And bere in minde who is with thee,
The woords that Salomon and Dauid spake
In Judicum, and in Genesye;
Hierome, Juuenall, and olde Tobye,
Caton, and Ouid wil testyfie,

And Merciall also, who listeth to try.
¶And vnto them that learned be,
I would and wil thou meekely went,
And showe them, who so made thee
No thing purposed of il intent
That should prohybe 3 the Sacrament;
But that the masculine might heerby
Haue some what to iest with the feminy.

Finis.

Heere endeth the Scole house
of women.5

1020

Imprinted at Lon
don at the long shop adioyning
vnto Saint Mildreds Church :=
in the Pultrie, by
John Allde.

1 Judges.

2 St. Jerome.

3 So King's ed. Allde's ed. reads prohibit.

THE

HE Proude Wyves Pater noster that wolde go gaye, and undyd her Husbonde and went her waye. Anno Domini MDLX. With a woodcut on the title of a man with purses at his girdle. [Col.] Imprinted at London in Paules Churche yearde at the Sygne of the Swane by John Kynge. 4to. black letter.

wolde go gaye, and With a woodcut on Imprinted at London

The Proude wyues Pater noster, that vndyd her husbonde and went her waye. title of two women conversing. [Col.] in Paules Churcheyarde at the Sygne of the Swane by John Kynge. 4to. black letter.

King's press seems, about this time, literally to have teemed with popular poems for or against the fair sex; for, not content with printing new essays on this interminable controversy, he republished some which, from their great popularity, were no longer to be procured, perhaps, and for which there was still a demand, such as Gosynhyll's Mulierum Paan, the Schole-house of Women, &c. The printer, as was natural, or reasonable, consulted only the marketable qualities of the ware brought to him, and so we find the same person becoming the medium for introducing to public notice works of a directly opposite characIt is to be hoped that Gosynhyll was dead when King reproduced his Mulierum Paan side by side with The Schole house of Women, in the exordium to which Gosynhyll is not very politely mentioned.

ter.

The Proude Wyues Pater noster was licensed to John Kyng on the 10th June, 1560, and he paid two shillings for it and

other articles. The tract was licensed (with others) to John Charlwood on the 15th January, 1581-82, and it appears from the Stationers' Registers, that it had been previously the property of Sampson (or John) Awdeley, so that it is likely enough that several editions issued from the press during the sixteenth century. This is one of the tracts described by Laneham in 1575 as being then in the library of Captain Cox. It is reprinted, not very accurately, in Select Pieces of Early Popular Poetry, 1817, and there is a review of it in Mr. Collier's Bibliographical and Critical Account of Early English Literature, 1865, from the edition dated 1560.

The other impression, by King, without any date on the title, is among Selden's books at Oxford; it has been collated for the present purpose; and a correct representation of the original title-page is subjoined. These are the only old editions of the poem known to be in existence.

The Pzoude wyues

Pater nofter, that wolde gogaye, and vndydher husbonde and went her waye.