Lansdowne MS 208

folio.

A Chronicle of England in verse, with the following title:-"Lawson's Orchett [orchard] wharin thou shalt fynde most pleasaunt fructe of all mannor of sortes. That is to sai, the true acte, facte or deade of every Prince reininge in this lande sens yt was first inhabitt, with the yeares of thaire contynuance and the varieite of the opinyons of the historiographers, newly gathyred and agmented, contynuinge unto the conquest. 1581." Beg. "When Troye tryumphed in his reigne." The author's name was John Lawson, and his work consists of many thousand wretched lines compiled from Geoffrey of Monmouth, Guido of Coloura, Lydgate's Troy book, and Higden's Polychronicon, with the occasional introduction of French history. It extends, as the title states, to the reign of William the Conqueror, inclusive. Lawson's apology for not including Scottish history may be worth transcribing, and serve at the same time as a specimen of his style. The affaires of Scotland I wente for to have touched, But thaire writers so far deffered frome the certentie Off others, boithe in tyme, and facte, that I the same leathed For feire of the learned that haith circumspectlie Numbered thaire steppes and sett thame forthe cordinglie. Wharfor I thought the tyme spente a great deile better To proceide forwardes and leve such rotten matter. At the end of the chronicle are two addresses, the one to the reader, whence the above extract is made, and the other to Lord Burghley and Sir William Damsell knight, and to all the author's good masters of the Court of Wards and Liveries, from which expression we may infer that he belonged to that court. In this address he states the materials that he had used for his work, three volumes of which he had compleated, and concludes with the menace of a fourth, that he might not waste his time. On the first leaf of the volume is the following memorandum in the hand-writing of Lord Burghley: "A^o Dni 1581 et Regin. Elizab. 23 Tho. Lawson, feodary in y^e county of Northub. sent me this booke."