COMMENTARY NOTES

Title The three Oxford mss. call this poem Iter Boreale, the title by which it was known to its imitator Richard Corbett, while the British Library ms. has the double title Musae Boreales sive Iter Boreale. It is possible that it circulated under yet a third, for when William Camden quoted lines 71f. the 1607 edition of his Britannia (Yorkshire 17) he wrote in a sidenote Itinerarium T. Edes. But the word itinerarium is more likely a genre-specifying word than a title, and the fact that he got the author’s name wrong possibly diminishes his credibility as a witness. Musae Boreales commands no confidence, since our poem contains only one Muse, and R’s evidentiary value is likewise tainted because it dates the poem to the wrong year. But it is not out of the question that Eedes called his work Musa Borealis, for two reasons. At the end of the poem (649ff.) he writes of the sudden flight of his rustica Musa gelido nata sub Arcto. Then too, the name of William Gager’s sequel, Musa Australis, suggests that he knew the poem under this title. But the evidence favoring Iter Boreale obviously preponderates. (Since Anthony à Wood read the poem in the ms. designated W here, his citation of the work by this title has no independent evidentiary value. In his description of how it came to be written, upon which Wood’s account is based, Sir John Harington mentioned no title.)
13a Here (as opposed to its one after 17, which seems indefensibly weak) W’s extra line makes rhetorical sense and finds a measure of support in C’s original reading charior at 13.
14 Anthony Blenkowe or Blenkow, Provost of Oriel College (1546 - 1618). What little is known about him is summarized by G. C. Richards and C. L. Shadwell, The Provosts and Fellows of Oriel (Oxford, 1922). He came from Little Blencowe, Cumberland; entered Oxford as a Dudley exhibitioner in 1560; admitted to the B. A. in 1563, and incepted M. A. in 1566; elected Senior Proctor of the University for both 1571 and 1572; elected Provost of Oriel College in 1574, a position he held for the rest of his life; received the D. C. L. in 1586. Little of a circumstantial nature seems known about the man beyond a eulogy written by his successor William Lewis:

Blenkowe bequeathed Oriel £1300 for the repair of its fabric as well as 67 books for its Library. There is a 1601 portrait in the Provost’s Lodge, listed, but not described or reproduced, by Mrs. Reginald Lane Poole, Catalogue of Portraits in the Possession of the University, Colleges, City and Country of Oxford (Oxford, 1927) II.80.
Any university man admitted to the B. A. was entitled to call himself Dominus, alone or in combination with other academic titles. This is a problematic word to render, and in the end I decided not to translate it all: Dominus is the Latin translation of “Sir” when writing of a nobleman or knight, but in the case of an academic “Sir” conveys entirely the wrong impression. One cannot translate it “Master,” because that English word must be reserved for Magister (someone who had incepted for the M. A.); “Dom” would make the individual seem monkish, “Don” sounds Spanish, and “Dan” too Chaucerian. But in the case of non-academics “Sir” or even “Lord” are of course the proper translations. What this implies about the possible equivalency of prestige in possessing a B. A. and a knighthood remains to be clarified by further research.
16 B’s sidenote is corrupt, or at least the final word is illegible on my microfilm. Perhaps the original plan was to go as far as Banbury, spend the night, and then return (cf. the note on 26f.). The second syllable of itinere is improperly scanned long.
19 Eedes departed too abruptly to apply for a leave of absence (the institution of the Long Vacation lay far in the future). But in his case requesting travel permission would have only been a formality: how much hot water could he get into, accompanying the heads of two Colleges and having been elected one of the two University Proctors for 1583 in the previous April (Wood, F. O. 223)?
22f. Cf. Martial, Epigrams XII.xxiv.4f:

26 Leland wrote (Itinerary I.7), “The toune of Northampton stondith on the north side of the Avon ryver, on the brow of a meane hille, and risith stille from the south to the north. Al the old building of the toune was of stone, the new is of tymbre.”
Mathew’s party had gone north to Banbury on a road following the west bank of the Cherwell (reckoned as 16.4 English statute miles by the Royal English Atlas), then turned northeast through Northamptonshire (a road stated to be 21.5 mi. by the Atlas).
27ff. Northampton was a Puritan town. Since 1572 its churches had been regulated by a covenant entitled The Orders and Dealings in the Church of Northampton (1572), described by W. H. Freer, The English Church in the Reigns of Elizabeth and James I (1558 - 1625) (London, 1905, repr. New. York, n.d.) 168f. These injunctions prescribed very Low Church practices, and Calvin’s catechism was to be used in lieu of that of the Book of Common Prayer. By Eede’s testimony, at least some extremists rejected the idea of Saints and refused to call the Sabbath by a pagan name. The tone of his initial remarks shows that he regarded Puritanism with distaste, an attitude which colors his subsequent evaluation of the crudely outspoken anti-Papist Bishop Barnes and his Basle-educated son.
31 “S. Thomas Hospitale is with oute the toune, and joinith hard to the West Gate” (Leland, Itinerary I.9). Eedes also refers to St. Mary’s (by the Castle) and either the Chapel of St. John the Baptist, Kingsthorpe (attached to St. Peter’s church), or to the Hospital of St. John’s. The survey of Northampton churches in William Page (ed.), The Victoria History of the Country of Northamptonshire (London, 1970) II.40ff. mentions no religious establishment consecrated to St. Nicholas.
33 “Paroche chirches in Northampton withyn the waulles be 7. whereof the chirch of Al Halowes is principale, stonding yn the harte of the toune, and is large and welle buildid” (ib. I.7.). This church is more commonly known as All Saints’.
37f. The Orders and Dealings described in the note on 27ff. gave instructions on how preaching was to be done. It would seem that Mathew adhered to these injunctions, to the extent that Eedes thought that he had given a talk but had been unable to deliver a genuine sermon.
39 They went north to Harburough in Leicestershire and then onward to Leicester, a total distance of approx. 24 mi. according to the Atlas. R puts the distance at 16 miles. R’s mileage calculations are almost always short (only accurate for the Tadcaster - York leg of the journey); perhaps some obsolete long mile was employed.
41 This may refer to the monastery ruins mentioned by Camden, Britannia (Leicestershire 5), alteram urbis partem inter laetissima prata, quae Soarus irrigat, monasterium fuit.
42 Our companions had traveled to Nottingham via Mobray, a total of 25.5 mi. according to the Atlas, though R’s appended itinerary makes the distance 19 mi. Nottingham’s castle is built on a rather dramatic sandstone bluff honeycombed with caves, Castle Rock, overlooking the River Trent. The stench of which Eedes complains presumably emanated from the marshland down by the river. 1583 appears to have been a dry summer (cf. the note on 73f.), which may have amplified the problem.
Nottingham made a more favorable impression on Camden (Nottinghamshire 2): urbs est loci ingenio amoena, hinc ad flumina spatiosa procumbunt prata; illinc faciles consurgunt colles; omnibus etiam quae ad vitam pertinent copiosa. Camden added sic enim Saxones dixerunt a subterraneis speluncis, et meatibus quae in receptacula, et habitationem excavavit antiquitas sub praeruptis illis saxis in Australi parte qua Linum fluviolum despectat. These caves were inhabited, perhaps by squatters, when Eedes saw them.
44 Cf., perhaps, Vergil, Aeneid I.167, vivoque sedilia saxo (imitated by Ovid, Metamorphoses V.317).
47 Pliny the Elder (Natural History VIII.cxlix) wrote of Egyptian dogs certum est iuxta Nilum amnem currentes lambere, ne crocodilorum aviditati occasionem praebeant.
48ff. Leland (IV.15) wrote “Maunsfeld a market town longing to the King in Notinghamshire (it is yn Shirwode)…miles from Rotherham in the hy way to Nottingham.” It is on the river Mann or Maun. R reckons it as 12 miles beyond Nottingham (13.6 according to the Atlas ).
52 “Rotheram is a meately large market towne, and hath a large and fair collegiate chirch” (Leland, Itinerary IV.14). According to the Atlas it is 23.4 miles beyond Mansfield.
53 I am not sure of my translation here: solis may be a corruption common to all four mss.
55 Wakefield is in the West Riding of Yorkshire, on the river Calder. In Britannia Camden (Yorkshire 8) praised this market town: Wakefeldiam alluit Calderus re pannaria, sua magnitudine, aedificiorum elegantia, foro frequenti, et ponte inclytam. R’s itinerary places it 13 miles beyond Rotheram. The Atlas gives no mileage, but by applying its scale one sees that it is more like 20 English statute miles.
Eedes is alluding to the ballad “The Jolly Pinder of Wakefield,” for which cf. Francis James Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (Boston - New York, 1888 - 90) III.129ff., where it is registered as no. 124. It begins:

In introducing this ballad, Child noted that a printed version was entered in the Stationers’ Register in 1557 - 58. There is probably a special point in Eedes’ allusion: at the conclusion of the ballad the pinder offers a banquet for Robin Hood and his merry men, just as Mathew’s company is treated to a feast now.
57 This line = Vergil, Aeneid I.215 with implentur altered to implemur.
58f. As BCW’s marginal note indicates, they are offered a special brew called March beer. Evidently this was powerful stuff. Lithgow in his Travels of 1632 (III.16, quoted by the O. E. D.) writes of “strong March-Ale, surpassing fine Aqua-vitae.”
61f. Aberford is a village in the West Riding about 14 miles northeast of Wakefield and 4 miles southwest of Tadcaster, well known in Eedes’ day for the manufacture of pins: Camden (Yorkshire 13) wrote qui nunc viculus est situs ad viam illam militarem, et aciculis conficiendis, quibus primas mulieres deferunt, celebris.
63 Ovid tells the story of Philemon and Baucis in Book VIII of the Metamorphoses. They stayed with this woman because Blencowe was the Provost of the college from which she held her lease.
66 Cf. Vergil, Aeneid XII.67f.:

This image influenced Ovid, Amores II.v.37, quale rosae fulgent inter sua lilia mixtae, and also Statius, Silvae I.ii.22f., tu modo fronte rosas, violis modo lilia mixta / excipis. This representation of feminine beauty was often imitated by the Elizabethans, both in English and in Latin, because it corresponded to their own, especially as enhanced by lead and vermilion. Cf., for example, Thomas Watson’s Ἑκατομπαθία (1582), Passion VII.9, On either cheeke a Rose and Lillie lies.
67 The outward trip was made in August, by which time Yorkshire apples are ripe.
69 Cf. Vergil, Eclogue iii.36f.:

70 This imitation of Ovid, Metamorphoses III.415, dumque sitim sedare cupit, sitis altera crevit, hints that the more ale they drank, the more attractive the widow’s daughters came to look (the Ovidian line describes Narcissus becoming enamored of himself whilst drinking from his pool). Or is this a sly allusion to the inevitable consequence of enthusiastic beer consumption?
71 Blenkow.
73f. Cf. Leland, Itinerary I.43, “The bridge at Tadcaster over Warfe hath 8 faire arches of stone. Sum say there that it was laste made of parte of the ruines of the old castelle of Tadcaster.” This town is built at the confluence of the Wharfe and the Ouse, and it was the former of these that ran dry, or at least stood so low that the bridge struck Eedes as absurdly oversized. On the return journey, when he saw this same river swollen by floods, he was disabused of his impression (622f.).
This bridge was also mentioned by Camden, Britannia (Yorkshire 17) , who added in the 1607 edition et sane mihi neutiquam admiratione indignum videtur, quod Wherf tot aquis adauctus aestivo tempore tam tenuis sub hoc defluat, ut quidam adulta iam aestate cum huc venisset lepide cecinerit.

A sidenote credits these lines to Itinerarium T. Edes. (It is, incidentally, possible that at the time he wrote this passage Camden had not actually read Iter Boreale, but in the 1610 English version by Philemon Holland, to which he himself added more material, he goes on to quote lines 623f. describing the same river during the winter flood season, as if he wished to correct the wrong impression he had originally given).
Daniel Defoe had the same experience with another bridge over the Wharfe (A Tour Thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain, London, 1727, repr. London, n.d., II.618):

When he comes to his description of the bridge at Tadcaster (ib. 635) he added:

nil Tadcaster habes [sic] muris vel carmine dignum,
praeter magnifice structum sine flumine pontem.

But I can assure the Reader of this Account, that altho’ I pass’d this Place in the middle of Summer, we found Water enough in the River, so that there was no passing it without a Boat.

