" His
_Life of Lord Clive_ was a bookseller's compilation.
WM. DURRANT COOPER.
* * * * *
QUERIES.
LOVE, THE KING'S FOOL OF THAT NAME.
In Rawlinson's Manuscripts in the Bodleian (c. 258.), which I take to
have been written either in, or very soon after, the reign of Henry
VIII., there is a poem thus entitled:--
"THE EPITAPHE OF LOVE, THE KYNGE'S FOOLE."
Can any of your readers furnish me with information regarding him? He
was clearly a man worthy of notice, but although I have looked through
as many volumes of that period, and afterwards, as I could procure, I do
not recollect meeting with any other mention of him. Skelton, who must
have been his contemporary, is silent regarding him; and John Heywood,
who was also living at the same time, makes no allusion to him that I
have been able to discover. Heywood wrote the "Play of Love," but it has
nothing to do with the "King's fool."
The epitaph in question is much in Heywood's humorous and satirical
style: it is written in the English ballad-metre, and consists of seven
seven-line stanzas, each stanza, as was not unusual with Heywood, ending
with the same, or nearly the same, line. It commences thus:
"O Love, Love! on thy sowle God have mercye;
For as Peter is _princeps Apostolorum_,
So to the[e] may be sayd clerlye,
Of all foolys that ever was _stultus stultorum_.
Pages:
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42