with my imperial crowne; all which was forthwith done. The prince and the infanta, his sister, being in presence, the King called for Iohn Ruyz de Valasco, putting him in minde of a cofer*, which he had committed to his custodie, willing him to fetch it; the cofer was very little, yet, when it was brought, he caused it to be opened, and, taking foorth a pretious stone of an infinite value, caused it to be deliuered to his daughter, speaking thvs vnto hir: My daughter Izabella Eugenia Clara, receiue this iewell, brought vnto me by your mother, the which I bestowe vpon you for my last farewell. And then, turning him to the prince, said, are you contented with this that I giue unto your sister? Who answered, yea, sir, although you gaue her all that I haue. This answere lyking the king very wel, he willed them to looke in the cofer for another paper, and, giuing it to the Prince, he told him, that therein he should see the forme how to gouern his kingdome. Then they tooke out of the said cofer a whip with bloudie knots, which the King holding vp, said, this bloud is mine owne, and yet not mine but my fathers, who is in heauen, who made use of this kind of exercise; and therefore to make known the value of it, and the trueth of it, I thought good to reueale it vnto you. After this he commaunded a paper to be taken from vnder his pillow, which, being read by Iohn Ruyz, contained these wordes: We, Philip, by the grace of God, King of Castile and Lion, &c. hauing gouerned this realme forty yeeres in the seuenty-first yeere of mine age, giue over this kingdome vnto my God to whom it belongeth, and commend my soule into his blessed hands, to performe therewith whatsoeuer it shall please his diuine Maiestie. Commaunding that this my bodie, so soone as euer my soule shall be separated from the same, he embalmed; then apparelled with a royall robe, and so placed in this brazen shrine heere present, and that the howers + be kept, with all rites and ceremonies as the lawe requireth, and I commaund my funerall to be solemnised in this manner: before shall be borne the archbishops banner, then the crosse; the monkes and the clergie presentlie shall followe, all in mourning garments. The Adelantado + shall beare the royall standard, trailing it vpon the ground. The duke of Nayara shall carrie the crowne vnder a canopie. The marquesse of Aguillar shall carrie the sword. My body shall be borne by eight of my chiefest seruants, all in mourning weedes, with burning torches in their handes. The Archbishop shall follow the nobles, and our vniuersal heir shall follow on the one side all in dewle . When they come to the church, my body shall be placed in the herse there of purpose crected. All the praiers and deuotions ended, the prelate shall place me in the vault, my last habitation, which shall be giuen to me for cuer. All this performed, your prince §, and third king of that name, shall go to S. Ierosmes ¶ at Madrill, there to keep the holy ceremonies of the ninth daie yeerely, and my daughter, with my sister, her aunt, shall go to the gray nunnes barefoote. Then, speaking to the prince, he saide, besides all that which I haue heertofore spoken to you, I pray al. A small box or trunk, you haue a great care and regard to your sister, because shee was my looking-glasse and the light of mine eies. Keepe the commonwealth in peace, placing there good gouernors to rewarde the good and punish the bad. Let the marquesse of Mondeiar be deliuered out of prison, on this condition that he come not to the court. Let the wife of Antonio Perez also be set at libertie, so that from hencefoorth shee liue in a monasterie, and let her daughters inherite the patrimonie which shee brought. Forgiue those which are prisoners for hunting, with all such as are condemned to die (the Kings pardon wanting) and so I giue my last farewell to my children, commending them to all peace and safetie. Then the Prince asked Don Christofer de Mora, for the royal key, commaunding him to deliuer it to him; who craued pardon of his Highnes, because it was the key of all trust and confidence, which hee could in no wise deliuer, without the leaue of his lord the King. Well, said the prince, it is ynough; and so went into his chamber, whilst Don Christofer, returning to the King, whome he found a little cheered, said vnto him, Sir, his Highness asked of me the royall key, which I haue denied him, as hauing no leave from your Maiestie. But the King told him he had done ill. Not long after he fell into another fit, wherevpon