Excerpt from The Life of Saint Wenburge of Clester

The present legend is extant only in an edition by Pynson (London), 1521 (described in Dibdin's Typogr. Antiq. II. 491), of which five copies are known to exist: one (the copy described by Dibdin as Heber's) in the British Museum, two in the Bodleian, one in the Minster library at York, and one in Mr. Christie Miller's collection (cf. Hawkins). It was carefully reprinted (in the type and shape of Pynson's ed., with all its faults, and without punctuation) for the Chetham Society, 1848, by E. Hawkins, with an introduction. Extracts had been given by Dibdin, and, not always correctly, by Warton (Hist, of Engl Poetry, II. 371 - 380).

In Pynson's edition the poem is preceded by a prologue in the honour of St. Werburge by J. T. (whose name neither Herbert nor Hawkins were able to make out). This prologue in an acrostic of the two first stanzas, and in vv. 17, 23, 28, names Henry Bradsha, "sometyme monke in Chester, " and servant of St. Werburge, as the author of the English legend.

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