Baldwin also sets forth his reasons for beginning the work: When the printer had purposed with hym selfe to printe Lidgate's booke of the fall of Princes, and had made privye thereto, many both honourable and worshipfull, he was counsailed by dyvers of them, to procure to have the storye contynewed from where as Bochas [Boccaccio] lefte, unto this presente time, chiefly of such as Fortune had dalyed with here in this ylande ... which advice liked him so well, that hee requyred mee to take paynes therein.A first edition of the work was compiled as early as 1555 by the publisher John Weyland, but only the title page remains, attached to his edition of Lydgate.
Poems dealing with the mistakes of the nobility of the preceding age were bound to be controversial, either by insulting the ancestors of the ruling class or, under the pretext of criticism, subtly praising the regime's political enemies.
Whether this was due to ill health—he probably died around 1563—or because the recent lives were more controversial, is uncertain, but it is significant that the next major expansion of the work confined itself mainly to the ancient past.
The critical assessment of the lives of people from recent history which was evident in the compositions of Baldwin's and his contemporary writers, gave way to mostly laudatory accounts of the distant legends of the early Britons.
What was once a politically contentious book, examining lives offering warnings to the present on the errors of the past, was now a work displaying national pride in England's history; many of which were taken from the largely mythical Historia Regum Britanniae.
Ignoring the omissions of the Niccols edition, the entire work contained almost one hundred lives, covering the period from Albanact in 1085 BC to Elizabeth in 1603 and written over 60 years.
It was also significant for its development of the form of tragedy in English literature, with Higgins' story of Lier and Cordila providing a source for Shakespeare's King Lear.
Many of the other poems are told in a dull, didactic tone and Edmund Gosse, writing in 1913, whilst offering guarded praise, said "the unflinching poetasters grind out in their monotonous rime royal".
[1] What follows is a list of the lives added in the principal editions of the Mirror for Magistrates: Robert Tresilian, Roger Mortimer, Thomas, Duke of Gloucester, Thomas Mowbrey, Richard II, Owain Glyndŵr, Henry Percy, Richard, Earl of Cambridge, Thomas, Earl of Salisbury, James I of Scotland, William de la Pole, Jack Cade, Richard, Duke of York, John Clifford, John Tiptoft, Richard, Earl of Warwick, Henry VI, George, Duke of Clarence, Edward IV Story in prose of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and his wife Eleanor Cobham Anthony Woodville, William Hastings, Henry, Duke of Buckingham, William Collingbourne, Richard III, Shore’s Wife (Jane Shore), Edmund Beaufort and the Blackesmith (Lord Audley) Albanactus, Humber, Locrinus, Estrildis, Sabrine daughter of Estrildis, Maddan, Malin son of Maddan, Mempricius, Bladud, Cordila, Morgan, Forrex, Porrex, Kimarus, Morindus, Nennius and in a 1575 copy Irenglas Guidericus, Carassus, Helena, Vortiger, Uther Pendragon, Cadwallader, Sigebert, Lady Ebbe, Alurede, Egelrede, Edric and Harold Iago, Pinnar, Stater, Rudacke, Brennus, Emerianus, Chirinnus, Varianus, Julius Caesar, Tiberius, Caligula, Guiderius, Lelius Hamo, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Londricus, Severus, Fulgentius a Pict, Geta, Caracalla, Nicholas Burdet, James IV, Flodden Field and Cardinal Wolsey Arthur, Edmund Ironside, Alfred, Godwin, Robert Curthose, Richard I, John, Edward II, Edward V, Richard III and Elizabeth