Note 107 — II THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD

Cf. ch. vi, p. 205, on the misadventure of Jonson and Sir John Roe in 1603; also Jonson's Irish Mask (1613), 12, 'Ish it te fashion to beate te imbasheters here, and knoke 'hem o' te heads phit te phoit stick?', and Beaumont and Fletcher, Maid's Tragedy (c. 1611), 1. ii. 44, 'I cannot blame my lord Calianax for going away: would he were here! he would run raging amongst them, and break a dozen wiser heads than his own in the twinkling of an eye'. John Chamberlain says of Comptroller Sir Thomas Edmondes in 1617 (Birch, i. 385), 'They say he doth somewhat too much flourish and fence with his staves, whereof he hath broken two already, not at tilt, but stickling at the plays this Christmas', and Osborne, James, 75, of Philip, Earl of Pembroke, that 'he was intolerable choleric and offensive, and did not refrain, whilst he was Chamberlain, to break many wiser heads than his own [vide supra]: Mʳ. May that translated Lucan having felt the weight of his staff: which had not his office and the place, being the Banqueting-house, protected, I question whether he would ever have struck again'. This was in Feb. 1634 (Strafford Papers, i. 207).