Publicly accessible
Prepared for the University of Virginia Library Electronic Text Center.
Having begun this project while engaging in doctoral research more than twenty years ago at the University of Virginia, I am specially delighted that it should be appearing from the E-text Center at Alderman Library. It was amongst the Faulkner archives in Alderman that David Nordloh, of Indiana University, put me through my earliest editorial paces, teaching me more about editorial principles and practices than I could absorb at the time and certainly more than I can recall now. Any and all obvious errors of editorial conception or execution in this project are entirely my responsibility; anything I might have got right probably owes itself to David's training. And it was in Charlottesville that Ian Jack, visiting from Pembroke College, Cambridge, took valuable time away from his own work on the texts of Browning to encourage me in planning an anthology of Restoration panegyrics. With the arrival of the microchip, the years since then have witnessed a transformation in the methods, theories, and means of editorial work and the reproduction of texts on a scale surely even greater than that heralded by the arrival of moveable type. That this project, begun in discussions at lunch overlooking the Lawn and in the rare books reading room at Alderman, should finally emerge into the light of day in electronic form from the E-Text Center seems, to me, peculiarly appropriate. My thanks to Jerry McGann for suggesting it, and to David Seaman for listening.
Even as I prepare the first sets of poems for electronic publication there are, the London news agencies would have us believe, millions of people for whom anticipating whether the current Prince of Wales will ever become Charles III is a matter of the utmost urgency. At the most general level, questions that were being asked back in 1659 and 1660 are once again on the agenda: should there be a monarchy? if so how, and over what or whom, does it rule? will Charles be suited for the job? what sort of king might he become? How will the poet laureate address the occasion? Beyond this very general level, of course, the issues at stake are very different, but not utterly or entirely. If supporters of monarchy living within the British Isles in 1660 were, and those living there now are, sufficient in number and political authority to put another king on the throne and keep him there, what can have happened to republicanism?
For those of us disappointed by the eventual outcome of what, in 1967, 1968, and 1969, seemed like a "revolution" in progress, the question of how revolutions come to fail has often taken the form of asking how it can be that an assembly of representations -- what in the 1990s has come to be called "culture" -- can interfere with, and sometimes even direct, the course of economic and political history. How do cultural formations, such as pictures, songs, plays, new jargons, forms of dress and public behaviour achieve political agency, entering and transforming the ways life is lived, power acquired and displayed, wealth accumulated and distributed? What might the poetry, published back in 1660 to celebrate the Restoration of the Stuart dynasty to the thrones constituting Great Britain, tell us about how poetry does, sometimes, make things happen?
In preparing the Introduction to this electronic edition, I have supplied only references to my own previous publications in support of the general claims being advanced. This is not simply the result of vanity but rather, I trust, a convenient way of indicating where more may be found concerning the drift of my argument or the historical and textual issues at hand, as well as particular citations to the primary and scholarly works on which I have relied. Since these essays have appeared over a twenty year period, certain discrepancies have arisen, but the references to scholarship in the field still prove useful and reliable. To the same ends I have prepared a list of Works Cited listing the scholarly resources that I have relied on while editing and annotating these poems: this will be updated from time to time while the groups of poems are being issued.
While I plan to issue annotated sets of the poems listed in the Calendar as quickly as possible, delays are certain to occur. Meanwhile I hope that anyone interested in this project will contact me with suggestions or comments. I will be happy to consider requests for provisional copies of any of the listed poems. From June 1999 through August 2000 I am off-line from my e-mail address at Wayne State, but can be reached at: 12 Southcombe St, Chagford, Devon, TQ13 8AY, England.
Since starting work on this project in 1979, I have incurred more debts than I care to recall to scholars and friends who have supplied and checked facts of all sorts. I have attempted to acknowledge specific debts in the notes to individual poems.
First, my special thanks to Jo Dulan and Mary Gillis who helped keyboard many of the texts, often from xeroxed copies that were frustrating to read.
At one time or another, I know that the following have all helped with information, confirmed suspicions, or generously supported this project in some other intellectual, professional, or material way: Jack Armistead, Iain Boal, Martin Bernal, John Bidwell, George Bornstein, Leo Braudy, John Brewer, Carol Briggs, the late Irvin Ehrenpreis, David Evans, A. J. Flavell, Howard Erskine-Hill, David Greetham, George Guffey, Bridget Hill, Christopher Hill, Speed Hill, Elaine Hobby, Ian Jack, N. H. Keeble, Robert Kellogg, Arthur Kinney, Laura Knoppers, Del Kolve, David Loewenstein, Nancy Klein Maguire, Arthur Marotti, the late Jeremy Maule, Michael McKeon, David Norbrook, Max Novak, Jason McElligott, Jerry McGann, John J. Morrison, Annabel Patterson, Lois Potter, Joad Raymond, Alan Roper, Kevin Sharpe, Nigel Smith, Susan Staves, Sara Jayne Steen, Ernie Sullivan, Len Tennenhouse, David Underdown, Andrew Walkling, James Winn, and Steve Zwicker. I can only hope the end product lives up to their expectations. My thanks also to the innumerable friends who have listened to me talking about 1660 and the poetry written that year regardless of their interest: they know who they are. I would also like to thank the numerous reviewers -- sometimes known, sometimes anonymous -- who have supported and refereed my grant applications and the various articles that I have written about this project.
Over the many years of working on it, librarians at a large number of institutions have been of incalculable helpfulness. My special thanks to Dr. Nicholas Bennett of Lincoln Cathedral Library; L. Brotherton of the Manchester Central Library; Dr. Christine Ferdinand, Librarian of Magdalen College, Oxford; John Field of Westminster School; B. E. Fowler, Clerk of Horsmonden Parish Council; Janet McMullin, Assistant Librarian of Christ Church College, Oxford; Roger Norris of Durham Cathedral Library; Joanna Parker, Librarian of Worcester College, Oxford; Dr. Michael Powell of Chetham's Library, Manchester; Paul Quarrie of Eton College Library; D. W. Riley of the John Rylands Library, Manchester; Alan Tadiello, Librarian of Balliol College, Oxford; P. W. Thomas of Exeter Cathedral Library; the late Paul Yeats-Edwards of Winchester College Library; Elizabeth Watson and Paul Escreet of Glasgow University Library. I have marvelled at their prompt, courteous and informative replies to my various enquiries. Without the generosity of John Morrison and others engaged in revising the Wing STC, this project might have been abandoned long ago.
More generally, to all the librarians and members of staff who, since 1979, have worked at the Alderman Library at UVA, the Kresge and Purdey Libraries at Wayne State, the University of Michigan Library in Ann Arbor, the Detroit Public Library, the Bodleian Library, the British Library, the Cambridge University Library, the Exeter University Library, Lambeth Palace Library, the John Rylands Library in Manchester, the National Library of Scotland, the Houghton Library at Harvard, the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library UCLA, the Huntington Library, St. John's College Library, Cambridge, and the Wren Library at Trinity College, Cambridge, my gratitude for courtesies remembered.
Funds and other forms of institutional support have, at various stages, been generously provided by a number of bodies. Between 1979 and 1981, the Department of English at UVA first provided funds for me to collect photocopies of nearly every piece of verse in the Thomason Tracts, that was then becoming available on microfilm. The Purchasing Office at Alderman Library promptly bought copies of every new book that I recommeded. During those years, University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, kindly supplied me with up to date reel guides to their publications of Early English Texts; I will never forget the exceptional generosity of the anonymous gift from someone at University Microfilms of a hard-bound photocopy of George Fortescue's Catalogue to the Thomason Tracts since I still use it regularly. In 1982, the Advisory Research Board of Queen's University at Kingston supplied funds for my first research trip to the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library; the Ahmanson Foundation at UCLA supported my return there on several occasions. In 1983, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada funded early research trips to the British Library and the Bodleian Library. In 1989, a research grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities enabled me to take a semester's leave from teaching to work in the Clark and Huntington Libararies. Since 1983, numerous grants and research fellowships awarded by the Dean of Liberal Arts and the Humanities Research Center of Wayne State University have enabled me to conduct research in numerous locations.
To all, my thanks.
{add to current preface after acknowledgements}
As I send off the second installment of these poems, those from December 1659 through April 1660, I am acutely aware of various omissions and errors in the work already online. These will be corrected in due course. Meanwhile, I continue to welcome suggestions, corrections, and advice. Please contact me at: aa2828@wayne.edu
Over the years of working on this project, I have been constantly aware of the innumerable scholars whose labors have made mine possible. Most especially has the figure of Joseph Woodfall Ebsworth haunted me, since he it was who first set about the only previous systematic attempt to collect and edit all the broadside ballads published on the Restoration in his serially-produced volumes of The Roxburghe Ballads. I know little of his life, but have spent many hours reading his commentaries and following up on his not always reliable, but usually fascinating, scholarly leads. I think if we were to have met, we would have found our views on the nineteenth century more alike than our views on the seventeenth, and the fantasy of such conversations has often haunted me as, for my collation sheets, I have pored over old ink on pages that he must have handled.
Ebsworth would, I am sure, have been quick to understand the possibilities of electronic publication, and to have recognized the perils. He would, I am certain, have understood the strange feeling of returning to a seemingly endless editorial project after more than a year away. While preparing this second installment of poems, those representing the king printed during the period December 1659 through April 1660, I have thought of Ebsworth often because it was during these months that the broadsides were produced that he knew so much about. 1 With his ghost beside me and work before me, I offer the following supplement to my previous summary comments on the place of the broadside ballad in the formation of a poetic discourse of Restoration during 1660.
Ebsworth's The Roxburghe Ballads, which appeared in nine volumes between 1871 and 1897, remains a monstrously ambitious task, the collection and editing of all the English street ballads published up to the end of the seventeenth century. For the most part, Ebsworth's volumes are internally organized according to specific collections, but also according to themes -- the Robin Hood ballads appear collected together, for example. But during the twenty-five years of his labors, Ebsworth necessarily had to reinvent the structure and scope of his project as new materials became available to him. He frequently became interested in sets of texts that distracted him from the task at hand. In the editorial idiom of his time, Ebsworth's volumes are a wonderland of addresses to the reader explaining why the editor is now turning aside to present some recent discoveries.
For the most part, Ebsworth's textual transcriptons are unreliable by modern scholarly standards: he handles spelling, line length and punctuation with little regard for the original, and without any evident or systematic policy. But his volumes still provide the best repository of the materials collected. And, as is true of so much nineteenth-century antiquarian scholarship, his commentaries often remain useful as guides to further research. Indeed, if Ebsworth's texts belong to a period of editing when the idiosyncrasies of the editor were permitted free reign, his commentaries are sometimes not entirely reliable either, but they do provide lots of informed hints about where to go to find things out.
Editing volumes seven, eight and nine of The Roxburghe Ballads, Ebsworth found himself excited by the ballads on the Restoration. He returned to the question of how poetry figured in the political settlement several times in these volumes, clearly eager to be able to offer a definitive account, but each time he looked, he discovered there were more ballads to include and each of them slightly altered the picture. While retracing many of Woodfall's steps in preparing my versions of the Restoration ballads, I have been unable to improve or even to verify his account of a set of broadsides from 1660 that were discovered during the nineteenth century, lining a leather trunk in the British Museum. Of these "trunk ballads," Ebsworth gives various accounts:
Many copies of contemporary ballads on the Restoration of the Monarchy, that were bought eagerly by loyal Cavaliers, must have been printed to meet a large demand, but their very popularity caused their speedy disappearance.
The broadsides were pasted upon walls in workshops and private houses. Some were used to line a new leather trunk, and thus came down to us, unique exemplars, marked with the impress and brown stains of the portmanteau, more or less mutilated. One is the `Noble Progress' of Monk, a distinct version of `Iter Boreale, the Second Part.' (Ebsworth, RB, 9:789)
Earlier in the same volume, in a lengthy preface added as the work went to press, Ebsworth provided a fuller, more interesting account that allows us a good glimpse of the man's temperament and offers a spirited version of a view once traditional and popular:
The Restoration was a spontaneous outburst of joy, and needed no stimulus. Had it not been meant for a national welcome, in vain would have been all the caballing and underplotting, such as had marked abortive efforts of brave unpractised men, each one loyally sacrificing his life for the rightful heir's just cause; while every day matters grew worse. Oliver Cromwell himself became weary of the vain struggle with unworkable materials, in the main his own miscreations. "I would have been glad to have lived under my woodside, to have kept a flock of sheep, rather than undertake such a government as this! Let God be judge between you and me!" Thus he spoke to the House, 4 Feb. 1658. A few months later, during his last June, news came of the victory at Dunkirk. The protest against "The Domination of the Sword," telling how "Law lies a bleeding" was then sung to the tune of the original "Love lies a bleeding."
We next continue our reprint of the unique "Trunk Ballads," six in number, that, till 1841, had formed the lining of an old leathern portmanteau, made in London, at the time of the Coronation; one year after that glorious `Royal-Oak Day,' the twenty-ninth of May, the birthday of the welcomed King.
Thus it was: a frugal Cheapside trunk-maker counted the cost of holidays, with loss of private cash for purchase of the half-dozen Black-letter Ballads, of date May 29, 1660, to April 23, 1661. Groaning the immortal words, "Bang goes sixpence!" he atoned for his prodigality, by turning the broadsides into profit. He lined the trunk with them -- at that same date, April 23, 1661. Of course, he charged their extra cost on the Loyal Cavalier who was then returning to his own home, at Wallington, in Northumberland; bearing a limp purse indeed, but with pleasant memories of the `Little Village on Thames.' (To none is it equal, not even Vienna the hospitable, or Lutetia, the city of delights, whereunto "all good Americans go when they die," but earlier if possible.) So he went back to his happy home, taking a wife with him, a recollection of the King's gracious smile, the beauty of Barbara Palmer, and the satisfaction of having seen ten Regicides executed coram populo.
Thus the `Trunk Ballads' became heirlooms for posterity. (Ebsworth, RB, 9:xxxv).
Thus it may, indeed, have been. Ebsworth understood the ballads of the Restoration better than many have done since, if only because he clearly felt himself to be living in such immediate contact with the events of the seventeenth century that he found it unthinkable not to take sides. I have been unable to track the accuracy of Woodfall's tale about the owner of the trunk, but offer it here as the fruit of a learned man's historically informed fantasy. Some of Ebsworth's details, however, seem to be misinformed. Giles Mandelbrote, Curator of British Collections, 1501-1800, at the British Library has kindly examined the ballads and reports:
None of the six ballads is stamped, which would provide a definitive accession date, but Ebworth's date of 1841 seems unlikely. It seems much more likely that the "trunk ballads" are to be identified with the "six ballads of the time of Charles II" presented to the British Museum on 9 February 1828 by W. C. Trevelyan and recorded in the Museum's Book of Presents. This is confirmed by the manuscript note still bound in with the album (shelfmark 835.m.10) from which these ballads were later removed in about 1940, when a separate volume (shelfmark C.120.h.4) was created for them. This note, signed by W. C. Trevelyan, records that "The following six Ballads of the time of Charles 2d. [were] found in the lining of an old Trunk." ... As you will have noticed, all these references mention only six ballads. This confirms your suspicion that the seventh item in the volume, An Elegy on the Death of his Sacred Majesty King Charles II, has come from a different source. ... I can shed no light on Ebsworth's source for the 1661 date or the other details he gives, but -- although they may have been embroidered -- I would doubt that they are entirely made up and I remain rather curious about this.2
At the present writing (December 2000), the "trunk ballads" are being removed from their more recent backing for improved long-term preservation and so that the decorated verso of the sheets, which presumably formed the inner lining of the trunk, can be more easily studied.
In order to keep the textual evidence of these broadsides together, as it were, I have included each of the ballads, even though two of them, being anti-Rump satires, would strictly fall outside the scope of the present anthology.
The ballads included in this anthology most typically offer imaginary and imaginative accounts of just how much the people wanted the king to come back, and in doing so show a clear sense of the Fleet Street principle of telling readers what they already believe themselves to think is true. Aimed at a broad audience, broadsides and ballads exemplify this principle perhaps more immediately than some of the longer, more formal verses since they were quicker to be composed and so begin by appearing to report on current affairs more immediately. Yet in common with more formal panegyrics, ballads share a generally obvious set of thematic contents and perspectives that recur throughout the year. They show considerable concern for how the king's return will effect economic, juridicial, political, social, and ecclesiastical conditions. The Restoration ballads often adopt localized and interest-specific perspectives, that of London merchants, mariners, or the gentry living in the countryside, yet are surprisingly vague on questions of what constitutes a national identity, often speaking in general of England, but advocating a generalized notion of loyalty and only seldom specifying differences between England and Scotland. Ballads emphasize how the return of the king will be good for trade, bringing about a return of justice, of traditional Parliamentary government, and of the Anglican Church. Several claim that the king's return promises to make England, or Britain, a world power; some advocate aggressive policies towards foreign nations, one recommends conciliation with Spain.
In formal terms, the ballads share a number of common verse patterns since they were written for the most part to familiar tunes. The most popular, for obvious reasons, was "When the King Enjoys his own again," by Martin Parker which had first been published in 1641 and then reissued in several printings during 1660. Several ballads from 1660 re-used this tune to arrange their verse and rhyme schemes, and often borrowed the initial trope of prophetic vision to imagine and set an agenda for the future.
In such ways, ballads combined both prescriptive and descriptive tendencies. Some ballads favoured prescription, anticipating the effects of Restoration in order to instruct the new king: punish the regicides, improve trade, establish an empire, bring back true religion, justice, plenty, and low taxes. Other ballads favoured description and narrative, offering detailed and seemingly factual reports of Charles's return. Such works often provide lists of names, places, and incidents in order to suggest that they are offering reliable accounts, sometimes even eye-witness information. Some provide detailed chronicle accounts of a single day or brief period, invariably mixing narrative with interpretation, detailing what the events in question mean for the future. The escape from Worcester continued to provide a favorite starting point for descriptive narratives of this sort throughout the year.
Though popular in appeal, ballads often describe the contemporary scene by allusions to biblical and classical history. This suggests a certain degree of sophisticated literacy could to be expected among readers. Issued soon after the dissolution of the Rump, An Exit to Exit Tyrannus and The King Advancing both evoke images from the Bible and from Greek myth of primal rebellions against divine authority to celebrate Charles's victory against the ungodly, dark, and chthonic forces that are now in retreat. In The King Advancing, the ghost of the martyred king, Charles I, calls upon his son to exact a just revenge against the rebels and imagines their defeat in learned terms:
thus
Fell Titan's son's and bold Enceladus
In the Tinacrean Earth their bones are thrown
Whose hundred Anvils made all Ætna groan. (lines 79-82)
Other forms of literary expertise were expected by the writers and readers of Restoration ballads. The Country mans Vive le Roy of early May echoes Sir John Suckling's celebrated "Ballad on a Wedding."
Given their close relation to circumstantial events, the ballads collected in this anthology fall into three general chronological phases; those written in anticipation of the king's return, those written about the return as it was taking place, those that appear after the king had returned. Ballads of the early months that were published in hope of return are variously optative, bombastic, and sometimes cryptic. They employ typology, anagrams, and prophecies to substitute for actual developments and events. Ballads published after the fact, but describing specific events of January to May, share a journalistic emphasis on authenticating details; some are openly reportorial, chronicling the return by detailing places, events, and names. They emphasize how the king's return marks an end of previous bad government under the Rump, while offering threats and warnings to those who had recently opposed the king.
Early in the year, broadsides were commonly printed anonynmously, sometimes with contentious and spurious printer's colophons. "Printed for Charles King" appears fairly regularly during the early months on pamphlets and small books as well as broadsides. Ballads were frequently reissued in pirated editions. One example: Anthony Woods dated his copy of the ballad Upon the Kings Most Excellent Majesty in February, but only a few weeks later, on 16 March, Thomason recorded a reissue of the same ballad under the title News from the Royal Exchange. This ballad uses cryptic anagrams and acrostics to predict the certainty of the Restoration. The first version appeared under the irregular imprimatur "Printed for Theodorus Microcosmus 1660," while the later version more confidently announced "London, Printed for Charles King. 1660."
In May, once the king's return was certain, ballads published in anticipation of the event typically offered a mix of prescriptive commentary and detailed, journalistic reporting. They focused on what would happen now that the king's return was certain, emphasizing the wonders of the newly dawning age and the errors of the recent past. Several ballads printed during May reported the king's arrival on English soil in the form of progress narratives that provide detailed descriptions from Charles's arrival at Dover to his entry into London and first nights in the capital. Once the king was actually back, ballads began to take a longer view, placing recent events within a broader historical narrative that situates the king's return as the fulfilment of providentially organized past events. Often the period of Charles's absence is represented as a time when the English nation was punished for past sins. In such narratives, the retelling of events after the battle of Worcester continues to mark a common starting point in works that detail the period of the king's exile. But we will also find ballads offering retrospective glances as far back as 1641, especially when calling for punishment of the regicides.
