Manuscript description

[On fol. 1r eleven jests are written, some nearly illegibly. Changes of ink indicate different times the scribe returned to add jests. The heading for the page is difficult to make out; it might say ""gillam"" or " "csillam"". The first jest concerns one fellow hitting another in the teeth for using the hangings to wipe his tail (in defence the man said he had never wiped his tail in his life). The second concerns a bet made between a friar and tailor about which of them could thrust his prick furthest between the legs of the tailor's wife. The third involves a country fellow talking with another man about whether the rain God has sent does more hurt than good. The fourth describes a falconer who meets a shepherd and asks if he has seen his hawk. The shepherd asks whether it is a bird, is specked, and has bells at the heels. The falconer says yes, then the shepherd says he never saw it. The fifth jest says that the steward of the Temple came once to Sergeant Harris asking him to come up because his calf's head was hot (The Temple refers to either the Inner Temple or Middle Temple, two of the four Inns of Court in London). In the sixth, a fellow standing by his father farted, and being asked about it, said it was good enough for the company. The seventh notes the Latin speech said by a priest to the bishop for having gotten five wenches with children. In the eighth an unidentified man swore a great oath that he would make someone taste of our Lord Jesus Christ's supper. The ninth involves a courtly gentleman who thrust a gentlewoman into the royal presence where the torches were put out. He came to her and pulled up her clothes, but she put her hand on her border saying, I will save this, the other will save itself. The tenth mentions someone who stole a horse and told the chief justice he would rather be tried by his uncle and aunt. The eleventh describes the significance of the actions of a person named Skefton who brought capons to the bishop, one named alpha and the other omega. The names Katherine Hordinant (once) and Elizabeth Clarke (four times) are written sideways along the left margin of the page.]

[Fols 1v-2v are blank.]

Trifles

[This page contains a number of short poems or fragments of poems.]

Shepherd sawest thou not my fair Phyllis

...

Pierce my Phyllis's flinty heart

[This pastoral poem is spoken by a lover whose mistress has disdained him to follow Diana.]

Churchyard's verses to the queen

Your grace did promise on a time

...

I never heard of rhyme nor reason

[These lines ask for a promised reward which the poet has not yet received. These lines appear also on fol. 8r (msItem 5.3) and in another manuscript, Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 51 , fol. 6r (msItem 6.2 in the catalogue entry for that manuscript). Though the lines have not yet been found in the works of Thomas Churchyard, many of his works bemoan his lack of favour at court and so the identification seems reasonable.]

Verses upon Mr Dunse

Nor law nor logic got me this

...

For one poor single suit

[To the right of the verse is noted ""made by mr dunse"". The lines lament that he has not been able to further his suit with law, logic, warbling on the lute, or cleaning six pairs of boots.]

In lib. 10. De peregrinatione

Parisios stolidum si quis transmittit asellum

...

si fuit hic asinus, non ibi fiet equus

[The Latin word ""peregrinatio"" means traveling abroad. A translation of these lines (by Shane Hawkins) is ""If someone transports a donkey to Gaul (or Paris), if it was an ass here it won't be a horse there"" .]

One line about a drake or duck

Once alive twice dead thrice happy drake

To his mistress clothed like the spring

...

Some happy creature do this letter bring

[This page contains seven jests. The first describes how a drunkard was lying in the dirt on a dark night, when a man came by thinking he had been robbed. He told the drunkard to stand, but the drunkard could not. The second tells of John Radcliffe who was once walking from Carfax to Brasenose College and told one of his friends that he was very sick. He sounded three times between Brasenose and Carfax, which means that he farted so many times. The third item is a single line: ""of all birdes the wagtaile is worst"". The fourth jest tells how an elephant spends ten years in his dam's belly and lives three hundred years. The fifth jest, a lengthy one, explains that a poor student in Paris often went to a cook's house for some sustenance. Since he was not able to afford meat he would hold his bread over the cook's roasting meat to take the breath of it. Shortly after this one of the student's friends died, making him rich, whereby the cook sued him in the civil courts because he had lived off the cook's meat a long time. When it came to trial the student pulled out some [illegible word] and told the cook to smell them and take the air of them, as he had taken the air of his meat, which was all the cook could obtain at the judge's hands. The sixth jest tells of a gentlewoman who once seeing a man want a knife said, cut my finger. He replied, you would say, finger my cut. The final jest concerns a captain's boy coming through Cheapside with long hair. A merchant's wife sitting in her shop called to him and said that he was bush natural, with more hair than wit. He replied, cousin, to your cunt, mistress, more hair than honesty. The John Radcliffe mentioned in the second jest might refer to the John Radclyffe of Lancashire who matriculated at Brasenose College in 1581 at age 16 (Joseph Foster, Alumni Oxonienses: The Members of the University of Oxford 1500-1714, vol. 3 (Oxford: Parker, 1892), p. 1228).]

