[670] Heiding-hill; i.e. heading [beheading] hill. The place of execution was anciently an artificial hillock.
XIX.
MARY AMBREE.
In the year 1584, the Spaniards, under the command of Alexander Farnese, prince of Parma, began to gain great advantages in Flanders and Brabant, by recovering many strong holds and cities from the Hollanders, as Ghent, (called then by the English Gaunt,) Antwerp, Mechlin, &c. See Stow's Annals, p. 711. Some attempt made with the assistance of English volunteers to retrieve the former of those places probably gave occasion to this ballad. I can find no mention of our heroine in history, but the following rhymes rendered her famous among our poets. Ben Jonson often mentions her, and calls any remarkable virago by her name. See his Epicœne, first acted in 1609, act iv. sc. 2. His Tale of a Tub, act i. sc. 2. And his masque intitled the Fortunate Isles, 1626, where he quotes the very words of the ballad,
----"Mary Ambree,
(Who marched so free
To the siege of Gaunt,
And death could not daunt,
As the ballad doth vaunt)
Were a braver wight, &c."
She is also mentioned in Fletcher's Scornful Lady, act v. sub finem.
----"My large gentlewoman, my Mary Ambree, had I but seen into you, you should have had another bed-fellow."——
It is likewise evident, that she is the virago intended by Butler in Hudibras (p. i. c. iii. v. 365), by her being coupled with Joan d'Arc, the celebrated Pucelle d'Orleans.
"A bold virago stout and tall
As Joan of France, or English Mall."