[294] It seems improbable that the R. D. was ever performed at Court; Udall's "interludes and devices" were pageants, as the Loseley Mss. prove; see below.
[295] Tusser's 500 Pointes, ed. Payne & Heritage, p. 205.
[296] Cooper attributes to Udall's severity the running away from school of "divers" Eton boys alluded to by Roger Ascham (Schoolmaster). But this passage refers to 10 Dec. 1563, twenty-two years after Udall had ceased to swing the rod over the Eton boys!
[297] Cf. quotation from Nicolas's Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council, 7, 152-53, in Cooper; the date is 14 March 32 Henry VIII. (1541-42) and not 1543, as Arber gives it. Arber dates Udall's letter also wrongly 1543; it is referred to 1541-42 in Ellis's Original Letters of Eminent Literary Men, Camden Soc., 1843, P. 1.
[298] "Accepte this myn honest chaunge from vice to virtue, from prodigalitee to frugall livyng, from negligence of teachyng to assiduitee, from playe to studie, from lightness to gravitee." He speaks about his "offenses," does not wish to excuse himself, but says "humana quidem esse, et emendari posse." He begs for a chance to show his "emendyng and reformac̄on," and quotes instances from ancient history of great men who had indulged in a "veray riottous and dissolute sorte of livyng" in their youth, had been "drowned in voluptuousness" and had lived in "slaundre and infamie," but had reformed. Not a word is said about thefts, "robberies," and such "felonious trespasses." Cf. the whole letter from a new collation in Flügel's Lesebuch, I, 351.
[299] U. does not beg in this letter for his "restitution," as Arber seems to accept.
[300] Cf. Cooper, XXIII.
[301] Mars had "the rule" there October, 1542-July, 1543 (Froude, 3, 525-570), then again August, 1547 (Somerset in Berwick, Froude, 4, 288); the naval expedition of Hertford in May, 1544, being here out of the question (Ib. 4, 32).
[302] This translation (published in September) might also indicate some connection between Udall and Aldrich during the summer of 1542. Aldrich was a great "Erasmian"; he had been the juvenis blandæ eloquentiæ whom Erasmus used as interpreter on that immortal pilgrimage to Walsingham, and he kept up a correspondence with Erasmus.
[303] Udall took as his share St. Luk and the "disposition" of the rest with exception of St. John and St. Mark; perhaps he assisted also in the translation of Matthew and Acts. The Prefaces are dated 1545, 1548. The whole must have been quite a lucrative business-undertaking, because every parish in England had, by law, to buy a copy of this work and "every parson had to have and diligently study the same conferring the one [the New Testament both in Latin and English] with the other [the paraphrase]." Cf. Cranmer's Remains, 155, 156 (1548); the Injunctions of Edward, 1547 (Ib. 499, 501), etc.; cf. also Grindal's Works, 134, 157; Hooper's Works, 2, 139, 143 (Parker Soc.).