Senior, says Wood, who in the reigns of Henry V. and VI. taught and
read in Peckwaters Ynne, while it flourished with grammarians, "was
one so well seen in verse and prose, and all sorts of humanity, that
he went beyond the learnedest of his age, and was so noted a
grammarian, that this verse was made upon him:--
'Ut rosa flos florum sic Leland grammaticorum;'
Which," he adds, "with some alteration, was fastened upon John Leland,
junior, by Richard Croke, of Cambridge, at what time the said Leland
became a Protestant, and thereupon," observes Wood (as if it were a
necessary consequence,) "fell mad:"
'Ut rosa flos florum sic Leland flos fatuorum.'
Which being replied to by Leland (In Encom. Eruditorum in Anglia, &c.
per Jo. Leland's edit. Lond. 1589,) was answered by a friend of
Croke's in verse also. And here by the way I must let the reader know
that it was the fashion of that age (temp. Hen. VIII.) to buffoon, or
wit it after that fashion, not only by the younger sort of students,
but by bishops and grave doctors. The learned Walter Haddon, Master of
Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and afterwards President of Magdalen College,
Oxford, in an epistle that he wrote to Dr. Cox, Almoner to Edward IV.
(afterwards Bishop of Ely) "doth give him great commendations of his
actions and employments, and further addeth (in his Lucubrations) that
when he was at leisure to recreate his mind, he would, rather than be
idle, 'Scevolæ et Lælii more--aut velitationem illam Croci cum Lelando
perridiculam, vel reliquas Oxonienses nugas (ita enim profecto sunt,'
saith he,) 'evolvere voluerit, &c.' Dr. Tresham, also, who was many
years Commissary or Vice-Chancellor of the University, is said by
(Humfredus in Vita Juelli) 'ludere in re seria, &c.'" When Queen
Elizabeth was asked her opinion of the scholarship of the two great
cotemporaries, the learned Buchanan and Dr. Walter Haddon, the latter
accounted the best writer of Latin of his age, she dexterously avoided
the imputation of partiality by replying: "_Buchannum omnibus
antepono, Haddonum nemini postpono_."
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