Hunnis published several volumes of moral and religious verse, original and translated: Certayne Psalmes (1550); A Godly new Dialogue of Christ and a Sinner (S. R. 1564, if this is rightly identified with the Dialogue of Hunnis's 1583 volume); A Hive Full of Honey (1578, S. R. 1 Dec. 1577, dedicated to Leicester); A Handful of Honnisuckles (N.D., S. R. 11 Dec. 1578, a New Year's gift to the Ladies of the Privy Chamber); Seven Sobbes of a Sorrowful Soule for Sinne (1583, S. R. 7 Nov. 1581, with the Handful of Honnisuckles, The Widow's Mite, and A Comfortable Dialogue between Christ and a Sinner, dedicated to Lady Sussex); Hunnies Recreations (1588, S. R. 4 Dec. 1587, dedicated to Sir Thomas Heneage). Several poems by Hunnis are also with those of Richard Edwardes and others in The Paradyse of Daynty Deuises (1567); one, the Nosegay, in Clement Robinson's A Handfull of Pleasant Delites (1584); and it is usual to assign to him two bearing the initials W. H., Wodenfride's Song in Praise of Amargana and Another of the Same, in England's Helicon (1600).
The name of no play by Hunnis has been preserved, although he may probably enough have written some of those produced by the Chapel boys during his Mastership. That he was a dramatist is testified to by the following lines contributed by Thomas Newton, one of the translators of Seneca, to his Hive Full of Honey.
In prime of youth thy pleasant Penne depaincted Sonets sweete,
Delightfull to the greedy Eare, for youthfull Humour meete.
Therein appeared thy pregnant wit, and store of fyled Phraze
Enough t' astoune the doltish Drone, and lumpish Lout amaze,
Thy Enterludes, thy gallant Layes, thy Rond'letts and thy Songes,
Thy Nosegay and thy Widowes' Mite, with that thereto belonges. . . .
. . . Descendinge then in riper years to stuffe of further reache,
Thy schooled Quill by deeper skill did graver matters teache,
And now to knit a perfect Knot; In winter of thine age
Such argument thou chosen hast for this thy Style full sage.
As far surmounts the Residue.
Newton's account of his friend's poetic evolution seems to assign his 'enterludes' to an early period of mainly secular verse; but if this preceded his Certayne Psalmes of 1550, which are surely of 'graver matters', it must have gone back to Henry VIII's reign, far away from his Mastership. On the other hand, Hunnis was certainly contributing secular verse and devices to the Kenilworth festivities (cf. s.v. Gascoigne) only three years before Newton wrote. Mrs. Stopes suggests, with some plausibility, that the Amargana songs of England's Helicon may come from an interlude. She also assigns to Hunnis, by conjecture, Godly Queen Hester, in which stress is laid on Hester's Chapel Royal, and Jacob and Esau (1568, S. R. 1557-8), which suggests gardens.
LEONARD HUTTEN (c. 1557-1632).
Possibly the author of the academic Bellum Grammaticale (cf. App. K).
THOMAS INGELEND.
Lee (D. N. B.) conjecturally identifies Ingelend with a man of the same name who married a Northamptonshire heiress.
