The fyrst boke of the introduction of knowledge made by Andrew Borde, of physycke doctor : A compendyous regyment; or, A dyetary of helth made in Mountpyllier / compyled by Andrewe Boorde, of physycke doctour. Barnes in the defence of the berde: a treatyse made, answerynge the treatyse of Doctor Borde upon berdes / edited, with a life of Andrew Boorde, and large extracts from his Brevyary, by F.J. Furnivall.

  • Andrew Boorde
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The fyrst boke of the introduction of knowledge made by Andrew Borde, of physycke doctor : A compendyous regyment; or, A dyetary of helth made in Mountpyllier / compyled by Andrewe Boorde, of physycke doctour. Barnes in the defence of the berde: a treatyse made, answerynge the treatyse of Doctor Borde upon berdes / edited, with a life of Andrew Boorde, and large extracts from his Brevyary, by F.J. Furnivall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    two separate Almanacs or Prognostications. The first bit is for the months of September, October, November, and December M. LLLLL. and xxxviif. -],1 signed at the foot “ e: Doctor of phisik.” This e is supposed to be the last letter of Boorde. The second bit is of a Prognostication, with a date which is supposed to be 1540, “ made by Maister ” [no more in that line2] “ cian and Preste.” Put “Andrew Boorde physi” in the bit torn off the left edge, and you have one of the Pronosticacions which Robert Coplande in his day may have printed for our author (p. 16, above). § 13. Jest-books. I. Merie Tales. We come now to those books that tradition only assigns to Boorde : The Merie Tales of the Mad Men of Gotam. and Scogin's Jests. Though the earliest authority known to us for the former is above 80 years after Boorde’s death, namely, the earliest edition of the book now accessible, that of 1630 in the Bodleian : “ gathered together by A.B., of Physick, doctour : ” yet Warton says: “There is an edition in duodecimo by Henry Wikes, without date, but about 1568, entitled Merie Tales of the madmen of Gotam, gathered together by A.B. of physicke doctour,” Hist. Engl. Poetry, iii. 74, note /. ed. 1840; however, Warton had never seen it. Mr Halliwell, in his Notices of Popvlar English His- tories, 1848, quotes an earlier edition still, by Colwell, who printed the 1562 edition of Boorde’s Dyetary, “Merie Tales of the Mad Men of Gotam, gathered together by A.B. of Phisike Doctour. [Colophon] Imprinted at London in Flet-Stret, beneath the Conduit, at the signe of S. John Evangelist, by Thomas Colwell, n. d. 12° black letter.” Mr Hazlitt puts Colwell’s edition before Wikes’s, and quotes another edition of 1613 from the Harleian Catalogue.3 In a book of 1572, “the fooles of Gotham” is mentioned as a book: see p. 30, below. Mr Horsfield, the historian of Lewes, 1 Boorde was in Scotland in 1536, in Cambridge in 1537 ; see p. 59-62 below. 2 The blank looks to me like an intentional one, so that a different name might be inserted in each district the Prognostication was issued in. 3 The chapbook copy in Mr Corser’s 5th sale, of The Merry Tales of the | Wise Men of Gotham (over a cut of the hedging-in of the cuckoo—a country- man crying ‘ Coocou,’ and a cuckoo crying ‘Gotam,’ both in a circular j paling—), Printed and Sold in Aldermary Church Yard, Bow Lane, London, contains 20 Tales, and six woodcuts.