[E496] Nicholas Udall was the author of our oldest known comedy "Roister Doister." He was born 1505, and was Master first at Eton and afterwards at Westminster, at both of which places he became notorious for the severity of his punishments. He wrote several dramas, now lost, one of which, "Ezekias," was acted before Queen Elizabeth at Cambridge, and, in all probability, "Roister Doister" was intended to be performed by his pupils.
[E497] As to Tusser's pedigree see letter from the Windsor Herald, in the Biographical Sketch, [p. xii].
[E498] "Tiburne play." Tyburn appears from authentic records to have been used as a place of execution in the time of Edward III. and probably before. See also [stanza 35] post. There was another place of execution, in the parish of St. Thomas-a-Waterings, in Southwark, called for distinction Tyburn of Kent. See Pegge's Kenticisms, ed. Skeat, Proverb 11, and Dr. Johnson's Poem of London, l. 238, and the note on it in Hales's Longer Eng. Poems, 1872, p. 313.
[E499] "A towne of price." A common expression in old English, meaning of high estimation, noble. See Halliwell, s.v.
[E500] "Norfolk wiles," etc. The East Anglians were noted for their litigious propensities. Fuller, in his Worthies, says, "Whereas pedibus ambulando is accounted but a vexatious suit in other counties, here (where men are said to study law as following the plough-tail) some would persuade us that they will enter an action for their neighbour's horse but looking over their hedge." An Act was passed in 1455 (33 Henry VI. cap. 7) to check the litigiousness of the district: "Whereas, of time not long past, within the city of Norwich, and the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, there were no more but 6 or 8 attornies at the most that resorted to the King's Courts, in which time great tranquillity reigned in the said city and counties, and little trouble or vexation was made by untrue and foreign suits. And now so it is, that in the said city and counties, there be fourscore attornies or more, the more part of them having no other thing to live upon but only his gain by the practice of attorneyship, and also the more part of them not being of sufficient knowledge to be an attorney, which come to every fair, market, and other places, where is any assembly of people, exhorting, procuring, moving and inciting the people to attempt untrue foreign suits for small trespasses, little offences and small sums of debt, whose actions be triable and determinable in Court Barons; whereby proceed many suits, more of evil will and malice than of the truth of the thing, to the manifold vexation and no little damage of the inhabitants of the said city and counties, and also to the perpetual destruction of all the Courts Baron in the said counties, unless convenient remedy be provided in this behalf; the foresaid Lord the King considering the premises, by the advice, assent and authority aforesaid, hath ordained and established, that at all times from henceforth there shall be but six common attornies in the said County of Norfolk, and six common attornies in the said County of Suffolk, and two common attornies in the said City of Norwich, to be attornies in the Courts of Record; and that all the said fourteen attornies shall be elected and admitted by the two Chief Justices of our Lord the King for the time being, of the most sufficient and best instructed, by their discretions." East Anglians were frequently called "Barrators," that is, incitors to lawsuits (O. Fr. bareter, to deceive, cheat).
[E501] "Diram sell." West Dereham Abbey, near Downham, Norfolk, founded by Hubert Walter, Archbishop of Canterbury, for Præmonstratensian canons.
[E502] Faiersted, a parish about four miles from Witham, and near our author's birthplace.
[E503] The plague, to which Tusser evidently alludes, according to Maitland, raged in London in 1574 and 1575. It must have been subsequent to 1573, as the edition of that date does not contain this or the following stanza.
[E504] This and the preceding stanzas were first introduced in the edition of 1580.
[E505] Cf.