^a This poem is contained in a MS. in the Cotton. Collection, Vesp. B. xvi. and it has been twice printed; first by Ritson (Anc. Songs and Ballads, I. 117, edit. 1829), and subsequently by Mr. Sharon Turner. The only precise note of time in it is the beheading of William de la Pole, on 2d May, 1450, so that it must have been written after that event. His widow Alice (Chaucer's granddaughter) is one of the individuals sought by Parliament, in 1451, to be removed from the presence of Henry VI. John Trevelyan is introduced by name into the penultimate stanza, but it is not possible at this distance of time to understand the allusion to him conveyed in the words “warre the rere.” The Roman Catholic mass for the dead, and the terms used in it, are employed and applied throughout, but sometimes not very intelligibly.