Top pop from seventeenth-century England. Broadside ballads were single-sheet songs that sold for a penny a piece. This website concentrates on over 100 resoundingly successful examples that you can investigate through recordings, images and a wealth of other materials. Whether you are interested in music, art, love, gender, tragedy, politics, family life, crime, history, humour or death, you will find something to engage you here. See also User’s Guide.

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Showing 1 to 8 of 8

4 A lamentable Dittie composed upon the death of/ Robert Lord Devereux late Earle of Essex, who was beheaded in the/ Tower of London, upon Ashwednesday in the morning [Huntington Britwell 18290]
41 The Woful Lamentation of Mistris Jane Shore, a Goldsmiths Wife/ in London, sometime King Edward the Fourth's Concubine [Euing 394]
44 The Lamentation of Master Pages wife of Plimmouth, who being enforced by her Parents to wed him against/ her will, did most wickedly consent to his murther [Pepys 1.126-27]
54 An Excellent Ballad of George Barnwel an Apprentice in Lon-/don, who was undone by a Strumpet [Pepys 2.158-59]
66 Advice to the Ladies of/ LONDON, In the Choice of their Husbands [Pepys 4.85]
72 A Lamentable Ballad of Fair Rosamond, King Henry the Second’s Concubine,/ Who was put to death by Queen Elinor, in Woodstock Bower near Oxford [Pepys 1.498-99]
80 The wofull lamentation of Edward Smith, a poore penitent/ prisoner in the Jayle of Bedford [Roxburghe 1.367]
93 Ragged, and Torne, and True./ Or, the poore mans Resoltion [Roxburghe 1.352-53]

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