COUNCIL

OF

The Percy Society.

President.

THE RT. HON. LORD BRAYBROOKE, F.S.A.

THOMAS AMYOT, Esq. F.R.S. TREAS. S.A.

WILLIAM HENRY BLACK, Esq.

J. A. CAHUSAC, Esq. F.S.A.

WILLIAM CHAPPELL, Esq. F.S.A. Treasurer.

JOHN PAYNE COLLIER, Esq. F.S.A.

T. CROFTON CROKER, Esq. F.S.A. M.R.I.A.

REV. ALEXANDER DYCE.

JAMES ORCHARD HALLIWELL, Esq. F.R.S. M.R.I.A.

G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ.

WILLIAM JERDAN, Esq. F.S.A. M.R.S.L.

CHARLES MACKAY, Esq.

T. J. PETTIGREW, Esq. F.R.S. F.S.A.

E. F. RIMBAULT, Esq Secretary.

JAMES WALSH, Esq.

THOMAS WRIGHT, Esq. M.A. F.S.A.

PREFACE.

THE following poem, which is now for the first time printed, from MS. Sloane 1986 (a small manuscript on vellum, of the fourteenth century), is perhaps one of the most singular relics of the kind that could have been placed before the notice of the antiquarian reader. In style of composition it is very similar to the curious poem which I printed some time since in my "Early History of Freemasonry in England,"-in fact, so much so, that I am almost inclined to think, on comparing the two together, that they may possibly be the work of one writer. The same language, and in some instances the same phrases, may be distinctly traced.

Immediately following this poem, in the same manuscript, is another, in the same hand, entitled "Liber Cocorum," a poem on the science of cookery as practised by our ancestors in the fourteenth century. It is curious in its way, and I would suggest to some one who possesses sufficient leisure for the task, that a collection of