In the days of the revival of learning and the reformation of religion in England, shoemakers had their share in the mental and moral awakening. Many of them turned poets, and essayed to write ballads and songs, of which we have a sample in Deloney's "Delightful, Princely, and Entertaining History of the Gentle Craft."[132] Such a spirited songster as Richard Rigby, "a brother of the craft," who undertook to show in his "Song of Praise to the Gentle Craft" how "royal princes, sons of kings, lords, and great commanders have been shoemakers of old, to the honor of the ancient trade," also deserves to be mentioned. This song, beginning "I sing in praise of shoemakers, Whose honor no person can stain,"[133] is no mean performance; its historic allusions may not be unimpeachable, but its poetic ring is genuine. Scores of pieces of a similar character have issued from the cobbler's room, and either perished, like many another ballad and song of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, or found their way into odd corners of our literature, where they are buried almost beyond hope of resurrection. [132] London, 1675 and 1725. [133] See Campion's "Delightful History," p. 51. Speaking of men who have aspired to be poets and have published their productions, one is fain to begin with a name which, if it could be proved to belong to the gentle craft, would certainly have to stand at the head of the long list of poetical shoemakers--the Elizabethan dramatist _Thomas Dekker_, who wrote "one of the most light-hearted of merry comedies," _The Shoomaker's Holyday_. One of the most prominent characters in the play is Sir Simon Eyre, the reputed builder of Leadenhall Market, London, and Lord Mayor of the city.[134] Of this worthy, who lived in the time of Henry VI., Rigby, in his "Song in Praise of the Gentle Craft," says-- "Sir Simon, Lord Mayor of fair London, He was a shoemaker by trade." [134] The author of "Crispin Anecdotes" mentions another shoemaker who was made Lord Mayor of London, viz., Sir Thomas Tichbourne, who was Mayor in 1656, during the Protectorate.--"Crispin Anecdotes," p. 127. It is hard to think that the writer of _The Shoomaker's Holyday_, in which the ways of shoemakers and the details of the craft are described with all the ease and exactitude of familiarity, was not a brother of the craft.[135] When the famous quarrel arose between the quondam friends and coworkers, Ben Jonson and Dekker, Jonson in his _Poetaster_ satirized the author of _The Shoomaker's Holyday_ under the name of _Crispinus_. This epithet may be simply an allusion to the subject of Dekker's well-known comedy; but may it not also be regarded as a veritable "cut at a cobbler?"