It is commonly said, even by such exact critics as the late Dean
Church, that the _Mirror for Magistrates_ was planned by the most
famous of the poets who took part in its execution, Thomas Sackville,
Lord Buckhurst. If a very clever man is combined in any enterprise
with people of less prominence, it is ten to one that he gets all the
credit of the adventure. But the evidence on this point goes to prove
that it was not until the work was well advanced that Sackville
contributed to it at all. The inventor of the _Mirror for Magistrates_
seems, rather, to have been George Ferrers, a prominent lawyer and
politician, who was master of the King's Pastimes at the very close
of Henry VIII.'s reign. Ferrers was ambitious to create a drama in
England, and lacked only genius to be the British Aeschylus. The time
was not ripe, but he was evidently very anxious to set the world
tripping to his goatherd's pipe. He advertised for help in these
designs, and the list of persons he wanted is an amusing one; he was
willing to engage "a divine, a philosopher, an astronomer, a poet, a
physician, an apothecary, a master of requests, a civilian, a clown,
two gentlemen ushers, besides jugglers, tumblers, fools, friars, and
such others," Fortune sent him, from Oxford, one William Baldwin, who
was most of these things, especially divine and poet, and who became
Ferrers' confidential factotum. The master and assistant-master of
Pastimes were humming merrily on at their masques and triumphs, when,
the King expired. Under Queen Mary, revels might not flourish, but the
friendship between Ferrers and Baldwin did not cease. They planned a
more doleful but more durable form of entertainment, and the _Mirror
for Magistrates_ was started. Those who claim for Sackville the
main part of this invention, forget that he is not mentioned as a
contributor till what was really the third edition, and that, when the
first went to press, he was only eighteen years of age.