“By hoke ne by croke.”

— John Skelton

Source: Jane Scroop (her lament for Philip Sparrow) (likely published c. 1509), Colyn Cloute (published c. 1550), Line 1240. Compare: "In hope her to attain by hook or crook", Edmund Spenser, Faerie Queene, book iii, canto i, stanza 17.

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John Skelton 14

English poet 1460–1529

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The Proverbs of Alfred, st. 19, as published in The Dialogue of Salomon and Saturnus (1848) http://archive.org/stream/dialogueofsalomo00kembuoft#page/226/mode/2up/search/Alfred, edited by John Mitchell Kemble, p. 247
Misattributed