A Supplicacyon for the Beggers

When trying to get together some evidence on the Condition of England in Henry VIII's and Edward VI's reigns for the Introduction to the Ballad of Now a Dayes (? ab. 1520, a.d.) for my first volume for the Ballad Society, I was struck hj the difficulty of finding out what tracts and books on the subject there were, and how few of them could be easily got at, much less bought at any reasonable price. But when I did get hold of some of them, I found them of such interest and value that I resolved to reprint such of them as I could, and one of the earliest is now before the reader. 

The second in date, the celebrated Supplicacyon  for the Beggers, is however the first in importance, from its influence on Henry VIII and the Reformation, and its calling forth an answer from Sir Thomas Moore, his Supplicacyon of Soulys (in Purgatory), which gave rise to his controversy with Tyndal. I therefore give Foxe's full account of the whole matter from the third edition of his Ads and Monuments, A.D. 1.576, pp. 986—991.

Before the tyme of M. Bilney, and the fall of the Cardinall, I should have placed the story of Symon  Fish, with the booke called " the Supplication of Beggars," declaryng how and by "what meanes it came to the kynges hand, and what efiect therof followed after, in the reformation of many thynges, esj^ecially of the Clergy. But the missyng of a few yeares in this matter, breaketh no great square in our story, though it be now entred here [under the year 1531] which should haue come in sixe yeares before. The maner and cu'cumstaunce of the matter is this :