Unlike our other _Drolleries_, reproduced _verbatim et literatim_ in this series, we here find little describing the last days of Cromwell and the Commonwealth; except one graphic picture of a despoiled West-Countryman (p. 57), complaining against both Roundheads and “Cabbaleroes.” The poems were not only composed before hopes revived of speedy Restoration for the fugitive from Worcester-fight and Boscobel; they were, in great part, written before the Civil Wars began. Few of them, perhaps, were previously in print (the title-page asserts that _none_ had been so, but we know this to be false). Publishers made such statements audaciously, then as now, and forced truth to limp behind them without chance of overtaking. By far the greater number belonged to an early date in the reign of the murdered King, chiefly about the year 1637; two, at the least, were written in the time of James I. (viz., p. 40, a contemporary poem on the Gunpowder Plot of 1605; and, p. 10, the Ballad on King James I.), if not also the still earlier one, on the Defeat of the Scots at Muscleborough Field; which is probably corrupted from an original so remote as the reign of Edward VI. “Dowsabell” was certainly among the _Pastorals_ of 1593, and “Down lay the Shepherd’s swain” (p. 65) bears token of belonging to an age when the Virgin Queen held sway. These facts guide to an understanding of the charm held by _Choyce Drollery_ for adherents of the Monarchy; and of its obnoxiousness in the sight of the Parliament that had slain their King. It was not because of any exceptional immorality in this _Choyce Drollery_ that it became denounced; although such might be declared in proclamations. Other books of the same year offended worse against morals: for example, the earliest edition known to us of _Wit and Drollery_, with the extremely “free” _facetiæ_ of _Sportive Wit, or Lusty Drollery_ (both works issued in 1656), held infinitely more to shock proprieties and call for repression. The _Musarum Deliciæ_ of Sir J[ohn] M[ennis] and Dr. J[ames] S[mith], in the same year, 1656, cannot be held blameless. Yet the hatred shewn towards _Choyce Drollery_ far exceeded all the rancour against these bolder sinners, or the previous year’s delightful miscellany of merriment and true poetry, the _Wit’s Interpreter_ of industrious J[ohn] C[otgrave]; to whom, despite multitudinous typographical errors, we owe thanks, both for _Wit’s Interpreter_ and for the wilderness of dramatic beauties, his _Wit’s Treasury_: bearing the same date of 1655.