"My lord Willoughbie (says a contemporary writer) was one of the queenes best swordsmen: ... he was a great master of the art military ... I have heard it spoken, that had he not slighted the court, but applied himself to the queene, he might have enjoyed a plentifull portion of her grace; and it was his saying, and it did him no good, that he was none of the Reptilia; intimating, that he could not creepe on the ground, and that the court was not his element; for indeed, as he was a great souldier, so he was of suitable magnanimitie, and could not brooke the obsequiousnesse and assiduitie of the courte." (Naunton.)
Lord Willoughbie died in 1601.—Both Norris and Turner were famous among the military men of that age.
The subject of this ballad (which is printed from an old black-letter copy, with some conjectural emendations,) may possibly receive illustration from what Chapman says in the Dedicat. to his version of Homer's Frogs and Mice, concerning the brave and memorable Retreat of Sir John Norris, with only 1000 men, thro' the whole Spanish army, under the duke of Parma, for three miles together.
[Lord Willoughby was the son of Katherine, daughter of Lord Willoughby of Eresby and widow of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, and of her second husband, Richard Bertie. They were protestants and were forced to fly from persecution in 1553, taking refuge first in the Low Countries and afterwards in Poland. They called their son in consequence Peregrine, a name that has ever since remained in the family. Mr. Hales has drawn my attention to the fact that Spenser, when in Ireland, named one of his sons Peregrine for a similar reason. A ballad was written entitled The Duchess of Suffolk's Calamity, which contains these lines:
"A sonne she had in Germanie,
Peregrine Bartue cald by name,
Surnamde The Good Lord Willobie,
Of courage great and worthie fame."
Mr. Chappell informs us that the tune of the following ballad occurs in Lady Neville's Virginal Book (MS. 1591), and in Robinson's School of Music (1603), where it is called "Lord Willobie's Welcome Home.">[
