps the most scurrilous poet in a scurrilous age. If this were a book of Minor Worthies of Devon, I should hesitate about admitting one who was in nothing worthy, but possessed wit caustic and cutting. He was as witty and not so coarse as Swift; witty but not so terse as Pope, and also without Pope’s fine touch.
John Wolcot was the fourth child of Alexander Wolcot by Mary Ryder his wife, and was born at Dodbrooke by Kingsbridge, baptized 9 May, 1738. His father was a country surgeon and the son of a surgeon. The Wolcot family was ancient; it had its origin at Wolcot in Thrushelton, where a moor still bears the name of Wollacot from a farm near by; the heiress of the eldest branch carried Wollacot to the family of Bidlake of Bidlake. A junior branch settled at Chagford, where “John Wolcot for his good service in ye Warres had an addition given him to his Armes, on Chief or, a lis betw. 2 Annulets.” One branch had a residence at Butterstone in Hemyock, where it remained for several generations. The lineal descent of John Wolcot, son of Alexander, from the heraldic family of that name has not been made out, but there can be little doubt that he was so descended.