222
NOTES AND QUERIES. [io* s. i. MABCH 19, 190*.
never saw in any of them ; and wit no more than
they could remember. In short, they were unlucky
to have been bred in an unpolished age, and more
unlucky to live to a refined one. They have lasted
beyond their own, and are cast behind ours ; and
not contented to have known little at the age of
twenty, they boast of their ignorance at three
score. '
It is in this essay while condescendingly contrasting the Elizabethan drama with that of his own day, to the disadvantage of the former that he says
"Shakespeare showed the best of his skill in his Mercutio ; and he said himself, that he was forced to kill him in the third act, to prevent being killed by him. But, for my part, I cannot find he was so dangerous a person ; I see nothing in him but what was so exceeding harmless, that he might have lived to the end of the play, and died in his bed, without offence to any man."
But elsewhere his praise of Shakespeare is noble and discriminating; and the modern reader of Dry den's heroic plays may echo " without offence " the author's own lines in the Prologue to ' Aureng-Zebe,' where he says he himself "grows weary of his long-loved mistress, Rhyme." Whence it appears that Glorious John had seen fit to revise the opinion given by Neander, his counterpart, in 'An Essay of Dramatic Poesy,' that, blank verse being too low for tragedy, riming couplets are the only wear suitable for heroic plays. And, indeed, the blank verse of 'All for Love ' is a great relief after the perpetual jingle, of 'Aureng-Zebe' or "The Conquest of Granada,' fine though the lines generally are. The mental ear aches with the "damned iteration " : the fatal facility of the poet gives no rest to his readers.
In the same essay he makes his Eugenius (Lord Buckhurst) contrast " our satirist Cleveland" with Donne. The former gives us " common thoughts in abstruse words ; to express a thing hard and unnaturally is his new way of elocution." A. R. BAYLEY.
WILLIAM OF WYKEHAM.
WHO were the parents of William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester 1367-1404, founder of Winchester College and of New College, Oxford ? The account of the Bishop of Winchester in the ' Dictionary of National Biography' is doubtless the latest we have of him, and there it is stated that his parents were John Longe and Sibilla Bowade his wife, the same as recorded by Bishops Lowth and Moberly.
Bishop Lowth is doubtful as to the exact- ness of the account he gives of Bishop Wykeham's family, for in the chart pedigree contained in his life of Wykeham he names
Henry Aas as a brother of John Longe, and
is not certain if the name of Longe is a
patronymic or only an appellation of the
individual's stature, nor does he give the
Christian name of the man who married
Agnes, the supposed sister of Bishop Wyke-
ham. Moreover, there seems to be no record
that William of Wykeham was ever known
by the name of William Longe. This account,
therefore, of Bishop Wykeham's parentage
is by no means conclusive.
It is shown in the account of Bishop Wyke- ham in the ' D.N.B.' that
" he was not the great architect he had been almost universally considered, that he made no mark as a statesman, and the list of his books does not point to any superfluity of learning."
Bishop Lowth states that he does not appear to have studied at any university, and there- fore had no academical degree.
What could have been the cause, then, of such a man as this (apparently the son of quite humble parents, and not endowed by nature with extraordinary talent nor by education with great learning) rising to so high a position in the State as he did, amass- ing sufficient wealth to build and endow the great school at Winchester and a college at Oxford during his lifetime, and to leave at his death ample estate to establish the family who adopted the name of Wykeham in place of their own 1
I venture to suggest that the true parentage of Bishop Wykeham has not yet been dis- closed, and that John Longe and Sibilla his wife were the foster-parents of the bishop, and not his actual father and mother that Wykeham was not his family name.
There are several Wykehams mentioned in the bishop's will, but except those who were born Perots and adopted the name of Wyke- ham, he calls none of them cousins, as he does the descendants of Henry Aas and John and Alice Archemore, nor does he go beyond the generic term " cousin " or " kinsman " in speaking of any of his supposed relations.
Bishop Lowth says :
" We must allow Wykeham to have been what the Romans call Novus homo, so with regard to his surname he might be strictly and literally the first of his family."
A nothus would be the first of his family, and there appear to be so many difficulties in deciding to what family Bishop Wykeham belonged, that it is doing him no injustice if we suppose him to have been a ncithus. No fault of his if he was such. Bishop Lowth also says :
" Conscious to himself that his claim to honour was unexceptionable, as founded upon truth and