he called for the extreme vnction, which was giuen vnto him by the Archbishop. Then he called for a crucifixe which had beene kept safely in a chest, which was the very same his father held betweene his hands, when he died, with the which he desired likewise to die. Hereupon his Highness returned to his father, at whose comming Don Christofer, vpon his knees, presented to him the royall key, which the prince received, and gaue it to the Marquesse of Denia; whereupon the King said to him, Remember I commende vnto you Don Christofer for the most faithfull seruant which I euer had, and so haue care of all the rest, which I commende vnto you. And so he took his leaue of him againe, imbracing him, at which instant his speech failed; and in this sort he continued two daies, and died vpon Sunday, the thirteenth of September, about three of the clocke in the morning. The body was buried vpon Munday the fourteenth of that moneth, about nine of the clocke in the morning, the Archbishop saying the masse. The new King came from Escuriall, the sixteenth of that instant, leauing his sister at the grey nunnes, and so went to S. Ierosmes, the court remaining in great mourning and lamentation, making preparation for the great funerall. • A sacrament of the Romish church; it is oil-olive consecrated by a bishop for the anointing such persons, of whose life there is no hope. NASHE'S LENTEN STUFF, CONCERNING THE DESCRIPTION AND FIRST PROCREATION AND INCREASE OF THE TOWN OF GREAT YARMOUTH, IN NORFOLK: WITH A NEW PLAY NEVER PLAYED BEFORE, OF THE PRAISE OF THE RED HERRING. Fit of all Clerks of Noblemen's Kitchens to be read; and not unnecessary by all Serving-Men, who have short Board Wages, to be remembered. Famam peto per Undas. London, printed for N. L. and C. B. and are to be sold at the West End of Paul's, 1599. Quarto, containing eighty-three Pages. To his worthy, good patron, Lusty Humphrey, according as the townsmen do christen him; Little Numps, as the nobility and courtiers do name him; and Honest Humphrey, as all his friends and acquaintance esteem him; King of the Tobeconists hic & ubique, and a singular Maccænas to the Pipe and Tabor (as his patient livery attendant can witness) his bounden orator, T. N. most prostrately offers up this tribute of ink and paper. MOST OST courteous, unlearned lover of poetry, and yet a poet thyself, of no less price than H. S. that, in honour of Maid-marrian, gives sweet marjoram for his empress, and puts the sow most saucily upon some great personage, whatever she be, bidding her (as it runs in the old song) Go from my garden, go, For there no flowers for thee do grow. These be to notify to your diminutive excellence, and compendious greatness, what my zeal is towards you, that in no streighter bonds would be pounded and inlisted, than in an epistle dedicatory. Too many more lusty blood Bravemente Signiors, with Cales beards, as broad as scullers maples, that they make clean their boats with, could I have turned it over, and had nothing for my labour, some fair words excepting; good sir, will it please you to come near, and drink a cup of wine?. After my return from Ireland, I doubt not but my fortunes will be of some growth to requite you. In the mean time, my sword is a tyour command; and, before God, money so scatteringly runs here and there upon Utensilia, furnitures, ancients, and other necessary preparations (and, which is a double charge, look how much tobacco we carry with us to expel cold, the like quantity of staves aker we must provide us of to kill lice in that rugged country of rebels) that I say unto you in the words of a martialist, We cannot do as we would. I am no incredulous Dydimus, but have more faith to believe they have no coin, than they have means to supply themselves with it, and so leave them. To any other carpet-monger, or Primrose Knight of Primero, bring I a dedication; if the dice over night have not befriended him, he sleeps five days and five nights to new-skin his beauty, and will not be known he is awake til his men, upon their own bonds (a dismal world for trenchermen, when their masters bonds shall not be so good as theirs) have took up commodities, or fresh droppings of the mint for him: and then; what then? He pays for the ten dozen of bottles he left upon the score at the tennis court; he sends for the barber to depure, decurtate, and spunge him, whom having not paid à twelve-month before, he now rains down eight quarter angels into his hand, to make his liberality seem greater, and gives him a cast