Pondo instructore. Inter saltandum, nudam eius manum manu nuda prensat Regina, tum ei caput, abrepto Leicestrie Comitis pileo, ipsa tegit, ne ex vehementi motu accensus subito refrigeraretur. Imposita ei videbatur laurea: cum (secundo eandem saltationis formam flagitante Regina) celerrime de more uno in pede circumuolitans, pronus concidit; Plausu in risum mutato, surge, inquit Regina, Domine Taure; ea voce commotus, surrexit quidem; at flexo ad terram poplite, vulgatum illud latine prolocutus, sic transit gloria mundi, proripuit se, et non longo interuallo Aulam spesque fallaces deseruit, consumptarum facultatum et violatae Religionis praemium ludibrium consecutus.'
There is a little difficulty as to the date. Morus puts it in 1564, but goes on to add that Pound was in his thirtieth year, and he was certainly born in 1538 or 1539. And Bartoli, 51, followed by Tanner, 480, gives 1569, citing, probably from Jesuit archives, a letter written by Pound himself on 3 June 1609. No doubt 1569, which may mean either 1568-9 or 1569-70, is right.
THOMAS PRESTON (> 1569-1589 <).
A Thomas Preston entered King's, Cambridge, from Eton in 1553, and became Fellow in 1556, taking his B.A. in 1557 and his M.A. in 1561. At Elizabeth's visit in 1564 he disputed with Thomas Cartwright before her in the Philosophy Act, and also played in Dido, winning such favour that she called him her 'scholar' and gave him a pension of £20 a year from the privy purse (Cunningham, xx; Nichols, Eliz. i. 270; Fuller, Cambridge, 137; Wordsworth, Ecclesiastical Memorials, iv. 322). He held his fellowship at King's until 1581. In 1583 a newswriter reported him to be 'withdrawen into Scotland as a malcontent and there made much of by the King' (Wright, Eliz. ii. 215). In 1584 he became Master of Trinity Hall, and in 1589 was Vice-Chancellor. In 1592, with other Heads of Houses, he signed a memorial to Burghley in favour of the stay of plays at Cambridge (M. S. C. i. 192). It seems to me incredible that he should, as is usually taken for granted, have been the author of Cambyses, about which there is nothing academic, and I think that there must have been a popular writer of the same name, responsible for the play, and also for certain ballads of the broadside type, of which A Lamentation from Rome (Collier, Old Ballads, Percy Soc.) was printed in 1570, and A Ballad from the Countrie, sent to showe how we should Fast this Lent (Archiv, cxiv. 329, from Bodl. Rawl. Poet. MS. 185) is dated 1589. Both are subscribed, like Cambyses, 'Finis Quod Thomas Preston'. A third was entered on S. R. in 1569-70 as 'A geliflower of swete marygolde, wherein the frutes of tyranny you may beholde'.
A Thomas Preston is traceable as a quarterly waiter at Court under Edward VI (Trevelyan Papers, i. 195, 200, 204; ii. 19, 26, 33), and a choirmaster of the same name was ejected from Windsor Chapel as a recusant about 1561 (cf. ch. xii).
