Honour and vertue, triumphing over the grave Exemplified in a faire devout life, and death, adorned with the surviving perfections of Edward Lord Stafford, lately deceased; the last baron of that illustrious family: which honour in him ended with as great lustre as the sunne sets within a serene skye. A treatise so written, that it is as well applicative to all of noble extraction, as to him, and wherein are handled all the requisites of honour, together with the greatest morall, and divine vertues, and commended to the practise of the noble prudent reader. By Anth. Stafford his most humble kinsman. This worke is much embelish'd by the addition of many most elegant elegies penned by the most accute wits of these times.

Sacred to the Memory of the Right Honourable, the Lord STAFFORD being the last Baron of his Name.

T'Is high Presumption in us, that are The feete, so almost excrement, to dare Turne eyes and weeape a puddle rivulet Over thy herse, which Nobles have beset

We teem'd too fast, and too much issue had That let us blood, as rules of Physick bad: But this gnawes our land's heart, Nobilitie, And is more cruell in Epitomie. By making us in this one Staffords fall, To celebrate the exequies of all.

Why wouldst thou yeeld so soone to death? alas! Thou hast too speedily finisht thy race: Thou ought'st not, pretty flowre, have hung thy head, Till thou wast ripe, and blown, hadst scattered Some seedes about thy bed: where in a shade Thou mightst have slept by thy sonne-flowers made: When with strong bulwork of posterity T'hadst fortify'd, thy decay'd Ancestry, Built up thy ruin'd house, allay'd our feares, And wert foure-score as wel in sons, as yeares, O then, and not til then, thou shouldst have tri'd Whether our tender love would let thee'ave di'd.

Tho. Snelling. of S. Iohns Oxf.