[20] [A few facts of a more precise kind about the contents of this and the foregoing paragraphs may be grouped here.  The Rev. H. Pickering was rector of Aldwinkle (the better form) All-Saints from 1507 to 1637, not from 1647 to 1657.  This destroys Scott’s inference.  The error arose from a misreading of his epitaph.  “The village” did not strictly belong to Lord Exeter:  but he had property in Aldwinkle St. Peter’s, and the two parishes are close together, one church being at one end and the other at the other of the joint village.  Erasmus Dryden and Mary Pickering were married at the church of Pilton, a very small village between Aldwinkle and Oundle, on October 21, 1630.  Dryden was therefore indisputably the eldest son.  Blakesley, where his father’s property was situated, is not near Aldwinkle or Tichmarsh, which are close together on opposite sides of the river Nene, and about two miles from Thrapston, but near Canons-Ashby on the other side of the county.  The estate (of about two hundred acres) was united to that of Canons-Ashby after the death of Dryden’s youngest son.  But, unlike Canons-Ashby, it does not now belong to the family, having been sold many years ago.—­ED.]

[21]
  “And though no wit ran royal blood infuse,
  No more than melt a mother to a muse,
  Yet much a certain poet undertook,
  That men and manners deals in without book;
  And might not more to gospel truth belong,
  Than he (if christened) does by name of John.”
              Poetical Reflections, etc.  See vol. ix.

Another opponent of our author calls him

“A bristled Baptist bred, and then thy strain
Immaculate was free from sinful stain.”
The Laureat, vol. x.

[22] Upon a monument, erected by Elizabeth Creed to the poet’s memory in the church at Tichmarsh, are these words:—­“We boast that he was bred and had his first learning here.” [A rival tradition favours Oundle, which had and has a grammar school of merit.—­ED.]

[23] The date is not known.  That of his admission to Trinity, infra, should be May 18.  He matriculated on July 16, and was not elected to his scholarship till October 2.—­ED.

[24] [More usually Busby.—­ED.]

[25] “I remember (says Dryden, in a postscript to the argument of the third satire of Perseus) I translated this satire when I was a King’s scholar at Westminster school, for Thursday night’s exercise; and believe, that it, and many other of my exercises of this nature in English verse, are still in the hands of my learned master, the Rev. Dr. Bushby.”

[26] The following order is quoted, by Mr. Malone, from the Conclusion-book, in the archives of Trinity College, p. 221.

“July 19, 1652.  Agreed, then, That Dryden be put out of Comons, for a fortnight at least; and that he goe not out of the colledg, during the time aforesaid, excepting to sermons, without express leave from the master, or vice-master; and that, at the end of the fortnight, he read a confession of his crime in the hall, at dinner time, at the three ... fellowes table.

  “His crime was, his disobedience to the vice-master, and his contumacy
  in taking his punishment inflicted by him.”