Tadcaster is nine miles from York, and here our companions picked up the great London-to-Berwick highway that would lead them northward to Durham (although, as we shall see, on both their outward and homeward journeys they were required by Bishop Barnes to swerve from the direct route). According to R’s itinerary, accurate for once, one passes through Bishopthorp on the way from Tadcaster to York, about two miles south of the city. Here the Archbishops of York had owned a manor and hunting park since the thirteenth century. This imposing moated edifice backs onto the Ouse. Cf. Peter F. Ryder, Medieval Buildings of Yorkshire (Ashbourne, Derbyshire, 1982) 110. Leland, Itinerary IV.12, wrote “In the midde way I saw hard on the right hond a veri fair large maner of the bisshops of Yorke caullid Bishops Thorpe.”
76 “Thorp” is an Anglo-Saxon word meaning “hamlet, village, estate”; as can be seen from the O. E. D. examples, it had not quite gone out of usage in Eedes’ period.
78ff. The rather complex thought of these lines is based on Matthew 7:6 - 7, And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it. The point of the pun is that the Archbishop is named Sandys, and Eedes grimly predicts that Bishopthorp will prove safer and securer for Mathew than Durham Cathedral, although the latter is set on a rocky hill, and simultaneously that Sandys is more trustworthy than Barnes. There may well be a pun intended in durae at line 82. Later in the trip Mathew speaks of laying the foundation of his administration. It is easy to imagine that the reason for his protracted stay at York, lasting at last a week was such foundation-laying. It would prove useful for him to cement relations with the most powerful Anglican prelate in the North and with the York clergy. Possibly his absence from the hunt laid on by the Archbishop involved some discreet form of politicking.
88f. Cf. P. M. Tilmot (ed.), A History of Yorkshire: The City of York (printed at London for the Oxford University Press, 1961) 341f., “The Old Residence, a house standing at the southeast corner of the minster, was probably built in the early eighteenth century to house canons during their period of residence. Nothing is known of any previous communal residence.”
89 Eedes was a habitual punster, and some of his Latin and bilingual puns and word-plays are untranslatable. In this case he plays on two meanings of canon, “Canon” and “rule.”
90 Hunting was a favorite sport of the upper classes and was also a popular university recreation (cf. James McConica “The Collegiate Society” at James McConica (ed.) The Collegiate University, (Volume III of The History of the University of Oxford, Oxford, 1986) 151. Therefore a number of items of academic literature have passages calculated to appeal to devotees of the sport, such as the lengthy description of a boar hunt in William Gager’s Meleager of 1582 (793 - 880).
91 Archbishop Edwin Sandys [d. 1588]; there is a biography in the D. N. B. His second son, Sir Edwin, was currently a member of Corpus Christi College, and may have been an acquaintance of our Oxonians. (Two of Sandys’ sons were involved with the colonization of Virgina: Sir Edwin was Treasurer of the Virginia Company, and his younger brother George wrote part of his translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses while sailing to Jamestown.) Gager wrote an epitaph for young Edwin’s aunt Cicely in 1584 (poem CLII). Mathew was well advised to cultivate Sandys, as Durham diocese lay within the province of the Archbishop of York. Sandys, already an admirer of Mathew, and a supporter of him for the present position, was a natural ally since as long ago as 1577 he had created one of his typical imbroglios by complaining about excessive Puritanism at Durham. Cf. John Strype, Annals of the Reformation II.ii 107. We may note that, despite Sandys’ knack of becoming involved in squabbles with all and sundry, Mathew managed to remain on his good side. In his will, dated Aug. 1, 1587, Sandys offered Mathew first pick of “all my books of learning, save as are in English.”
94 The park of Ryther, frequently spelled Rider in contemporary documents, adjoins the archiepiscopal palace at Cawood, about three miles downriver from Bishopthorp. Cf. Edmund Boggs, Old Kingdom Emet: York and the Ainsty District (London, 1902) 245 - 51.
104 Rest Park was a moated archiepiscopal manor near Sherburn: cf. William Page (ed.), The Victoria History of the Counties of England: Yorkshire (London, 1974) II.46f. Restabat of course involves a bilingual pun.
105 Evidently an echo of the Vergilian Culex 89, illi dulcis adest requies et pura voluptas.
113 Cf. Vergil, Aeneid II.219, superant capite et cervicibus altis.
114 Arcum tendo designates the act of drawing a bow (Horace, Odes II.x.20, Ovid, Metamorphoses II.604, Persius, Satire iii.60, Statius, Achilleis II.134, etc.). The Latin would sustain the idea that he had his man fit an arrow to his bow and hand it to him ready to shoot; it may not be impossible that an elderly prelate would require such help, but it seems likelier that he asked for his bow to be strung prior to taking his first shot.
117 Eedes was remembering Lucan, Bellum Civile I.183, iam gelidas Caesar cursu superaverat Alpes.
134 Cf. Vergil, Aeneid I.203, forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit.
137 Mathew’s host was Sir Ralph Bourchier of Benningborough, a town on the Ouse about twelve miles southeast of York as the crow flies, in the Ouse and Derwent wapontake of the East Riding of Yorkshire. He was a grandfather of the regicide Sir John Bourchier, whose biography is in the D. N. B. For the family pedigree cf. Joseph Foster, The Visitation of Yorkshire made in the Years 1584/5 by Robert Glover, Somerset Herald (London, 1875) 62f.
144 Singula quid referam? is from Ovid, Amores I.v.23.
147 The relevance of this tag taken from Persius, Satire v.62, impallescere chartis (“to go pale over your books”) preserved in BCW is far from self-evident. R’s hortis is far superior: what is the point in growing pale laboring over flower gardens (rather than herb gardens)? This idea sets up the contrast drawn between the utile and the dulce at 150.
148 The sidenote shows Eedes is describing maw, a dialect variant of mallow (cultivated for its medicinal virtues).
149 Loadem was a popular card game of the time (cf. the O. E. D. entry), but I find no evidence for it being called “cut-throat.” Nor in his compendious treatise The Herball or Generall Historie of Plants (London, 1633, repr. New York, 1973) does John Gerard list either loadem or cut-throat as a popular name for any member of the garlic family.
150 Eedes quotes Horace, Ars Poetica 343. Horace wrote this line to admonish playwrights not to mix elements of tragedy and comedy in the same play. The evident idea here is that we are supposed to consider the inadvisability of mixing useful herbs and decorative flowers in the same garden. (At Williamsburg I once observed that colonial gardeners alternated rows of flowers with rows of herbs or vegetables, possibly as a means of controlling insect damage. Possibly Yorkshiremen anticipated this practice and earned Eedes’ disapproval.)
This line would have been fresh in the ears of Eedes and his Christ Church audience, for in June of this same year William Gager had produced his tragedy Dido on the occasion of a state visit, and in the Prologue had paraphrased this line in the form tulit omne punctum tristia admiscens iocis.
151 Our travelers took the north road out of York, paralleling the Ouse, for approximately 21 miles, and came to Topcliff. The Topcliff School occupies the site of a former chantrey: cf. William Page (ed.), The Victoria History of the Counties of England: Yorkshire (London, 1974) I.46f. Hence the playful allusion to the Muses. Leland (Itinerary I.66) describes Topcliff as “an uplandisch toune.”
155 They continued about twelve miles further on the same road to Northallerton. It is, as a Chamber of Commerce brochure would say, the gateway to the northern moor country.
157f. Note the Arcto…arctos pun.
161 Cf. Horace, Epistulae I.xii.29, Italiae pleno defudit copia cornu (cf. also his Carmen Saeculare 60).
162f. The author of B’s sidenote was right: Northallerton was famous for its cattle market.
165ff. There may be a hostile implication to this passage. Leland (loc. cit.) records that “At the west side of Northalverton a litle from the chirch is the Bisshop of Dyrham’s palace, strong of building and welle motid” (Camden, Yorkshire 65, gives the history of this manor). The modern reader wonders why our four travelers were obliged to stay at a ghastly inn rather than at the episcopal manor. They may have asked themselves the same question. This would appear to be the first of a number of slights to which Mathew was subjected by Bishop Barnes and the Durham chapter.
Fama is called garrula at Seneca, Hercules Furens 193.
169 The partridges were perhaps acquired in the manner indicated in line 647.
170 Matthew Harrison, with the help of his wife Doll (cf. 514), was proprietor of an Oxford inn, The Bear. He kept a tame bear, Furze, as a mascot. Eedes reports that he was an animal of considerable dignity. The Bear was located on Alfred Street, between Christ Church and the High, and so was the Christ Church “local.”The original inn was pulled down in 1801 and the present public house of that name occupies an ostler’s house attached to the main building (Christopher and Edward Hibbert, The Encyclopaedia of Oxford, London, 1988, 35f.). Possibly the horses ridden by our travelers came from Harrison’s stable. See further the note on 258f.
Within his own sphere, Harrison was no less destined for a distinguished future than Eedes and Mathew (Anthony à Wood, Survey of the Antiquities of the City of Oxford Composed in 1661 - 6 (ed. the Rev. Andrew Clark, Oxford, 1899) vol. III, index s.v. his name). He was one of the two Oxford Bailiffs in 1588 and Mayor of the city in 1611, by which time he could describe himself as a mercer; in recording his burial on 20 March, 1630, the parish register of St. Aldgate’s calls him an alderman. Interestingly, Harrison’s career nearly duplicates the wish expressed by the freedman Crobolus in Edward Forsett’s 1581 Cambridge comedy Pedantius (139ff.), who aspires to become an innkeeper and thence to work his way up in society, eventually arriving at the exalted station of a municipal magistrate. Harrison married Helena Levins, his Doll, at St. Aldgate in 1581. After her death in 1590 he married Mary Plumpton at St. Martin’s. When Eedes calls him vetus at 307 he is only indulging in humor.
Harrison, talented at sniffing out provender and whipping up meals, seems to have been brought along as a kind of Major-Domo (Mathew’s 1582 letters quoted in the Introduction show he was anxious about the quality of the establishment he would find there and aware of the necessity of entertaining the locals). One gathers that the travelers amused themselves on the road by singing, and one of Harrison’s responsibilities was to supply the bass, which he did badly, sounding more as if he were snoring than singing. He was a devotee of the card game cut-throat, though he did not play it well (316ff.). Evidently he went along on the trip as a vacation from Doll, for he seems to groan at the prospect of returning to her, though he did miss Furze (514). His presence imparts an interestingly democratic tone to the expedition, but we note that when Mathew had too many guests to put up it was Harrison who lost his bed (466f.).
William Gager’s tragedy Dido, produced a few weeks previously in June 1583, was filled with spectacular (and quite expensive) stage effects. In one scene a procession of hunters crosses the stage with a pack of hounds, and then later recrosses it when returning from the hunt (stage direction after 610). Although the stage directions, and Raphael Holinshed’s description of the performance, do not mention this detail, one cannot help observing that it would have hugely pleased the audience to have the hunters return with Furze in tow.
Eedes may have got the adjective horrisonus, which he employed for the sake of the play on Harrison’s name, from Forsett’s comedy Pedantius where it is applied to artillery at line 1810). For Eedes’ possible familiarity with this play see the note on 479.
173f. Cf. Vergil, Aeneid II.361f., quis cladem illius noctis, quis funera fando / explicet(?).
176 Cf. the Ovidian formula molliter ossa cubent at Amores I.viii.108, Heroides vii. 162, and Tristia III.iii.76.
180 My student Margaret Smith pointed out that taetrum…odorem is used of the smell of the plague by Lucretius VI.1156, and of the stench of the Harpies at Vergil, Aeneid III.228.
181 For Endymion’s eternal sleep cf. Robert Graves, The Greek Myths (New York, 1955) § 64.
189 For lustraret lampade terras cf. Vergil, Aeneid IV.6 and VII.148.
192 Eedes now introduces the villain of the piece, Dr. Richard Barnes [1532 - 87]. Cf. Alexander Grosart’s sympathetic biography in the D. N. B. as well as Wood, A. O. II.826f.
As stated in R’s sidenote, de nos inde involves the tmesis of deinde.
197 Save for the Duchy of Lancaster, all of England north of the Trent (Yorkshire, Durham, Northumberland, Cumberland, and Westmoreland) was governed by the Council of the North, which had sweeping administrative and judicial authority. It was composed of leading northern noblemen and ecclesiastical notables, although much of its routine work was carried out by full-time professionals. Cf. R. R. Reid, The King’s Council in the North (London - New York, 1921).
198 Henry Hastings, third Earl of Huntington [1535 - 95], the Lord-President of the Council of the North. As such, he bore ultimate responsibility for military preparedness in the North. Claire Cross’s The Puritan Earl (London, 1966) is an excellent modern biography that does much to paint the background against which the events described by Eedes transpire, although she did not write about the war scare of 1583 or describe the present conference.
202 Eedes loathed Bishop Barnes on sight, and is presumably attributing to him a discreditable reason for skulking at his Stockton retreat. We shall see that Barnes made an abortive attempt to greet Walsingham and gain his favor by toadying, but was unceremoniously brushed aside (423ff.); afterwards he avoided Walsingham until the end of his visit when he received him at his Auckland estate as Mr. Secretary was quitting Durham (520), when the money issue no longer counted. The subjunctive is used to attribute a motive to someone other than the speaker: Barnes did not see how he could turn a profit on entertaining Walsingham, but could very well imagine that it would cost him money. Thus he earns the derisory adjective sapiens (196), and his visitors were surprised that the stingy Bishop offered them a decent meal (205). On another occasion he did not (cf. 523).
203 Mathew and his friends struck northeast from Northallerton to find Bishop Barnes at his country retreat, a distance reckoned by the Atlas as 14.3 miles. This was located at Stockden, in the extreme southeastern corner of co. Durham. It is situated on the north bank of the Tee, about seven miles upstream from Tee Mouth and (according to the Atlas) 21.8 miles southeast of Durham. As observed by Eedes at 194f., this served as an eminently satisfactory bolt-hole for Barnes. For a history and description of Castle Stockden, the episcopal manor, cf. Surtees, History and Antiquities of Co. Durham III.170f.
204 The town in question is variously called Stockden and Stockton. Eedes’ whimsical etymology presumes the former name.
207 The son is Emmanuel Barnes, who matriculated from Magdalene College, Oxford, in 1577 and incepted for the M. A. in 1581 (Foster, Alumni I.74). He then took a D. D. at the University of Basle (478ff.). He was installed as Canon of the fifth stall at Durham in 1585 (Mussett, op. cit. 43) and died in 1614. His Basle doctorate, with its implication of Calvinism, was enough to earn Eedes’ dislike. At Magdalene he associated with John Florio. According to Frances A. Yates, John Florio (Cambridge U. K., 1934) 27, Florio tutored him in Italian and French beginning in 1576; on p. 53 it is also stated that after Florio himself matriculated at Magdalene in 1581 he acted as Barnes’ servant.
It is regrettable that Eedes did not leave us a portrait of Bishop Barnes’ third son, the future poet Barnabe Barnes, who was still only a lad — he matriculated from Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1586. Barnabe was, as his D. N. B. article indicates, a gifted minor poet. But he inherited a streak of rather farouche eccentricity from his father, manifested in his sometimes bizarre choice of imagery. For example, Sonnet lxii from Parthenophil and Parthenope (1593) contained the poet’s extraordinary wish to become wine to be consumed by his darling,

