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.

Politics - Court   Crime - Punishment  

Showing 1 to 20 of 20

1 A proper new Ballad, intituled, The wandring Prince of Troy [Pepys 1.84-85]
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]
33 The most Rare and Excellent History,/ Of the Dutchess of Suffolks Callamity [Euing 228]
36 A Courtly new ballad of the Princely wooing of the/ fair Maid of London by King Edward [Euing 51]
38 A worthy example of a vertuous wife, who fed her father with her own milk [Roxburghe 3.48-49]
41 The Woful Lamentation of Mistris Jane Shore, a Goldsmiths Wife/ in London, sometime King Edward the Fourth's Concubine [Euing 394]
42 An Excellent Ballad of Patient Grissel [Euing 85]
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]
45 A pleasant new Ballad of the Miller of Mansfield, in Sherwood and of King Henry the second [Roxburghe 1.228-29]
50 A New Song of Lulla By,/ OR, Father Peter's Policy Discovered [Bodleian Wood E25 (110)]
57 The Shepherd and the King, and of Gillian the Shepherds Wife, with her churlish Answer [Euing 332]
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]
73 The lamentable fall of Queen Elenor, who for her Pride/ and wickedness by Gods judgements sunk into the ground at Charing=Cross and rose at/ Queen hive [Euing 184]
78 John ARMSTRONG's Last Good-Night [Pepys 2.133]
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]
104 The Careless Gallant: Or, A farewel to Sorrow [Pepys 4.241]
105 The New Courtier [Bodleian Wood E25 (89)]
108 The Wandring Jews Chronicle [Pepys 1.482-83]
116 Love and Honour: Or,/ The Lovers Farewel to Calista [Roxburghe 2.306]

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