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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.

Crime - Prison  

Showing 1 to 7 of 7

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]
17 The Merchants Daughter of Bristow [Euing 210]
25 A most notable example of an ungracious Son, who/ in the pride of his heart denyed his own Father [Roxburghe 1.226-27]
38 A worthy example of a vertuous wife, who fed her father with her own milk [Roxburghe 3.48-49]
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]
100 Luke Huttons Lamentation: which he wrote the day before his death, being/ condemned to be hanged at Yorke for his robberies and trespasses committed/ there-about [Euing 189]

Top Fives

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Authors

  • Anonymous  (6)
  • Hutton, Luke (d. 1596),...  (1)

Publishers

  • Wright, Cuthbert  (6)
  • Clark, John  (5)
  • Coles (aka Coules), Fra...  (5)
  • Gilbertson, William  (5)
  • Gosson, Henry  (5)

Topics

  •   Crime - prison  (7)
  • Death - execution  (5)
  • Emotions - sorrow  (5)
  • Family - children/paren...  (5)
  • Places - European  (4)

Instruments

  • Cittern  (3)
  • Fiddle  (2)
  • Double bass  (1)
  • Drum  (1)

Performers

  • Vitale, Steno  (3)
  • Couper, Victoria  (2)
  • Lewin, Giles  (2)
  • Banks, Steve  (1)
  • Davis, Jub  (1)

Tunes

  • Chevy Chase  (2)
  • Dainty come thou to me  (1)
  • Old Simon the King  (1)
  • The maiden's joy  (1)
  • Wandering and wavering  (1)

Woodcuts

  • Courtly garden  (1)
  • Knife attack  (1)
  • Mad-man with horn and s...  (1)
  • Ungracious son composit...  (1)
  • Woman breast-feeding ma...  (1)

Holding Libraries

  • British Library  (7)
  • No known copy  (7)
  • Pepys Library, Magdalen...  (6)
  • National Library of Sco...  (5)
  • University of Glasgow  (5)

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