165. sacrament, my oath of allegiance. Note that the author takes credit for giving evidence against the riotous people; for which the populace condemned him as a liar (l. 171).
178. passed, surpassed (every one), in giving me an infamous character.
181. reply, i.e. to subvert, entirely alter, recall; lit. to fold or bend back.
189. Here the author says, more plainly, that he became unpopular for revealing a conspiracy.
193. out of denwere, out of doubt, without doubt. Such is clearly the sense; but the word denwere is rejected from the New E. Dict., as it is not otherwise known, and its form is suspicious. It is also omitted in Webster and in the Century Dictionary. Bailey has 'denwere, doubt,' taken from Speght's Chaucer, and derived from this very passage. Hence Chatterton obtained the word, which he was glad to employ. It occurs, for instance, in his poem of Goddwyn, ed. Skeat, vol. ii. p. 100:—
—'No denwere in my breast I of them feel.'
The right phrase is simply out of were; cf. 'withoute were' in the Book of the Duchess, 1295. I think the letters den may have been prefixed accidentally. The line, as printed in Thynne, stands thus: 'denwere al the sothe knowe of these thinges.' I suggest that den is an error for don, and the word don ought to come at the end of the line (after thinges) instead of at the beginning. This would give the readings
'out of were' and 'these thinges don in acte'; both of which are improvements.
194. but as, only as, exactly as.
198. clerkes, i.e. Chaucer, HF. 350; Vergil, Aen. iv. 174.