be gleaned from this tract is that William Thynne was a patron and supporter of John Skelton, who was an inmate of his house at Erith, whilst composing that most masterly bit of bitter truth, his “Colin Clout,” a satire perhaps unsurpassed in our language.

William Thynne rests beside his second wife, in the church of Allhallows, Barking, near the Tower of London, where there are two handsome brasses to their memory. That of William Thynne represents him in full armour with a tremendous dudgeon dagger and broadsword, most warlike guize for a clerk of the kitchen and editor of Chaucer. The dress of his wife is quite refreshing in its graceful comeliness in these days of revived “farthingales and hoops.” These brasses were restored by the late Marquess of Bath. Would that the same good feeling for things old had prevented the owners of the “church property” from casing the old tower with a hideous warehouse.

The Sir John Thynne mentioned in the “Animadversions” was most probably a cousin of Francis. He married the daughter of Sir Thomas Gresham, the builder of the Royal Exchange, part of whose wealth was devoted by his son-in-law to the building of the beautiful family seat of Long Leat, in Wiltshire, in which work he was doubtless aided indirectly by the Reformation, for, says the old couplet,

Francis Thynne was born in Kent, probably at his father’s house at Erith, about 1550. He was educated at Tunbridge school under learned Master Proctor, thence to Magdalen College, Oxford, and then, as the manner was, to the Inns of Court, where he lay at Lincoln’s Inn for a while. Some men are born antiquarians as others are born poets, and we may be pretty certain that it was at Thynne’s own desire that his court influence was used to procure him the post of “Blanch Lyon pursuivant,” a position which would enable him to pursue studies, the results of which, however valuable in themselves, but seldom prove capable of being converted into the vulgar necessities of food and raiment. Poor John Stowe, with his license to beg, as the reward of the labour of his life, is a terrible proof of how utterly unmarketable a valuable commodity may become.

Leading a calm and quiet life in the pleasant villages of Poplar and Clerkenwell, in “sweet and studious idleness,” as he himself calls it, the old herald was enabled to accumulate rich stores of matter, much of which has come down to us, principally in manuscript, scattered through various great libraries, which prove him to have deserved Camden’s estimate of him as “an antiquary of great judgment and diligence.” It would seem that he had entertained the idea of following in his father’s footsteps, and of becoming an editor of Chaucer, and that he had even made some collections towards that end. The appearance of Speight’s edition probably prevented this idea being carried out, and the evident soreness exhibited in this little tract very probably arose from a feeling that his friend had rather unfairly stolen a march upon him. However the wound was not deep, and Speight made use of Thynne’s corrections, and Thynne assisted Speight, in new editions, with all friendship and sympathy.1 I suspect him of dabbling in alchemy and the occult sciences. He shows himself well acquainted with the terms peculiar to those mysteries, and hints that Chaucer only “enveyed” against the “sophisticall abuse,” not the honest use of the Arcana. Moreover in the British Museum (MS. add. 11,388) there is a volume containing much curious matter collected by him on these subjects, and not only collected