[256] Uncouth. "If thou shuldest refuse to do any of these thynges, and woldest assaye to do some thing of more sadnes and prudence, they wyll esteme and count the vnmanerly, cloubbysshe, frowarde, and clene contrarye to all mennes myndes."—Erasmus De Contemptu Mundi, transl. by Thomas Paynel, 1533, fol. 42. "Rusticitie may seem to be an ignorance of honesty and comelinesse. A Clowne or rude fellow is he, who will goe into a crowd or presse, when he hath taken a purge: and hee that sayth, that Garlicke is as sweet as a gillifiower: that weares shooes much larger then his foot: that speakes alwaies very loud:" &c.,—Theophrastus His Characters, translated by John Healey, 1616, pp. 15, 16. It is a generally received opinion that this work has come down to us in a corrupt shape.
[257] Times were altered when the curious ballad "These Knights will hack," printed by Mr. Halliwell from Addit. MS. 5832, in one of the Shakespeare Society's publications (Marriage of Wit and Wisdom, &c., p. 144), was directed against the mushroom-knights of James I.:—
"Come all you farmers out of the countrey,
Carters, plowmen, hedgers, and all,
Tom, Dick, and Will, Ralph, Roger, and Humphrey,
Leave of your gestures rusticall.
Bidde all your home-sponne russets adue,
And sute yourselves in fashions new:
Honour invits you to delights;
Come all to court, and be made knights.
He that hath fortie pounds per annum
Shal be promoted from the plow:
His wife shall take the wall of her grannam,
Honour is sould so dog-cheap now," &c.
[258] Consult the new edition of Nares' Glossary, voce Walsingham. "This is an Image of oure Ladye. Ergo it is oure Ladye, and here she wyll worke wounders more than in an other place, as she dyd at Walsingham, at Boston, at Lincoln, at Ipswiche, and I cannot tell where."—Wilson's Rule of Reason, 1551, 8vo. sign S ii verso. In Percy's Reliques, ii. 91, is the ballad "As I went to Walsingham." "Have with you to Walsingham" is mentioned as a musical composition in Ward's Lives of the Professors of Gresham College. See also Burney's Hist. of Music, iii. p. 111. When people employed this form of adjuration, as was formerly very common, they were said, for brevity's sake, "to swear Walsingham." In the play of The Weakest Goeth to the Wall, 1600, 4to. Barnaby Bunch the Botcher sings:
"King Richard's gone to Walsingham,
To the Holy Land!"
with what are intended for comic interlocutions. In March, 1502—3, Elizabeth of York, consort of Henry VII, made an oblation of six shillings and eightpence to "oure lady of Walsingham" (Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York, edited by Nicolas, p. 3). This offering may not appear very large, but it was thought a considerable sum to devote to the purpose in those days; for in the Northumberland Household Book, ed. 1827, p. 337, we find that the yearly offering of the Earl of Northumberland (Henry Algernon Percy, 5th. Earl, b. 1478, d. 1527) to the same shrine was fourpence. There is a fuller account of the Shrine of Walsingham, &c., in Chappell's Popular Music of the Olden Time, 121, et seqq.
[259] It is just possible that this individual may be identical with the "John Reynolde" mentioned in the subjoined extract from the Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York, under date of December, 1502:—
"It[=m] the xvth day of Decembre, to John Reynolde for money by him payed to a man that broke a yong hors of the Quenes at Mortymer by the space of v wekes, every weke iis. s[=m]. xs."
[260] Orig. reads as.
[261] Foolish. Used in this sense by Chaucer and Shakespeare. See the last edit, of Nares in voce.