Thomas Smyth and William Gray

Chronologically, the next flyting to consider is also conducted between courtiers, although the debate appears in the more public medium of printed broadside ballads. In these invectives from 1540 Thomas Smyth, “seruaunte to the kynges royall maiestie/ And clerke to the Quenes graces counsell” and William Gray, favorite of the capricious Henry VIII and protégé of Thomas Cromwell, level accusations of sectarianism and Romanism against one another respectively, while taking considerable trouble to emphasise that they cannot substantiate their claims. Poems from the controversy began to appear in print within a month of Cromwell’s execution (28^th July, 1540), instigated by disagreement over the rectitude of his sentence. Hence, they are situated in the midst of suspicion and uncertainty brought about by a complex juncture in the Reformation in which the ongoing witch-hunt for Papist recusants was concurrent with the execution for treason of the Vicar General of the reformed Church. It might, in fact, be the case that the two men alternately affect the roles of inquisitor and defendant as a means of deflecting suspicion from one another.

The controversy arises out of an exchange of broadside ballads beginning with an anonymous libel attacking Cromwell posthumously (‘A Newe Ballade Made of Thomas Crumwel, Called “Trolle on Away”’). ²¹⁴ This is the only explicitly pro-Catholic poem in

17:1 (1999), 177-212 (p.185).
²¹⁴ The ballad is reprinted by Dormer (1923), pp.76-8. The original appears to be lost (see Livingston (1991), p.821). The word troll recurs frequently throughout the flyting. OED cites numerous definitions of the verb. To troll is to allure or entice, to angle, to perform an antiphonal song, or “to move nimbly” from one place to the next. The word might also denote a knave:

OED, Troll, IV. 15

b.Troll and troll by, Troll hazard, Troll with, as sbs., names for various ‘orders of knaves’: see quot. and cf. sense 1. Obs. Cant.

1561 J. Awdelay Frat. Vacab. (E.E.T.S.) 12 Troll and Trol by, is he that setteth