The Restoration of Charles II in 1660 marked a period in world history by reintroducing monarchy to a nation that was determining global events through its artistic, scientific, and intellectual achievements as much as by its growing imperial ambitions. It also brought to an end the first great anti-monarchist revolution in modern European history. On no previous occasion had the commercial press been both so necessary and so directly instrumental in bringing a new government into being.1 This anthology seeks to bring together for the first time all the English language poems that appeared during 1660 anticipating Charles's return up to, but excluding, his coronation in April 1661, in order to map the cultural links between poetry and political life by demonstrating the range and scope of what was evidently an immense ideological need for a poetic legitimation of the new regime.2
Why did the English Revoution fail? While it would clearly be overstating the case to suggest that poetry in any direct way brought about the end of the English Revolution, or that it caused the reintroduction of monarchy, nevertheless the events of these crucial months would doubtless have taken different form had there been no commercial press producing and distributing the numerous poetic celebrations gathered here which, with few exceptions, aim to persuade their readers to agree with the poet that Charles's return was both good and needful. There was evidently a powerful perception that these things needed saying, in print, and in poetic form; a need that cannot simply be explained as the need of individual poets to publicize a display of their personal loyalty.3
When they were first published over three hundred years ago, the poems collected here helped to re-define the meanings of royalty to a people who had been without a monarch for nearly two decades, but also to the new king who was brought in to reign. What did it mean to be Charles Stuart, king of England, Scotland, and Ireland in 1660? What did the people expect of the man who came to rule over them? What were the burning issues of the day that only the arrival of a king could promise to solve? The most general aim of this edition is to indicate ways that poetry provided an authoritative public medium by which the sometimes private interests, hopes, and expectations of those helping to engineer and celebrate Charles's return could find expression. Except to poke fun at other poets or to demonize members of the Rump, these poems are never directly critical or satirical in contrast to the traditional view that Restoration poetry was satirical. Many of these poems, however, are highly didactic and openly advise the king to adopt any number of domestic and international policies in order to boost trade, settle disputes, establish peace and prosperity. What these poems reflect is the incredible diversity of problems that Charles was expected to solve, and of the equally diverse and often contradictory sets of opinions about how he was to go about the enormous task expected of him. Often poets advised the king of the dangers still to be faced from those opposing his return. Calls for the king to seek out and enact revenge upon the regicides and all other "traitors" still loyal to the good old cause were often more blood-thirsty than Charles's eventual policies, but serve as a crucial counterpoint to the constantly reiterated reports of spontaneous and unanimous celebration and praise. Even royalist panegyrists could not always maintain the illusion that Charles's return was as universally desired as was so often being proclaimed in various forms of printed text. Once these poems become available and understood not just as examples of poems from the oeuvres of particular poets -- Cowley, Waller, Davenant, or Dryden, for instance -- but as a public discourse that operates beyond the private talents and interests of the specific poet, then their historical importance and cultural agency can come into clearer focus. In this sense, of constituting a poetic discourse, these works establish a horizon of expectations within which Charles was called upon to perform the role of king, and by which that performance might be judged.4
Although they were written over three hundred years ago, these poems still help to define for us the very meaning and place of royalty in English culture. When Charles II arrived in England, the people who found that they had suddenly become his subjects had lived through the experience of regicide and revolutionary military governments. Among the documents that flooded from the presses in 1660, poems celebrating the king's return were not alone in encouraging readers to think about the many and likely benefits that would follow from bringing the king back. In the light of such expectations, the tasks confronting the new king, despite all the carefully orchestrated welcome, might well have seemed truly daunting. He found himself expected to rule a people grown accustomed to an unprecedented degree of public debate, a people who demanded regular news about, and influence over, political events. Unlike his father, Charles confronted the job of performing the role of king before an audience composed of a people grown accustomed to questioning and exercising authority themselves.5 How, and in what ways, might poets be said to have contributed to the failure of the English Revolution while at the same time establishing expectations by which the new king would be judged?
[1] See my "Literature, Culture, and Society in Restoration England," in Culture and Society in the Stuart Restoration: Literature, Drama, History, pp. 3-27; and Time's Witness, epilogue.
[2]See my "An Edition of Poems on the Restoration," Restoration 11 (1987): 117-21, and "What is a Restoration Poem? Editing a Discourse, Not an Author," TEXT 3 (1987), pp. 319-346.
[3] See my "Literature and Politics in Revolutionary England, 1640-1660," Review 16 (1994): 177-95.
[4] See my "The King on Trial: Judicial Poetics and the Restoration Settlement," The Michigan Academician 17 (1985): 375-88.
[5] See my "Literacy, Class, and Gender in Restoration England," TEXT 7 (1995), pp. 307-335.
Currently, there is no detailed study of the literary response to the Restoration based upon a comprehensive examination of the poetic works published in the months surrounding Charles II's return. This anthology aims to provide a resource for future literary-historical research as well as a contribution to the rapidly expanding study of print culture in the early modern period. This anthology has been designed to help social and literary historians better understand how poetry mediated civil unrest by providing the terms in which political struggle could be resituated as art.
The Return of the King provides accurate, old-spelling texts of the English poems addressed to the king on his return that were published between January 1660 and the coronation in April the following year. Many are being made available here, outside specialist library holdings, for the first time in over 300 years. Many are unique and have been entirely ignored by previous scholarship; several were, until recently, unlisted in standard bibliographies. Making these poems available, this edition contributes to our understanding of literary-historical relations at an important and still controversial moment in British and world history.
This project began in the late 1970s while I was conducting research into the vernacular backgrounds to Dryden's political poetry. Preliminary work on Astraea Redux quickly alerted me to the large number of Restoration panegyrics that had been ignored by the existing scholarly editions of Dryden's poem.6 Not only James Kinsley but also the editors of the California Dryden had limited their scope to poems by other well-known poets; the latter, for instance, restricting themselves to the other poems held in the collection at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library at UCLA. When first planned, this project was intended to produce a printed volume, similar in scope to London in Flames, London in Glory, R. A. Aubin's historical edition of poems on the great fire and rebuilding, that would contain all poems on the Restoration written or published during 1660. However, once I began cataloguing the enormous number of texts involved, this plan quickly proved impracticable. Since the rationale for the project centered on the public character of the poetic discourse, I happily abandoned plans to find, edit, and include poems that exist only in manuscript form, and all foreign language poems -- though this regretably meant omitting copious Greek and Latin verses including those produced by the dons at Oxford and Cambridge. Even so, the number of poems remained clearly well beyond the scope of a single volume, so I decided to limit the range even further by omitting poems addressed to General Monck or members of the royal family other than the king, and by cutting out verse satires on the defeated Rump.7
By thus restricting the project to poems printed in English that directly address the king in the period before his coronation, I hoped to produce an edition that would still be publishable in a single book while holding true to the conceptual rationale that had prompted the project in the first place.
After a little more than two decades of searching, transcribing, collating, and checking, the texts of the poems to be included were finally assembled and came to a little more than 300,000 words, without annotation. As such, this project could not be contained by a single, printed volume. By the late 1990s, the costs in time, labor, and money of publishing accurate, old-spelling editions of historical texts that even major research collections might not be able to afford, have become even more prohibitive than they have ever been. Or so I have been told.
In many of its features, this electronic edition betrays its own history of having been conceived of in printed form. One obvious limitation resulting from that history is that the headnotes and annotations have been prepared cumultatively so that the commentary on any given poem presumes upon information supplied in the general headnote to the group in which it appears, which in turn relies on prior annotations and headnotes. Were I starting out now, with electronic publication in mind, I would have proceeded quite differently in ways that are easy to imagine. Apart from setting out to learn a great deal more than I currently know about the possibilities of computer editing and use of hypertext applications -- I have worked throughout exclusively in MS-DOS using Notabene -- I would proceed much in the manner of the great antiquarian editor of the late nineteenth century, Joseph Woodfall Ebsworth, whose nine volumes of Roxburghe Ballads, issued between 1871 and 1897, represent -- among other things -- the last time an editor has set out to collect, edit, and annotate poems because they were ballads on the Restoration and not because the work in question forms part of an author's oeuvre. That is to say, I would have followed his lead and issued texts as they became available and once they were edited, not holding off from issuing edited poems until the entire project was complete.
[6]See my "Poetry as History: The Argumentative Design of Dryden's Astraea Redux," Restoration (1980): 54-64.
[7]See my "What's Class Got To Do With It?," in Margins of the Text, ed. D. C. Greetham (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997), pp. 25-42.
The poems included fall into three generic categories: broadsides and ballads, poems printed in separately published books and pamphlets, and embedded poems such as dedications and verses included with other texts.
Ballads include verses printed on single sheets, normally illustrated with woodcuts, black-letter and other ornamental print-fonts, and usually employing a "popular" lyrical form and idiom traditionally associated with radical, or at least popular, political views. For those in Restoration England who couldn't read, ballads were typically read aloud and pinned up in public places. Their ornamental lettering and woodcut illustrations served to make these broadsides an attractive souvenir for those not fully or formally "literate." Since ballads could be looked at by all, listened to by many, read by most city-dwellers, and collected by some -- like Samuel Pepys -- they constitute an important part of the commercial apparatus of public opinion-making. A group of six broadside ballads on the Restoration, subsequently referred to as the "trunk ballads," were found pasted inside a trunk to form a lining and are currently preserved in the British Library. Since all of them are unique copies, we may presume that there were many more such inexpensive commemorative publications that have not survived.
While the ballads are frequently anonymous, the more formal verse panegyrics represent an important movement towards the exclusive discourse of an élite and are very often aimed at drawing attention to the person, and skills, of the poet. Certainly the Latin, Greek and other non-English language poems addressed to Charles made certain that only an elect few, largely men, could read what they had to say. The Universities published celebratory volumes in 1 containing verses in Latin and Greek. The Cambridge collection additionally contained verses in Anglo-Saxon, Hebrew, Arabic, and Syrian. The Oxford volume included verses in English, as did the collection of verses by scholars of Woodstock School.
Most generally, the vernacular panegyric strain was varied and strong enough to dominate the scene, and it is in these formal verses that we find the emergence of that "Augustan" tradition of vernacular neo-classicism that literary historians have most often seen as the period's most significant contribution to English poetry. One thing that the revolutionary decades had certainly achieved was the pre-eminence of the English language as the public medium of printed discourse. In addition to the well-known poems by Dryden, Cowley, Waller, and Davenant, this edition will make generally available important but previously ignored poems by (among others) the antiquarians Elias Ashmole, Thomas Fuller, and James Howell, the career diplomat and Ottomanist Thomas Higgons, rural vicars such as John Couch, Giles Fleming, and Alexander Huish, young London lawyers such as Giles Duncombe, Thomas Flatman, and Samuel Woodford. There is a fascinating poem by Ralph Astell, the uncle and tutor to the celebrated "first feminist" Mary Astell, but most Royalist women declined to have their poems printed. Only one woman poet, Rachel Jevon, printed a poem in 1660, though we know that several other women poets, including Katherine Phillips, wrote poems on the occasion that were either left in manuscript or only printed considerably after the event.
All printed poems in each category that directly address the king on his return have been included. The poems have been arranged into chronological and narrative sections that help indicate the place of each poem within the developing literary discourse of returning monarchy during these months. Brought together here because of their common concern with formulating social, cultural, and literary terms for the new monarchy, many of these poems rely on historical narrative and tell a very similar story peopled by a range of historical figures, and often recording similar moments from the king's exile and miraculous return in extensive and sometimes conflicting narrative detail. In order to reduce the number of annotations, headnotes to each section include a brief summary of those events which are most often recorded by the poems in that group but not repeated in annotations to the text of the poem. Poems that cannot be dated with any certainty have been included within the chronological group they most resemble, based on the moment in that story at which the poem seems to insinuate itself (see Dating, below).
Arranging the poems into a chronological and narrative sequence in this way provides a reliable map to the development of themes, topics, and tropes during the course of the year. At the same time, readers interested in tracing the relative use of biblical or Virgilian references, for example, will be able to do so for a wider range of poetic works than was previously available. Other interests are also served by this arrangement. Readers beginning with a poem from July, for instance, will be able to turn to the general headnote to that section in order to find out in detail what was happening that month. References in poems to commonly mentioned historical figures and events will receive minimal explanatory footnotes, while more obscure and topical references will be glossed.
In addition to the headnotes to the chronological sections, entries for each poem will include a brief headnote containing bibliographical details, biographical information on poets, and other contextual information. Eventually I hope to include a short-title check-list of related, but excluded, poems -- such as those written to praise members of the royal family other than Charles, the numerous poems addressed to General Monck, and the poems written in foreign languages. The layout of information is aimed to assist readers seeking to trace the various relations between poet, publisher, and politician.
In keeping with the historical rationale for editing these verses in terms of their discursive agency, I have arranged them, as accurately as possible, into a calendar by which the events of the king's return can be seen to be unfolding throughout the year. In sorting the poems into groups that serve as narrative chapters, I have followed the following procedures in order to ensure that, while the groups are in some cases being imposed out of editorial requirements, they nevertheless arise in direct response to evidence provided by, or in, the poems.
At this stage, before I attempted to address the problems of poems for which I could find no evidence for dating, the simple monthly calendar was proving less useful than before. For obvious reasons, poems tended to cluster around certain key dates and consequently required greater specificity than months could allow: May clearly needed breaking up while months later in the year were often empty. What principles other than dating might usefully be employed, either to replace or to supplement the initial monthly calendar? With this question in mind, I set about looking among the undatable poems for any kinds of internal evidence that might help date such poems or suggest into what other sorts of groups such poems should go. At first I became much taken with the idea of beginning with all the ballads written to the tune "when the king enjoys his own again," and to end with the "trunk" ballads. But since there were numerous poems in each of these groups that could be dated by some means, setting up such a new general principle of organization might introduce new problems and incongruities. If I were to group all ballads to the same tunes, why not all works from the same printer? If I were to group together works that constituted a collection because they were found lining a trunk, why not group together poems from other forms of contemporary collection, notably those of Thomason and Wood? In that case, what about the collections assembled during the nineteenth century, such as the Crawford and Euing collections of broadsides? A further problem here, of course, is that copies of the same poem often appear in different collections; how should such items appear in this one?
In the event, I have stuck to a general chronological arrangement as far as possible, introducing thematic groups only when it makes better sense to do so than not to. Since the text of Martin Parker's original ballad, "When the king enjoys his own again," is itself a minor bibliographic nightmare, without any reliable evidence concerning the various versions printed for the Restoration, I have begun with a group of undatable variants of Parker's ballad, while other ballads to the same tune for which evidence of dating can be found are distributed accordingly. Three other thematic groupings encouraged themselves into which I have included poems even when there is evidence for dating: poems exclusively concerned with recounting Charles's escape from the Battle of Worcester back in 1651; a group of poems written from the perspective of Scotland;8 and a small selection of verses written on the trials of the regicides.
The copy text is the first printing, except when a subsequent printing shows evidence of authoritative revision.
The copy text is reprinted except for:
Textual notes indicate Wing number, the format of the printing, and provide a full description of the title page to the copy text when required. Sigla indicate the specific copies which have been collated, providing shelf-marks to copies in public-access libraries and collections. Sigla follow the abbreviations adopted by the Wing Short Title Catalogue for indicating library collections. Where multiple copies exist, I have attempted to examine at least five; where fewer than five copies are to be found in public access libraries, I have attempted to examine and collate all of them. Subsequent reprintings in seventeenth-century editions and collections, as well as a selection of modern scholarly editions, are indicated.
Substantive and accidental variants are reported in footnotes only when they may affect meaning; no attempt has been made to record all press variants.
Otherwise, footnotes and collations indicate all editorial changes to the copy text and list substantive press variants. However, spelling, capitalization, punctuation, and typographical variants are listed only when they significantly affect the sense.
When a variant in punctuation is listed, a wavy dash [~7E] is used in place of the word preceding the variant. A caret [^] signifies the ommission of a punctuation mark.
Where a majority of copies share a reading, the sigla may be replaced in the notes and collation with a capital Sigma [ä], and then departures from the majority reading are listed by specific sigla.
| bl | blackletter |
| brs | broadside |
| D | duodecimo |
| ed | the present editor |
| F | folio |
| ms | manuscript; also used to indicate hand corrections accompanied by "inked out/inked" |
| om | omitted |
| 8to | Octavo |
| Qto | Quarto |
| r (superscript) | recto |
| v (superscript) | verso |
| t/p | title page |
| ss | single sheet |
| 7E | word preceding variant |
| ä | agreement in a majority of copies |
| ^ | punctuation mark is omitted |
| () | date based on printed evidence from the title or colophon, or a contemporary hand-written annotation |
| [?] | date based on evidence from other sources; a question mark indicates editorial speculation based exclusively on internal evidence |
| ~Wing | Catalogue numbers are to the revised printed version of the Wing STC and may not conform to the electronic revision |
This listing represents the chronological groups into which I have organized the poems and in which they will be issued.
Although the information included here should prove redundant once this anthology has been completed, my object in including this checklist here is to provide scholars working in Restoration studies with a useful tool that will help them in assessing the poetic response to the events of 1660. This list is close to being a complete record of the printed English poems that directly address the king on his return, though I am acutely aware of omissions and the likelihood of errors.
This checklist provides full titles, colophons, and location guides to the English language poems that will be included in the present anthology. All were published to commemorate Charles's return between January 1660 and his Coronation in April 1661. Many of them are separately printed items, but I have also included poems to be found embedded in other works. In searching for embedded poems, I have attempted to examine copies of every Wing title dated 1660 as well as most dated 1659 and 1660; there are no doubt many more of these than I have been able to find.
Entries are here arranged alphabetically by author or title in the following format: Wing number; author; title, or title page details including colophon; format; list of copies known to me. I have attempted to provide bibliographical information that will most assist scholars in finding original copies by including library shelfmarks and selected reprint information, though again these details are far from complete in every case. Where specific copies of poems bear manuscript annotations, I have indicated so, especially when dates have been added. In citing libraries, I again follow the abbreviations adopted by the Wing project, adding shelfmarks to copies that appear in major public-access research collections.
In line with the policy of the anthology as a whole, omitted from this list are printed poems addressed primarily to General Monck or other members of the royal family, anti-Rump satires, and foreign language poems. I have made no systematic attempt to locate manuscript poems on the Restoration, but have, however, included here a brief checklist of manuscript poems in the Bodleian Library derived from Margaret Crum's First-Line Index of Manuscript Poetry in the Bodleian Library, and a selection of manuscript poems in the British Library.
Having been composed as a working checklist over the last two decades, this list nevertheless remains in many ways both incomplete and already out of date. Items not appearing in the first revised printed versions of Wing STC are marked /not Wing/: these will be updated from the online Wing STC in due course. Orthography has generally been simplified, though irregular use of capitals has been retained when evidently deliberate (eg Ralph Astell's poem). Under "Commentaries" I have listed bibliographical descriptions; these listings do not include critical commentaries unless they directly offer bibliographical details.
Format: Qto. t/p + pp. 1-6.
Copies: LT E.1029(3), ms dated "17 June"; O Tanner 744(20); CH 25754, the Corser-Brooke copy with additional Dutch portrait of Charles; MH; WF.
Commentaries: Corser, 2.2: 321-2
Format: Qto. Variant printings.
Copies, A3985: L 1486.tt.1; O Ashmole 36,37(l7); MH.
Reprint: lines 45-58 were printed in Mercurius Aulicus #8 (28 May-4 June), p. 58, with one variant in line 58.
Another edition, A3986: Sol In Ascendente: / OR / The Glorious Appearance of / CHARLES / THE SECOND, / UPON / The Horizon of LONDON, in / her Horoscopicall Sign, Gemini. / [rule] / Iam vaga co/elo sidera fulgens, / Aurora fugat; surgit Titan / Radiante coma, mundoque diem / Reddit clarum. / [rule] / EDINBURGH, / Re-printed by Christopher Higgins, in Harts Close, over against / the Trone-Church, Anno Dom. 1660. / [ornamental box]
Copies: EN Ry.III.c.34(1); MH; Y.
Ms version: O Ashmole 38 f.230, a corrected, autograph copy.
Commentaries: Aldis, #1675; Crum, A 1309.
Format: Qto. t/p + pp. 1-16.
Copies: L G.18923; O Vet A3 e 352.
Format: brs.
Copies: L 1876.f.1(6).
Format:
Copies: MH Copy inscribed "Harvard College Library / In Memory of / Lionel De Jersey Harvard / Class of 1915" dated Dec. 29, 1925.
Format: F. t/p + pp. 3-10, sigs. [A-Cv]
Copies: LT E.1080(12), ms dated "24 Sept"; O Gough Loudon 2(3); OW LR.8.32, removed from G.5.10(106a); TU Aj/B393/660p; Y.
Also contains: Bold, Henry, "To His Sacred Majesty Charles the Second." Reprinted in Poems Lyrique, Macaronique (Henry Brome, 1664), pp. 205-206.
Format: Qto. t/p + pp. [1]-6.
Copies: WF 189623 ; CH 432487; MH.
Format: Qto. t/p + pp. 1-9.
Copies: LT E.1027(10), ms dated "8 June"; O Tanner 774(19); CH 112864; WF ms dated "8 June 1660"; Y; MH.
Format: Qto. Variant printings.
Copies, V620: L 11375.c.36, ms signed "Wm Amherst. Novemb: 1660"; C; Lincolns Inn; OW L.R.III.4, William Gower's copy; EtonC; SP; CH; MH. Another edition, V619: LONDON, Printed by R. Hodgkinsonne, living in Thames / street over against Barnards Castle. 1661.
Copies: LT E.1054(3) dated 30 December; O 90.d.22, ms signed "Elizabeth Bridgeman" top t/p; left t/p margin signed "John Watts is a scotch man" with further occasional marginal glosses throughout; OCC; CSJ; BLH; BMA; CB; CLC; IU; MH; NP; PL; WF; Y; ASU; CN Case Y 672.v 9166.
Format: brs.
Copies: O Wood 398(11).
Format: Qto. t/p + pp. [3]-15.
Copies: LT E.1032(5), ms dated "12 July"; OH J.38(3*), ms signed "Peter Crutchfield"; OW B.B.15(37); CH 102846; MH; Y
Format: Qto. t/p + pp. 1-25.
Copies: LT E.1027(7), ms dated "5 June"; O Tanner 774(17); OB 530.b.2(1), Nicholas Crouch's copy for which he paid 4d., an authorial presentation copy with additional prose dedication; 9 CS; MR R18763; NP; WF; CH 357156; MH.
