Joseph of Exeter was born at the City of Exeter in Devonshire, he was also sirnamed Iscanus, from the River Isk, now called Esk, which running by that City, gave it formerly the denomination of Isca. This Joseph (faith my Author) was a Golden Poet in a Leaden Age, so terse and elegant were his Conceits and Expressions. In his younger years he accompanied King Richard the First, in his Expedition into the Holy Land, by which means he had the better advantage to celebrate, as he did, the Acts of that warlike Prince, in a Poem, entituled Antiochea. He also wrote six Books De Bello Trojano, in Heroick Verse, which, as the learned Cambden well observes, was no other then that Version of Dares Phyrgius into Latine Verse. Yet so well was it excepted, that the Dutchmen not long since Printed it under the name of Cornelius Nepos, an Author who lived in the time of Tully, and wrote many excellent pieces in Poetry, but upon a strict view of all his Works, not any such doth appear amongst them; they therefore do this Joseph great wrong in depriving him the honour of his own Works. He was afterwards, for his deserts, preferred to be Arch-bishop of Burdeaux, in the time of King John, about the year 1210.
MICHAEL BLAUNPAYN.
This Michael Blaunpayn, otherwise sirnamed the Cornish Poet, or the Rymer, was born in Cornwall, and bred in Oxford and Paris, where he attained to a good proficiency in Learning, being of great fame and estimation in his time, out of whose Rymes for merry England as Cambden calls them, he quotes several passages in that most excellent Book of his Remains. It hapned one Henry of Normandy, chief Poet to our Henry the Third, had traduced Cornwall, as an inconsiderable Country, cast out by Nature in contempt into a corner of the land. Our Michael could not endure this Affront, but, full of Poetical fury, falls upon the Libeller; take a tast (little thereof will go far) of his strains.
Non opus est ut opus numere quibus est opulenta,
Et per quas inopes sustentat non ope lenta,
Piscibus & stanno nusquam tam fertilis ora.
We need not number up her wealthy store,
Wherewith this helpful Lands relieves her poor,
No Sea so full of Filh, of Tin, no shore.