And when none can make with them comparison,
Against their princes conspire they by treason,
Then when their purpose can nat come well to frame,
Agayne they descende and that with utter shame,
Coridon thou knowest right well what I meane,
We lately of this experience haue seene
When men would ascende to rowmes honorable
Euer is their minde and lust insaciable."
The most definite proof of the date of publication, however, is found in the fourth Eclogue. It contains a long poem called The towre of vertue and honour, which is really a highly-wrought elegy on the premature and glorious death, not of "the Duke of Norfolk, Lord High admiral, and one of Barclay's patrons," as has been repeated parrot-like, from Warton downwards, but of his chivalrous son, Sir Edward Howard, Lord High Admiral for the short space of a few months, who perished in his gallant, if reckless, attack upon the French fleet in the harbour of Brest in the year 1513. It is incomprehensible that the date of the publication of the Eclogues should be fixed at 1514, and this blunder still perpetuated. No Duke of Norfolk died between Barclay's boyhood and 1524, ten years after the agreed upon date of the Elegy; and the Duke (Thomas), who was Barclay's patron, never held the position of Lord High Admiral (though his son Lord Thomas, created Earl of Surrey in 1514, and who afterwards succeeded him, also succeeded his brother Sir Edward in the Admiralship), but worthily enjoyed the dignified offices of Lord High Steward, Lord Treasurer, and Earl Marshal, and died one of Henry's most respected and most popular Ministers, at his country seat, at a good old age, in the year above mentioned, 1524. The other allusions to contemporary events, and especially to the poet's age, preclude the idea of carrying forward the publication to the latter date, did the clearly defined points of the Elegy allow of it, as they do not.
Minalcas, one of the interlocutors, thus introduces the subject:—