explanation, “whom some Zabeta call.” The Famous Chronicle of King Edward the first, sirnamed Edward Longshankes, with his returne from the holy land. Also the life of Lleuellen, rebell in Wales. Lastly, the sinking of Queen Elinor, who suncke at Charingcrosse, and rose again at Potters-hith, now named Queenehith (printed 1593). This “chronicle history,” formless enough, as the rambling title shows, is nevertheless an advance on the old chronicle plays, and marks a step towards the Shakespearian historical drama. The Battell of Alcazar—with the death of Captaine Stukeley (acted 1588–1589, printed 1594), published anonymously, is attributed with much probability to Peele. The Old Wives Tale, registered in Stationers’ Hall, perhaps more correctly, as “The Owlde wifes tale” (printed 1595), was followed by The Love of King David and fair Bethsabe (written c. 1588, printed 1599), which is notable as an example of Elizabethan drama drawn entirely from scriptural sources. Mr Fleay sees in it a political satire, and identities Elizabeth and Leicester as David and Bathsheba, Mary Queen of Scots as Absalom. Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes (printed 1599) has been attributed to Peele, but on insufficient grounds. Among his occasional poems are “The Honour of the Garter,” which has a prologue containing Peele’s judgments on his contemporaries, and “Polyhymnia” (1590), a blank-verse description of the ceremonies attending the retirement of the queen’s champion, Sir Henry Lee. This is concluded by the “Sonnet,” “His golden locks time hath to silver turn’d,” quoted by Thackeray in the 76th chapter of The Newcomes. To the Phoenix Nest in 1593 he contributed “The Praise of Chastity.” Mr F. G. Fleay (Biog. Chron. of the Drama) credits Peele with The Wisdom of Doctor Doddipoll (printed 1600), Wily Beguiled (printed 1606), The Life and Death of Jack Straw, a notable rebel (1587?), a share in the First and Second Parts of Henry VI., and on the authority of Wood and Winstanley, Alphonsus, Emperor of Germany.
Peele belonged to the group of university scholars who, in Greene’s phrase, “spent their wits in making playes.” Greene went on to say that he was “in some things rarer, in nothing inferior, ” to Marlowe. Nashe in his preface to Greene’s Menaphon called him “the chief supporter of pleasance now living, the Atlas of Poetrie and primus verborum artifex, whose first encrease, the Arraignement of Paris, might plead to your opinions his pregnant dexteritie of wit and manifold varietie of invention, wherein (me judice) hee goeth a step beyond all that write.” This praise was not unfounded. The credit given to Greene and Marlowe for the increased dignity of English dramatic diction, and for the new smoothness infused into blank verse, must certainly be shared by Peele. Professor F. B. Gummere, in a critical essay prefixed to his edition of The Old Wives Tale, puts in another claim for Peele. In the contrast between the romantic story and the realistic dialogue he sees the first instance of humour quite foreign to the comic “business” of earlier comedy. The Old Wives Tale is a play within a play, slight enough to be perhaps better described as an interlude. Its background of rustic folk-lore gives it additional interest, and there is much fun poked at Gabriel Harvey and Stanyhurst. Perhaps Huanebango,[1] who parodies Harvey’s hexameters, and actually quotes him on one occasion, may be regarded as representing that arch-enemy of Greene and his friends.
Peele’s Works were edited by Alexander Dyce (1828, 1829–1839 and 1861); by A. H. Bullen (2 vols., 1888). An examination of the metrical peculiarities of his work is to be found in F. A. R. Lämmerhirt’s Georg Peele, Untersuchungen über sein Leben und seine werke (Rostock, 1882). See also Professor F. B. Gummere, in Representative English Comedies (1903): and an edition of The Battell of Alcazar, printed for the Malone Society in 1907.
PEEP-OF-DAY BOYS, an Irish Protestant secret society, formed about 1785 Its object was to protect the Protestant peasantry, and avenge their wrongs on the Roman Catholics. The “Boys” gained their name from the hour of dawn which they chose for their raids on the Roman Catholic villages. The Roman Catholics in return formed the society of “The Defenders.”
PEEPUL, or Pipul (Ficus religiosa), the “sacred fig” tree of India, also called the Bo tree. It is not unlike the banyan, and is venerated both by the Buddhists of Ceylon and the Vaishnavite Hindus, who say that Vishnu was born beneath its shade. It is planted near temples and houses; its sap abounds in caoutchouc, and a good deal of lac is obtained from insects who feed upon the branches. The fruit is about the size of a walnut and is not much eaten.
PEERAGE (Fr. pairage, med. Lat. paragium; M.E. pere, O. Fr. per, peer, later pair; Lat. paris, “equal ”). Although
in England the terms “peerage,” “nobility,” “House of Lords”
are in common parlance frequently regarded as synonymous,
in reality each expresses a different meaning. A man may be
a peer and yet not a member of the House of Lords, a member
of the House of Lords and yet not strictly a peer, though all
peers (as the term is now understood) are members of the
House of Lords either in esse or in posse. In the United
Kingdom the rights, duties and privileges of peerage are
centred in an individual; to the monarchical nations of the
Continent nobility conveys the idea of family, as opposed to
personal, privilege.
Etymologically “peers” are “equals” (pares), and in Anglo-Norman days the word was invariably so understood. The feudal tenants-in-chief of the Crown were all the peers of each other, whether lords of one manor or of a hundred; so too a bishop had his ecclesiastical peer in a brother bishop, and the tenants of a manor their Origin of Peerage. peers in their fellow-tenants. That even so late as the reign of John the word was still used in this general sense is clear from Magna Carta, for the term “judicium parium” therein must be understood to mean that every man had a right to be tried by his equals. This very right was asserted by the barons as a body in 1233 on behalf of Richard, earl marshal, who had been declared a traitor by the king’s command, and whose lands were forfeited without proper trial. In 1233 the French bishop Peter des Roches, Henry III.’s minister, denied the barons’ right to the claim set up on the ground that the king might judge all his subjects alike, there being, he said, no peers in England (Math. Paris. 389). The English barons undoubtedly were using the word in the sense it held in Magna Carta, while the bishop probably had in his mind the French peers (pairs de France), a small and select body of feudatories possessed of exceptional privileges. In England the term was general, in France technical. The change in England was gradual, and probably gathered force as the gulf between the greater barons and the lesser widened, until in course of time, for judicial purposes, there came to be only two classes, the greater barons and the rest of the people. The barons remained triable by their own order (i.e. by their peers), whilst the rest of the people rapidly became subject to the general practice and procedure of the king’s justices. The first use of the word “peers” as denoting those members of the baronage who were accustomed to receive regularly a writ of summons to parliament is found in the record of the proceedings against the Despensers in 1321 (Stubbs, Const. Hist. ii. 347), and from that time this restricted use of the word has remained its ordinary sense.
Properly to understand the growth and constitution of the peerage it is necessary to trace the changes which occurred in the position of the Anglo-Norman baronage, first through the gradual strengthening of royal supremacy with the consequent decay of baronial power locally, and subsequently by the consolidation of parliamentaryAnglo-Norman Baronage. institutions during the reigns of the first three Edwards.
Before the conquest the national assembly of England (see Parliament) was the Witan, a gathering of notables owing their presence only to personal influence and standing. The imposition of a modified feudal system resulted in a radical alteration. Membership of the Great Councils of the Norman kings was primarily an incidentThe Saxon Witenagemot. of
- ↑ Mr Fleay goes so far as to see in the preposterous names of Huanebango’s kith and kin puns on Harvey’s father’s trade. “Polymachaeroplacidus” he interprets as “Polly-make-a-rope-lass”!
