Life. -- The first authentic record of John Heywood is one of 6 January,
1515, in Henry VIII.'s Book of Payments, which shows him to have then
been one of the King's singing men, in receipt of a daily wage of eightpence.
According to Bale, who must have known him, he was "civis Londinensis,"
the story that he was born at North Mimms, Hertfordshire, having apparently
arisen from his possession of land in that neighbourhood. Tradition has
sent him to Broadgates Hall, now Pembroke College, Oxford, and there is
nothing improbable in this. In February, 1521, Heywood was granted by the
King an annuity of ten marks, and in 1526, a quarterly payment of the same
sum was made him as a "player of the virginals." He appears to have been
specially attached to the retinue of the Princess Mary, a payment being made
in January, 1537, to his servant for bringing her "regalles" (or hand-organ)
from London to Greenwich, and Heywood himself in March, 1538, receiv-
ing forty shillings for "pleying an interlude with his children " before her.
At Mary's coronation Heywood made her a Latin speech in St. Paul's
Churchyard, and in November, 1558, the Queen granted him some leases in
Yorkshire. On the accession of Elizabeth, Heywood, though he had steered
through the reign of Edward VI. with safety, fled to Malines, and Professor
Ward (in the Dictionary of National Biography) identifies him with the John
Heywood who in 1575 wrote from Malines, "where I have been despoiled
by Spanish and German soldier," thanking Burghley for ordering the pay-
ment to him of some arrears on lands at Romney, and speaking of himself as
an old man of seventy-eight, which would give 1497 as his birth-year. He
is mentioned in a list of refugees in 1577, but by 1587 is spoken of as "dead
and gone." Earlier biographers, it should be noted, following Anthony à
Wood, have placed his death in 1565. Besides his plays Heywood wrote
a Dialogue Conteyning the Number of The Effectuall Prouerhes in the Eng-
lishe Tonge, Six Hundred Epigrams, and a tedious allegory The Spider and
ibe Flie, printed, with a woodcut of the author, in 1556.

Heywood's Place in English Comedy. -- The early history of
English comedy is a record of successive efforts and experiments
apparently leading to no result. The comic scenes in the miracle
plays culminate in the really masterly sheep-stealing plot of the
Secunda Pastorum in the Towneley Cycle; but the step which seems

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