Format: Qto. t/p + pp. 1-18; sigs. [A]-[C]2v.
Copies: LT E.1027(4), ms dated "4 June"; O1 Tanner 744(15); O2 Wood 319(9), ms dated "June"; CH 113249, t/p annotated "1d"; CLC PR 2459 B48C6; MH; TU Wj/B788/660c; Y; WF Reprints: Brome, Songs and other Poems (1664, 1668), and in Dubinski, ed. 1.358-367 (l664 text).
Format: brs. Variant printings
Copies, E2988: LT 669.f.25 (22), ms dated "14 June"; L c.20.f2(20); OC B.23(67); MC Halliwell Phillips # 2745; O Wood 416(84).
Another edition, E2988ba: for John Andrews, at the White Lion near Pye-Corner.
Copies: GU Euing 99.
Commentaries: Hazlitt, Handbook (p. 94) mentions a "2nd edition" by Andrews which, presumably, is this.
Reprint: Dubinski, 2.57-60.
Another shorter version appeared under the title: "For General Monk his Entertainment at Cloath-workers Hall. 13 Mar." in Songs and other Poems 1661; rpt. in Dubinski, 1.175-177.
Commentaries: Jose, p. 28.
Format: 8to. Variant printings: contains Isaac Walton, "To my ingenious Friend
Mr. Brome, / on his various and excellent Poems: / An humble Eglog," sigs. [A6]-[A6v]; and Brome, "Song xxxix. On the Kings Return", pp. 112-13. Copies, B4852: O1 Douce B290, this copy has an engraved portrait tipped in opposite t/p: "VERA EFFIGIES A: BROME 1664" subscripted "CARMINA DESUNT"; "To the Reader" sigs. [A2v]-[A5] ends with ms: "Old Brome he was a witty knave / that's all his character can crave" [A5]; O2 Harding C 3310; O3 Harding C 536, this copy has variant K gathering not found in other copies; C Syn 7 66 102; L c.71.cc.6; CH 106634; CLC; CN; MH; TU; Y; WF.
Reprint: Dubinski, 1:173-4.
Another edition, B4853: "Song xl" in Songs (1664), p. 122, and Songs `(1668), pp. 111-112; partly reprinted with music by Matthew Locke in John Playford's Catch as Catch Can (1667).
Copies: L1 C.71.cc.5; L2 G.18537, author's gift to Ralph Bathurst; CT; BN, CH, CU, MH, NC, Y; WF
Commentaries: Corser, 2.
Format: verses on a cut of Charles by William Faithorne
Copies: L -- see British Museum Catalogue of Engraved British Portraits, 1:401.
Ms version: O Bodley MS Hearne Diary 57, p. 80, dated "March 28th. Wednesday."
Reprint: Lord, POAS, 1: frontispiece.
Commentaries: Crum, T 1291a.
Format: brs.
Copies: EN L.C.1155; OW LR 8.32(109), removed from G.5.10.
Format and date: brs. After the collapse of the Rump on 16 March.
Copies: L c.120.h.4(3) a "trunk ballad"
Reprint: Ebsworth, RB, 9:xvii-xix.
Format: bl brs. A reply to The Cavaliers Complaint (see below).
Copies: GU Euing 26.
Reprint: Ebsworth MDC, pp. 52-4.
Format: brs. Variant printings
Copies, C1570: L1 c.40.m.11(23)
Another edition, C1569: To the Tune of, I'le tell thee Dick. &c. An Echo to the Cavaliers Complaint. / [text] / LONDON, Printed, 1660.
Copies: MC Halliwell Phillips, # 2641.
Another edition, C1570A and C1571: The Cavaleers Complaint. / To the Tune of, I tell Thee DICK, &c. / [text] / LONDON, Printed for Robert Crofts at the Crown in Chancery Lane. 1661.
Copies: O Wood 416(76), in this copy the original printed date of "1661" has been emended in hand to "1660"; this is really another copy of C1571; L2 c.20.f.4(33), a Luttrell item [reported missing in April 1996]; LT 669.f.26(69), ms dated "15 March" [i.e. 1661]; MH.
Reprints: An Antidote Against Melancholy: Made up in Pills (London, 1661), pp. 49-51; Dryden, ed., Miscellany (1716) 4:352-4; Wright, Political Ballads, pp. 257-59; Wilkins, Political Ballads, 1:162; Ebsworth, MDC, pp. 52-4.
Format: Qto. t/p + pp. 3-12.
Copies: WF C1654.
Commentaries: Hazlitt, Handbook, p. 94.
Format: Qto. A-[A4v]; pp. [1]-8. no separate title page.
Copies: L c.133.dd.11; O Tanner 744(22).
Reprint: Saintsbury, Minor Poets, 1:297.
Commentaries: Corser, 2.1:
Format: Qto.
Copies: O 4to Rawl.324, vellum binding with garter arms, heavy ms annotations signed "Walter Charleton"; LT E.1084(8), ms dated "7 March"; LLP NN.196.3(2); OW; OFX; C; CT; CH; CSS; CU; LC; MIU; MMU; WF 186907.
Format: brs. [Edinburgh?? 1660??]
Copies: OW LR.8.32, removed from G.5.10.
Commentaries: NOT listed in Aldis.
Format: Qto. Verses at sigs. b2-[b2v].
Copies: L 226.g.21(2); O Pamph. C110(4); C; NE; DT; CLC Pamph. coll. Misc. Sermons v.2; CN; MH; NU; Y; WF. See also Nicols below.
Format:
Copies: L 11609.b.6; O Firth.e.157(3), ms notes; EN reported missing by Hilberry; CN;
Reprint: Conrad Hilberry, ed., The Poems of John Collop.
Format: bl brs
Copies: L c.120.h.4(4) a "trunk ballad" in very poor condition; probably printed for Francis Groves.
Reprint: Ebsworth, RB, 9:lvii-lviii.
Format: brs.
Copies: EN1 Ry III c 34(3); EN2 S.302.b.2(24); OW L.R.8.32, removed from G.5.10(101).
Reprint: Laing, Fugitive Scottish Poetry (1853).
Commentaries: Aldis, #1638.
Format: brs.
Copies: L c.20.f.4(38).
Format: brs.
Copies: L c.20.f.2(41).
Format: brs.
Copies: LT 669.f.27(18), ms dated "May 1661".
Reprint: Wright, Political Ballads, pp. 265-268; Ebsworth, RB, 9:xxvi.
Format: bl brs.
Copies: GU Euing 43; O Firth c.20(f118), a modern transcription of this ballad, presumably by Firth.
Commentaries: Hazlitt, Handbook, p. 93; sale catalogues -- Heber, IV 200 (12); Smith, Cat. 43.
Format: Qto. t/p + pp. 1-19.
Copies: O Pamph C110(24); OW L.R.426; C Syn.7.66.11(3); LT E.1025(l8), ms dated "31 May"; L 873.h.30; CT Y.9.108 (4); CS Ee.4.26(9); E; CLC; CH 120961; CU; MH; WF; TU1 Aj/C839/660; TU2 Wj/C839/6600; Y.
Format: Qto. t/p + [ii] + pp. 1-15.
Copies, C7300: L 11626.c.5, includes frontispiece portrait of Charles by A. Hertochs; C Syn. 766.11 (1); CH 49036; MH; WF; Y; CN 337666.
Another edition, C7301: A / Mixt Poem / Partly Historicall, Partly Panegyricall, / UPON THE / Happy Return of his Sacred MAJES-/ TY CHARLES the Second, &c. / AND HIS / Illustrious brothers the DUKES of YORK / and GLOCESTER. / With Reflections upon the Late RUMP, and / their Appurtenances. / Not Forgetting his Excellency the Lord / GENERAL MONCK. / [rule] / By J. C. Gent. / [rule] / London, Printed for Daniell White at the Seaven / Stars in Pauls Church-yard, 1660.
Format: Qto. t/p + A, [no A2] A3-[A4] B-[B4v]
Copies: O Malone 746(3*).
Another edition, C7291A: in variant form as "A Poem Upon the Happy Restauration" in John Crouch, Census Poeticus (H. Brugis, 1663).
Copies: C Peterborough Q.2.23.
Format: mixed italic and bl brs.
Copies: LT 669.f.25(24), ms dated "16 May."
Format: Qto. t/p + pp. 1-22; sigs. [A]-[C4v].
Copies: O Tanner 744 (l4); OW L.R.4.27, removed from B.B.1.5(39); OH J.38(7); OB 910.h.13(4); L 11626.d.11; LT E. 184(2), ms dated "25 June"; CH 1016521; CLC PR 2 P 81; WF D334; TU Wh/D272/660p; MH; WF; Y.
Reprint: The Works of Sr William D'avenant Kt. (1673), pp. 256-61.
Format: brs.
Copies: O Wood 398(16), ms "John Denham Esq; at his Maties first coming into England; By Sr Jo: Denham Kt of ye Bath"; LT 669.f.26(30), ms dated "23 November"; LG; MH.
Reprint: Banks, ed., The Poems of Sir John Denham pp. 94-95; A. N. Wiley, ed., Rare Prologues (l940), pp. 8-12.
Format: Qto.
Copies: O1 Pamph 111(5) 1st state; O2 Gough Loudon 2(13) 2nd state; LT E.1080(6), ms dated "19 June" 2nd state; UL Sel. 3.162 (1); OM K.11.9 bound in after p. 288, 2nd state, with light pencil marks on some borders (bound with extensively annotated copy of Absalom and Achitophel); CH 125994 2nd state; WF D2244 2nd state; LVF; BN; CN; CLC; MH; Y.
Commentaries: MacDonald, 5Ai. Advertized in Mercurius Publicus (21-28 June, 1660).
Format: brs.
Copies: L c.112.h.4(29).
Format and date: 8to. Advertised in the Parliamentary Intelligencer 22 (21-28 May), p. 348.
Copies: O1 Tanner 624, has an additional cut after the t/p and before the Epistle to the Reader showing Charles about to be crowned by an angel, followed by a dedication page "To His Most Sacred Majestie"; O2 Linc 8to c.183, has the additional engraving of Charles between sigs A and B; L1 292.a.15, the plate of shepherd missing; L2 1483.aa.26; L3 G3535, ms note: "This Copy belonged to the Royal Library of Charles 2d whose cypher is on the binding. It has not only a very fine impression of the Frontispiece, but it has also a 2d Plate which precedes the "Shepherd's Complaint" at the end of the book, & is very seldom found with it. This Plate has been by some called "Charles 2d" but it is so unlike that it is not easy to believe it could be meant for his portrait"; C Adams 8.66.8; WF 140413 has the additional engraving of Charles between sigs A and B; CT; P; CH; CN; MH; Y; Exeter.
Format: F. t/p + pp. 1-2; sigs. [A-A2v].
Copies: LT E.1080(7) 1st state, ms dated "26 June"; O Gough Loudon 2(4) 2nd state (see line 21); Y.
Format: F.
Copies: LT E.1080(5), ms dated "11 June" with ms note: "The gift of the Author, my son George's Tutor."
Format: Qto. t/p + pp. 1-10; sigs. [A]-[B4v].
Copies: OB 910.h.13(9), 1st uncorrected state, Nicholas Crouch's copy for which he paid 6d.; L 1347.d.50, reported mislaid, January 1996; O Pamph c.110(28) 2nd state; LLP KA446, 2nd state, with additional ms verses; MH; CLC PR 3431.E59A6.
Latin edition at E661: F. [1662].
Copies: O Ashm.F.4(41); OB 670.e.8(14), Nicholas Crouch's copy for which he paid 2d.
Commentaries: Madan, #2493, 2950; according to Madan, the Oxford publisher Henry Hall printed the English version "about June."
Format: bl brs. Partial text only; probably for Francis Grove.
Copies: O Firth b.20(f25).
Reprint: Ebsworth, RB, 8:787. See "When Charles King of England Safe on Shore" below.
Format: bl brs. [largely illegible].
Copies: MH *pEBB65.
Format: brs.
Copies: O Wood 416(80), ms dated "April"; LT 669.f.25(3), ms dated "30 April"; L1 c.20.f.4(69), removed from Luttrell II(69); L2 c.121.g.9(6), reported missing 1995.
Commentaries: Frank, #776.
Format: Qto. t/p + pp. 1-6; sigs. [A]-[A4v].
Copies: MH *p EC65.A100 660e2.
Format: bl brs.
Copies: GU Euing 96.
Commentaries: Hazlitt, Handbook, p. 93.
Format: bl brs.
Copies: GU Euing 98.
Reprint: Ebsworth, RB, 9:xxvii-xxix.
Format: bl brs.
Copies: GU Euing 100.
Reprint: Ebsworth, RB, 9:xxx-xxxi; dates it 29 May.
Commentaries: Hazlitt, Handbook, p. 95.
Format: bl brs. Woodcuts similar to those on Gallant News, and The Loyal Subjects Exultation.
Copies: GU Euing 95.
Commentaries: Hazlitt, Handbook, p. 95.
Format: brs.
Copies: O Wood 416(61), ms dated "March 1659"; OW L.R.8.32, removed from G.5.10(58); L1 c.20.f.4.(249); L2 82.l.8(44); L3 c.40.m.9(68); LT 669.f.24(18), ms dated " March"; MH.
Reprint: Ebsworth, RB, 7:663-64.
Format: Qto. t/p + pp. 1-12; sigs. [A]-[B2v].
Copies: L 11626.ee.6; O Wood 319(11), ms dated "June: 1660"; CT Y.9.108 (5); MH; Y; NYPL.
Format: brs.
Copies: O1 Wood 416(83), ms dated "May"; O2 Firth b.20(26); LT 669.f.25(51), ms dated "30 June"; MH; WF; Y.
Format: 8to. "The Portrait of His Majesty" appears at sigs B-B4.
Copies: L Huth 99; O Mal 479; LIU; CLC PR3461 F4H5; CH 121692; WF 233175; BN, IU, MH
Reprint: in A / COLLECTION / Of the choicest / EPIGRAMS / AND / CHARACTERS / OF / Richard Flecknoe. / Being rather a New Work, / then a New Impression / of the Old / [rule] / [design] / Printed for the Author. 1673., sigs. A3-A4v.
Copies: L 11623.aa.12; C Hib 8.673.4; CH; CLC; CN; MH; TU; WF.
Commentary: Corser, 3.2: 36 2-
Format:
Copies: LT E.1914(1), ms dated "July"; O1 Ashm 916; O2 Pamph. E.109(15), missing genealogical table but has additional portrait; C; MR 16971, genealogical table missing; ES; CH 123829; CU; MH; NU; WF F1261; Y.
Reprint: His Majesty's Pedigree (1664). This is not so much a reprint as the original work with a cancel titlepage -- "Printed for Tho. Rooks at the Lamb and Inkbottle at the East end of S. Pauls near S. Austins gate, 1664" -- and a final leaf listing works printed by Rooks. The colophon has been erased from the genealogical table.
Copies: O Bliss B.283, contains portrait of Charles II by William Faithorne.
Format: 8to. Verses in Fragmenta Poetica at pp. 21-4; sigs C3-[C4v].
Copies: LT E.1806, ms dated "Octob"; O Harding D1088, with new cancel t/p dated 1661; L 1080.g.6, with new cancel t/p dated 1661; OW F1550, with new cancel t/p dated 1661, signed "W. Gower"; EN; CH1 151598; CH2 26553; CLC; CN; LC; MH; WF 138401, contains additional frontispiece portrait of Charles I.
Reissue, F1550: A / THEATRE / OF / WITS, / Ancient and Modern/ etc. 1661.
Copies: CH; CU; MH; WCL; WF; Y; AUP; O1 Douce F.303; O2 Harding E.245(2); O3 Harding D.1088(2).
Ms version: O Eng. poet e.4(167), ms dated "1672," first twenty lines only.
Format: Qto. t/p + pp. 1-11.
Copies: L 11626.d.17, 1st state; O Malone 746(1), 2nd state; OW L.R.4.34, removed from B.B.1.5(41), 2nd state; C; MR R147668; LLU; GK; CH 51710; MH; NP; WF F2452, 2nd state.
Reprint: see the entry on Worcestershire in The History of the Worthies of England (1662), pp. 182-84; Alexander B. Grosart, The Poems and Translations in Verse ... of Thomas Fuller (Edinburgh: Crawford and McCabe, 1868), pp. 91-105.
Commentary: John Eglinton Bailey, Life of Thomas Fuller (1874)
Format: bl brs.
Copies: GU Euing 130.
Commentaries: Hazlitt, Handbook, pp. 94-5; Ebsworth RB, 9:12.
Format: brs.
Copies: LT 669.f.25(53), ms dated "30 June."
Format: bl brs.
Copies: L c.120.h.4.(5), a "trunk" ballad.
Reprint: Wright, Political Ballads, pp. 223-228; Ebsworth, RB, 9:xxxvii-xxxix.
Format: brs.
Copies: E JA 2069/16; OW BB.1.5(35); Y.
Reprint: Laing, Various Pieces (1823), np.
Format: brs.
Copies: O Firth b.20(25). This item is 8 stanzas of a ballad under the generic heading, "The second part, to the same Tune." It is printed on the verso of "England's Captivity Returned" (see above). This title follows the catch-phrase of the chorus.
Reprint: Ebsworth, RB, 9:788.
Format: brs.
Copies: GU Euing 138.
Format: Qto.
Copies: O Gough Loudon 282(14); CT.
Format: Qto. [A reissue of a 1651 tract with new titlepage??]
Copies: CH R197008; L Cup.408.d.8(4).
Format: F. t/p + pp 1-11; sigs, A, B, C [D].
Copies: O1 Gough Loudon 2(5); O2 Pamph. A111(6); LT E.1080(4), ms dated " June"; C SEL.81; CLC PR 3515.H15P1;CH 133288; MH; Y; TU; WF 156740.
Format: brs.
Copies: OW LR.8.32, removed from G.5.10(104).
Format: brs. Variant printings.
Copies, H2444: LT 669.f.25(42), ms dated "14 June."
Another edition, H244A: "EDINBURGH, Re-printed by Christopher Higgins, in Harts Close, over against the Trone Church, 1660."
Copies: EN S.302.b.2(127).
Commentaries: Aldis, #1645.7.
Format: 8to. Verses appear pp. 1-9, sigs. B-B5.
Copies: LT E.1824.(2), ms dated "June"; O missing since 1962; C; CT Munby d.11; LVD, CT; Fellows' Library, Winchester School; CH; CLC; CN; LC; MH; NC; TU; WC; WF; Y.
Reprint, H3004: Howard, Poems (1696).
Copies: CLC PR 3517 H3A17; L; LIU; MH; NP; TU; WF.
Format: F. Variant printings.
Copies, H3087: O Douce H.432.
Another edition, H3088:
Copies: WF.
Another edition, H3089: LONDON, Printed by J. G. for Cornelius Bee, at the Kings Armes in Little Brittaine.
Copies: L 71.f.4.
Format: Qto. t/p + pp. [i] 1-17; sigs. [A-A3v], B-[B4] + C-[C4]
Copies: LT E.765(12), ms dated "10 May"; LLP NN 196.3(1); OB 670.b.4(11), Nicholas Crouch's copy for which he paid 4d.; Y.
Commentaries: Erskine-Hill, Augustan Idea, pp. 208-12.
Format: brs.
Copies: O1 Wood 416(87), ms annotations; O2 Smith newsbook a.3(15), ms annotations.
Latin edition:
Copies: O3 Wood 398(13) Latin version, ms annotations identify Ingelo as the author and translator; the music was by Benjamin Rogers of Windsor.
Format: Qto. t/p + pp. 3-18; sigs. [A]-[C2v].
Copies: O1 Firth e.157(2), 1st state; O2 Tanner 744(18), 2nd corrected state; L 1066.f.32, 2nd corrected state; WF 187583, 2nd corrected state; MH; Y; EN [not found]
Commentaries: Hazlitt, Handbook, p. 94.
Format: bl brs.
Copies: GU Euing 160.
Format: F.
Copies: LT E.1080(11), ms dated "16 August"; O Gough Loudon 2(6); LL; CS; CH 125996; MH; WF; Y.
Commentaries: for Jevon, see CSPD, and Hobby, Virtue of Necessity, pp. 18-19.
Format: bl brs.
Copies: O Wood 401(171/172), ms dated "1660."
Reprint: Ebsworth, RB, 7:638-41; and Broadley, Royal Miracle, pp. 91-97.
Format: Qto. t/p + pp. [1]-7; sigs. [A]-[A4v]; mispaginated "2, 3, 4, 4, 6, 7". Latin with English translation.
Copies: O G.Pamph 1119(4); LT E.1017(28), ms dated "21 March"; OW Huth copy from Fairfax collection; MH; AVP.
Commentaries: Hazlitt, Handbook, p. 93.
Format: bl brs. This is a variant title of The Traytors Downfall.
Copies: L c.20.f.4.
Reprint: Ebsworth, RB, 7:661-2.
Format: brs.
Copies: LT 669.f.25(35), ms dated 31 May.
Format: brs.
Copies: EN Ry.III.c.34(2).
Reprint: Laing, Fugitive Scottish Poetry (1853), np.
Commentaries: Aldis, #1646.3.
Format: brs. Printed in triple columns.
Copies: LT 669.f.25(39), ms dated "6 June"; MH *pEB65.L4456.660u.
Format: F. t/p + pp. 3-12; sigs. [A-Cv].
Copies, L2628: O Gough Loudon 2(8), 1st uncorrected state without colophon; LT E.1080(1) ,ms dated "24 May," 2nd state, without colophon; EtonC; LU; CH1 125998; CH2 33289; CU; MH; TU; WF 156719, colophon present.
