The work was written in 1553, during the final months of the reign of King Edward VI, but was not published because the accession of Mary Tudor to the throne prevented it. Joseph Ritson's Bibliographia Poetica (1802) is the only authority for an edition dated 1561, which is probably an error. An edition from 1570 is now only known via a Victorian era transcript; a second 1570 edition survives only as a four-page fragment. There is also another edition, dated 1584. The work was dedicated to the courtier John Young.
