[Footnote 1: “To the readers. After this booke was last printed, I understand that M. Francis Thynn had a purpose, as indeed he hath when the time shall serve, to set out Chaucer with a coment in our tongue, as the Italians have Petrarke and others in their language. Whereupon I purposed not to meddle any further in this work, although some promise made to the contrarie, but to referre all to him; being a gentleman for that purpose inferior to none, both in regard to his own skill, as also of those helps left to him by his father. Yet notwithstanding, Chaucer now being printed againe I was willing not only to helpe some imperfections, but also to add some things whereunto he did not only persuade me, but most kindly lent me his helpe and direction. By this means most of his old words are restored: proverbes and sentences marked: such Notes as were collected, drawne into better order and the text by olde copies corrected.” Speight’s Chaucer, 1602.] On the 22nd of April, 1602, he was with great ceremony advanced to the honour of Lancaster Herald. He never surrendered his patent, and as his successor entered on that post in November, 1608, he is supposed to have died about that date, though some postpone his death till 1611. He married Elizabeth, daughter and co-heiress of Thomas de la Rivers of Bransbe, but left no issue. There are many points of interest to be picked out of the following honest and straightforward bit of criticism, if we examine it closely: and, firstly, as to its author? Is there not something very characteristic in its general tone, something dimly sketching a shadowy outline of a kindly, fussy, busy, querulous old man, much given to tiny minutiæ, a careful copier with a clean pen, indefatiguable in collecting “contributions” to minor history; one jealous of all appearance of slight to his office, even to being moved to wrath with Master Speight for printing “Harolds” instead of “Harlotts,” and letting him know how mightily a “Harold” like himself would be offended at being holden of the condition of so base a thing as False Semblance? Perhaps the more so from a half-consciousness that the glory of the office was declining, and that if the smallest opening were given, a ribald wit might create terrible havock amongst his darling idols. How delicately he snubs Master Speight for not calling on him at Clerkenwell Green (How would Speight have travelled the distance in 1598? It was a long uphill walk for an antiquarian, and the fields by no means safe from long-staff sixpenny strikers); and how modestly he hints that he would have derived no “disparagement” from so doing; showing all the devotion to little matters of etiquette of an amiable but irritable old gentleman of our own day.