riding jerkin, and an old Spanish hat into the bargain, and God's peace be with him. The chamber is not rid of the smell of his feet, but the greasy shoemaker with his squirrel's skin, and a whole stall of ware upon his arm, enters, and wrencheth his legs for an hour together, and after shews his tally. By S. Loy that draws deep, and by that time his tobacco merchant is made even with, and he hath dined at a tavern, and slept his under-meal at a bawdy-house, his purse is on the heild, and only forty shillings he hath behind to try his fortune with at the cards in the presence; which if it prosper, the court cannot contain him, but to London again he will, to revel it and have two plays in one night, invite all the poets and musicians to his chamber the next morning, where, against their coming, a whole heap of money shall be spread upon the board, and all his trunks opened to shew his rich suits, but the devil a whit he bestows on them, save bottle ale and tobacco, and desires a general meeting. The particular of it is, that Bounty is bankrupt, and lady Sensuality licks all the fat from the seven liberal sciences; that Poetry, if it were not a trick to please my lady, would be excluded out of Christian burial, and, instead of wreaths of lawrel to crown it with, have a bell with a cock's comb clapped on the crown of it by old Johannes de Indagines, and his choir of dorbelists. Wherefore, the premisses considered (I pray you consider of that word Premisses, for somewhere I have borrowed it) neither to rich, noble, right worshipful, or worshipful, of spiritual or temporal, will I consecrate this work but to thee and thy capering humour alone; that, if thy stars had done thee right, they should have made thee one of the mightiest princes of Germany, not for thou canst drive a coach, or kill an ox so well as they, but that thou art never well but when thou art amongst the retinue of the muses, and there spendest more in the twinkling of an eye, than in a whole year thou gottest by some grasierly gentility thou followest. A king thou art by name, and a king of good-fellowship by nature, whereby I ominate this encomium of the King of Fishes was predestinated to thee from thy swaddling cloaths. Hug it, ingle it, kiss it, and cull it now thou hast it, and renounce eating of green beef and garlick till martlemas, if it be not the next stile to "The Strife of Love in a Dream :" or, "The lamentable Burning of Tiverton." Give me good words, I beseech thee, though thou givest me nothing else, and thy words shall stand for thy deeds, which I will take as well in worth, as if they were the deeds and evidences of all the land thou hast. Here I bring you a red herring, if you will find drink to it, there's an end, no other detriments will I put you to. Let the kan of strong ale your constable, with the toast his brown bill, and sugar and nutmegs his watchmen, stand in a readiness to entertain me every time I come by your lodging. In Russia there are no presents but of meat or drink; I present you with meat, and you, in honourable courtesy to requite me, can do no less than present me with the best morning's draught of merry-go-down in your quarters ; and so I kiss the shadow of your feets shadow, amiable donsel, expecting your sacred poems of the Hermit's tale, that will restore the golden age amongst us, and so, upon my soul's knees, I take my leave. Yours, for a whole Last of Red Herrings, TH. NASHE. I To his Readers, he cares not what they be. NASHE'S Lenten Stuff! And why Nashe's Lenten Stuff? Some scabbed scalled Esquire replies: Because I had money lent me at Yarmouth; and pay them again in praise of their own town and the red-herring. And, if it were so, Goodman Pig-wiggen, were not that honest dealing? Pay thou all thy debts so, if thou canst for thy life. But thou art a ninny-hammer, that is not it; therefore, Nickenoky, I call it Nashe's Lenten Stuff, as well for that it was most of my study the last lent as that we use so to term any fish that takes salt, of which the red-herring is one of the aptest. O! but, saith another John Dringle, there is a book of the Red-herring's Tail, printed four terms since, that made this stale. Let it be a tail of haberdine, if it will, I am nothing entailed thereunto; I scorn it, I scorn it, that my works should turn tail to any man. Heal, body, tail, and all of a red-herring you shall have of me, if that will please you; or, if that will not please you, stay till Easter term, and then, with the answer to the Trim Tram, I will make |