red the Tower, then rode through Tower-street, where he was
received by Vause, lord of misrule to John Mainard, one of the sheriffs
of London, and so conducted through the city with a great company of
young lords and gentlemen to the house of sir George Burne lord-mayor,
where he with the chief of his company dined, and after had a great
banquet, and at his departure the lord-mayor gave him a standing cup
with a cover of silver and gilt, of the value of ten pounds, for a
reward, and also set a hogshead of wine and a barrel of beer at his
gate, for his train that followed him. The residue of his gentlemen and
servants dined at other aldermen's houses and with the sheriffs, and
then departed to the Tower wharf again, and so to the court by water, to
the great commendation of the mayor and aldermen, and highly accepted,
of the king and council."

From this time Ferrers became "a composer almost by profession of
occasional interludes for the diversion of the court[19]." None of these
productions of his have come down to posterity; but their author is
still known to the student of early English poetry, as one of the
contributors to an extensive work entitled "The Mirror for Magistrates,"
which will be mentioned hereafter in speaking of the works of Thomas
Sackville lord Buckhurst. The legends combined in this collection, which
came from the pen of Ferrers, are not distinguished by any high flights
of poetic fancy, nor by a versification extremely correct or melodious.
Their merit is that of narrating after the chronicles, facts in English
history, in a style clear, natural, and energetic, with an intermixture
of political reflections conceived in a spirit of wisdom and moderation,
highly honorable to the author, and well adapted to counteract the
turbulent spirit of an age in which the ambition of the high and the
discontent of the low were alike apt to break forth into outrages
destructive of the public tranquillity.

[Note 19: See Warton's History of English Poetry, vol. iii. p. 213
et seq.]

Happy would it have been for England in more ages than one, had the
sentiment of the following humble stanza been indelibly inscribed on
the hearts of children.

"Some haply here will move a further doubt,
And as for York's part allege an elder right:
O brainless heads that so run in and out!
When length of time a state hath firmly pight,
And good accord hath put all strife to flight,
Were it not better