[On fol. 4r rev. are two accounts the first of which relates to the price of a pair of shoes for the scribe's brother, for which he paid the shoemaker at Bristol. The second item is an amount given to someone at the church at Babcary to pay Hugh Younge. These accounts were perhaps added after the main list of accounts on fols 6r-7v. Fol. 4v rev. contains mathematical calculations relating to money. Fol. 5 is badly torn and still joined along the top edge to another leaf. This attached leaf is not foliated. Perhaps the scribe tried to cut the pages apart but having torn them decided to start his accounts on fol. 6r instead. Fol. 5r is blank. A few letters are visible on fol. 5v (""is"", ""t"" and ""t""). Fols 6r-7v contain a list of accounts relating mostly to funeral arrangements. The heading, in which not all of the words are clear, on fol. 6r is ""A note wt I haue Lane forth since the ny[superceded by

"O"

[Fol. 5 is blank.]

A selection of verse arranged into two columns

You craggy rocks and moutains high

...

And witness that I that I that I am in love

[This poem takes up most of the left column on this page.]

[At the bottom of msItem 5.1 is a note in English and Latin: ""finis in the three & twentith yeare of my age. Tricestimo septimo Elizabethe ."" The thirty-seventh year of Elizabeth's reign is approximately 1595. This note is followed by a few words in Latin: ""aetas prima canat veneres postrema tumultus"". A translation of these words (by Shane Hawkins) is ""The first age sings that you ought to revere the last things"".]

Churchay to the queen

Your grace did promise on a time

...

I never heard of rhyme nor reason

[These lines appear at the top of the second column on fol. 8r. See msItem 2.2 for another version of these lines, attributed to Thomas Churchyard, and for a note about another manuscript which contains them.]

The day is past and yet I saw no sun

...

and now I live and now my life is done

[This couplet is extracted from Tichborne's Elegy (lines 5 and 6), written on the eve of his execution in 1586.]

Phillida Phillidas Phillidant

...

tangere fundrum

[This Latin passage is very difficult to make sense of, as it seems to be playing on multiple senses of words. The first two lines may be a play on someone's name (Phyllis or Phillip?).]

I proffered her my love and service of my [symbol]

...

She took it for a favour and thrust it in her [symbol]

[This couplet is actually written on four lines. The first symbol looks like ""f-"" and the second like the top half of an upper case ""P"". No doubt something sexual is intended by these symbols.]

Sweet were the words my mistress said

...

Put off thy clothes and come to bed

[This couplet is actually written on four lines.]

For this I say and this my words shall prove

...

That jibing is the only joy of love

[This couplet is actually written on four lines.]

I love thee not 'cause thou art fair

...

To him that hath a heart not his

[ Elizabeth Clarke has reversed the manuscript so that the final page forms a new first page, and she has signed her name in the top right corner of this page. She has also transcribed some verse: stanzas three and two of a three-stanza poem first printed in Thomas Stanley's Poems of 1651, where it is headed ""Song By M.W.M."". Its first line is ""Wert thou yet fairer then thou art"". Galbraith Miller Crump, who edited Stanley's works in 1962, suggests Walter Montagu or Walter Moyle as possible candidates for the authorship of the poem. This poem was later published in many songbooks and miscellanies, including Henry Lawes's The treasury of musick in 1669 (Book 1, p. 27; located with the LION database). Crump, pp. 387-388, lists the following sources where it was printed: Henry Bold's Latine Songs, with their English, and Poems, with Latin translation, 1685; Select Musicall Ayres and Dialogues, etc. , 1653; The New Academy of Complements, 1669, 1671; The Jovial Garland, 1672; Synopsis of Vocal Musick, 1680; and Cantus, Songs and Fancies, 1682. (A search indicates that the song does not in fact appear in either edition of The New Academy of Complements, or in Cantus, Songs and Fancies. I was not able to consult The Jovial Garland.) The poem also enjoyed a circulation in manuscript (see Crum W339 and Folger Shakespeare Library MS V.a.169, Part II, p. 29). None of the variants in the extant versions of the poem I have seen follow the alterations made by Clarke. For a discussion of the alterations to this poem see Victoria Burke's article, listed below.]