Another edition, L2628A: TO THE / KINGS / MOST EXCELLENT / MAJESTY. / [text] / LONDON, / Printed for J. Martin, Ja. Allestry, T. Dicas, and are to be sold / at the Bell in St. Pauls Church-yard, 1660.
Format: Large-paper folio, t/p + pp. 3-12; sigs [A-A2] B-[B2] C-[C2].
Copies: OB 670.e.8(9), Nicholas Crouch paid 3d., some ms underlining; 1st state of this edition; see lines 45-46;OW LR.8.32, removed from G.5.10(105), colophon present, severely trimmed; L 1505/311, 2nd state; Y.
Format: bl brs.
Copies: GU Euing 167.
Commentaries: Hazlitt, Handbook, p. 94.
Format: F. Verses, p. 115.
Copies: L1 1565.69(2) Dutch language version; L2 808 m.5; C R.7.5(1); OB 1080.d.37; MR 13057; SU; EN C.18.a.11; DT; OAS; LIU; Y; CH; CLC; MHL; NS; WF R781.
Format: Qto. t/p + pp. 1-13; sigs. [A]-[B4v].
Copies: O1 Tanner 744(16), ms corrections; O2 Pamph. c.109(1); OH J.38(9); OB 910.f.13(11), Nicholas Crouch's copy bought for 2d.; LT E.1025(14), ms dated "29 May"; MR1 W/M1446; MR2 R13075, ms signed "Charles Harris"; EN LC 3338(l9); CH 146818; WF 184043, ms dated "29 May"; IU; MH; TU; WF; Y.
Format: 8to. Verses, pp. 12-13.
Copies, M151: L c.57.aa.28; EN; Washington.
Commentaries: Aldis, #1623.
Date: The volume contains verses on the death of Henry, Duke of Gloucester, so after September.
Another edition, M152: ARETINA; / Or, The Serious / ROMANCE [rule] / Written origially in English / [rule] / Part First. / [rule] / [design] / [rule] LONDON: / Printed for Ralph Smith, and are to be / sold at the BIBLE in Corn-hill, / near the Royall Exchange, / Anno Dom. 1661. [ormamental box].
Format: 8to.
Copies: O Ferguson 121; EN; WF 135248.
Another edition, M153: for George S[awbridge, 1661]
Format: 8to.
Copies: Y.
Format: bl brs. Variant printings.
Copies: L c.120.h.4(2), a "trunk ballad."
Reprint: Wilkins, Political Ballads, 1:153-58.
Another edition, H136A: Iter Boreale, the Second part, \ RELATING \ The Progress of the Lord General Monk, \ Calling in the Secluded Members, their Voting King \ CHALRS the Second home, his Joyfull reception at Dover. \ and his Glorious Conduct through London, to His Royal Palace at White Hall. \ By T. H. a Person of Quality \ To the Tune of When first the Scottish Wars began. \ [text] \ LONDON Printed for Henry Brome, at the Gun in Ivy-Lane 1660.
Format: bl brs.
Copies: L c.40.m.11(16); MH.
Reprint: Ebsworth, RB, 7:670-71.
Commentaries: see also "T. H." The Cavaliers Thanksgiving (1661) at LT E.1087(4). Without evidence, Ebsworth suggests "T. H." might be Thomas Houghton or Handford, RB 7:671.
Format: 8to.
Copies: O Bliss A.199; CH 55905; IU; WF.
Format: Qto. t/p + [foreign language poems] + Aa-[Ff4v]
Copies: LT E.1030(16), ms dated "7 July," correctly gathered; L 161.b 55; O1 4.M.16(1) Art. BS, misgathered at sig. Cc; O2 Pamph. c.112(13), correctly gathered; OM Magd. a.6.7, misgathered at sig. Cc; OH J.38(11), misgathered at sig. Cc, additional parentheses at sig. Ff4v; C; CT III.9.81 (3); EN H.38.a.22; E Df.7.5; CLC; CN; LC; MH; TU; WF 143558, correctly gathered sig. Cc, but no parentheses at sig. Ff4v; Y.
Commentaries: Madan, #2466.
Format: bl brs.
Copies: L c.120.h.4(1), a "trunk ballad."
Reprint: Ebsworth, RB, 9:xl-xliii.
Commentaries: reproduced in Weber, Paper Bullets, p. 55.
Format: brs.
Copies: L c.20.f.4(157); LT 669.f.25(52), ms dated "30 June"; LG; OW LR.8.32(110), removed from G.5.10, poorly trimmed along right margin.
Format: brs. Variant printings.
Copies: L1 1876.f.3, in roman type.
Another edition: L2 Rox.III.256, in bl.
Ms version: EN ADV l9.3.4 (29).
Reprint: Ebsworth RB, 7:682-84, based on L2.
Format: Qto. t/p.+ 1-14; sigs. A2-[B4v]. Two states evident, see lines 289-90 (p. 12, lines 9-10).
Copies: L 1077.h.68, 1st state; OW L.5.9, 1st state; O Vet A3 e.1767, 2nd state; Sheffield U; CH 16897.
Format: Qto. t/p + pp. 3-7.
Copies: O Wood 319(12); CH; WF P1676A.
Format: F.
Copies: LT E.1080(9), ms dated "4 August"; TU.
Format: 8to.
Copies: O1 Mal 413; O2 Mal 259(3); L 1076.g.16(2); LG; LIU; CH 147340; CLC PR 3639.P25P7; CN; CU; MH; PU; Y; WF 222587, ms signed "Hen. Williams."
Format: brs with partial blackletter.
Copies: L1 c.20.f.4(37);L2 c.20.f.2(39)
Format: brs. Variant printings.
Copies, P3389A: O1 Wood 401(149/150); O2 Wood 402(70/71) [catalogued as "c. 1645"]. Another edition, /not Wing/: roman type, single cut, no date, colophon reads: "Licens'd according to Order. Printed by and for C. Brown, and T. Norris, and sold by J. Walter, in Holborn High."
Copies: O3 Firth b.20(24), catalogued as "c. 1660" but none of the stationers named were active until well after 1660; see Morrison, Index.
Another edition, P3390: "For Fra. Coles, Tho. Vere, Io. Wright and Io. Clarke 1680," bl brs. with three cuts
Copies: L Rox.II.522; O; MH.
Another edition, P3390A: "for I. Wright, I. Clark, W. Thackerey and T. Passinger" [c. 1681-84].
Copies: Pepys Library, CM.
Another edition, /not Wing/: A Knave at the Bottom, The Dealer's Sure of a Trump. London: Printed by J. Ranger, in the Strand. [n.d.].
Copies: O Firth b.20(23), with tune in musical notation at top under title. Ms versions: O1 MS Rawl. D.383(113), catalogued as "c.1712"; O2 Top. Oxon.c.108.f83.
Reprint: Wilkins, Political Ballads, 1:144-49.
Format: brs.
Copies: O Wood 416(40), ms dated "1659"; LT 669.f.23(43), ms dated "11 Feb"; CH microfilm copy of LT.
Format: brs.
Copies: GU Euing 310.
Format: bl brs.
Copies: L c.120.h.4.(6), a "trunk ballad."
Reprint: Wright, Political Ballads; Ebsworth, RB, 9:xlix-l.
Format: brs.
Copies: LT 669.f.25(28), ms dated "18 May"; MH *pEB65.R3954660u, severly trimmed with loss of ornamental borders; CH 189.95, microfilm of LT copy.
Format: bl brs. Variant title.
Copies: L Rox.III.160a; GU Euing 309, gives title as "Royall Subjects Joy."
Format: bl brs.
Copies: Manchester Central Library BR F821.04 B49 vol.1 p.7; NYPL photocopy of above; MH photocopy of above.
Reprint: Ebsworth, RB, 9:xliv-xlvi.
Format: bl brs.
Copies: GU Euing 312.
Commentaries: Hazlitt, Handbook, p. 93.
Format: Qto.
Copies: LT E.1023(13), ms dated "14 May"; EN Crawford, removed from HH [W/S25 at MR], ms dated "May 1660"; CH; OSU.
Format: brs.
Copies: LT 669.f.25(4), ms dated "1 May"; CLC Pamph. Coll. folio drawer; CH microfilm of LT; MH1 *pEB65.Sal52.660m; MH2 *pEB65.A100.B675b v.2 A144, Marquis of Bute broadsides (microfilm).
Format: Qto. Frontispiece + A-F4=25 leaves.
Copies: O Mal. 194(4); L1 644.f.43, removed from LT, ms dated "17 May," reported missing January 1996; L2 163.h.52, frontispiece missing; WF 154181 frontispiece missing; CH 147664; LC; MB; MH; Y.
Format: Qto. t/p + pp. 3-7; sigs. [A]-[A4v].
Copies: O Tanner 744(23), ms corrections; L 11632.df.39; EN Crawford, removed from HH W/S758 at MR, ms dated "June 5th, 1660"; CH 14676; WF 184045, ms dated "4th June"; MH.
Format:
Copies: EN1 1.234(28); EN2 1.88(2); E [not found]; OW B.B.1.5(35); MH; Y.
Reprint: Laing, Various Pieces (1823), np.
Commentaries: Often ascribed to William Lithgow, but the attribution is rejected by DNB and disputed by James Maidment, ed., The Poetical Remains of William Lithgow, The Scottish Traveller, 1618-1660 (Edinburgh: Stevenson, 1858), pp. xxxii-xxxiii, who further writes: "The Editor is very much inclined to suspect that the real author of the "Paraenesis to Charles II.," was one William Douglas, author of a poem entitled "Grampius' Gratulation to his High and Mightie Monarch, King Charles," which will be found at the end of a volume of "Addresses by the Muses of Edinburgh to his Majesty," printed in small 4to by the heirs of Andro Hart, 1630" (Appendix, p. l).
Format: Qto.
Copies: LT E.1034(2), ms dated "17 July."
Format: Qto.
Copies: MH *EC65.Sh662.660o.
Reprint: George Thorn-Drury, ed., A Little Ark Containing Sundry Pieces of Seventeenth-Century Verses (London: Dobell, 1921), pp. 19-25; and in Shirley, Poems, ed. Armstrong.
Format: Qto. t/p + pp. 1-6; sigs. [A]-[A4v].
Copies: O Tanner 744(21); OH J.38(3); CH 49630.
Format: bl brs.
Copies: GU Euing 131.
Commentaries: Hazlitt, Handbook, p. 93.
Format: Qto, t/p + pp. 1-10; sigs [A]-[B3v]. Verses on pp. 1-4, sigs. A3-[A4v].
Copies: LT E.1030(13), ms dated "6 July"; O1 G.A.Loud 4to.63; O2 Ash. 677(6); OW B.B.8.8(75), poorly inked copy; WF 205431; LG; CT; Lampeter, St Davids; EN; DT; CH; CN; CU; LC; MH; NP; WF.
Reprint: James Maidment and W. H. Logan, eds., The Dramatic Works of John Tatham (Edinburgh: William Patterson, 1879), pp. 293-304. See Fairholt, Lord Mayor's Pageants (London: Percy Society, 1843).
Format: Qto; verses on pp. 4-5, sigs. [A3v-A4].
Copies: LT E.1053(11); LNC.
Format: F. Incorrectly attributed to Edmund Waller.
Copies: LT E.1080(2), ms dated "3 June"; CH 473577.
Format: bl brs. This is a variant reprint of a Luttrell item, King Charles his Glory and Rebells Shame "To a Pleasant New Tune: Or, The Crost Couple" (Wing K553), reprinted in Ebsworth, RB, 7:661-2.
Copies: GU Euing 350.
Reprint: Ebsworth, RB, 9:liii-lv, citing a copy in the Trowbesh Collection, Manchester.
Format: brs. Variant printings.
Copies: O1 Wood 416(55), ms dated "feb"; O2 13.é.79(69), missing since 1979.
Another version, N1014: News From The Royall Exchange: / OR, / Gold turn'd into Mourning: / [text] / London, printed for Charles King. 1660.
Copies: LT 669.f.24(15), ms dated "16 March"; L C.40.m.11(27); O3 Wood 416(69), ms dated "March"; MH; Y.
Another version, A3046A: An Anagram and Acrostick on / CHARLES STVART KING,
Copies: OW L.R.8.32, title cut away, no colophon.
Format: verses p. 8.
Copies: LT E.1017(40), ms dated "24 March";OFX=Fairfax collection (dispersed); MH; NU; WF 189631.
Format: bl brs.
Copies: GU Euing 368.
Format: brs.
Copies: L1 c.20.f.2.40; L2 c.20.f.4(229), Luttrell II(229); O1 Wood 416(75), ms dated "April"; O2 Firth b.20(27); OW G.5.10(75), George Clarke's copy.
Format: Qto. t/p + pp. 2-8; sigs A2-[A4v]. Variant printings.
Copies, V735: OC A.73.37, misbound giving t/p + A, [A4], A2, A3; L not found; O not found; MR W/V735, ms dated "May. 28. 60"; MH.
Another edition, V736: "Printed at London, and Re-printed at Edinburgh by / a Society of Stationers, 1660."
Format:
Copies: EN 1.234(31); MH; Y.
Commentaries: Aldis, #1680.
Format: bl brs.
Copies: EN Crawford Ballad 990, removed from MR.
Format: bl brs.
Copies: GU Euing 308.
Reprint: Ebsworth, RB, 9:lxv-lxvi.
Format: bl brs.
Copies: GU Euing 97.
Ms copy: O Firth c.20 f.102, see Crum, C 482.
Format: brs.
Copies: LT 669.f.25(10), ms dated "8 May"; L L.23.C.1(88).
Format: bl brs.
Copies: GU Euing 146.
Reprint: Ebsworth, RB, 9:xxxiii-xxxiv.
Format: F. t/p + pp. 1 [no 2 or 3] 4-8; sigs. [A]-[B2v]. no colophon. Variant printings.
Copies, W528: O1 Gough Loudon 2(9), t/p signed by author, reported missing in 1995; O2 Ashm.1819(22); C Sel.3.162(6); IU; TU.
Another edition, W529: Printed for Richard Marriot, in St. Dunstans Church-yard, Fleetstreet.
Format: Large paper F. t/p + pp. 1 [no 2 or 3] 4-8; sigs. [A]-[B2v].
Copies: LT E.1080(3), ms dated "9 June." Thomason incorrectly began to inscribe this as if it were the Ellis poem "The gift of the Author, my son George's Tutor," so he presumably collected it on or around 11 June; C; O3 Pamph. A.111(4), heavily trimmed; OW LR.8.32, removed from G.5.10(110), trimmed; CH 125997; IU; MH; WCL; Y; CLC.
Format: Qto, t/p + pp. 1-12; sigs. A2-[B3v].
Copies: LT E.1027(15), ms dated "15 June"; O Malone 746(3); C1 Syn 7.66.11 (2); C2 Peterborough K.4.22(15), contains variants.
Format: bl brs.
Copies: O Wood 401(173/174), ms dated "1660."
Reprint: Ebsworth, RB, 9:lxvii-lxix.
Format: Qto. t/p + pp. 1-19; sigs. A2-[C3v].
Copies: LT E.1027(8), ms dated "7 June"; O Malone 746(2); OH; CH 47864, ms emendations.
Commentaries: Hazlitt, Handbook, p. 636.
Format: Qto. t/p + [A]-[D4], last two blank. Published in Oxford by Henry Hall, according to Madan.
Copies: L 11626.d.68; O1 Wood 319(10), ms dated "June 1660" but unreliable [see below]; O2 Pamph.c.109(3); OC F.127(2); OB 910.h.13(21), Nicholas Crouch's copy bought for 4d.; CS Ee.6.10 (3); CN; MH; TU; Y.
Commentaries: Madan, "#2540: "The royal borough of Woodstock contained a free Grammar School, founded in 1585, and at this time presided over by Francis Gregory, a native of that town and educated at Westminster and Cambridge. He had already issued several school-books, and according to Wood (Fasti Oxon. ii.258) 'did much good by his sedulous instruction'. Anyway he induced his scholars to weep over Charles I in correct style and to rejoice in the new King to order he himself showing them how to do it, by example. Any sincerity there might have been was disturbed by the unfortunate doubt whether Charles after all would not be sent off, bag and baggage, to Holland again (p. [7]). In fact, the poems were a little 'previous' when written. The Verses are fairly correct, and dictionaries and grammars produced. . . The volume seems to have been issued after [Britannia Rediviva] which is referred to in the preface, that is to say, not before the middle of July."
Format: bl brs. The initial cut was also used by the stationer Charles Tyus for The Covenant.
Copies: GU Euing 404.
[9] Nicholas Crouch was elected fellow of Balliol in 1640, returned in 1650 and survived the interregnum; see John Jones, Balliol College: A History 1263-1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).
[10] title. CHARLES] CHALES copytext
[11] Tyus] Yyus
[12]\257Henry Marsh] blackletter\257 at the Princes Armes in / Chancery-Lane near Fleet-Street, 1660.
[13] LONON] O1, O2, L
[14] sequunta] "n" inked out O1, O2, MR, LT, OH, OB; but not WF\257 est. Ovid. Met.
[15] The first line is missing from O
[16] Soveraigne] Soveriagne copy text\257
[17] unto] nnto copy text
[18] Honourable] ed; Honourble \344
[19] 1660.^] ed; 7E.. \344
Reference: "He wrote a Poem upon the King's Restoration, which was well received, but which I never met with." Eustace Budgell, Memoirs of the Lives and Characters of the Illustrious Family of the Boyles (London, 1737), p. 91.
References: Corser 4:1, 34, 36, mentions this poem under the entry for "Bold," a claim repeated in the entry for Oldys in DNB; L Birch ms. 4240 contains memoirs of the Oldys family.
References: Hazlitt, Handbook, p. 94, dating it 26 January 1660; reprinted in Rump Songs (1662), but the original has not been found: perhaps a confusion with P4 above?
References: once reported in Wing for P66, listing copies at L, CH, MH; but none have been found?
References: Thomas Flatman, in Montelion's Almanac for 1661, says that Stubbe wrote a "Panegyrick to the King when the tide turned." This item is not part of Stubbe's Animadversions on the Commonwealth of Oceana proposed by James Harrington (1660) [NUC listing NS1020311] at PL; reported private letter, 1986.
Copies: Firth b.20(141).
Copies: Ashmole 36,37 f.17; Ashmole 38, f.230. Corrected autograph copy of printed version; see Ashmole above.
Copies: ms Eng. poet. e.4, 167.
Copies: Firth b.20, f.140.
Copies: ms Top. oxon. b.116, f.111.
Copies: Firth c.20 f.102. A transcription of W41A above.
Copies: ms mus.c.26, f.115. Set to music by Dr. John Blow; see Music and Letters, 46 (1965): 0000.
Copies: ms Eng. poet. e.4, 46.
Copies: Firth b.20, f.140.
Copies: ms *Rawl. poet. 94, 173.
Copies: ms Tanner 306, f.367; printed in Poems (1664) p. 3.
Copies: Locke e.17, 94; printed in Poems (1664), but not Poems (1667).
Copies: ms Rawl. poet. 26, f.163.
Copies: ms Rawl. poet. 84, f.10.
Copies: ms Ashmole 47, 164.
Copies: ms *Fairfax 40, 612 [autograph]; ms *Fairfax 38, 274.
Copies: ms Tanner 306, f.387.
Copies: ms Add.B.8, f.70v.
Copies: ms Ashmole 36,37 f.165.
Copies: ms Eng. poet. d.152, 16v.
Copies: ms Rawl. poet. 173, f.108v. A late ms copy made by John Dunton.
Copies: ms Hearne's Diaries 57, 80. Printed version in Lord, POAS, 1: frontispiece.
Copies: ms Rawl. poet. 155, 115.
Copies: ms *Don.f.5, f.35.
Copies: ms *Eng. poet. f.16, f.64v.
Copies: mss Ashmole 36,37, f.120; adapted from Sir Robert Ayton's poem to Queen Anne, 1604.
Copies: ms Top. oxon.c.108, 83. A version of Laurence Price's ballad, see P3389A-3390A above.
I have made no systematic search through the manuscript collections of the British Library, but can report that verses concerning the Restoration are to be found in the following:
This list contains references to publications that are regularly cited in the editorial material, but does not list every seventeenth-century printed work used in the annotations to particular poems.
Place of publication for printed works is London unless otherwise stated. Dates are given Old Style, but with the year regarded as starting on 1 January.
When referring to these works in the headnotes and annotations, I have sometimes provided a full reference; otherwise I have used an Author plus Short Title form, except when adopting an abbreviated form for frequently cited works as indicated below.
Frequently imitated before and after the Restoration, Martin Parker's ballad was by far the best known of the popular cavalier songs of the civil war and commonwealth period, keeping alive in a communal form the wish that the king would soon return.20 According to Ebsworth, it was first printed between 1643 and 1646 in a five-stanza version entitled Upon Defacing of Whitehall, to the tune of "Marry me, marry me, quoth the Country Lass."21 But in several reprintings and subsequent versions, the tune -- and the stanzaic patterning that accompanies it -- soon came to be known and recognized as "When the King enjoys his own again." Several ballads printed during 1660 imitate other features of Parker's original, but making versions of it was not an activity confined to print since the familiarity of the tune and refrain would surely have provoked any number of ad hoc performances and versions among royalists.22 At least one vanquished cavalier wrote a version into his commonplace book.23
Other notable ballads to this tune include the "trunk" ballad The Glory of These Nations, and The Last News from France which purports to offer Jane Lane's account of the king's escape.24 The tune remained popular once the king was back. One blackletter ballad on the coronation signed "By me O. G.," Englands Joyfull Holiday, or, St Georges-Day, holy[. . .] Honoured being the joyfull Solemnity, so long lookt for, of the Coronation of King CHARLS the second, who was most highly attended by all his Dukes, Earls, and Barons from the Tower, through the City to Westminster, where he was Crowned on St. Georges Day, being 23. of April: To the Tune, The King enjoys his own again, is printed on the verso of another ballad; a ms note reads "This page and fol 28b were covered with thick paper till 1881."25
[20] For Martin Parker, see DNB and Rollins, Cavalier and Puritan.
