One of the earliest, if not the earliest, printed mention of the Bote occurs in Thomas Feylde’s “A contrauersye bytwene a louer and a Jaye. [Colophon.] Imprynted at London in Fletestrete at the sygne of the Sonne by Wynkyn de Worde.” The Lover in the preceding verses apostrophizes Nature regarding his passion for his mistress, at which the Jay thus expostulates:-- “Thoughe nature moue, And bydde the loue, Yet wysdome wolde proue, Or it be hote, Whan fortune sowre Dothe on the lowre, Thou getest an ore In cocke lorels bote.” The next mention of Cocke Lorell is in a black-letter poem, preserved in the Bodleian Library, without date or printer’s name, entitled “Doctour Double Ale.” “I hold you a grota Ye wyll rede by rota, That ye wete a cota In cocke lorels bota.” The Rev. Charles H. Hartshorne, in “Ancient Metrical Tales,” reprinted “Doctour Double Ale,” but rendered the last line _cocke losels bota_. In pointing out this error, Mr. Collier says, that in John Heywood’s “Epigrams upon three hundred proverbs,” printed in 1566, mention is made of Cocke Lorelles Bote, under the heading of “A BUSY BODY He will have an ore in every man’s barge, Even in cocke lorels barge, he berth that charge.” Later on we find that the rascal is not forgotten, for Ben Jonson in his masque of the “Gypsies Metamorphosed,” has introduced him as feasting the Evil One, in a song which continued popular for some considerable time, and was frequently printed as a broadside, copies of which are in the Pepysian and Ashmolean Collections. The first verse is as follows:-- “Cock Lorrell would need have the devil his guest, And bid him once into the Peak to dinner, Where never the fiend had such a feast Provided him yet at the charge of a sinner.” In 1807, the Rev. William Beloe, in his “Anecdotes of Literature and Scarce Works,” Vol. I., p. 393, called attention to the following tract, but unfortunately he changed the title to “Cocke Lorells Vote,” in place of “Bote.” That this was a misprint may be inferred from the fact, that in another place in the same work, he makes reference to a passage in Bishop Percy’s Reliques, where the correct title is given. Dibdin, who appears never to have seen the work, but says he was “indebted to Mr. H. Ellis of the British Museum” for specimens “of this singular performance” has fallen into the droll blunder of writing “of the licentious and _predatory character_ of its AUTHOR, ... one Cock Lorell,” whose “popularity has, I believe, escaped the notice of our chroniclers.”[3] The poem was presented to the members of the Roxburghe Club in 1817, by the Rev. Henry Drury, but the impression was limited to thirty-five copies, two of which were printed on vellum.