Understandably, this earned the attention of humorists. For example, Thomas Campion wrote in Epigram I.17 of the 1619 collection:

[“You crave to be dissolved in Aufilena’s wine, so that you may happily bestow a kiss on her as she drinks. Perhaps you will also arrive at her heart. But, Barnes, what kind of lover will you be when you land in her piss-pot!”]

Similar humor can be found at Nashe’s Have with you to Saffron-Walden (III.103 McKerrow) and Marston’s The Scourge of Villainy VIII.126f.
Indeed, anybody who reads Mark Eccles’ biography of Barnabe Barnes in Thomas Lodge and Other Elizabethans (ed. C. J. Sisson, Cambridge U.. K. 1933, repr. New York, 1966) 165 - 241 will find plenty of evidence to support the idea that there was a deep streak of eccentricity, or perhaps something a good deal more sinister, engrained in the Barnes family. Barnabe was, among other things, a poisoner, who tried to slip some mercury sublimate in the lemonade of John Brown, Recorder of Berwick, in 1598 (pp. 175 - 91). He was arrested, broke jail, and fled to Durham. As Eccles put it (p. 196), Brown’s body, “if Barnes had had his way, would soon have lain mouldering in the grave.” The reader is referred to this study for a great amount of extra lore about the Barnes family. Note too, as a further example of ecclesiastical standards at Durham, the wife of another Dean who appropriated some Cathedral gravestones to decorate the Deanery and its font for her kitchen, described on p. 221.
209 This translation presumes Eedes was thinking of Seneca, Thyestes 609, ponite inflatos tumidosque vultus. But maybe he is describing the Bishop’s bloated face. Later he hints that he was an alcoholic (524ff.).
212 Bishop Barnes seems to be going out of his way to demonstrate that he is unimpressed by his distinguished visitor. Always sensitive to slights to the Dean, Eedes perceives this and is annoyed. Thus the tone of Mathew’s Durham sojourn is set at the very beginning.
214f. The son, Dr. Emmanuel Barnes, was married to Anne, daughter of William Barnby of Skipton, Yorkshire. Cf. the Barnes pedigree at Foster, Visitation of Yorkshire 50 (there is also an inferior one at Surtees I.lxxxii). Anne’s age cannot be ascertained from the information provided.
216f. Bishop Barnes’ second wife was Jane Dyllycote (neé Jerrade), native of the Duchy of Anjou; her present age cannot be determined. This is taken from Foster’s pedigree. Surtees I.lxxxii note m, uncritically — or at least with a straight face — quoted an entry from the register of St. Oswald’s church, Durham, “Richard Barnes, Bp. of Durham, and Jane Dyllycotes, a French woman, were married at his castle in Durham, upon Wednesday the second week of Lent, being the 20th of March 1588” (1588 is an error for 1582: cf. Eccles, op. cit. 168) — Barnes died on August 24, 1587.
218f. Eedes’ point can be adequately explained by quoting O. L. D. “emblem” definition 2a: “A drawing or picture expressing a moral fable or allegory; a fable or allegory such as might be expressed pictorially.” The first half of this definition pertains to the Bishop’s painting, the second half to the Bishop.
220 B’s sidenote is a bit garbled, but evidently the Bishop included explanatory rhymes in his paintings. The barbarous short u in domus is remarkable and does not appear to result from textual corruption. M. W. Haslam suggests to me that this might be a parody of the Bishop’s versification.
225 This line = Horace, Ars Poetica 139, with mus altered to sus contrary to expectation. The reason for this change quickly becomes apparent.
226ff. Although Eedes reacts to this painting with disgust, he seems to be describing an interesting early specimen of political cartooning. Eedes was no doubt especially offended because he detected a whiff of Puritanism in Barnes’ vitriolic anti-papism.
229 This line = Horace, Ars Poetica 5.
233 The words inopem me copia fecit come from Ovid, Metamorphoses III.466.
241 The praebendarii or Canons of the Cathedral chapter. When Eedes states that they came to greet Mathew because they were duty-bound to do so, he may be implying that their appearance was grudging.
243ff. Eedes succinctly describes Durham. The city is situated at a sharp loop in the River Wier, by which it is surrounded by on three sides. See the 1611 map by John Speed reproduced on p. 239 of Margaret Bonney’s Lordship and the Urban Community (Cambridge, U. K., 1990). As a result, the city assumes the aspect of a southward-facing peninsula, at the tip of which is a high rocky prominence upon which are built the castle and the Cathedral close. The sight of these imposing structures is what first strikes the visitor approaching from the south. Thus the eighteenth century traveler William Hutchinson enthused about its:

This is quoted By Bonney, p. 1, where other comparisons of Durham with Jerusalem or Zion are also cited: the craggy hill tended to reminds visitors of what they had read in such writers as Josephus about the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and the disposition of the city walls.
To continue the Jerusalem analogy, to the north of this hill the ground levels off so that for defensive purposes it was necessary to construct a wall across the peninsula’s neck. Within this wall, sandwiched between the hill and the Clayportgate, is the market place. The principal north-south road skirts the city, but the east-west road (which has to cross the river twice) cuts through the market. Eedes’ point is that this was the only imposing street in town, but because Durham was a crowded and jumbled medieval city the eye could not trace its course. For that one had to climb the Cathedral’s steeple and enjoy a bird’s-eye view.
251 Ascensu…primo because the Deanery, being within the Cathedral close, is atop the hill mentioned in 238. There is a detailed description of the Deanery at The Victoria History of the Country of Durham (London, 1968) III.132 - 5.
255f. Eedes dryly notes that Harrison ate with the dignitaries, not the servants.
259 Harrison’s Furze was the predecessor of another and more famous Christ Church bear, Tiglath Pileser or “Tig,” owned in the nineteenth century by Frank Buckland (whose jackal ate the guinea pigs under the sofa). Christ Church students used to dress the animal in a cap and gown and produce him on social occasions, or present him to important visitors (such as Mr. Moncton Milnes, the future Lord Houghton, who attempted to mesmerize him, “which made Tig furious but he at last fell senseless to the ground.” See the passage from G. Bompas’ Life of Frank Buckland (1885) quoted by Thomas Seccombe and H. Spencer Scott, In Praise of Oxford: An Anthology in Prose and Verse (London, 1910) II.647f. The way that Eedes confers academic titles on Furze, if R’s sidenote is to be trusted, suggests that this bear performed a similar function.
According to this sidenote Eedes humorously writes as if it were Furze rather than Harrison who is the fundator of The Bear. Here fundator must mean “landlord,” as neither Harrison nor his bear could be described as the founder of an establishment founded in 1432 (previously operated as Le Tabard, this establishment stood on the site once occupied by Parne Hall). But CW’s sidenote suggests a different interpretation. Anthony à Wood (Survey I.149), records that it was once called “Furres Inne” and in a note added “The Furreses lived at the Bear tempore Henry VIII.” According to this reading, Harrison is as dignified as that erstwhile landlord (as memorialized in a portrait hanging in The Bear?); then we must also suppose that Harrison named Furze after that individual. But the animal could have earned this name by dint of being furry: cf. the O. E. D. entry, and it may be that Wood’s source for this information was in fact nothing more than a fanciful inference based on W’s sidenote.
260 Robert Bellamy M. D. was Canon of the third stall 1573 - 89 (P. Mussett, Lists of Deans and Major Canons of Durham 1541 - 1900, Durham, 1974, 25). He matriculated from St. John’s College, Oxford, in 1555 and received the D. Med. in 1571 (for his full academic record cf. Foster, Alumni Oxonienses I.104). We have a letter of May 30, 1581 from Lord Hunsdon to Walsingham printed by Boyd, Calendar of the State Papers VI.12 (cf. the similar letter of July 31, 1581, reproduced ib. p. 42, which makes it clearer that Bellamy was Bishop Barnes’ candidate, but omits the insinuation that his candidacy was also supported by Archbishop Sandys):

Bellamy, perhaps put forward by the forces of corruption, not only failed to gain the Deanship, but was also replaced as Sub-Dean by Ralph Tunstall (326ff.). In a footnote to the Introduction I have already cited a 1581 letter from Mathew to Burleigh designed to undermine Bellamy’s candidacy.
If we assume that Bellamy preached on a Sunday, then he did so on August 24, and Mathew’s arrival in Durham can be fixed to the 23rd.
261 Impar Achilli comes from Vergil, Aeneid I.475.
262 With R’s alte, Eedes would appear to be describing that unfortunate high-pitched singsong still affected by many C. of E. clergy. Or we could select the variant alter, but what would this mean: that he behaved like a changed priest as the result of his defeat? But that setback was two years in the past.
264f. An excellent example of Oxford superciliousness, no doubt noted and resented by the Durhamites.
266 Deer Park Hall, the Dean’s manor, is about three miles due west of Durham.
269 The Canons were called praebendarii because their duty was to offer assistance to the Bishop (praebeo); in the present case, they have not exactly been offering.
Though Eedes does not name all the Canons, I may as well do so here. In the order of the stalls they occupied, in 1583 they were (1) Robert Swift, (2) John Pilkington, (3) Robert Bellamy, (4) Henry Naunton, (5) Ralph Lever, (6) Peter Shaw, (7) Leonard Pilkington, (8) Francis Bunney, (9) Richard Fawcett, (10) Ralph Tunstall, (11) Adam Holiday, and (12) George Cliffe.
272 Terra ferax is an Ovidian tag (Amores II.xvi.7, Fasti I.68, Metamorphoses I.314).
285ff. These line describe the installation ceremony on Sunday, August 31 and a subsequent reception. It may reflect on the Durhamite clergy’s attitude toward him that this reception was given by Mathew rather than for him; or this may have been part of his strategy for winning over the Durhamites outlined in a letter to Burleigh quoted in the Introduction.
288f. Cf. Sallust, Bellum Iugurthinum xix.2, nam de Carthagine silere melius puto quam parum dicere.
292 For vena = “talent,” Oxford Latin Dictionary, article vena, def. 7, citing Horace, Ars Poetica 409 (the source of the tag divite vena), Odes II.xviii.10, Ovid, Epistulae ex Ponto II.v.21, and perhaps with a slight difference of meaning, Juvenal, Satire vii.53. In the examples cited the talent in question is literary.
293f. He fed them bodiliy as well as spiritually.
312f. Particularly, the Dean had to remain at Durham until he had sorted out the question of his income (cf. 508ff.).
316 See the note on 149.
320 Boyd, Calendar of the State Papers VI.691 reproduces a document entitled “A note of certaine spoiles committed by the Scotts in the Middle Marches,” in which the Elwood (or Elwet) family loom large. Two such complaints were both filed on August 30, 1583:

Percivall Hall and John Hall, of Haueacres, complain upon John Elwet and “Hob” Elwet, of the Park, Archibald of the Hill, “Jocke” Elwet, called “Scottes Hobbe,” Jock Eddeich [sic], with their accomplices for 100 kine and oxen, 100 horses and mares, household stuff value 60 l., slaying five [people] and hurting divers others.