[21] Ebsworth, RB, 7:633-34. I have not been able to find the original of this ballad, also mentioned by the DNB entry on Parker, so have followed Ebsworth's text in the subsequent notes and comments when referring to this work.
[22] See Lois Potter, Secret Writing, pp. 33-5, on the singing of subversive songs by defeated cavaliers.
[23] Now in the Edinburgh National Library at shelfmark ADV l9.3.4(29).
[24] I have only seen the copy at GU Euing 181. This undated ballad provides such an inaccurate account of the events that it was probably issued shortly after the events it describes.
[25] The colophon reads: London, Printed for Richard Burton at the Horse-shoe in Smithfield; O Wood 401(27/28b).
Martin Parker
[undated]
In its often imitated opening line, Parker's ballad refers to one of the more celebrated fortune tellers of the time, John Booker, engaging the theme of prophecy in order to describe a wish. Booker (23 March 1603-8 April 1667), was born in Manchester but apprenticed to a London haberdasher; disliking the business, he taught writing at Hadley School in Middlesex. According to Mr. William Lilly's History of His Life and Times, From the Year 1602, to 1681 (1715), "he wrote singularly well both Secretary and Roman" and served as clerk to various London Aldermen "and by that Means became not only well known, but as well respected of the most eminent Citizens of London, even to his dying day" (p. 28). His first almanack was Telescopium Uranium (1631). After successfully predicting the deaths of Gustavus Adolphus and the Elector Palatine, Booker gained the position of licenser of mathematical books. Elias Ashmole bought his papers for £140 -- "far more Money than they were worth" according to Lilly (p. 29) -- and erected a gravestone for him (Ebsworth, RB, 7:634). "To say no more of him," wrote Lilly, "he lived an honest Man, his Fame now questioned at his Death" (p. 29).27
The original stanzas map a program of loyal resignation suitable for the second half of the 1640s when royalist affairs were going poorly. The stanzas added in 1660 touch on several topics that seem to have been commonly in the thoughts of hopeful royalists that year: reform of the universities, settlement of the church, agreement between parliament and the crown, and a return of many things -- prosperous trading, justice, law, security, peace, and marital harmony.
There are two printed versions in the British Library, one in roman type, the other in blackletter, that presumably belong to the year of the king's return, though both are undated. The text given here follows the version in roman type (L1) rather than that in blackletter (L2), since it contains more substantive variants from earlier versions, suggesting a greater degree of revision specifically for the occasion. The major difference between the two printings is that the roman version maintains focus on domestic issues, trusting that treacherous "Rogues," rather than "Frenchees," will flee with the king's return (line 77). The xenophobic note, however, is sharpened in another version of this ballad -- England's Great Prognosticator -- which is given next.
[28] proper sweet Tune.] proper Tune.
[29] Rivers] River
[30] lines 5-6: Ebsworth suggests that "Booker's skill in measuring `the depth of a Pond, or Rivers, in the greatest rain'. . . was gained as an experienced Angler, and maker of fishing-tackle, resident in Tower-Street, temp. Caroli" (RB, 7:634).
[31] the] thee
[32] than] then
[33] give a] give you a
[34] shoon] shoone
[35] Wall,] wal
[36] Room] Roome
[37] Two Thousand Years] Full fourty years following Upon Defacing of Whitehall
[38] Scepter sway] Scepter to sway,
[39] than] then
[40] Hope] hopes
[41] that] the
[42] I'll] I'le
[43] the] that
[44] it was then but] it then to be
[45] our] their
[46] For surely I can] For I can surely
[47] will be] shal go
[48] hath] have
[49] line 53: Coblers, i.e. Col. John Hewson, a common butt of royalist satires because of his artisanal origins.
[50] we shall e'er long] ere long we shal
[51] Mates] Maiks L2. Ebsworth sees here evidence of a Northern printer, suggesting John White of Newcastle (RB, 7:684).
[52] lack] lake
[53] &] and
[54] the King comes Home in] we enjoy sweet
[55] Rogues] Frenches
[56] all the Kings Foes most shamefulie] the Kings foes a shamed remain
[57] they'll] they will
[58] the King enjoys] we enjoy
[59] shall come to pass,] things to pass shall come,
[60] Pipe] Pick
[61] When the King comes Home in Peace again.] GOD SAVE THE KING, AMEN.
[undated]
This version of Parker's The King enjoys his own again more closely follows the text of the blackletter copy in the British Library (L2; see line 31) than the copy in roman type (L1), but displays sufficient independent and substantial variants from either to establish itself as a distinct variant. In several places, the versification has been improved. More generally, alterations here add edge to the satire against those who supported and benefitted from parliamentary government (eg. line 11), while shifts in verb tenses intensify the historical immediacy of the verses by signalling certainty that the king is about to arrive (eg. lines 21, 28-30). With the return of monarchy, the danger from treacherous "rogues" is replaced by that from "Papists" (line 95), adding international relations to the agenda: "a fig for Rome and Spain."
One of several ballads published for Francis Grove to celebrate the events of 1660, this one bears an original cut representing an astrologer looking through a three-barrelled telescope alongside a stock cut of two noble knights riding.
[62] Wing: E2974A. Copies: GU Euing 96. E [not found]. Commentaries: Hazlitt, Handbook, p. 93.
[cut]
[cut]
FINIS.
London, Printed for Francis Grove on Snowhill, without Newgate. Entred according to Order.
[63] Thomas Swallow, Jonathan Dove and William Dade all gave their names to well-known almanacs published throughout the century; see Bernard Capp, Astrology and the Popular Press, pp. 357, 358, 380-81. According to Ebsworth, each of them prospered during the commonwealth: "Swallow had been a corn-cutter, cheiropodist, in Gutter-Lane, helped into favour by Pennington's wife whom he literally set on her feet again. Dove, a cobbler at Whitecross-street, had told Sir William Waller that `The Lord would fight his battles for him!' and after Waller's success in Cambridgeshire Dove was rewarded, being subsidized as an almanack-maker. Dade, seller of fiddle-strings and pensioner of parliament, had fooled them with flattery" (RB, 7:634).
[64] "forty years" follows Upon Defacing of Whitehall and the blackletter version of Parker at@@####
[65] Probably a compositor's error for "Greed's" as in Parker, line 53.
[66] Presumably Col. John Hewson, commonly thus termed in satires of the time.
[67] An improvement on Parker line 61.
[undated: before May?]
This anonymous and undated blackletter broadside loosely follows Parker's stanza, retaining the metrics of the refrain. It bears woodcuts that were also used by Charles Tyus for The Covenant.
Evidently composed before Charles arrived, the ballad sets general conditions for, and details specific results of, his return, including the rare and potentially startling claim that, once Charles is back, "Then will his power be absolute" (line 32).
[cut]
[cut]
FINIS.
Among the most popular themes that poets used to celebrate Charles's return was his seemingly miraculous escape from the battle of Worcester back in 1651. The flight from battle, the early days in hiding, and the escape to France six weeks later had swiftly become the stuff of both royalist legend and parliamentarian propaganda. In the months following the battle, the London press had kept busy publishing all manner of speculation and misinformation about the Scottish king's "mad design": widely-circulated news reports maintained that he had escaped into Scotland, or was disguised as a woman and living in London.72 After safely arriving in France in mid October, Charles himself turned misinformation into disinformation by confirming false reports of his route that had appeared in the London press in order to protect those who had helped him escape.73 But nine years later, he was keen that the truth should be told. As soon as he set sail for England, Charles "fell in disourse of his escape from Worcester,"74 subsequently taking a personal interest in setting the record straight and rewarding those who had taken risks on his behalf.75
Understandably, accounts of the escape published in 1660 tended to rely on the familiar, though often unreliable, stories that had been in circulation since 1651.76 Some of the grosser fabrications disappeared, but errors, such as the soujourn in London which Charles himself had confirmed,77 are frequently repeated. In order to understand how the events of those weeks have been retold by the poets, some facts and dates are useful.
On Wednesday, 3 September, Charles left the battlefield accompanied by his personal servants and a group of principal noblemen, including Henry Wilmot.78 On Lord Derby's advice, the group herded north where the king had good hopes of being hidden by the recusant underground. By 3:00pm on Thursday they had got as far as Whiteladies and stopped. Here Charles met the five Penderel brothers -- tenant farmers, royalists, and recusants accustomed to hiding people -- who would keep him safely in hiding for the next week. Charles paid off his servants and went into disguise. After a day spent hiding in the woods, with Richard Penderel, Charles attempted but failed to cross the Severn; they retreated to Boscobel House where Charles spent Saturday hiding in an Oak tree. That evening William Penderel cut Charles's hair in an attempt to disguise his overly familiar features.
Meanwhile John Penderel and Wilmot had been planning an escape in league with Colonel John Lane, whose sister Jane had a parliamentary pass to Abbots Leigh, near Bristol, for herself, her cousin Henry Lascelles, and a manservant. On Sunday evening, following a day at prayer during which he suffered a celebrated nose-bleed, the disguised king, carrying a billhook, set off with all five Penderels to meet up with Wilmot and the Lanes. At Moseley en route, Charles took leave of the Penderels, ending his sojourn among this branch of the loyalist recusant underground. Early on the morning of the 10th, Charles met up with Jane at Bentley and, taking on the guise of William, her manservant, set out riding pillion with Jane for Abbots Leigh, where he would be safely among royalists and close to one of England's busiest ports. As the party approached Stratford, parliamentary troops scared off Jane's sister and brother-in-law, who turned back home. But the rest carried on unmolested, arriving at Long Marston for the night of the 10th. It was here that manservant "William" was scolded by a kitchen maid for being too incompetent to turn a roasting handle. Travelling next day to Cirencester, where they put up at the Crown Inn, the fugitive party arrived at Abbots Leigh on Friday the 12th. Here, despite attempts at disguise, Charles was recognized by a butler named Pope. Finding no boat from Bristol, with Pope's advice and connivance, Jane, Lascelles, with their manservant "William" travelled on into Dorset to Trent. Once plans for a boat to take Charles to France had been arranged, Jane and her cousin returned to Bentley.
As events turned out, it would take several more weeks before Charles would find passage for France; he finally left from Shoreham on the 15th of October. News that the king had escaped in the company of a woman was in print within a month of his arrival in Paris on the 20th, so there must have been a leak in or around the Lane household.79 The recusant underground handled secrecy somewhat better; the Penderels only enter the story in 1660. In any event, Jane and Colonel Lane, determined to escape any danger, walked to Yarmouth and took ship for the continent in December. Once there, they joined the court in exile. Details of Charles's escape, once Jane Lane had left him, remained obscure to the poets of 1 and so need not detain us here.80
Restoration accounts of the escape from Worcester are clearly interested in claiming historical accuracy, especially when verisimilitude might contribute to royalist legend and help legitimate regal authority. But the truth about Charles's kingship was to be a gradual and continuing process of revelation. New details were invented, while established rumours, such as Charles claiming to be the son of a nail maker from Birmingham, persisted regardless of their historical accuracy. Harold Weber describes the escape narratives operating a pattern of disguise and revelation that characterizes and legitimates Charles's paradoxical status, rendering the king both human and royally other. By 1660, his defeat at Worcester had already been turned to his advantage, representing not "a military victory over his own people, but . . . a conquest of their hearts."81 Recycling the escape story was ideally suited to keeping that conquest alive by rendering Charles, both man and king, knowable and familiar. In keeping with their popular form, the ballads favor comic inversion -- such as a kitchen maid calling the king a booby -- a device which serves to reaffirm rather than disturb the established order.
Since none can be dated exactly, the broadside verses given in this section are arranged in the order in which the information they provide became available. The first three reiterate a remarkably similar repertoire of narrative details that had mostly been available in printed form since 1651: Charles leaving the field only after several horses were shot from under him, the subsequent cutting of the king's hair, his disguise, his distributing £300 in gold among his servants, his hiding in an oak tree, his further disguise as a servant to Jane Lane, the £1, reward offered by Parliament for his capture, his taking ship for France. Some anecdotes found in the first three ballads seem to be the stuff of irreducible but undocumentable legend, such as the disguised king claiming to be the son of a Birmingham nail maker. Misinformation from the 1 news reports persists into some of these accounts: the story of Charles and the kitchen maid is set at an inn in Bristol, and he is imagined visiting London before sailing for France.
The fourth ballad given here, The Wonderfull and Miraculous escape, however, depends on information generally available only after the king's return and fills in some of the details of the first week after Worcester when Charles was in company with the Penderels. John Couch's broadside verses are less interested in reporting historical narrative than with transforming historical detail into the magical forms of poetic iconography. Allusions, both casual and detailed, to the providential-seeming nature of Charles's escape persist in Restoration poems throughout the year. Poems in later sections that make full use of the story include John Crouch's Mixt Poem, Thomas Fairebrother's An Essay, and Thomas Fuller's Panegyrick.
[72] See The last Newes from the King of Scots (for G. Wharton, 1651), LT E.641.(24), ms dated 29 Sept.; The Weekly Intelligencer 16, for 9-16 September 1651, reports on "the madnes of that Design" (p. 281); and see the fuller account from early November, A Mad Designe (for Robert Ibbotson, 1651), LT 669.f.16.(32).
[73] Printed reports of Charles's own account include The Declaration of the King of Scots (for G. Horton, 1651), LT E.645.(5), ms dated "10 November," and A Mad Design.
[74] Pepys, 23 May 1660. Twenty years later, Charles gave Pepys a full account; and see Matthews, ed., Charles's II's Escape from Worcester
[75] On rewards for those who assisted, see Richard Ollard, The Escape of Charles II after the Battle of Worcester (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1966), pp. 139-48.
[76] See Harold Weber, Paper Bullets, chapter on the escape from Worcester stories.
[77] See The Declaration, pp. 2-3.
[78] Alone of the noblemen, Wilmot stayed with Charles during the escape, becoming an important member of the court in exile. He was created Earl of Rochester on 13 December 1652, remaining engaged in royal service until his death on 19 February 1658.
[79] A Mad Designe and The Declaration appeared in early Novemeber. An undated ballad, The last Newes from France (Printed for W. Gilbertson), to the tune "When the King enjoyes his own again," at GU Euing 181, tells the story in the voice of the un-named Lady.
[80] Jane entered the service of the Duke of Orange, whom she attended to Cologne in 1654. In 1660, she was voted £1,000 by the Commons to buy herself a jewel; Charles gave her a gold watch that was to become a family heirloom; a pension of £1, was also voted her (DNB).
[81] Weber, Paper Bullets, p. 40.
[undated: before 29 May]
This undated ballad printed for Charles Tyus says little enough about the much venerated Royal Oak itself, but takes the king from the battle field as far as France in the company of Henry Wilmot and Jane Lane: the subsequent legend of the tree itself has been traced by A. M. Broadley.83 This ballad necessarily simplifies along the way: Charles did not leave the battle field accompanied only by Wilmot, or stop in the oak on the first night, for example. The narrative of events given here reappears in an identical sequence in the next ballad by Henry Jones.
Although the ballad bears the initials "J., W," authorship remains uncertain. Despite the peculiarity of the punctuation -- initials usually put first name first -- Ebsworth suggests that this ballad is "probably" by John Wade. He also assigns "J. W."'s The King and Kingdomes Joyful Day of Triumph to Wade (RB, 9:33-34). But in neither instance does he provide supporting evidence, and I have found none. This latter ballad was printed for John Andrews who also published "J. W."'s "A Second Charles Once more Shall Reign." Weber notes: "In A Bibliography of the Literature Relating to the Escape and Preservation of King Charles II after the Battle of Worcester, 3rd September, 1651 (Aberdeen: University Press, 1924), William Arthur Horrox suggests the uncertainty of the ascription to Wade, and provides a tentative date of 1660 for publication".84 Since nothing is added to the printed accounts of Worcester available since 1651, and since the king's "presence" is "proclaimed" (lines 6, 11) but not described, we may presume that the ballad appeared early in 1660, before Charles actually arrived.
[82] Wing: /not Wing/. bl brs. Copies: GU Euing 308. Reprint: Ebsworth, RB, 9:65-66.
[83] See Broadley, The Royal Miracle.
[84] Weber, Paper Bullets, p. 221 n1.
[cut]
[85] On lines 29-33, see Weber, Paper Bullets, p. 41.
[cut]
FINIS. J. W.
London, Printed for Charles Tyus on London-Bridge.
(1660)
A unique ballad from the collection, now in the Bodleian, of Anthony Wood who dated it "1660" after the colophon, and noted above the title that the ballad was "Made by Hen. Jones an old Ballad-singer of Oxon."
What is specially interesting here is Jones's invention and recounting of comic incidents at the king's expense involving class and gender inversions. These incidents serve to humanize the king without actually subverting anything. Jones is specially good when imagining Jane Lane slapping the king's face, one of several incidents original to this ballad. It is worth noting that as soon as Lane has awed the soldiers, thereby recovering the incident from danger by means of her nobility, Jones immediately attributes the king's escape to divine, not female, agency. A classic instance of low-comic inversion merely re-confirming the old orders of class and gender once more.
Jones appears to follow the stragegy of J. W.'s Royal Oak with an initial warning to those hostile to the king's return, reminding us that monarchy was far from popular with everyone.
[cut]
[cut]
By Henry Jones of Oxford: Printed for the Authour.
[87] This was the sum offered by parliament for information leading to the king's capture. The Proclamation for the Discovery and Apprehending of Charles Stuart was issued on 10 September (LT 669.f.16[25]), and reprinted in newsbooks; see, for instance, The Weekly Intelligencer 37 (9 to September, 1651), pp. 285-86.
[88] A confusion for the "Crown" at Cirencester.
[89] i.e. Henry Lascelles.
[undated: before May?]
Although undated, this ballad was presumably among those produced by Francis Groves during the early months following Charles's return, a time when there was still a lively market for tales of the king's adventures that were as historically unreliable as this one. The link between Charles's exile and the wanderings of Aeneis, suggested by the title and the tune, is not pursued in the text. Nevertheless, the miraculous escape is once again imagined to be a sign of divine providence protecting the royal heir rather than the result of human agency and cunning.
[90] Wing: R2157A. Bl brs. Copies: GU Euing 312. Commentaries: Hazlitt, Handbook, p. 93.
[cut]
FINIS.
London Printed for F. Grove on Snow-hill. Entred according to order.
[undated: before May?]
To the previous ballad accounts of the king's escape, this broadside offers the first version of the story of the loyal Pendrel brothers, members of a recusant family who helped disguise the king in the days immediately after the battle when Charles, accompanied by Derby, Lauderdale, Buckingham and Wilmot, sought refuge while planning his escape. Other reports of the Pendrel's activities to appear in 1660 include An Exact Narrative and Relation,93 and "T. H."'s The Five faithfull Brothers,94 a prose tract purporting to be a transcription of the conversation between Charles and the brothers after the king's return.
With characteristic enthusiasm for the Stuart cause, Ebsworth considered this "the best and most important of the many `Restoration Ballads' of the `Royal Oak' which we have had the privilege of bringing back to the notice of loyal Cavaliers" (RB, 9:69).
[92] Wing: J945. Bl brs.
Copies: O Wood
401(173/174). Reprint: Ebsworth, RB, 9:67-69.
[93] Thomason dated his copy "20 July."
[94] The colophon reads "Printed for W. Gilbertson, 1660"; L c.71.bb.6.
The tune is,Come lets drink the time invites.
[cut]
[cut]
Printed for F. Coles, T. Vere, and W. Gilbertson.
[95] sic: not in OED.
[96] The Proclamation was not issued until September, after the Penderels had handed Charles over to Jane Lane.
[97] "beronnen" obscure past participle of "berun": OED 1. trans "to run or flow about, or over the surface" 2. "To run round about, encompass."
[undated: before May?]
John Couch was among those anglican divines who suffered sequestration during the civil war. In 1640 the living of St. Margaret's Church, Horsmonden in Kent, became vacant on the death of the rector Dr. Geoffery Amhurst.
Dr Amhurst's place was first filled by one Elliston, and a little later Mrs Beswicke introduced John Couch, who in due course also found himself in trouble from the Puritan members of his flock, becoming a second victim of sequestration in 1653. He was supplanted by Edward Rawson, a recent graduate of Harvard, who is described as `a New England man and a violent Presbyterian.' . . .
The unfortunate Mr Couch, with his wife and six or seven children, was turned out of the rectory with an allowance of only £20 per annum, but was able to claim the benefice again at the Restoration, a claim strongly resisted by Rawson, who made belated efforts to legalize his own position. It appears that neither contender had ever been legally inducted. Rawsons's battle-cry had always been `No bishop': now he found himself in urgent need of one, and twice contrived to secure an induction mandate (in August 1660 and August 1661) for the vacancy `per mortem naturalem Gaudfridi Amhurst' (who had died in 1647). These manoeuvres being subsequently declared to be invalid, John Couch was restored to the rectory amid general approbation in 1661, and held it until his death in 1673.99
The most poetic, learned and witty of the Restoration broadsides on the king's escapades after Worcester, Couch's verses hearken back to the emblem tradition, meditating on three agents of the "miraculous" escape that are signs of a special providential promise to the nation. Not for Couch the narrative stanza of ballad form. Indeed, the heroic exploits of the English king outgo biblical, classical, and legendary precedents, just as the heroic virtues of the Englishwoman Jane Lane surpass and obliviate those of the heroic Frenchwoman, Joan of Arc. For this treatment of events, only the elevated style of the classical pentameter couplet would do.
