[1] A cheating bully, so called in several Acts of Parliament during the reign of King Henry the Eighth.—S.
[2] A common proverb, of which there are varying versions; but the original is quot homines, &c.
[3] Merchant was anciently used as we now use the word chap. See note on "Romeo and Juliet," A. 2, S. 4.—Steevens.
[4] Cowle or rather coll [Coll] I suppose to be the name of the dog.—Steevens.
Cowle my dog, I am inclined to believe, means put a cowl or hood on a dog, and he will be as learned as a friar: the contempt into which the order had at this period fallen will at least countenance the explanation, if it should not be thought sufficient to prove it. I once was of opinion, that there might be an allusion to the case of one Collins, a crazy man, who seeing a priest hold up the host over his head, lifted up a dog in the same manner, for which both he and the animal were burnt in 1538. See Fox, vol. ii. 436.
My conjecture requires a little explanation. The speaker means to say, "If the New Testament is fit for the use of boys, so likewise is it adapted equally to the conception of Coll my dog. The one will understand and make a proper use of it as soon as the other."—Steevens. [What will be thought of the preceding note, I hardly know; the text is the clearer.]
[5] By the Stat. 33 Hen. VIII. c. 9, s. 16, a penalty is imposed on certain persons therein mentioned, who should play at the tables, tennis, dice, cards, bowls, clash, coyting, logating, or other unlawful game.
[6] Perhaps a contraction of save your reverence.—Steevens.
[7] Fox, in the third volume of his "Acts and Monuments," p. 131, says: "Over and besides divers other things touching M. Rogers, this is not to be forgotten, how, in the daies of King Edward the Sixth, there was a controversie among the Bishops and Clergie for wearing of priests caps, and other attyre belonging to that order. Master Rogers, being one of that number which never went otherwise than in a round cap during all the time of King Edward, affirmed that he would not agree to that decreement of uniformitie, but upon this condition, that if they would needs have such an uniformitie of wearing the cap, tippet, &c., then it should be decreed withall, that the papists, for a difference betwixt them and others, should be constrained to weare upon their sleeves a chalice with an host upon it. Whereunto if they would consent, he would agree to the other, otherwise he would not, he said, consent to the setting forth of the same, nor ever weare the cap; nor indeed he never did."
[8] I suppose the "Legenda Aurea," the "Golden Legend" of Jacobus de Voragine.—Steevens.