Notes. In the only known source, this poem immediately follows a copy of the more widely circulated “Heere lyes the breife of badnes vices nurse”.

Greedie, Envious, malitious proud unstable

Suborner, Plotter, no waies tractable1

Forger of Mischeifes, vertues onely Foe

Usurers Mynion Contriver of woe

The nurse of vice, I will not say a whore

Lyes nowe demancd2 confin’d with in the tower3

A place too good for such a one to take

Who list to knowe her, tis the Ladie Lake.

Source. Bodleian MS Malone 23, pp. 5-6

J4

¹   tractable: the scribe also inserts “warrantable”, as though considering an alternative reading. <back>

²   demancd: not in the OED, but perhaps an anglicized version of the French verb demancher, to dislocate. <back>

³   tower: Mary Lake was imprisoned in the Tower of London from 1619 to 1620. <back>