These documents were submitted the day before Mathew’s installation as Dean and it is not hard to imagine that the Elwoods’ large-scale looting was the talk of Durham.
323ff. The boy may have entertained the company with hair-raising border ballads. If he had wanted to chill their blood, he could have sung ballads about the rising of 1569, led by the Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland, during which the rebels took over Durham Cathedral and caused the Mass to be said: “The Rising in the North”, “Northumberland Betrayed by Douglas”, and “The Earl of Westmoreland” (Child 175 - 77). Plenty of others describe behavior of the Jock the Scot variety.
326 Ralph Tunstall, Canon of the tenth stall, recently appointed Sub-Dean (Mussett, op. cit. 78). Tunstall matriculated from Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1555, and died in 1619 (for his academic career cf. Venn, Alumni I.iv.272). Readers of Eedes’ disparaging appraisal will be surprised to learn that Tunstall served as Cambridge University preacher for the year 1568, so the man cannot have been altogether devoid of talent. Although BCW give his name correctly, R may reflect what Eedes actually wrote, if he deliberately mangled it for the sake of the Tall Dunce joke.
From the allusion to the passage of five days in line 299, we can deduce that Tunstall preached on Sunday, September 7.
327 In using the word pinguedine Eedes seems to convey that Tunstall spoke drearily, or even coarsely: cf. Oxford Latin Dictionary entry pinguis 7b, citing, inter alia, Horace, Epodes II.i.267.
333ff. Matthew 11: 24, Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
337 Cf. Terence, Heauton Timorumenos 877, quae sunt dicta in stulto, caudex stipes asinu’ plumbeus. In the dedicatory epistle for his Nero (1603) Matthew Gwinne wrote recitari nonnunquam frigide, perabsurde, intelligo: sed ab eo cui latera, cui manus, cui cerebrum, non plumbeo, non stolido, non asino, sic recitari vix concesserim. He was probably thinking of this Terentian tag, but since he was a member of the same circle as Eedes and Gager, he may have read the Iter Boreale, and so it is not inconceivable that he remembered the present line.
341 This line = Juvenal, Satire I.79.
348f. More charitably, one could translate “he did not fail in one iota of his duty, nor (saving the name of Dean) will he ever fail in it.” But Eedes is not charitable. Decani nomine salvo means “so long as the Deanship itself isn’t available to him.”
351 At this point two prominent figures from York come up to Durham, raising Eedes’ hopes that they will soon escort Mathew southward. The first is Dr. Robert Lougher, an eminent civilian of Welsh extraction, and Vicar General in Spiritualities to Archbishop Sandys. Cf. the D. N. B. biography. Lougher was the author of a letter announcing Mathew’s appointment as Dean of Durham mentioned in the Introduction. (Wood, F. O. I.165, wrongly gives the date of his death as June 3, 1583 — this is a mistake for 1585).
The other is Mistress Jane Young, daughter of Thomas Kynaston of Staffordshire, the widow of Thomas Young [1507 - 68], a former Archbishop of York, who haled from Llanfey in Pembrokeshire: cf. the D. N. B. life As we shall see later, she now maintained her own establishment at York, obviously on a rather grand scale. Both here and when she reappears later in the poem there is plenty of flattering punning on her surname. R’s dominum Yongham and similar sidenote evidently reflects a misunderstanding that the individual here is her son Sir George Young — the D. N. B. mistakenly calls him Sir William, but for the family pedigree cf. Foster, Yorkshire Visitations 593. But this identification is excluded by 352 digna. We are told at 569 that Mistress Young had previously invited Mathew’s party to stay with her on their return journey through York; presumably she issued this invitation during her visit to Durham.
The only problem with this identification is how Eedes could have transmogrified the name Young into “Youngham.” Probably he did so for metrical convenience, but one wonders whether he misheard Northern pronunciation.
354 There is a special point to this comment. Mathew was Bristol-born, and evidently used to congratulate himself jokingly on having narrowly avoided being a Welshman: so Gager, Musa Australis 21ff.
365ff. Since we have already been told about Tunstall’s sermon on the 7th, it would appear that Eedes is describing a remarkable occasion on Sunday, September 14, on which no less than seven sermons were delivered (by Holiday, Naunton, Mathew, Robson, Brown, Bunney, and Ewbanke). I do not know whether such preaching marathons were ever held, but it would seem intrinsically more likely that for dramatic convenience Eedes is combining an account of sermons delivered at various services on this day, or perhaps more generally. This theory would explain an ostensible slip in line 379, when Eedes, after caustically reviewing the sermons of Holiday and Naunton, states that Mathew spoke in the second position. Probably Holiday preached at one service and then Mathew spoke after Naunton at another, just as he preached after Eedes on the 21st (cf. 469 below).
Adam Holiday was Canon of the eleventh stall (Mussett, op. cit. 84). He had received a Cambridge B. D. in 1572 (Venn I.ii.392). The Greek word ἀμνησίαν can stand in the text if we assume it is wrongly scanned as one short and three long syllables; otherwise, it is a corruption of some other Greek word.
372 This image would have been fresh in the minds of Eedes and his audience, for in Gager’s Dido produced earlier the same year it was said of Elizabeth (345f.):