Couch imagines Charles endangered by lions and tigers in his flight across the English countryside, a peculiar poetic fancy that he shared with the writer of The Countrymens Vive le Roy.
[98] Wing: C6508A. brs. Copies: L c.20.f.4(38).
[99] Anthony Cronk, St Margaret's Church, Horsmonden: An Historical and Descriptive Account (Horsmonden: Church Farm House, 1967), p. 45. My thanks to B. E. Fowler, Clerk of Horsmonden Parish Council; personal letter including a copy of Cronk's notice, October 1995.
[100] See II Sam. 18.9-14 for the story of Absalom, the oak tree, and Joab's three darts.
[101] "This Tree is not hollow but of a sound firm Trunk, onely about the middle of the body of it there is a hole in it about the bignesse of a man's head, from whence it absurdly and abusively (in respect of its deserved perpetual growth to outlast Time itself) is called Hollow," An Exact Narrative, p. 9.
____________________________________________________________
By John Couch, M. in A. sequestred from Horsmonden in Kent.
[103] Compare The Countreymen's Vive le Roy: "By Tigers, wolves and beasts of prey" line 14.
The sixteen poems included in this section were printed during, or describe events from the perspective of, the period between December 1659 and the end of April 1660. They demonstrate how both poetic genres and political opinions were hesitant and uncertain during these months when royalists lived in hopeful anticipation of a return to monarchy. Experimentation in a wide variety of poetic genres contributed to the sense of general uncertainty about possible futures even as General Monk -- "the most important single agent in bringing about the Restoration"104 -- led his army south to London. These poems offer numerous revisions of recent past events, while also attempting to document the immediate present as closely as they can in order to interpret, advise, and set the terms for what they hope will come about. 105
Milton scholars will be familiar with these weeks as the period when The Readie and Easie Way was being written and revised, in a desperate attempt to prevent a return to monarchy. Austin Woolrych's "Historical Introduction" to the revised seventh volume of The Complete Prose Works of John Milton (1980) provides an indispensible and detailed guide to the political and social activities of these weeks. In what follows, I will presume that readers will refer to Woolrych's account for a more fully detailed account of persons and events; here I seek only to offer a broad outline focussing on matters of interest to royalist poets.
While General Monk was bringing his army south to London and negotiating with both Parliamentary and city interests, poets writing in support of restoring the king commonly set conditions, often quite specific ones, to that recall. Although Charles would not be formally acclaimed until Tuesday 8 May, during the previous two months, royalist poets expressed confidence that he would be recalled, and felt empowered to begin enumerating the advantages his return would, or should, bring to a broad range of social, economic, and political interests.
Poems have been included in this group when there is evidence, usually marginal dates from George Thomason and Anthony Wood, for dating their availability, or if the work addresses events specific to this period but does not claim that the king's return has been formally proclaimed. This group has been further restricted to poems that advocate the king's return by directly addressing the figure of the king himself. Left out, then, are the large number of topical anti-Rump satires that Lucy Hutchinson remarked upon in her description of the king's return:
And indeed it was a wonder in that day to see the mutability of some, and the hypocrisy of others, and the servile flattery of all. Monck, like his better genius, conducted him, and was adored like one that had brought all the glory and felicity of mankind home with this prince.
The officers of the army had made themselves as fine as the courtiers, and everyone hoped in this change to change their condition, and disowned all things they had before adored. And every ballad singer sung up and down the streets ribald rhymes made in reproach of the late commonwealth and of all those worthies that therein endeavoured the people's freedom and happiness.106
Lucy Hutchinson was by no means alone in her responses during the spring of 1660, and her sensitive account of what Christopher Hill calls "the experience of defeat," should come to mind whenever we are reading the often quoted words of Pepys and Evelyn.
Also left out are all the verses, in a wide variety of genres, that were addressed to General Monk. Although I have included two broadsides that are properly anti-Rump satires (see A Psalme and The Case is Altered), I have not attempted to catalogue all such works; though doing so would enable us to examine how they represent the possibility of a return to monarchy. Recent studies by David Norbrook, Laura Knoppers, Nigel Smith and others have started to extend our understanding of these important works by examining specific titles, but a fully historicized and archivally informed study of anti-Rump satire is very much needed.107
So too, Monk's importance as the subject of verse propaganda is sufficiently massive a topic to deserve independent study. I have included, as an appendix to this preface, a preliminary checklist of works containing poems to Monk: it does not claim to be comprehensive. The most deserving of close analysis are the verses addressed to him during the entertainments and masques held in his honor by the various London Guilds, many of which were subsequently published. How might the evidence of these omitted works change the picture of poetic activity that emerges from these sixteen pro-monarchy pieces? Do the satires on the Rump invariably recommend a return to monarchy? How influential were the various masques and "Entertainments" organized for Monk after his arrival in London? Leaving these works out remains a practical matter of limiting the scope of this edition to the work of a single life-time, but the consequences are worth briefly exploring.
By including only poems addressing the king as a desired monarch, my concern has not been to suggest that poets constituted or imagined themselves an early consensus; on the contrary I am concerned rather with charting how the specific differences in form and attitude show a discourse being constructed from disparate ideological programmes. As these sixteen poems demonstrate, poets advocating the king's return in these months before his formal recall by Parliament frequently disagreed among themselves about what such a return should mean and how to write about it. Although the trade Guilds comissioned poets to address and advise Monk, and stationers comissioned ballads that encouraged pro-Restoration sentiments, such activities hardly constitute evidence that the press was being enrolled on behalf of an organized pro-Restoration campaign of verse propaganda during these early months. On the contrary, the common use of anonymous or false colophons and imprints on royalist publications -- such as "printed for Charles Prince, in the year, 1660" -- suggests there were still perceived dangers. Harold Weber in Paper Bullets has powerfully demonstrated how Charles and his governments used and controlled the press for their own purposes, but as Brian Weiser has noted, such efforts at control were neither uniform in operation nor consistent throughout Charles's reign.108 Certainly, during the early months of 1660, there is little evidence of a centralized royalist effort to control the published representations of the king. Moreover, poems representing the king were far fewer in number than the verse attacks on the Rump and the poems addressed to Monk which I have omitted, reminding us that the king was not yet fully the center of poetic attention.
Diarists of the time confirm that these first months of 1660 were a time of hesitation and uncertainty. In December 1659, when Pepys began his Diary in anticipation of great events, it would not have seemed very likely, even to him, that the king would be back in power by May. Pepys recalls personal and family events, money troubles and illnesses, but keeps a keen eye on current events. For Bulstrode Whitelocke, negotiating with the Stuart exiles seemed a reasonable option before Christmas; for him, loyalty to the old regime proved impossible to maintain once the regicides, Thomas Scot and John Lambert, struggled to keep the Rump in power. Skirmishes and bloodshed as early as 5 December resulted from demonstrations on behalf of recalling the excluded members.
Freeing Parliament from the Rump was on many people's minds; but not all were necessarily hoping for the return of a Stuart king. The General Counsel of the officers signed against kingship on the 13th. By the 20th of December, Whitelocke wished "himselfe out of these dayly hazards, butt knew not how to gett free of them, the distractions were strangely high & daily increasing," and later records personal and political anxieties over what Monk and the army would demand once they arrived in London. Many began fearing that the king would be recalled; on 2 January a bill was approved by all members of Parliament against the title of Charles to the throne.
With the collapse of the Rump on 16 January, Whitelocke saw the tide turning and went into hiding. He noted increasing evidence that Monk was playing an ambiguous game from news that was being brought to him by his wife who, from then on, served as his public intelligencer.
Meanwhile, in Essex, Ralph Josselin had been nervous of renewed civil disturbance since August 1659, but December was for him as for Pepys a month of family illnesses and reassuring reports that all seemed mercifully quiet in London. Reporting word of Monk's journey to London as early as 15 January, Josselin reserves judgment: "General Monck is coming up to London, wee shall see to what intent, god remember his in mercy and all shall bee well."
Monk's journey south is the subject of the best known poetic account of events during the first months of 1660. Robert Wild's Iter Boreale may mostly be remembered for drawing Dryden's contempt in the Essay of Dramatic Poesy (1668). Wild, Eugenius pronounces, "is the very Wither of the City ... When his famous poem first came out in the year 1660, I have seen them reading it in the midst of 'Change time; nay so vehement they were at it, that they lost their bargain by the candles' ends."109 This scene of reading could not have occured until after 23 April when Wild's poem appeared, mere days before the Convention Parliament sat for the first time. Whether real or imagined, Dryden's recollection of a moment, eight years previously, when the appearance of Wild's Iter Boreale interfered with the more important business of making money, suggests a sustained interest in reading about Monk and his journey to London, at the head of the army that would pressure the Rump to restore the excluded members and dissolve itself, thus precipitating the call for Charles to return.
By late April, Monk was already a national hero much celebrated in print. Since January, he had been the direct subject of more than twenty poems, while Charles was the direct subject of fewer than sixteen. On the second of January Monk crossed the Tweed and immediately began attracting a great deal of attention from poets and propagandists. In short order, the ruddy-faced Devonian squire became the subject of a mythology linking him with the legendary Christian knight, St George. Before Monk left Scotland, his name was linked with the patron saint of England, though by witty negation. "'Tis not Saint George we sing of here," declared The Noble English Worthies, a broadside that Anthony Wood collected in December. Monk's Westcountry origins were swiftly and regularly elaborated upon as the mythology of a new St George, the "glory of the West," took shape.110
By Wednesday, 11 January he reached York and on this day "complete victory was his" (Hutton 1985: p. 84) since any danger of armed resistance from Lambert's supporters had crumbled away. On Saturday 14 January, Monk's fellow Devonians, the "gentlemen" of Exeter, took it upon themselves to be among the very first to declare themselves publicly in favor of restoring the excluded members111. Bulstrode Whitelocke recorded in his diary on 23 January that he had received word how a "tumult in Excester, the people declaring for a free Parlement, [had been] quieted" (Whitelocke, Diary, p. 563).
During the last days of January, petitions for restoring the excluded members appeared from various parts of the country. Many were addressed to Monk personally. On 24 January, Canterbury and Northampton had joined Exeter petitioning for Parliamentary reform. On the 25th, Ralph Josselin cynically noted in his diary, "the nacion looking more to Charles Stuart [than to Cromwell's family] out of love to themselves not him." The republican and friend of Milton, Colonel Robert Overton, declared himself ready to defend Hull against Monk's army, if need be, until 12 March, when he obeyed the Council of State and handed the city over to Fairfax. 112
Whitelocke, Josselin, and Overton were by no means alone in feeling ill-disposed to the way events seemed to be going as Monk and his army moved south on London. Not all writers wanted to see in Monk a new St George from the West. Before January was over, the mythology surrounding Monk took a new turn as he became involved in the published libels of the times. An obscene and scurrilous prose tract that George Thomason dated "20 Jan." and entitled To His Excellency General Monck. The Humble Petition of the Lady Lambert,113 imagines "Lady Lambert" offering herself to Monk, hoping to divert him from his course. Three days later, however, Thomason collected another tract, A Curtain-Conference, in which John and "Lady" Lambert are imagined in bed, planning for the inevitable return of monarchy. 114 Before Monk had even reached London, royalist satirists were already imagining the dissolution of the Rump to be inevitable, given unfolding events, and sought to defame and demoralize opponents of the movement toward monarchy. But verses addressed to Monk were seldom scandalous. On the last day of January, a broadside appeared advising Monk to bring in a king:
NOw George for England, that brave Warrior bold,
That would not be by Lambert's force controul'd;
But did endeavour for the good o'th'Nation,
We hope to work a blessed Reformation,
And settle Kingly Power in this Dominion,
And then thou shalt be great in the Opinion
Of all good people that do fear the Lord,
And then no doubt they will with thee accord,
And say, Long live brave George in Wealth and Peace,
Bless thee with Honors, Plenty and Increase.
115
Once he arrived in London on 3 February, poets announced the arrival of England's new St George who would victoriously rout the dragonish Rump Parliament. Some advised him that he must bring in the king, others hoped he would. An acrostick from later this month shows how Monk's very name mysteriously offered him advice:
M Mount thy Horse,
O On thy Army bring,
N Neuter stand till
K Restores the KING.
Historians have noticed how Monk's "studied neutrality" continued during his negotiations with political forces in the capital city.116 Throughout the year, poets continued to recollect various details of incidents that took place from the time of Monk's arrival, suggesting that many of them were themselves in London at the time, or turned to newsbooks to refresh their memories.
On Wednesday, 8 February, two days after Monk first addressed the House of Commons, householders and freemen of the city of London petitioned the Lord Mayor not to permit any authority that could not rightly claim legislative authority. Their petition started a rumour that citizens were preparing to withold taxes, in response to which the Committee of Safety ordered the Secretary of State, Thomas Scott, to command Monk to use his troops to subdue the city. Almost immediately, the Common Council of the city voted a tax strike that would remain in effect until the excluded members were readmitted. The next morning, Thursday the 9th, Scott ordered Monk to display his power over the city by arresting those citizens named as ringleaders in the tax strike, by removing the chains used to secure city streets, and by removing the city gates. Monk equivocated. On the 9th, Monk reluctantly complied with part of the order, arresting nine of the eleven named ringleaders and removing the chains. But he demurred about taking down the gates until the 10th, and then only after receiving a repeat command to do so (see Davis 1955: 278-79; Hutton 1985: 91-93). The next day, however, Monk turned on the Rumpers and presented his own ultimatum demanding new elections. This was "the first good omen" according to John Evelyn. Others agreed. That night, 11 February, the citizens of London took back the streets in a night of bonfires and carnival that Ronald Hutton has called "possibly the greatest expression of popular rejoycing London has ever known" (Hutton 1985: 93).
Details about these days of early February often surface in the works of poets writing after Charles had returned, and there is plenty of contemporary evidence that, for many who were caught up in these events, the tensions and excitement that began with Monk's arrival in London and ended with the bonfires of 11 February marked a moment after which the Restoration seemed a likely option, however much Monk might keep his intentions to himself. At the time, nothing was very certain. One supporter of the king who seems to have been printing his personal chronicle of these events even as they were taking place, a young law student named Giles Duncombe, captured the passionate uncertainty of eager royalists during early February in his Scutum Regale: The Royal Buckler; or, VOX LEGIS, A Lecture to Traytors: Who most wickedly murthered CHARLES the I, AND Contrary to all Law and Religion banished CHARLES THE II. 3d MONARCH of GREAT BRITAIN. Towards the end of his peroration against those who have brought down and kept out monarchy, Duncombe vividly describes the indignity felt by many Londoners when Monk destroyed the defences which had been erected against royal intrusion back in 1643:
Monck prov'd worse than Pharaoh himself, and instead of relieving of our distressed Jerusalem ... he heaped misery to misery, and executed such a grand piece of Tyranny that none in the world ... could invent. On Thursday the ninth day of February, 1659 ... he drew up all his souldiers into the City, with their matches lighted, in a warlike posture, doubled his guards, and tore down all the gates, and posts of the City; neither did his intoxicated malice stay upon the gates, but leapt upon the Aldermen, and other Citizens, whom he presently cast into prison, so that now he is become odious, and stinks in the nostrils of all the Citizens and People: and whereas he was the common hopes of all men, he is now the common hatred of all men, as a Traytor more detestable than Oliver himself; who, though he manacled the Citizens hands, yet never took away the doores of their City, whereby all manner of beasts, (as well the Wolves at Westminster, as other out-lying Foxes, and Birds of prey) may come in, and destroy them when they please. (pp. 373-74).
Within three pages, however, Duncombe starts all over again with a new section -- "Englands Redemption" -- and finds himself recanting his earlier complaint rather than cancelling the earlier pages:
No sooner had I written these last words of the momentary prosperity of the wicked, but immediately the same hour, news was brought me, that General Monck and the City were agreed, and resolved to declare for a free Parliament, and decline the Rump ... I was strucken with amazement, joy made me tremble, and the goodnesse of the news would scarce permit me to believe it. (p. 377)117
Duncombe's interrupted narrative makes Scutum Regale one of the most interesting ephemeral publications of the Restoration year. Advertized in the Parliamentary Intelligencer 22 for the week 21-28 May (p. 348), copies of Scutum Regale show evidence of considerable stop-press actitivity. The Virgilian motto "Iam redit Astræa, Redeunt Saturnia regna," used by Dryden in June, also appears as a motto to the frontispiece found in some copies of Scutum Regale, one of which comes from Charles II's own collection. The Epistle to the Reader, anagrammatically signed "Cimelgus Bonde," ends with a prayer for the arrival of "Charls the 2d our Augustus, and Cæsars Successor" (sig. A4v), suggesting that Duncombe may very well have been the earliest writer to name Charles as Augustus in print.
Throughout February and March, verses addressing Monk and his heroic achievements battling the Rump continued to appear. On Tuesday 21 February, he brought in the excluded members,118 and poets were quick to celebrate the event in ballads such as Saint George, and the Dragon, Englands Triumph. Or The Rump Routed, which declares itself written "To the Tune of, Fill up the Parliament full," "G. Tichwhit"'s General Monks Welcome ... To the Tune of, When the King Enjoys his Own again, and Redemptio Ab Aquilone which ends:
Then George for England strike up thy Drum
And do thy devoir this Rump destroy,
That Noble King Charles the second may come,
And our streets may eccho with Vive le Roy.
Similar works continued to appear during March (see Appendix). In this month William Davenant and John Denham published the first formal panegyrics addressed to the general on behalf of royalist interests. The Clothworkers and Drapers were the earliest of the London guilds to commission verse speeches addressing Monk to be performed at entertainments held in his honour. During April, the Skinners, Goldsmiths, Vintners, and Fishmongers all held entertainments for Monk involving performance pieces that were subsequently printed. On St George's day, 23 April, Wild's Iter Boreale appeared. Two weeks later, the Convention Parliament declared Charles king and by May, Monk had resigned his position as centre of interest to the poets. But not entirely. Monk continued to appear in poems directly addressed to the king and continued to attract poems in his honour well into the summer.
Once it started to look extremely likely that Charles would be returned, poets began directing their attentions more directly to the man who was about to become king. Several ballads representing Charles appeared following the dissolution of the Rump on 16 March. Engraved portraits of Charles, with verses by John Ogilby, appeared early as late March, marking a distinct interest in the personal appearance of the future king. But during April, the presses remained relatively quiet on the subject of the king.
This section ends with the formal verse "portrait" by Richard Flecknoe, although this undatable work almost certainly appeared later in the year.
This list of verses addressed to Monk is certain to have omitted works that should have been included. It requires supplementing by a carefull examination of the many prose tracts in the Thomason Tracts and elsewhere.
Works are calendared in chronological order; shelfmarks are given to copies I have examined and are not a comprehensive list of extant works.
The Noble English Worthies. "'Tis not Saint George we sing of here." LONDON, Printed by Tho. Milbourn and are to be sold at his House in Jewen Street. brs. 0 Wood 416(24); LT 669.f.22(36), ms dated "December 1659"; L c.20.f.4(75).
The Glory of the West or, The Tenth Renowned Worthy, and most Heroick Champion of this Brittish Island. Being an unparallel'd Commemoration of General Monck's coming towards the City of London. London, printed for Charles Gustavus. brs. O Wood 416(39), ms dated "January 1659"; L1 c.20.f.2(36); L2 82.L.8(25).
Advice to Gen. Monck: By a Friend that wisheth his Happiness. brs. LT 669.f.23(19), ms dated "31 Jan 1660"; OW L.R.8(32), ms dated "Feb 1659."
Saint George, and the Dragon, Anglice, Mercurius Poeticus: To the Tune of, The Old Souldjour [sic] of the Queens, &c. brs. LT 669.f.23(66), ms dated "28 Feb 1659/60"; OW L.R.8.32.
Englands Triumph. Or The Rump Routed By the true Assertor of Englands Interest, Generall George Monck. A Sonet. To the Tune of, Fill up the Parliament full. London: Printed for James Johnson. O Wood 416(48), ms dated "Feb. 1659."; L1 c.20.f.2(34); L2 c.20.f.4(72).
Redemptio Ab Aquilone, Or some Good out of Scotland, To the Tune of Cook Laurell. O Wood 416(46), ms. dated "1659: feb".
"G. Tichwhit," General Monks Welcome (From the Citie) to Whitehall. To the Tune of, When the King Enjoys his Own again. O Wood 416(52), ms dated "Feb 1659"; OW L.R.8.32.
Monasticon, OR LONDON's Gratulation to the Lord General. The sixth of March, 1660. brs. L 82.L.8(24).
The Second Part of Saint George for England. To the Tune of, To drive the cold Winter away brs. O Wood 416(54), ms dated "March 1659/60"; LT 669.f.24(4), ms dated "7 March 1659/60."
A Speech Made To The Lord General MONCK, at Clotheworkers Hall in London The 13. of March, 1659. at which time he was there entertained by that Worthie Companie O1 Wood 398(3); O2 Firth b.20(16); LT 669.f.24(8); L c.20.f.2(27).
William Davenant, A Panegyrick to his Excellency, The Lord General MONCK. London, Printed for Henry Herringman, 1659. O Wood 416(66), ms dated "March"; LT 669.f.24(33), ms dated "24 March"; L c.20.f.2(25).
A Speech Spoken to his Excellency the Lord General Monk, By one Representing the Genius of ENGLAND at Drapers-Hall, Wednesday the 28. of March. Printed for Richard Andrews. brs. LT 669.f.24(46); L c.20.f.2(26); OW L.R.8.32.
