HEYWOOD, JOHN, styled the epigrammatist, from a work which he published under the title of Six Centuries of Epigrams, was born (it is not known in what year) at North Mims, near St Albans. He was educated at Oxford, and afterwards made the acquaintance of Sir Thomas More, who introduced him at court. His skill in music and his inexhaustible fund of ready wit made him a special
favourite of Henry VIII., and afterwards of his daughter Mary;—and it is said to have been only pungent jesting that could move the laughter of two such persons. His Interludes, a kind of connecting link between the old moralities and the modern drama, were extremely popular in their day. These generally represented some ludicrous incident of a homely kind in a style of the broadest farce, and in their way displayed no mean skill and talent. One of these interludes, called The Four P's, describes a contest between a pedlar, a poticary, a palmer, and a pardon, as to which of them shall tell the grossest lie. The palmer remarks that he never saw a woman out of patience in all his life; and his rivals, amid much jesting, confess themselves vanquished. Heywood's longest single work is an immense burlesque allegory, published under the title of the Parable of the Spider and the Fly. The spider symbolizes the Protestant party, the fly the Catholic. The allegory itself is an account of the conflict between the two parties, but so long-winded, intricate, and unintelligible that, in the words of an old critic, "neither he himself that made it, nor any one that readeth it, can reach unto the meaning thereof." On the accession of Queen Elizabeth, Heywood, who was a zealous Catholic, fled to Mechlin in Belgium, where he died in 1565.