#Page 1.# #MS. Harl. 2253.# These four lines were apparently regarded by Wanley, together with the preceding French strophe, as forming part of the poem on the Death of Simon de Montfort, and are not noted by him in the British Museum Catalogue. Böddeker also omitted them from his _Altenglische Dichtungen des MS. Harl. 2253_ (Berlin 1878). They were, however, already noted by Pinkerton in 1786, see _Ancient Scottish Poems never before in print . . . from the MS. Collections of Sir Richard Maitland_, ii, Note on p. 466: ‘In the same (i.e. Harleian) library, No. 2253, is another of the same kind, beginning, Erthe toc of erthe erthe wyth wote. It is only one stanza; and another piece of one stanza preceding it, both are put by Mr. Wanley, in the Catalogue, as part of a French song on Sir Simon de Montfort, which they follow: but such mistakes frequently arise from the crowded manner of old MSS.’ The facsimile opposite the title-page shows the lines as they occur in the MS. #Page 5.# #William Billyng’s MS.# The ‘finely written and illuminated parchment roll’ described by William Bateman in his preface to Billyng’s _Five Wounds of Christ_, of which forty copies were privately printed by him at Manchester in 1814, contained the following poems:-- 1. The Five Wounds of Christ (fifteen stanzas in rime royal). 2. At hygh none whan the belle dothe tylle (eighteen lines). 3. Erth owte of Erth (six stanzas). 4. Pes maketh plente (five lines). The whole is signed #Willm̃ Billyng#. It has been frequently suggested that Billyng was the author of these poems, but it is evident that he was not the author of _Erthe upon Erthe_, though his may be one of the earliest transcripts of the B version, and the lines _Pes maketh plente_ also occur elsewhere, cf. MS. Digby 230 (fifteenth century). He may have been the author of _The Five Wounds of Christ_, but it is more probable, considering the usual origin of other fifteenth-century collections of the kind, that he was merely the collector and transcriber of the texts. Cf. F. J. Furnivall, _Notes and Queries_, IV. iii. 103. It is possible that this may be the William Billyng who, in 1474, became rector of Toft Monks in Norfolk on the presentation of the Provost and Scholars of King’s College, Cambridge, and who appears to have held the benefice until 1506 (see _Notes and Queries_, III. iv. 173; Blomefield, _Norfolk_, viii. 63).[1] The parchment roll was formerly preserved in Bateman’s collection of antiquities at Lomberdale House, Derbyshire. This collection was broken up and sold after Bateman’s death, the archaeological remains being purchased by the Sheffield Museum, and the books and MSS. sold at Messrs. Sotheby, Wilkinson, and Hodge’s rooms in 1893, but all attempts to trace Billyng’s MS. after the breaking up of the collection have been unsuccessful. A copy of the printed text is in the British Museum.