Though his son gives him no higher position in the court of Henry VIII. than the apparently humble one of clerk of the kitchen, he is careful to let us know that the post was in reality no mean one, and that “there were those of good worship both at court and country” who had at one time been well pleased to be his father’s clerks. That he was a man of superior mind there is no question, and we have a pleasant hint in the following tract of his intimacy with his king, and of their mutual fondness for literature. To William Thynne, indeed, all who read the English language are deeply indebted, for to his industry and love for his author we owe much of what we now possess of Chaucer. Another curious bit of literary gossip to be gleaned from this tract is that William Thynne was a patron and supporter of John Skelton, who was an inmate of his house at Erith, whilst composing that most masterly bit of bitter truth, his “Colin Clout,” a satire perhaps unsurpassed in our language. William Thynne rests beside his second wife, in the church of Allhallows, Barking, near the Tower of London, where there are two handsome brasses to their memory. That of William Thynne represents him in full armour with a tremendous dudgeon dagger and broadsword, most warlike guize for a clerk of the kitchen and editor of Chaucer. The dress of his wife is quite refreshing in its graceful comeliness in these days of revived “farthingales and hoops.” These brasses were restored by the late Marquess of Bath. Would that the same good feeling for things old had prevented the owners of the “church property” from casing the old tower with a hideous warehouse. The Sir John Thynne mentioned in the “Animadversions” was most probably a cousin of Francis. He married the daughter of Sir Thomas Gresham, the builder of the Royal Exchange, part of whose wealth was devoted by his son-in-law to the building of the beautiful family seat of Long Leat, in Wiltshire, in which work he was doubtless aided indirectly by the Reformation, for, says the old couplet, “Portman, Horner, Popham, and Thynne, When the monks went out they came in.” Francis Thynne was born in Kent, probably at his father’s house at Erith, about 1550. He was educated at Tunbridge school under learned Master Proctor, thence to Magdalen College, Oxford, and then, as the manner was, to the Inns of Court, where he lay at Lincoln’s Inn for a while. Some men are born antiquarians as others are born poets, and we may be pretty certain that it was at Thynne’s own desire that his court influence was used to procure him the post of “Blanch Lyon pursuivant,” a position which would enable him to pursue studies, the results of which, however valuable in themselves, but seldom prove capable of being converted into the vulgar necessities of food and raiment. Poor John Stowe, with his license to beg, as the reward of the labour of his life, is a terrible proof of how utterly unmarketable a valuable commodity may become.