Dialogue betwixt Tom and Dick The former a COUNTRY-MAN, The other a CITIZEN, presented to his EXCELLENCY and the COUNCIL of STATE, at Drapers-Hall in LONDON, March 28. 1660. (To the tune of I'le never love thee more.) O Firth b. 20(21); LT 669.f.24(49), ms dated "30 March"; L1 c.20.f.2(38); L2 c.20.f.4(63); L3 c.40.m.11(5).
Walter Yeokney, A Speech Made to his Excellency The Lord General MONCK, and the Councell of State, at Drapers-hall in London: The 28th of March, 1660. At which time they were entertained by that honourable Company. "The Reader may take notice that the other Speech is a forged cheat, and disowned by Walter Yeokney." LONDON: Printed for Henry Broome at the Gun in Ivy-lane, 1660. O Wood 398(5); LT 669.f.24(46).
[John Denham?], A PANEGYRICK ON HIS EXCELLENCY The LORD GENERAL GEORGE MONCK: Commander in Chief of all the Forces IN ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, AND IRELAND. LONDON, Printed for Richard Marriot in Fleetstreet, 1659. L1 Ashley 624; L2 Lutt.II.72; L3 c.20.f.2(34); O Wood 319(8), ms note: "March: said to be made by Jo. Denham: see whether it be in his works -- -". See also Woods, AO (1721 ed) 2: 423. Banks in Poems accepts and includes this; O Hehir in Harmony from Discords isn't so sure (pp. 152-53).
"T. B.", The Muses congratulatory Address to his Excellency the Lord General MONCK. "Awake ye sacred Quire the night is past..." O Wood 416(72), ms dated "March 1660"; LT 669.f.24(54), ms dated "5 April".
A Speech to the Lord General Monck at Skinners-hall April the fourth, 1660. Spoken by Mr. W. Bard. London, Printed for John Towers 1660. O Wood 398(6); LT 669.f.24(55), ms dated "5 April".
Walter Yeokney, A Song to his Excellency the Ld. General Monck, at Skinners-Hall on Wednesday April 4. 1660...The Reader may take notice that this is the right Speech, sung by W. Yeokney. Printed for William Anderson, 1660. L c.20.f.2(29).
Thomas Jordan, A Speech Made to his Excellency the Lord General Monck, and the Council of State, at Goldsmiths Hall in London, the tenth day of April, 1660. At which time they were entertained by that honourable Company. London, Printed for H. B. at the Gun in Ivy-Lane, 1660. O Wood 398(7); LT 669.f.24(59), ms dated "11 april"; L c.20.f.2(30).
Walter Yeokney, The Speech spoken to the Lord General Monck at Goldsmiths-Hall April the tenth, 1660. By Walter Yolkney. London, printed for John Towers. LT 669.f.24(58), ms dated "11 April".
Thomas Jordan, A Speech made to his Excellency George Monck General, &c. The Twelfth day of Aprill, M.DC.LX. At a Solemn Entertainment at Vinteners-Hal. Wherein his Illustrious Virtues are shaddowed forth under the Emblem of a Vine. O Wood 398(8); Manchester Chetham Halliwell-Phillips #2746 (copy torn and cropped at bottom); LT 669.f.24(61), ms dated "13 April"; L c.20.f.2(31); OW L.R.8.32.
Cyprian Southaick, Fames Genius. OR, A PANEGYRICK Upon tHis Excellency the Lord General Monck. At Vintners-Hall, Thursday the 12th of April 1660. London, Printed for J. Jones and are to be sold at the Royal Exchange in Cornhil, 1660. LT 669.f.24(62), ms dated "13 April".
Thomas Jordan, A Speech made to his Excellency the Lord General Monck and the Council of State, at Fishmongers-Hall in London. The Thirteenth of April, 1660. At which time they were entertained by that Honorable Company. "After a Song of Difference betwixt the Lawyer, the Soldier, the Citizen and the Countrey-man. The Chorus being ended. Enter the Ghost of Massianello Fisher-man of Naples. [text] Spoken by Walter Youkcny [sic]". London, Printed by W. Godbid over against the Anchor Inn in Little Brittain. 1660. O Wood 398(9); Manchester Chetham Halliwell-Phillips #2747 (torn); L c.20.f.2(32) (torn); OW L.R.8.32.
Bacchus Festival, Or, a New medley Being A Musical Representation at the Entertainment of his Excellency the Lord General Monck. At Vintners-Hall, April 12. 1660. brs. LT 669.f.24(64), ms dated "13 April".
Robert Wilde, Iter Boreale. Attempting something upon the Successful Matchless March of the Lord General George Monck, From Scotland to London, The Last Winter, &c. By a Rural Pen. London, Printed on St George's Day, for George Thomason at the Rose and Crown in St Pauls Churchyard, 1660. LT E.1021(13), ms dated "23 April"; OB 910.h.13(26), Nicholas Crouch bought this copy for 1d in the 1690s.
Richard Farrar, A Panegyrick to his Excellency the Lord General Monck. London, Printed by John Macock. May 22. 1660. brs. LT 669.f.25(29), date in colophon.
"J. H." Englands Joy, Expressed in an 'EPINI'KON, To the most Renowned Man of Honor, and Temporal Redeemer of the Prince, Peers, and People of this Land, His Excellencey The Lord General Monck. London, Printed for M. B. 1660. brs. LT 669.f.25(50), ms dated "25 June".
This broadside was attributed to James Howell by Hazlitt, but William H. Vann, in Notes on the Writings of James Howell (Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 1924), argues against the attribution thus: Payne Fisher left it out of his edition of Howell's Poems and Howell did not write "political verses", though some of the idioms are suitable. Vann suggests "If he did write the lines to Monk, he was probably the same J. H. who, on April 30th of that year gave forth "England's Genius Pleading for King Charles," a one-sheet broadside, and "England's Joy For the coming of King Charles II," May 4th. All these give evidence of the same hand; but I am doubtful whether Howell was the author" (pp. 62-3). Curiously, neither of these works, which are included in this anthology, are signed "J. H." The latter is by Henry Brome; a shorter version appeared under the title "For General Monk his Entertainment at Cloath-workers Hall" in Brome's Poems (1661).
W. Drummond, Anagram Of his Excellency the Lord Generall George Monck, King Come Ore. brs. LT 669.f.25(63), ms dated "25 July"; HH [not found]. To be included in this anthology.
An Essay to A Continuation of Iter Boreale, Attempting soemthing upon the happy influence, which that seasonable and successful march of the Lord Generall Monck Out of the North, had upon the Arts and Sciences. The Second Part. By a Lover of Learning. London, Printed for R.S. 1660. O Firth e.157(4).
Robert Howard, "A Panegyrick to Generall MONCK," in Poems, pp. 283-5.
William Moorhead, Lachrimæ Sive Valediction Scotiæ ... The Teares and Valediction of Scotland Upon the Departing of her Governour, the Lord Generall George Monck. By H. Brugis for the Author, 1660. Wing M613. O, OW, CT; CH, MH.
The Noble Monk: OR, An Acrostical Panegyrick to the memory of his Excellency The Lord General Monk. London, Printed by Tho. Milbourn for the Author. brs. LT 669.f.23(49).
The Pedegree and Descent of His Excellency, General George Monck. Setting forth how He is descended from King EDWARD the Third, by a Branch and Skip of the WHITE ROSE, THE House of York. And likewise, His Extraction from RICHARD King of the ROMANS. WITH The State, Title and Descents of the Houses of YORK and LANCASTER in their several Branches. London, Printed for W. Godbid 1659. OC A.73.(34).
Samuel Pordage, "A Panegyrick to his Excellency General Monck" in Poems, sigs B2-B4.
"J. W.", Englands Heroick Champion. Or the ever renowned Generall George Monck, through whose Valor and prudence Englands antient Liberties are restored, and a Full and Free parliament now to be called, to the great joy of the Nation. London, Printed for John Andrews a at the White Lion near Pye Corner. Bl brs. L Rox.III.246.
The British Library Catalogue attributes this to John Wade, following Ebsworth, RB.
"W. Y.", The Entertainment of the Lady Monk, At Fishers-Folly. Together with an Addresse made to her by a Member of the College of Bedlam at her visiting those Phanatiques. Printed 1660. O Wood 398(10).
The title has been torn away from the only copy of this broadside that I have been able to find, so I have adopted the catch phrase from the chorus.
The "J. W." who signed this ballad remains obscure. The publisher, John Andrews, issued numerous early works celebrating the Restoration, including another broadside also signed "J. W.," The King and Kingdomes Joyful Day of Triumph, as well as a second issue of Alexander Brome's ENGLAND'S JOY For the Coming in of our Gracious Soveraign, A Glimpse of Joy, and "J. P."'s The Loyal Subjects hearty Wishes, which was found among the "trunk" ballads. Although written to a different stanzaic pattern, The King and Kingdomes Joyful Day of Triumph picks up the story of Charles's return exactly where "A Second Charles" leaves off, suggesting they may have been commissioned by Andrews from the same balladeer.
Ebsworth has proposed that the "J. W." who wrote this later ballad may have been John Wade, who sometimes published his work with Andrews, and who often signed with his initials (RB, 9:33-34). The British Library catalogue has accepted that Wade was the "J. W." who authored a ballad to Monck, Englands Heroick Champion, which was also published by Andrews.120 Further, Ebsworth also attributes The Royall Oak, printed by Charles Tyus, and signed "J. W." to Wade, but with no special evidence in either case.121 In the absence of further precise evidence, while there is no reason to suppose that the "J. W." in each case may not be the same, whether it is Wade or not seems inconclusive.
In this work, the king is implored, "Do but return and save us now," and promised that were he to do so, "we will Crown thy lovely Brow." These, and the closing lines of the ballad, are the only internal evidence for dating this ballad, and suggest that "A Second Charles" may have appeared early in the year, before or shortly after Monk entered London. Certainly the general terms of desire described here suggest a moment before it was known whether Monk would support a return to monarchy.
Although this anti-Rump satire anticipates the Restoration only obliquely, and addresses the king not at all, I have included it here since the treatment offered of the events of Saturday 11 February -- the day of the "roasting of the Rump" -- seems sufficiently important to warrant inclusion. Pepys recorded a detailed description of the celebrations following Monk's presentation of his ultimatum to the Rump. Returning home from Cheapside that evening, "it being about 10 a-clock," he noticed
the common joy that was everywhere to be seen! The number of bonefires, there being fourteen between St. Dunstan's and Temple Bar. And at Strand bridge I could at one view tell 31 fires. In King-streete, seven or eight; and all along burining and roasting and drinking for rumps -- there being rumps tied upon sticks and carried up and down. The buchers at the maypole in the Strand rang a peal with their knifes when they were going to sacrifice their rump. On Ludgate-hill there was one turning of the spit, that had a rump tied upon it, and abother basting of it. Indeed, it was past imagination, both the greatness and the suddeness of it.
But there is nothing in Pepys's account that indicates he thought the spontanious joy in any way anticipated the king's return.
Thomason dated his copy of this ballad on 15 February.
The two copies of this ballad I have examined indicate stop-press activity and suggest that the stationers William Gilbertson and Charles Tyus employed the same print shop. The copy of this ballad in the British Library has been printed on the back of The beautiful Shepherdesse of Arcadia. A new pastarell Song of a courteous young Knight, and a supposed Shepheards Daughter. To a gallant tune, called the Shepheards Delight, which was printed in London for William Gilbertson. The copy in the Euing collection of Glasgow University is identical apart from the title, which is given as The Royall Subjects Joy. In both instances, the stationer is named as Charles Tyus.
Why has this ballad been ascribed to Thomas Robins, and not The Royall Subjects Warning-piece to all Traytors, issued later in the year, which is also signed "T. R." but bears no stationer's colophon?2 It may be mere chance that the two broadsides happen to be bound next to each other in the Euing collection, but they would seem to have been printed by the same press. But if they are by the same printer and author, why would Charles Tyus sign a piece of work early in the year when things might still have gone the other way, and then not sign what is presumably a later work?
Robins was a prolific writer of ballads who seems to have been specially active in the period 1650-1670 (see Wing STC).
This ballad is optimistic of the future if Charles and Monk can come to some agreement, so has been placed in late February. The claim that there is money at hand to pay soldiers their back wages is as optimistic as the hope that Charles will "pull all Taxes down."
Soon after first appearing in February, Upon the Kings Most Excellent Majestie was re-issued as News From the Royall Exchange; both Woods and Thomason agree that the reprint appeared during March. This later version is almost identical with the initial printing apart from a few minor variants and a more explicit and longer title, which appears in double columns and reads thus:
News from the Royall Exchange: OR, Gold turn'd into Mourning: FROM
| Exit Tyrannus Regum Ultimus An-} | { ECCE! | |
| no Libertatis Angliæ Restitutæ} | {Exit non Tyrannus, sed Regnum Homi- | |
| primo. Januarii 30. Anno Dom.} | TO | {numq; optimus Anno Angliæ Fo/elici- |
| 1648. } | {tatis Ultimo. |
News bears one of the most common of the polemical false imprints to be found on royalist publications of the early months of the year, "London, Printed for Charles King. 1660." A further undatable variant reprint was issued, but the only copy I have seen has the title cut away.
At issue in these broadsides is the inscription that had been set up in the Royal Exchange where a statue of Charles I had once stood. After his execution in 1649, the statue was removed and the Latin motto put in its place. This inscription was removed, but not until 15 March, later than the copy of this broadside dated February by Wood. For details of 15 March, see the broadside An Exit to the Exit Tyrannus.
Although strictly an anti-Rump satire, this piece directly calls for the king's return and has been included here in order to keep the collection of "trunk" ballads intact. The text is defective in many places but the ballad evidently belongs to the moment between the collapse of the Rump Parliament on 16 March, and the sitting of the Convention Parliament on 25 April. Where the text is currently unreadable, I have sometimes supplied, in brackets, readings from Ebsworth's edition as marked in the notes.
John Andrews, the stationer who produced this broadside, issued a satiric 8to pamphlet in August with a similar title: The Case is Altered; or, Dreadful news from Hell. In a discourse between the Ghost of this grand Traytor and Tyrant Oliver Cromwel, and Sir reverence my Lady Joan his wife, at their late meeting neer the Scaffold on Tower Hill. With His Epitaph written in hell, on all the grand Traytors, now in the Tower.2
Like many anti-Rump satires, this ballad names a selective catalogue of the MPs and military leaders defeated by recent events, thereby providing an oblique and cryptic history of the final days of the Rump. After the collapse of Richard Cromwell's protectorate in May 1659, the case begins to alter. In late December 1659, Colonel Charles Fleetwood, Commander in Chief of the army, authorized Bulstrode Whitelocke to begin negotiating the return of Charles Stuart, and immediately ran into opposition from two mutually hostile directions: Sir Henry Vane, who was holding out against monarchy at any cost, and from the Council of Officers, who voted to dissolve themselves and approved the return of the Rump. On the day after Christmas, when the remaining forty-nine members of the Rump entered the House behind Speaker William Lenthall and the mace, both Fleetwood and Vane were politically finished.
This ballad links Fleetwood with the meetings of the Rump during January, when William Say, M.P., carried the mace during Lenthall's illness, but the association is obscure. Somewhat clearer are the comments on Vane, who (along with Desborough and Lambert) had been ordered out of London during those first weeks of January, but did not finally leave until General Monk -- "Presbiter George" as he appears in this ballad -- ordered him to be escorted to his house in Lincolnshire on 13 February. The ballad recalls Vane's early years in Massachusetts, recommending that he be exiled there, since he would be certain of being hanged.3
The second part of the ballad imagines the Rump, under Arthur Haslerig's leadership, playing a losing game of cards with Monk, who "turnd up the King for Trump." Invective is then directed at William Lenthall, William Prynne, Hugh Peters, and Colonel John Hewson, familiar targets of royalist invective at this time.
Broadsides produced by Francis Grove were most often anonymous, but this one has been signed "T. J." and has been attributed to Thomas Joy by the Wing project.
Internal evidence suggests it belongs to the period immediately following the collapse of the Rump and before the Convention Parliament sat. These distinctly unmetrical verses encourage readers to be loyal to the king who is about to return now that Monk has rescued everyone from the tyrany of recent years. Mostly a catalogue of anti-Rump sentiments aimed at inciting the desire for just revenge, the accusations of property-grabbing by "Rebells" are especially interesting. I have been unable to establish whether Colonel Thomas Rainsborough (also Rainborow) did indeed profit from Higham Park as accused, but since he had died in 1648, the accusation itself is testimony to Joy's long memory and suggestive of a personal grudge.
Largely a complaint against the devilish regicides who martyred Charles I, and members of the subsequent tyrannical governments who brought the nation to ignominy, the ballad recalls the plaque that was put up to mark the absence of the king's former statue in Whitehall. It turns to Monk in its closing lines and urges him to bring in the king.
Thomason dated his copy on Saturday 17 March, the day after the Rump formally dissolved, though the major incident referred to in the verses had occured the previous Thursday (see The Case is Altered). Noting that the tune belongs to Richard Corbet's "Merry Journey into France" of 1618, Ebsworth cites Madame de Witt's edition of the French ambassador's eye-witness report:
It was on the eve of the day when the Parliament was at length to pronounce its own dissolution [15 March] . . . A working painter, accompanied by some soldiers, and carrying a ladder in his hand, approached a wall in the city near the Royal Exchange, where eleven years before an inscription in Latin had been placed, Exit Tyrannus, regum ultimus, anno libertatis Angliæ restitutiæ primo, annoque Domini 1648. The workman effaced the inscription, and threw his cap into the air, exclaiming, `God bless KING CHARLES II!' The crowd joined its acclamations, and bonfires were lighted on the spot.2
Pepys records the incident, from report, in similar detail, on the 16th, noting that it started at "about 5 a-clock in the afternoon" . Pepys's editors comment: "The man who obliterated the words was later identified as Michael Darby, 'now painter to the Company of Mercers'."3
Once the Rump had dissolved itself, royalist propagandists began recalling the living memory of the martyred king in order to inspire the call for bringing in his son (see An Exit). These verses from a quarto pamphlet, The King Advancing, Or Great Britains Royal Standard, With His Majesties Gracious Speech to His Loyal Subjects; And the Investing Him in His Royal Throne, Crown and Dignities, purport to be a speech made by the Ghost of Charles I commenting on events shortly after the Rump's dissolution. After demonizing Cromwell and his supporters, the voice of the Stuart martyr proclaims the imminent arrival of his son, a more than Herculean hero, who comes to put things right. The verses are given in both Latin and English, the printing arranged so that the two versions can be read side by side.
Rather than adopting an entirely Anglo-centric position, these verses notice that because Charles I was king of Great Britain, his son inherits "three Crowns" (line 27). Thomason dated his copy on Wednesday, 21 March.
Thomason dated his copy of this polemical tract on 24 March. But who wrote it and who was hiding behind the colophon "Printed for Charles King," I have been unable to discover. The following verses appear on p. 8.
Although blaming "haughty Rebels" rather than particular regicides or Rumpers, the verses also attribute responsibilty for events following the execution of Charles I to the nation at large.
Calling on Charles to ascend the throne, John Ogilby's verses accompanyed several of the earliest engraved portraits of the future king. Combining typological implications with epigrammatic poise, Ogilby's lines urge the "Second Charles," son of a Christ-like martyr, to fulfil the divinely ordained mission of revenge implicit in his regal inheritance. Given their contextual appearance as glosses on engraved images of the king, the verses must surely have attracted attention from readers who like to look at pictures.
Such engravings were evidently available from as early as late March, corresponding to the post-Rump period when we have seen broadside verses calling on Charles II by re-calling the memory of his martyred father. In a notebook entry dated "March 28th. Wednesday" -- confirming that the year was 1660 -- Thomas Hearne transcribed the lines and noted: "Out of Mr. Tho. Rawlinsons Notebook CC. K. Charles the 2d. a Cutt. Guil. Faithorne sculp. motto Dieu et mon Droit." This note leaves it unclear whether he copied the verses and motto from Rawlinson, or from the Faithorne engraving, and I have been unable to find the lines in Rawlinson's notebooks. In giving the verses from the printed version accompanying Faithorne's portrait below, I have, for the curious, noted all variants in Hearne's transcription.
The Faithorne engraving, showing Charles in wig and armour, was reprinted as a frontispiece by George de Forrest Lord for the first volume of his Poems on Affairs of State. Louis Alexander Fagan writes: "This plate, intended for a book, was afterwards cut down and used for deeds and public instruments. There is a copy measuring 14 1/2 in. by 10 1/2 in.; no background, and inscription below; but with Faithorne's name, and with the motto in ribbon above."1
John Ogilby's name was signed in full to a reissue of the verses accompanying a three-quarter length portait of Charles by Chantry after an original by Nason. This six-line version is given below as Variant (1).
Later in the year, William Gilbertson may have pirated Ogilby's verses for an augmented version appearing in a broadside, dated by Thomason "Sept: 6," misleadingly entitled The manner of the Solemnity of the Coronation of His most Sacred Majesty King Charles. Below the title words "King Charles" is a rather crudely executed portrait of Charles II on the throne in his robes of state, crowned, and holding the sceptre. The engraving and twelve-lines of verse based on Ogilby's which appear either side, occupy the top half of the sheet. The lower half is a double-columed prose summary of the coronation, not of Charles II, but of his father. Since the work is unsigned, Ogilby himself may have written the extra lines, given here as Variant (2). The extra lines find previous kings and emperors named Charles who complicate and enrich the possibilities of Charles Stuart's inheritance.
