John Tisdale. [Epistles to Lady Cheyne, signed H. C., and to the Reader. Cheyne arms on v^o of t.p.]
The translation is from the Tragedia del Libero Arbitrio (1546) of Francesco Nigri de Bassano. It is presumably distinct from that which Sir Thomas Hoby in his Travaile and Life (Camden Misc. x. 63) says he made at Augsburg in Aug.-Nov. 1550, and dedicated to the Marquis of Northampton.
HENRY CHETTLE (c. 1560- > 1607).
Chettle was apprenticed, as the son of Robert Chettle of London, dyer, to Thomas East, printer, on 29 Sept. 1577, and took up the freedom of the Stationers' Company on 6 Oct. 1584. During 1589-91 he was in partnership as a printer with John Danter and William Hoskins. The partnership was then dissolved, and Chettle's imprint is not found on any book of later date (McKerrow, Dictionary, 68, 84, 144). But evidently his connexion with the press and with Danter continued, for in 1596 Nashe inserted into Have With You to Saffron Walden (Works, iii. 131) a letter from him offering to set up the book and signed 'Your old Compositer, Henry Chettle'. Nashe's Strange News (1592) and Terrors of the Night (1594) had come, like Have With You to Saffron Walden itself, from Danter's press. The object of the letter was to defend Nashe against a charge in Gabriel Harvey's Pierce's Supererogation (1593) of having abused Chettle. He had in fact in Pierce Penilesse (1592) called Greenes Groats-worth of Wit 'a scald triuial lying pamphlet', and none of his doing. And of the Groatsworth Chettle had acted as editor, as he himself explains in the Epistle to his Kind Hearts Dream (cf. App. C, No. xlix), in which, however, he exculpates Nashe from any share in the book. By 1595 he was married and had lost a daughter Mary, who was buried at St. John's, Windsor (E. Ashmole, Antiquities of Berkshire, iii. 75). By 1598 he had taken to writing for the stage, and in his Palladis Tamia of that year Meres includes him in 'the best for Comedy amongst vs'. Of all Henslowe's band of needy writers for the Admiral's and Worcester's from 1598 to 1603, he was the most prolific and one of the neediest. Of the forty-eight plays in which he had a hand during this period, no more than five, or possibly six, survive. His personal loans from Henslowe were numerous and often very small. Some were on account of the Admiral's; others on a private account noted in the margin of Henslowe's diary. On 16 Sept. 1598 he owed the Admiral's £8 9s. in balance, 'al his boockes & recknynges payd'. In Nov. 1598 he had loans 'for to areste one with Lord Lester'. In Jan. 1599 he was in the Marshalsea, and in May borrowed to avoid arrest by one Ingrome. On 25 Mar. 1602 he was driven, apparently in view of a payment of £3, to seal a bond to write for the Admiral's. This did not prevent him from also writing for Worcester's in the autumn. More than once his manuscript had to be redeemed from pawn (Greg, Henslowe, ii. 250). His England's Mourning Garment, a eulogy of Elizabeth, is reprinted in C. M. Ingleby, Shakespere Allusion-Books, Part i (N. S. S. 1874), 77. Herein he speaks of himself
