By the aid of the latter, he took precedence of the former; and his publications, though not voluminous, soon gained a general popularity.

So that when an arbitrary king saw fit to silence competition among the philologists, by becoming himself, as Sir Thomas Elliott says, "the chiefe authour and setter-forth of an introduction into grammar, for the childrene of his lovynge subjects," Lily's Grammar was preferred for the basis of the standard.

Hence, after the publishing of it became a privilege patented by the crown, the book appears to have been honoured with a royal title, and to have been familiarly called King Henry's Grammar.
5.

Prefixed to this book, there appears a very ancient epistle to the reader, which while it shows the reasons for this royal interference with grammar, shows also, what is worthy of remembrance, that guarded and maintained as it was, even royal interference was here ineffectual to its purpose.

It neither produced uniformity in the methods of teaching, nor, even for instruction in a dead language, entirely prevented the old manual from becoming diverse in its different editions.