A PEPYSIAN GARLAND - online book

Black-letter Broadside Ballads Of The years 1595-1639

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14
Anne Wallen's lamentation
Pepys, i, 124, B.L., two woodcuts, four columns.
A "good-night" by T. Platte, an author known only by this one pro­duction. For the tune see Chappell's Popular Music, 1, 162.
Professor Kittredge points out the following passage in a letter written by John Chamberlain to Sir Dudley Carleton on July 6, 1616 {The Court and Times of James 7, 1, 418):
There was a seminary priest hanged at Tyburn on Monday... That morning early, there was a joiner's wife burnt in Smithfield for killing her husband. If the case were no otherwise than I can learn it, she had summum jus[!]; for her husband having brawled and beaten her, she took up a chisal, or some such other instrument, and flung at him, which cut him into the belly, whereof he died.
As July 6 came on Saturday, July 1 was Monday. On July 1, according to the ballad, Anne Wallen was burned, so that to her execution Chamber­lain's comment seems applicable. For comments on burning women as a punishment for petty treason see the introduction to No. 52.
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