the catastrophe of the king's execution, and it seems likely that his subservience to Cromwell was not quite voluntary. In February 1650 he was brought to London from Weymouth under a strong guard for having spread false reports of the Parliament and of Cromwell. He died on the 13th of November in the same year, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, but after the Restoration his remains were exhumed and buried in a pit in the yard of St Margaret's, Westminster. May's change of side made him many bitter enemies, and he is the object of scathing condemnation from many of his contemporaries. There is a long notice of May in the _Biographia Britannica_. See also W. J. Courthope, _Hist. of Eng. Poetry_, vol. 3; and Guizot, _Études biographiques sur la révolution d'Angleterre_ (pp. 403-426, ed. 1851). MAY, or MEY(E), WILLIAM (d. 1560), English divine, was the brother of John May, bishop of Carlisle. He was educated at Cambridge, where he was a fellow of Trinity Hall, and in 1537, president of Queen's College. May heartily supported the Reformation, signed the Ten Articles in 1536, and helped in the production of _The Institution of a Christian Man_. He had close connexion with the diocese of Ely, being successively chancellor, vicar-general and prebendary. In 1545 he was made a prebendary of St Paul's, and in the following year dean. His favourable report on the Cambridge colleges saved them from dissolution. He was dispossessed during the reign of Mary, but restored to the deanery on Elizabeth's accession. He died on the day of his election to the archbishopric of York. MAY, the fifth month of our modern year, the third of the old Roman calendar. The origin of the name is disputed; the derivation from Maia, the mother of Mercury, to whom the Romans were accustomed to sacrifice on the first day of this month, is usually accepted. The ancient Romans used on May Day to go in procession to the grotto of Egeria. From the 28th of April to the 2nd of May was kept the festival in honour of Flora, goddess of flowers. By the Romans the month was regarded as unlucky for marriages, owing to the celebration on the 9th, 11th and 13th of the Lemuria, the festival of the unhappy dead. This superstition has survived to the present day.