¶ The true report of the form and shape of a monstrous child, borne at Much Horkesleye, a village three miles from Colchester, in the county of Essex, the xxi day of Apryll in this year. 1562.  
O, praise ye God and bless his name  
His mighty hand hath wrought the same.  
 

THis monstrous world that monsters bredes as rife  
As men tofore it bred by native kind  
By births that show corrupted nature's strife  
Declares what sins beset the secret mind.   

I mean not this as though deformed shape  
Were always linkd with fraughted mind with vice  
But that in nature god such draughts doth shape  
Resembling sins that so been had in price,   

So grossest faults braced out in bodies form  
And monster caused of want or to much store  
Of matter, shows the sea of sin: whose storm  
Oreflowes and whelmes virtues barren shore.   

faulty alike in ebb and eke in flowed,  
Like distant both from mean, both like extremnes.  
Yet greatest excess the want of mean doth shroud  
And want of mean excess from virtues means.   

So contraryest extremes consent in sin  
Which to be wray to blindest eyes by sight  
Behold a calf hath clapped about his chin  
His chauderne reft whence nature placed it right.   

And ●u●●d drives doubtful seers to prove by speech  
Themselves not calves, and makes the fashion stolen.  
In him behold by excess from mean our breach  
And mids excess yet want of nature's shape.   

To show our miss behold a guiltless babe  
Reft of his limbs (for such is virtues want)  
Himself and parents both infamous made  
With sinful birth: and yet a worldling scant.  
Fears midwyfes rout: bewraying his parent's fault  
In want of honesty and excess of sin.  
Made lawful by all laws of man, yet halt  
Of limbs by God, scaped not the shameful mark   

Of bastard son in bastard shape descried.  
Better far better ungyven were his life  
Than given so. For nature just envy  
Her gift to him: and cropd with maiming knife   

His limbs, to wreak her spite on parent's sin▪  
Which, if she spare unwares so many 'scapes  
As wicked world to breed will never sin  
Their lives declare their maims saved from their shapes   

Scorched in their minds (o cruel privy maim  
That festreth still, o unrecured sore)  
Where thothers quitting with their bodies shame  
Their parent's guilt, oft linger not their lives  
In loathed shapes but naked fly to skies.  
As this may do whose form tofore thine eyes  
Through want thou seest, a monstrous ugly shape  
Whom friendly world to sin doth term a escape.   

ON Tuysday being the xxi day of Apryll, in this year of our Lord God a thousand five hundred three score and two, there was borne a man child of this maimed form at Much Horkesley in Essex, a village about three miles from Colchester, between a natural father and a natural mother having neither hand, foot, leg, nor arm, but on the left side it hath a Stump growing out of the shoulder, and the end thereof is round, and not so long as it should go to the elbow, and on the right side no mention of any thing where any arm should be, but a little stump of one inch in length, also on the left buttock there is a stump coming out of the length of the thigh almost to the knee, and round at the end, and groweth something overthwart towards the place where the right leg should be, and where the right leg should be, there is no mention of any leg or stump. Also it hath a Cod and stones but no yard, but a little hole for the water to issue out. finally it hath by estimation no tongue, by reason whereof it sucketh not, but is succoured with liquid substance put into the mouth by drops, and now beginneth to feed with pap being very well favoured, and of good and cheerful face.  
¶ The aforesaid Anthony Smyth of Much Horkesley husbandman and his wife, were both married to others before, and have had divers children, but this deformed child is the first that the said Anthony and his wife had between them two, it is a man child. This child was begot out of matrimony, but borne in matrimony. And at the making hereof was living, and like to continue.    

¶ Imprinted at London in Fleetstreet near to S. Dunston's church by Thomas Marsh.