374 Henry Naunton, Canon of the fourth stall (Mussett, ib. 33). He matriculated from Trinity College, Cambridge, at the age of twelve in 1561 and incepted for the M. A. in 1570 (Venn I.iii.232).
380 Cf. Vergil, Eclogue ix.36, sed argutos inter strepere anser olores.
382 This line = Vergil, Eclogue i.26.
385 For Iunonius ales cf. Ovid, Amores II.vi.55.
386 Simon Robson, who had matriculated from St. John’s College, Cambridge, in 1569, was admitted to the B. A. in 1573, and incepted for the M. A. three years later (Venn I.iii.476). At the moment he was rector of Stainton-le-Street, co. Durham. From 1598 to 1617, the date of his death, he was Dean of Bristol Cathedral.
389 Eedes is thinking of the passage in Horace’s Ars Poetica that begins (408f.) natura fieret laudabile carmen an arte, / quaesitum est and discusses the roles of native talent and acquired art in poetry. His point is that Naunton is deficient in both.
393 Presumably the idea is that such an orator is a mere effigy of a man, not a real person.
394 For invita…Minerva cf. (appropriately) Cicero, de Officiis I.cx.10, ad Familiares III.i.1, XII.xxv.iv, and Horace, Ars Poetica 385.
398 I cannot identify this individual with certainty: perhaps he was the Edward Browne who took an M. A. from Brasenose College in 1576, or the similarly-named individual who took an M. A. from Christ Church in 1580 (for both cf. Foster, Alumni Oxonienses I.193).
400 For more fluentis aquae cf. Ovid, Ars Amatoria III.62.
401 I guess the idea is that when he was dealing with an issue of substance he just muttered, but when he had nothing to say he waxed emptily eloquent.
402 Francis Bunney [1543 - 1617], a Perpetual Fellow of Magdalene College, born at Chalfont, St. Guiles, Bucks., had been inducted as a Canon in 1572 and occupied the eighth stall (Mussett, op. cit. 63). He is not to be confused with his brother Edmund, a celebrated itinerant preacher who ranged the North country at this time. In his biography of Francis at A. O. II.199f. Wood wrote “This person was very zealous in the way he professed, wa s a great admirer of Jo. Calvin, a constant preacher, charitable, and a stiff enemy to Popery.” See also Cross, Puritan Earl 267f. For his academic record and references to genealogy cf. Foster, Alumni Oxonienses I.75. The fact that he subsequently published several theological tracts, itemized by Wood, confirms Eedes’ appraisal of his comparative intellectual merit among the Durhamites.
405 Henry Ewbanke, former Fellow of Queen’s College, Oxford (academic record at Foster, Alumni Oxonienses II.475), and destined to be a Canon of Durham when Mathew was elevated to the bishopric (as of 1596). Although he is dealt with by Eedes no less disdainfully than most other Durhamites, we may gather that he was an ally of Mathew, since he was the only clergyman in the diocese to offer him hospitality on the return journey (538). Another reason for regarding him as a supporter is B’s sidenote, which says that he prayed for Mathews in his sermon; the implication is that the other Durham preachers did not (W’s sidenote A follower of the Deane of Durham probably points to the same conclusion). A friendly attitude towards the Dean is also suggested by the fact that his son Tobie, born in 1588, who matriculated from Broadgates Hall, Oxford, in 1605 (Foster, Alumni Oxonienses II.475), was named after Mathew, no doubt his godfather. In his May 1582 letter to Burleigh Mathew had written “many good men of that church and country were earnest with him to do what in him lay for expedition…For that he was credibly informed that many things there went to wrack.” This implies he already had supporters and informants within the diocese. Was Ewbanke one of these? He was installed as rector of Washington parish, co. Durham, on December 23, 1583, and it is tempting to see Mathew’s hand in this appointment. See further the note on 539.
418 Vix vero C, vix dum RW. B’s more specific variant vix ter cannot be evaluated. Eedes is reckoning days from some indeterminable date on which Mathew’s companions had planned to quit Durham. I have selected vix ter merely because it is Eedes’ habit to be precise about chronology.
419 Cf. Ovid, Fasti VI.717, at pater Heliadum radios ubi tinxerit undis. Walsingham arrived at Durham on Saturday, September 20, and stayed until the 26th (cf. letters reproduced by Boyd, Calendar of the State Papers VI.617 and 621). This intelligence agrees with Eedes’ testimony that he spent the first night with Heath at Kepier and came into Durham the next day to hear Mathew preach.
425 For pluvialibus…Austris cf. Vergil, Georgics III.429.
427 Compare the assessment at William Page (ed.), The Victoria History of the County of Durham (London, 1968) II.37, “[Barnes] certainly copied [his predecessor] in his servility to the queen, carrying the alienation of parcels of the bishopric to an outrageous extent.”
429 Cf. Plautus, Poenulus 332, tum pol ego et oleum et operam perdidi.
432 Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex [1566 - 1601]. While at Cambridge Essex had run up such huge debts that his guardian Lord Burleigh pulled him out of the University. It used to be thought (for example by the author of the D. N. B. biography) that he lived in seclusion at his house in Lamphey (Llanffydd) in Pembrokeshire prior to his introduction at Court by Leicester in 1584. In fact he was placed in the wardship of the Earl of Huntington at York for a year and a half, and was doubtless present at Durham as a member of the Earl’s train (Cross, Puritan Earl 54f.). Mention of Essex would be of special interest to a Christ Church audience, since his younger brother Walter Devereux was currently a highly popular student there.
434 Henry le Scrope, ninth Baron Scrope of Bolton [1534 - 92], Lord Warden of the West Marches and a member of the Council of the North. Cf. the D. N. B. biography.
435 Sir John Foster, Lord Warden of the Middle Marches.
437 Francis Russell, second Earl of Bedford [d. 1585] had three sons, John, William, and Francis, two of whom were present on this occasion.
440 Sir Walter Mildmay [d. 1589], Chancellor of the Exchequer, was originally nominated as the leader of this embassy but had been unable to come (cf. the D. N. B. biography). He had instead been sent as Elizabeth’s ambassador to Mary Queen of Scots in mid-August (Boyd, Calendar of the State Papers VI.583), and was probably at Durham now because the closer guarding of Mary was an agenda item at this meeting, as can be inferred from a postscript of a letter by Walsingham printed ib. 595. In the following year Mildmay would found Emmanuel College, Cambridge.
Perhaps the other gentleman mentioned in this line is Sir Henry Neville, a protégé of Lord Burleigh and a future diplomat and parliamentarian, who had matriculated from Merton College, Oxford, in 1577. Cf. the D. N. B. life.
441 Sir Richard Lowther (1529 - 1607), Lord Warden of the West Marches. Cf. the D. N. B. biography.
442 Sir Henry Widdrington (Woodrington), an English diplomat with a history of service in Scotland (see Boyd, Calendar of the State Papers VI, index s. v. — his despatches from Scotland cease in July 1582). A good deal about him and Fenwick — the villians of the ballad Chevy Chase — and of chaotic conditions in the Middle Marches in the 1590’s can be gleaned from Eccles 192 - 211. Eccles also gives us a glimpse of Mathew, now elevated to the See of Durham, sitting on the bench of assizes, trying to make sense of these squabbles.
443 Sir Simon Musgrave, Constable of Newcastle, and his son Christopher (cf. Boyd, Calendar of the State Papers VI, index s. vv.).
Sir William Fenwick of Wallington, Northumberland (cf. the D. N. B. article on his son Sir John). For his father’s death in a skirmish with the Scots cf. the letter of Henry Killigrew to Walsingham of July 17, 1575, reproduced at Boyd, Catalogue of the State Papers V.168.
450 A Scots eyewitness says that Walsingham had eight score of horse in his train: cf. Sir James Melville, Memoirs of His Own Life (Edinburgh, 1827) 310. When the members of the Council of the North and their retinues and also members of the defensive commission established in mid-August are added, one can readily imagine that Durham was full to the bursting-point.
451 John Heath (d. 1590), a merchant and Warden of the Fleet, owned a manor at Kepier in the parish of St. Giles, Durham, about a mile north of the city center: cf. William Page (ed.), The Victoria History of the County of Durham (London, 1968) III.185 as well as Surtees I.38 and 158. He had acquired the dissolved Hospital there by purchase and so was styled Lord of Kepier or “Heath of Keeper,” as is imperfectly reflected in R’s corrupt sidenote.
Heath was a strong supporter of Bishop Barnes’ critic Bernard Gilpin. One cannot help noting that when Walsingham spent his first night at Durham under Heath’s roof the anti-Barnes, pro-Mathew forces would have had an admirable opportunity to fill his ear with their views.
454 In 1583 St. Matthew’s Day fell on Sunday, Sept. 21.
460 Eedes alludes to the 1569 Catholic rising in the North.
467 The words dominumque domus indicate that Mathew found a Major-Domo awaiting him at Durham after all.
474 Cf. the Commentary note on 416.
475 Walsingham may understandably have been exhausted, as he had undertaken the Scottish embassy although he was in poor health. His chief reason for lingering at Durham was nevertheless the Scottish crisis. The political situation and the embassy are described in detail by Camden in his Annales.
483ff. Dr. Emmanuel Barnes, the Bishop’s son. His Basle diploma must have been very recently conferred: he did not receive his first church appointment (the Rectorship of Houghton-le-Spring, co. Durham) until the following year, and became a Canon of Durham in 1585. Eventually he became a Canon of York (1602), and died in 1614. These lines contrast the son, who for all his faults is a genuine D. D., with his father, whose academic credentials appear to be represented as faintly bogus (see the next note).
487 Barnes had been “actually created doctor of divinity by certain persons appointed by the members of the university, but whether at London, or elsewhere, it appears not” (Wood, F. O. I.215 — he also uses the words “actually created” at A. O. II.826). Eedes seems to be sneering at this transaction, honorific or slightly dishonorable — I do not understand what “actually” means in this context.
This is as good an opportunity as any to note that Surtees I.lxxxii, recorded that in his deathbed will Bishop Barnes appointed Mathew and John Heath (for whom cf. the Commentary note on 445) his co-executors. Surtees likewise reports that Dr. Emmanuel Barnes’ firstborn son was named Toby. Like Henry Ewbanke, he named the boy after Mathew, in all probability his godfather. Are these signs of eventual reconciliation, or further evidence for Barnesian obsequiousness? The same question might be asked about Barnabe Barnes’ subsequent dedication to Mathew of his Divine Century of Spiritual Sonnets.
489 The allusion is to Lucretius’ famous axiom (I.156f.) nil posse creari / de nihilo.
495 Eedes possibly had in mind the situation described by Cicero, de Oratore II.lvii. 233, eorum impudentiam qui agunt in scaena gestum spectante Roscio. Or more precisely, he may have been thinking of the quotation of this phrase in Edward Forsett’s recent comedy Pedantius (p. 120 of the printed edition): see the next note.
497 Cf. Persius, Satire i.28, at pulchrum est digito monstrari et dicier “hic est.”
In Edward Forsett’s highly successful comedy Pedantius, produced at Trinity College, Cambridge, in February 1581, the title character (whom Nashe claimed to be a lampoon of Gilbert Harvey), a self-important rhetorician with a grossly inflated opinion of his abilities, exclaims at one point (1529) of the printed edition), me (dum in curia versabar) praetereuntem demonstrabant omnes digito, insusurrantes, hic est ille, (quod nisi Demostheni olim contigit mortalium nemini). Eedes may have had this passage in mind, or even expected his audience to recognize the allusion.
499. R’s sidenote can be interpreted as referring to a proposed return, but why say towards Matthew Hutton, the Dean of York? Although Mathew did meet him while on his return journey through York (609), Eedes scarcely represents this as the high point of his visit. Probably R’s copyist abridged a note that originally stated that Mathew returned to York where he met Mrs. Young, Archbishop Sandys, and Dean Hutton.
504f. Evidently Walsingham paid off the debts Mathew had incurred in entertaining him. Bishop Barnes, who had shunned Walsingham to avoid such expenses, must have found this galling. If only because of Mathew’s letters to Burleigh, Walsingham would have been aware of the financial problems in the Deanery.
510ff. Diocesan income largely derived from rents and other revenues from its landholdings. A certain share of these rents were set aside to support the Dean (cf. 237f., where he is greeted by his tenants); while the Deanship lay vacant his rents had been abstracted by the Chapter, just as his deer park had been depopulated. See further Mathew’s letters on the subject quoted in the Introduction.
517 The date of their departure cannot be fixed. It was not before Sunday, September 18, when Mathew wrote a letter to Lord Burleigh dated from Durham, reproduced by Strype III.ii 266 - 68.
518 There was another grand episcopal manor at Bishop’s Auckland, situated upstream on the Were, perhaps fourteen miles to the southeast of Durham as the crow flies. Our friends crossed the Were at Sunderland, then were obliged to travel southeast rather than due south on the great London-Berwick road.
524 There is no such word as immediate in the classical Latin lexicon. Either this is an error for immoderate or it is a neologism meaning “without interruption.”
525f. Cf. Vergil, Aeneid I.738f.:

528 The point of the pun is that Germans were notoriously boorish (and young Dr. Barnes had finished his education at Basel, which at the time was reckoned a part of Germany).
529 C’s sidenote implies the friends in question were acquired during Dr. Barnes’ Magdalene days.
530 For cane peius et angue cf. Horace, Epistulae I.xvii.30 (also echoed at Forsett’s Pedantius 1267).
534f. To preserve the pun I use the word “mundane” in an unusual sense, = Fr. mondain (O. E. D. def. 1c).
536 Cf. Camden’s geological note at Yorkshire 56, montes vero ipsi plumbo, carbone fossili, nec non aere gravidi…quod in eorum autem summitatibus, ut etiam alibi lapides nonnunquam fuerint reperti cocheleas marinas, et alia aquatica referentes, si non sint naturae miracula: refusi in omnem terram sub Noe diluvii certa esse indicia, cum Orosio Christiano iudicabo.
537f. Cf. Leland’s Itinerary IV.24ff., “Richemont is pavid. Richemont towne is waullid, and the castel on the river side of Swale is as the knot of the cumpace of the waulle…The toun is set on a hille side. The greate hil above hit more then a mile of is cawllid Penhil, and is countid the hiest hille of Richemontshire.” This arrangement reminds Eedes of Homer’s descriptions of Ithaca in the Odyssey, both because of its general cragginess (IX.20ff.) and because of the way Mt. Neritos dominates the landscape (XIII.351).
539 For Henry Ewbanke cf. the note on 400. He had not yet received his own parish at Washington, co. Durham, and presumably held some subordinate or temporary ecclesiastical post at or near Richmond. To judge by patria in the next line, he was native to the region.
543 It is impossible to imagine that Mathew would have lugged along a water-clock on his travels. Eedes wrote clepsydra because the three successive short syllables in horologium cannot stand in a hexameter line. Doubtless the timepiece in question was one of those traveling-clocks described by Elizabeth Burton, The Elizabethans at Home (London, 1958) 115. Such instruments were still a sufficient novelty to inspire an apostrophe by Thomas Campion, Epigram I.cli of the 1595 collection, de Horologio Portabili:

544 Cf. Plautus, Amphitruo 282, credo edepol equidem dormire solem, and Seneca, Phoenissae 394, vide ut atra nubes pulvere abscondat diem.
546 Cf. the note on 153.
553 The sidenote indicates that Harrison thought this landlord looked like Furze the bear (or like Furze the erstwhile landlord in his portrait?).
555 Cf. Vergil, Aeneid I.723, postquam prima quies epulis mensaeque remotae (cf. also ib. I.216).
566 Verecundum…pudorem is an Ovidian tag (Ars Amatoria II.572, Tristia IV.iv.50).
567 For Jane Young cf. the note on 351.
573 Cf. Vergil, Aeneid I.597, o sola infandos Troiae miserata labores (as if Mistress Young were Dido, welcoming the shipwrecked Trojans).
574f. Cf. Ovid, Metamorphoses VIII.677f.:

595 Bis mille is the preferable reading, since this is the approximate distance from York to Bishopthorp.
597f. Utrisque academicis refers to Blenkowe and Eedes.
609 I cannot identify this individual: nobody named Parsons, Person, Persons, or Pierson who took a doctorate from either University was a member of the Yorkshire clergy, or a lay officer of the diocese, at this time. Hence my retention of R’s Parsons in the text has no more to recommend it than the seeming support of W’s Persons.
617ff. In view of his sentiments, Eedes would have been gratified to learn that she survived until 1614.
619 The eagle in question is the Phoenix.
623f. Eedes now discovers why the Tadcaster bridge was so large.
628 Mathew’s company returned on a road several miles eastward of their outbound journey, about nine miles from Aberford, and stayed at the market town of Pontefract or Pomfret. Pontefract Castle, with its sinister memories of the murder of Richard II and the execution of Anne Neville’s kinsmen by Richard III, was not pulled down until the Civil War.
630 Leland (Itinerary I.39) appears to have shared Eedes’ lack of enthusiasm for Pomfret, for he says much about the Castle but nothing about the town beyond “the fairest parte of Pontefract stondith on the toppe of the hille.” Camden (Yorkshire 12) was more enthusiastic: loco sedet peramoeno…aedificiis excultum nitibus.
642 Eedes alludes to the fact that Blenkowe haled from Cumberland.
644ff. From Leicester the travelers took a track westward of Northampton, to reach Aston-on-the-Walls (or Aston-le-Wall) in the Warden Hundred of Northamptonshire, situated near the headwaters of the Cherwell eight miles north of Banbury. They stayed with George Butler, whose son Alban matriculated from Magdalen Hall, Oxford, two years later (Foster, Alumni I.222). For the family cf. Walter C. Metcalfe, The Visitations of Northamptonshire made in 1564 and 1618-19 (London, 1887) 8. To enjoy their hunting the party had bypassed Northampton to the west, and intended to follow the road paralleling the Cherwell down to Banbury and hence to Oxford. There was no direct road from Leicester or Northampton to Aston, hence Eedes’ remark about multis ambagibusque usi.
654 Cf. Ovid, Metamorphoses XIII.641, cum primum haec moenia vidi. The city wall of Oxford had last been repaired in the reign of Richard II and was an advanced state of disrepair, save for those portions incorporated into collegiate walls, and it is these which Eedes must be describing: cf. Wood, Survey I.242f.
658 For rustica Musa cf. Vergil, Eclogue iii.84.
660f. Cf. the note on 380.