“Skelton, when he was in London, went to the King’s Court, where there did come to him a Welshman, saying, ‘Sir, it is so, that many do come up out of my country to the King’s Court, and some get of the King by patent a castle, and some a park, and some a forest, and some one fee and some another, and they live like honest men; and I should live as honestly as the best, if I might have a patent for selling good drink. Wherefore I pray you write a petition for me to give into the King’s hands.’ ‘Very good,’ said Skelton. ‘Sit down,’ said the Welshman, ‘and write, then.’ ‘What shall I write?’ asked Skelton. The Welshman said, ‘Write _Drink_. Now write _More drink_.’ ‘What now?’ said Skelton. ‘Write now _A great deal of drink_; and put to all this drink _A little crumb of bread, and a great deal of drink to it_, and read out what you have written.’ ‘_Drink, more drink, and a great deal of drink, and a little crumb of bread, and a great deal of drink to it._’ Then quoth the Welshman, ‘put out _the little crumb of bread_, and set down _all drink and no bread_; and if I might have this petition signed by the King, I care for no more, as long as I live.’ ‘Well, then,’ said Skelton, ‘when you have got yours passed, I will try to get another for bread, that you with your drink, and I with my bread, may seek our living together with bag and staff.’” Whether Andrew Borde, the pleasant Sussex Doctor of Physic, really wrote the little book of stories about Skelton, whom he might very well have personally known, must be numbered among the uncertainties; but Borde’s estimate of Taffy is cognate to that of Skelton himself, as delivered to us in the book and in the _Hundred Merry Tales_. For in his _Introduction of Knowledge_, 1542, the Doctor puts into the mouth of his Cambro-Briton these lines:-- “I am a Welshman, and do dwell in Wales; I have loved to search budgets, and look in mails,” which seems to portray the predatory borderer and the thief by breeding and instinct. It is perhaps, at the same time, a matter for speculation whether these traits of Welsh character were not more current after the accession of the Tudors. Henry the Seventh, as his _Privy Purse Expenses_ establish, was very lavish in his presents to his countrymen; and the royal partiality tended very possibly to render them unpopular in England, and to bring their foibles and frailties into print. The very tale above given reads like a burlesque on the importunity of Taffy for privileges and monopolies at Henry’s hands, and at the same time jeers pretty broadly at his propensity for intemperance.