The exact date of this ballad’s publication was 31st December, 1659: in Thomason Collection, Numero xxii., folio, Brit. Mus.
Page 270. Pray why should any, &c.
Probably written in 1659-60, when Monk was bridling the Commons. “Cooks” alludes to John Cook, the Solicitor for the Commonwealth, who at the trial of Charles Ist. exhibited the charge of high treason. After the Restoration, Cook was executed along with Hugh Peters, 16th Oct., 1660, at Charing Cross.
Pages 283 (line 22), 395. I have the finest Nonperel.
“Hyrens” (as earlier printed in Wit and Drollery, 1656, p. 26), instead of “Syrens” of our text, is probably correct. Ancient Pistol twice asks “Have we not Hirens here?” (Henry IV., Part 2nd, Act ii. sc. 4). George Peele had a play, now lost, on “The Turkish Mahomet and Hiren the fair Greek” [1594?] In the Spiritual Navigator, 1615, we learn, is a passage, “There be Syrens in the sea of the world. Syrens? Hirens, as they are now called. What a number of these syrens, hirens, cockatrices, courteghians—in plain English, harlots—swimme amongst us!”
Page 287. Title, “Oxford Feasts.”
An unfortunate misprint crept in, detected too late: for “Feasts” read properly “Jeasts:” the old fashioned initial J being barred across like F.
Page 293, line 11. “Heresie in hops.”
This must have been an established jest. Compare Introd. to M. D., C., pp. xxxi-ii. and T. Randolph’s “Fall of the Mitre Tavern,” Cambridge, before 1635,
“The zealous students of that place