Notes and Queries, Number 24, April 13, 1850 | Page 3

convict Mr. Cunningham of error, I will adduce two extracts from The Life of Master Thomas Cartwright, written by the Presbyterian Sa. Clarke, in 1651, and appended to his Martyrologie.
"About the same time [viz. 1580], the Earl of Leicester preferred him [Cartwright] to be master of his hospital at Warwick, which place was worth to him about one hundred pounds."--Clarke, p. 370.
"For riches, he sought them not; yea, he rejected many opportunities whereby he might have enriched himself. His usual manner was, when he had good sums of gold sent him, to take only one piece, lest he should seem to slight his friend's kindness, and to send back the rest with a thankful acknowledgement of their love and his acceptance of it; _professing that, for that condition wherein God had set him, he was as well furnished as they for their high and great places_."--Ib. p. 372.
So much for the "poverty," the "wretchedness," of Cartwright, and the "inflexible animosity" of Whitgift. The very reverse of all this is the truth.
J.K.
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INEDITED LETTER OF THE DUKE OF MONMOUTH.
Several notices of the Duke of Monmouth having appeared in "NOTES AND QUERIES," you may be glad to have the following letter, which I copied literatim some years ago in the State Paper Office from the domestic papers of the year 1672. The letter was written to Lord Arlington, then Secretary of State. Monmouth was at the time commanding the English force serving under Louis XIV. against the Dutch, and was in his twenty-third year. Mr. Ross had been his tutor; and was at this time, I believe, employed in the Secretary of State's office.
"ffrom the Camp nigh "Renalle the 29 Jun
"M'r Ross has tolld mee how mutch I am obliged to you for your kindness w'ch I am very sensible of and shall try to sho it upon all occations. I will asur you the effects of your kindness will make me live within compas for as long as I receave my mony beforehand I shall do it w'th a greadell of easse.
"I wont trouble you w'th news becaus Mr. Aston will tell you all ther is. I will try to instrokt him all as well as I can. I wont trouble you no longer, only I doe asur you ther is nobody mor your humble servant than I am.
"MONMOUTH."
C.
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LYDGATE AND COVERDALE, AND THEIR BIOGRAPHERS.
Dan John Lydgate, as Warton truly observes, was not only the poet of his monastery, but of the world in general. Yet how has he been treated by his biographers? Ritson, in his Bibliographia Poetica, says, "he died at an advanced age, after 1446." Thomson, in his Chronicles of London Bridge, 2nd edition, p. 11., says, "Lydgate died in the year 1440, at the age of sixty;" and again, at p. 164. of the same work, he says, "Lydgate was born about 1375, and died about 1461!" Pitt says that he died in 1482; and the author of the Suffolk Garland, p. 247., prolongs his life (evidently by a typographical blunder), to about the year 1641! From these conflicting statements, it is evident that the true dates of Lydgate's birth and decease are unknown. Mr. Halliwell, in the preface to his Selection from the Minor Poems of John Lydgate, arrives at the conclusion from the MSS. which remain of his writings, that he died before the accession of Edward IV., and there appears to be every adjunct of external probability; but surely, if our record offices were carefully examined, some light might be thrown upon the life of this industrious monk. I am not inclined to rest satisfied with the dictum of the Birch MS., No. 4245. fo. 60., that no memorials of him exist in those repositories.
The only authenticated circumstances in Lydgate's biography (excepting a few dates to poems), are the following:--He was ordained subdeacon, 1389; deacon, 1393; and priest, 1397. In 1423 he left the Benedictine Abbey of Bury, in Suffolk, to which he was attached, and was elected prior of Hatfield Brodhook; but the following year had license to return to his monastery again. These dates are derived from the Register of Abbott Cratfield, preserved among the Cotton MSS. Tiber, B. ix.
My object in calling the attention of your readers to the state of Lydgate's biography is, to draw forth new facts. Information of a novel kind may be in their hands without appreciation as to its importance.
I take this opportunity of noticing the different dates given of Myles Coverdale's death.
Strype says he died 20th May, 1565, (Annals of Reformation, vol. i. pt. ii. p. 43., Oxf. ed.), although elsewhere he speaks of his as being alive in 1566. Neale (_Hist of Pur._, vol. i. p. 185.) says, the 20th May, 1567. Fuller (_Church Hist._, p. 65. ed.