The final version of Ogilby's verses included here, Variant (3), returns to the original six lines. They appear in a broadside printed for John Williams in 1661, mostly taken up by a large scale portrait of Charles within an oval frame that recalls Faithorne's original, but reverses the direction of the king's gaze and replaces his armour with robes and a garter star. The six lines of verse given here at the bottom of the page are signed.
(1 May)
Thomason dated his copy of this broadside on Mayday.
According to Anthony Wood, Anthony Sadler (1610-c.1683) left "behind him the character of a man of a rambling head and turbulent spirit," a view confirmed by published reports of the controversies which Sadler seems to have attracted.2 Born in Chitterne St. Mary, Wiltshire, Sadler entered St. Edmund Hall, Oxford in 1628, and was ordained by the Bishop of Oxford, Dr. Richard Corbet in 1631 at the age of twenty one. His precosity seems to have accompanied a restless enthusiasm that marks his career as well as his poetic and controversial writings. After a temporary curacy at Bishopsgate in Hampshire, he served as chaplain to a relative, the Squire Sadler of Hertfordshire, before moving to Westminster as chaplain to Lady Lettice Paget, who presented him to a living at Compton-Hayway in Dorset on 25 May 1654.
Having survived the years of civil war, Sadler was now middle-aged and finding his Anglican views were out of tune with the times. Within weeks of his presentation to Compton-Hayway, he was summoned for examination before a group of recently appointed "triers" -- the parliamentary commissioners charged with judging and approving new church appointments -- headed by the fiercely independent Philip Nye, whom William Lilly called a "Jesuitical Presbyterian."3 Woods notes that "no small trouble passed between him and them." Sadler presented his certificate of ordination on 10 June but it was rejected four days later. After further delays, he was called for examination by the triers on 3 July. In October, Sadler addressed Inquisitio Anglicana, his own account of the events of his trial, to Cromwell and the High Court of Parliament.4 Nye's response -- Mr Sadler Re-examined -- appeared in early December,5 and repeated charges that Sadler preached more for ostentation than edification. That month a further order was given for Sadler to be re-examined.6 Since there is no further record of Sadler until the year of the Restoration, when he shows up unemployed, we can only presume that he was ejected from his Dorest living sometime after 1 once his patroness had died.7
Like other unemployed Anglican divines in 1660, Sadler must have held great hopes that Charles's return would mean more and better jobs for loyal clergymen, especially those who drew attention to their plight by publishing declarations of their past sufferings and eager support for the king. In anticipation of recognition or reward, the fifty-year old rushed into print by May, as we have seen. We learn from Mr. Sadler, Sadled, In the Vindication of Mr. R. Cranmer of London Merchant (1665), that Sadler was without a living in 1660, but was "well stockt with Wife and Children" (p. 4). This anonymous attack on Sadler reports that in 1660 he was quick to make it known how much he wanted a church living in recompense for his loyal sufferings. With the initial support of Robert Cranmer, and after preaching a sermon there in June, Sadler was duly appointed to a vacant appointment at Mitcham in Surrey. Within a few years, however, Sadler had fallen foul of Cranmer and other local parish dignitaries, entering into a series of legal suits that landed him in prison. The living at Mitcham was poorly paid, it had been vacant for many years and the house was in very bad condition when Sadler moved his family in. In Strange News Indeed: From Mitcham in Surry [sic] (1664), signed from "the Burrough Prison, Novem. 25. 1664," Sadler attacks Cranmer for not fuliflling his promises with regard to the living. But according to Mr. Sadler, Sadled, Sadler and his family were frequently shown hospitality, provided with food, medicine and coal; a subscription to repair the house was established. Once £40 had been raised, however, Sadler followed bad advice and sued his patron for dilapidation, thereby estranging himself from the local community. The author or authors even dispute Sadler's claim to be the author of the Inquistio Anglicana, insisting it was made up by "a Club of Divines" (p. 8). Other charges against him include frequent drinking and swearing, and refusing to pay for a horse that he bought on credit.
Sadler again disappears from the record until 1681 when, at the age of 71, he was accused of debauchery by Seth Ward, the Bishop of Salisbury. The last record of Sadler appears when he is an old man of 73, petitioning against his suspension in 1683 (DNB).
From the record of his publications praising the return of monarchy, it is clear that Sadler was skilled at promoting himself and that he seems to have enjoyed some success at finding himself employment within the restored Anglican church. Wood tells us that after the controversy with Cranmer, Sadler was made "Doctor of Div. and Chapl. extraord. to his Majesty" (AO, 2:505). Unfortunately, the DNB does not repeat this claim, and I have been unable to verify it.
For more on Sadler's other Restoration publications, see The Subject's Joy.
[1] Wing: S273. Brs. Copies: LT 669.f.25(4) copy text; CLC Pamph Coll, folio drawer; CH {microfilm of LT}; MH1 *pEB65.A100.B675b v. A144=Marquis of Bute broadsides (microfilm); MH *pEB65.Sal52.660m.
[2] Anthony Woods, Athenae Oxoniensis, vols. (London: for Thomas Bennet, 1691, 1692), 2:505.
[3] Mr. William Lilly's History of his Life and Times, from the year 1602 to 1681 (1715), p. 83. See "An Ordinance for appointing Commissioners for approbation of Publique Preachers," 20 March 1654, in C. H. Firth and R. S. Rait, eds., Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642-1660, 3 vols. (London: HMSO, 1911), 2:855-88.
[4] Sadler, Inquisitio Anglicana: Or The Disguise discovered. Shewing The Proceedings of the Commisioners at White hall, for the Approbation of Ministers, In The Examinations of Anthony Sadler Cler: (Chaplain to the Right Honourable the Lady Pagett, Dowager) Whose Delay, Triall, Suspence and Wrong, presents it self for Remedy, to the Ld Protector, and the High Court of Parliament: And For Information to the Clergy, and all the people of the Nation (London: Printed by J. Grismond, for Richard Royston at the Angel in Ivie-lane, 1654).
[5] [John Nye], Mr Sadler Re-examined, Or, His Disguise discovered, shewing The grosse mistakes and most notorious Falshoods in his dealing with the Commissioners for Approbation of Publike Preachers in his Inquisitio Anglicana (London: Printed for Nathanael Webb and William Grantham, at the Signe of the Bear in Pauls Churchyard. 1654).
[6] CSPD, p. 410.
[7] Sadler's funerary sermon to Lady Pagett, Benedictio, Valedictio, appeared in October 1655; see Wood, AO, 2:505.
Majestie Irradiant is printed in three vertical columns as marked, with lines between so that the headings of each column invite us to read across, giving: "CHARLES, the Second: / This Conqueror, -- / A Prince, -- " with vertical ornamental borders down side margins emphasizing the frame.
The question of whether a broadside such as Majestie Irradiant is poetry can, in part, be deferred to contemporary authority since the text reappeared later the same year, anonyously, set in the form of prose, as the final part of The Strange and Wonderfull Prophesie of David Cardinal of France.1 Thomason dated his copy of this later work 14 December. If the anaphoric cadence here owes more to the sermon than the ear of the poet, Sadler's skills as a versifier are fully exemplified in his masque, The Subject's Joy.
Works such as Majesties Irradiant that purported to inform readers what sort of king Charles would be based on his character, obviously belong that realm of journalism where a few facts are transformed into certainty, and owe as much to the desire to reassert traditional ideals of what a king should be like as they do to what was known of Charles himself. But a good deal of fairly accurate assesment of Charles's personal life was quickly being made avaialable. Thomason collected a prose tract, A Character of Charles the Second Written by an Impartial Hand, and exposed to Publick View for Information of the Peopleon April.2 Discussions of the new king's character and arguments that his exile was really an education suited to a modern king, quickly became commonplaces of Restoration ideology.3
Despite their clear flattery of the royal person, however, surely such predictions of what sort of king Charles will be also serves a prescriptive function by establishing expectations.
[1] See the verses from this work entitled "In the eight Kings reign."
[2] The colophon reads "Printed for Gabriel Bedell, 1660" LT E 765.(10).
[3] See David Evans, "Charles II's 'Grand Tour': Restoration Panegyric and the Rhetoric of Travel Literature," Philological Quarterly 72:1 (1993): 53-71.
Among the poetic tributes which poured from the English press in 1660 to welcome the newly appointed monarch, Anthony Sadler's "sacred masque" presents something of an anomaly, so it is not surprising that this work should have gone unnoticed until very recently.2 Although court masques enjoyed something of a revival in the early years of the Restoration, their season was a brief one.3 In both form and narrative concerns, however, The Subject's Joy immediately precedes the Restoration itself, and in crucial ways links the highly politicized print culture of the late 1650s with a tradition of Stuart poetics reaching back to the 1630s and 1640s. Poised between Renaissance and Restoration, Sadler's masque is a closet drama clearly intended to be experienced in printed form rather than staged performance.4
[1] Wing: S267. Qto. O Mal.194940, copy text; CH 147664; L1 163.h.52; L2 644.f.43, described as "removed from the Thomason collection," this copy was reported missing in January 1996; WF 154181; Y; WLC [the "Huth" copy] PR 3671.S114 S8. I would like to thank specially Suzanne Gossett, Robert Hume, Laura Knoppers, Lois Potter, Dale B. J. Randall, and Nigel Smith for valuable advice and suggestions with Sadler's masque.
[2] Suzanne Gossett's "Recent Studies in the English Masque," ELR 26: (1996): 586-627, surveys "scholarship on all aspects of the English masque from 1509 to 1660" (p. 586) and finds nothing to report on Sadler's piece. Nancy Klein Maguire, in Regicide and Restoration: English Tragicomedy, 1660-1671 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), calls The Subject's Joy an "intriguing and totally neglected masque" (p. 86), and briefly compares it with Cosmo Manuche's Banished Shepherdess. Sadler's masque is also noticed by Dale B. J. Randall in Winter Fruit: English Drama 1642-1660 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1995), p. 369. Laura Lunger Knoppers discusses the frontispiece in her recent study of portraits of Cromwell in ELR.
[3] See Joanne Altieri, The Theatre of Praise: The Panegyric Tradition in Seventeenth-Century Drama (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1986), and Andrew Walkling, "Politics and the Restoration Masque: The Case of Dido and Aeneas," in MacLean, ed., Culture and Society in the Stuart Restoration, pp. 52-69.
[4] On the distinction between the "literary" and the "theatrical" masque, see Jerzy Limon, The Masque of Stuart Culture (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1990) which does not, however, take the story up to the Restoration. For a recent examination of print culture after the Restoration, see Harold M. Weber, Paper Bullets: Print and Kingship under Charles II (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996).
The Subject's Joy is a small quarto that collates: frontispiece + A-F4 = leaves. Running headers between sigs. A2v-A3v read "The Epistle Dedicatory;" between sigs. B1v-F4v read "A Divine Masque." The frontispiece, {to be} reproduced from the copy in the Bodleian Library, is also present in the Huntington Library copy, but has become detached from the copies in the British Library, Folger Library, Yale University Library, and Library of Congress. Texts of all these copies are identical.
The titlepage tells us that this work was printed for James Davis "to be sold at the Greyhound" in 1660. It seems most likely that Sadler had the text on hand and ready for the printers before Charles actually arrived, and in print during the early part of May. Internal claims that it was published during May are congruent with Sadler's hasty handling of contemporary details and are supported by the handwritten "May 17" on the copy associated with George Thomason's collection.5
From Thomason's dates we also know that Sadler had rushed his broadside Majestie Irradiant through the press in time for the first of May -- a full week before the king's return was formally proclaimed, and weeks before Charles actually landed on the 25th. Clearly Sadler was keen to appear among those who welcomed Charles back before he had actually returned, and had successfully established working relations with printers.6Other internal evidence complicates the question of when The Subject's Joy might actually have appeared, but proves inconclusive. In the "private Speech of the Author" immediately preceding the speeches, songs, and shews making up the text of the masque proper, Sadler calls this work the "younger" of two printed pieces dedicated to the restored house of Stuart. "The Elder," he writes, "is a Sybillian; and (to acheer the King) doth (by a Prophetick Pen) write a Prædiction, in a Lamentation." Here, Sadler is clearly referring not to his own Mayday broadside, Majestie Irradiant, but to yet another loyal tribute he published that year, a two-gathering quarto entitled The Loyall Mourner, Shewing the Murdering of King Charles the First. Fore-shewing the Restoring of King Charles the Second, "Printed by T. C. for L. Sadler. 1660." While it is very likely that Sadler is thinking of the chronological order in which he wrote the works -- one on the death of Charles I, the other on the return of Charles II -- his insistence that they are both "dres'd in Print" deserves attention since it is not clear when The Loyall Mourner first appeared.
Thomason, who was normally swift to buy and date his collection of printed works, did not date his copy of the "Elder" work, The Loyall Mourner, until December.7 But this fact alone does not necessarily point to a date later than May for the appearance of the "younger" masque since the copy of the elegy currently in the Thomason collection, like that in Lambeth Palace Library,8 is evidently a re-issue of an earlier printing. In both these copies, the two gatherings of The Loyall Mourner have been broken up and interleaved with the titlepage and text of Mercy in a Miracle, a sermon preached by Sadler on 28 June that also shows up as a separate publication. Since not all copies of The Loyall Mourner contain the June sermon, unsold copies of an original printing were probably reissued with Sadler's sermon sometime in early December. The undated copy of The Loyall Mourner currently in the Huntington collection,9 for example, contains an identical printing bound in with two engraved portraits of Charles but lacking any of the material from Mercy in a Miracle, strongly suggesting an original issue of the elegy that might well have appeared earlier, perhaps at the same time as The Subject's Joy in line with Sadler's claim.
If, as seems likely, Sadler's masque was indeed published in May, then it was presumably being written before there was any certainty that Charles would be recalled. And this is the historical moment into which the text insinuates itself, opening with an epistle to General Monk in which Sadler declares himself ready "to chant an Hosanna for the Kings Reception," and encourages Monk to "enthrone" the king. Following this epistle, verses addressed "TO THE Candid Reader" -- the oversized and bolded "C" and "R" signal "Carolus Rex" -- announce "this is The Month of May" when "the Prince . . . is Deliver'd."
Nothing in The Subject's Joy indicates detailed knowledge of specific events or public issues after Charles had actually stepped on English soil, while the culminating action of the masque -- the casting down of Cromwell's iconic portrait -- anticipates the start of the new king's reign.
Sadler himself claims of his masque:
This Peece (I confess) is Theatrical, New, and Strange; Strange, but yet Pertinent; New, but yet Serious; and Theatrical, but yet Sacred.Although Sadler later includes a speech that claims to precede an actual performance, there is little reason to think The Subject's Joy was ever performed.10
The singular literary achievements of Sadler's "sacred masque" can best be approached in terms of print culture and the history of the book on the eve of the Restortation. By 1660, the very activity of printing had itself become firmly politicized as a result of two decades during which the press came into its own as a central agent of political change.11 Lois Potter has shown with what energy royalists managed to continue printing despite the largely successful censorship campaigns of the late 1640s and 1650s, using the press to comment on contemporary events while keeping alive arguments for belief in monarchy.12 In many respects a jeremiad directed at those who rebel against divinely ordained monarchs, The Subject's Joy may be linked with other mixed genres employed in the cause of royalist propaganda during the early months of 1660 -- such as Scutum Regale, The Royal Buckler; or, Vox Legis, A Lecture to Traytors by the young lawyer Giles Duncombe -- that seek to attack and undermine the authority of the "traitors" currently losing control over the nation. Back in May, Sadler's epistle to Monk also links the appearance of his masque with the royalist revival of theatrical entertainments held for the General by the various London Guilds during March and April. Although it seems most likely that the masque was never performed, Sadler can nevertheless rightfully claim that the appearance of the text puts its author "upon the joyfull stage" of national history.
So in its claim to be theatrical, new, and strange, The Subject's Joy is very much a product of its precise historical moment, political allegiances, and the agency of print. By recasting traditional features of the masque into an account of an imaginary performance, Sadler looks backward to the court culture of the 1630s and 1640s, but instead of the neoclassicism at the heart of Stuart court culture back then, this Anglican divine opts for a biblical theme. Simply by reason of appearing in print, his text shifts the scene from the exclusive world of court entertainment to the public sphere of print culture that was opening up in 1660. Besides delighting in the use of striking print fonts and bolded anagrams, Sadler's text fully embraces the possibilities of print, integrating both its own frontispiece and textual status into the action of the masque, which ends when "Psyche (with an observant haste) goes, to present the King, with the Masque, in writing." In the frontispiece Cromwell appears in the type of Jeroboam, he of the golden calves. And it is Jeroboam's portrait -- presumably the engraved frontispiece itself -- that the Levites smash at the feet of the returning King Abijah or Charles. In these respects, it is only as a printed document, complete with frontispiece, that Sadler's celebration of returning monarchy fully engages the resources of print in order to turn the iconoclastic impulses of the revolutionary decades against themselves in a reconfiguring of old testament history.
Nevertheless, The Subject's Joy not only calls itself a masque, but displays a strong commitment to many of the structural and generic features of the form, framing the text of the masque within an imaginary account of a performance. Following the prose epistle to Monk and verses addressed to the reader, Sadler announces "In this MASQUE are 6. Shewes. Speeches. 3. Songs," as indeed there are. First, however, Sadler treats us to the "Private Speech" before "Friends," that purports to have been spoken before a performance. Here he details how his initial plans to write a masque on the Gunpowder Plot led him to ponder Old Testament rebels who had plotted against the divine authority of sacred kings. Zedekiah, Corah, Zimri, Shallum: Sadler ponders them all before he finally settles on the most wicked of them all, Jeroboam. The action begins when a Levite steps forward to speak "The Argument."
Here, Sadler quarries accounts of Jeroboam from 1 Kings and 2 Chronicles, inviting the reader to apply this exemplary figure, who not only sinned but also caused Israel to sin, to Oliver Cromwell. Jeroboam's wicked reign eventually fails when King Abijah accedes to the throne of David and destroys Jeroboam's army. A young prince then steps forward to speak a verse "Prologue" by way of introducing Psyche, the titulary spirit of the masque. From here, the shews, speeches and songs follow a general pattern of lamenting rebellion but finding hope in Old Testament examples, a pattern that leads to an "antique" dance during which Psyche enthrones King Abijah.
Each of the descriptive shows introduces the next speaker or set of characters in emblematic context. The exception is the last in which Jeroboam finally appears, only to be torn apart and cast into hell by the Devil. During the Levite's song which follows, the iconic portrait is smashed and Psyche presents the king with the written copy of the masque. Each of the speeches invariably details loyalist attitudes toward rebellion against sacred monarchy. King David appears and asks why God allows the wicked to prosper. King Abijah/Charles laments "was ever grief like mine?" echoing George Herbert's "The Sacrifice." Other members of the Stuart family and court recall sacred examples of how God punishes wicked rebels. Finally an "Old Man" appears, who turns directly to Jeroboam and precipitates the final show. Much like the speeches, the songs provide catalogues of loyalist sentiments -- grief at the tyranny of rebels, delight at their eventual overthrow. No tunes are indicated for any of the songs.
Sadler clearly has the general framework of English politics very much in mind in casting and ordering biblical materials for his masque. Jeroboam frequently figures in the Old Testament as the type of leader who compounded his own sins by encouraging others into sin through rebelling with him.13
It is said of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, That he not onely sinned himself, but that he made Israel to sin; and there were those of his Confederates that then sinned with him and after he was dead and gone, of whom it is recorded, That they walked in the ways, and departed not from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat who made Israel to sin.
The parallel hereof we have on England in this our day: Oliver the late Protector (so called) who (Jeroboam-like) so greatly appeared with the people for Justice and Freedom against Oppression, highly professing and declaring for the same, hath sinned in the breach of those Protestations and Declarations, in building again those things he had been so greatly instrumental to destroy; therein surpassing not onely the deeds of the wicked who were cut off upon the like account, but also of Jeroboam, who never made such professions and declarations as he had done.14 Where Wharton argues that Cromwell exceeds the parallel with Jeroboam, Sadler vicariously invents a gory end for him at the hands of the Devil.
Sadler's Subject's Joy claims to be the first English masque to use sacred history.
However we might assess his adherence to masque form, Sadler wants to draw attention to the novelty of his design, but he quickly solicits the authority of two fathers of the early church for his practice here. "Nor am I in This," he writes in the epistle to Monk, "either singular, or affected; while Apollinarius and Nazianzen (two antient Fathers of the Primitive Church) are known to be exemplary in this very way." Apollinarius is an appropriate precedent for turning sacred history into profane form, but as Milton knew, there were two examples of that name.15 Sadler probably has Apollinaris the younger, bishop of Laodicea, (361-77, died 392) in mind, rather than his father, though both translated scripture: "The father prepared a Christian grammar, turned the Penteteuch into an epic and the `Former Prophets' into tragedies,"16 while his son of the same name composed, "to replace Homer, a biblical history in twenty-four hymns and reproduced the content of the gospels in Pindaric meters."17
Sadler's other authority, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, whose church in the Cappadocian village of Güzelyurt is now a mosque, is perhaps even more revealing of the loyal minister's design since Gregory's Carmen de vita sua, is "a self-pitying autobiography in iambic verse"18 written in retirement during 381 after he resigned in anger from the Council of Constantinople which had challenged his nomination as bishop of Constantinople.19 Though hardly self-pitying when he published the masque in 1660, Sadler no doubt began composition during a period of defeat for royalists. Perhaps this explains why The Subject's Joy, as the final chorus reminds us, is "Psyche's play," not simply a public declaration of royalist sentiments, but also a very personal if not psychological document, a testament of beleaguered loyalty and faith to a seemingly lost cause that has finally and miraculously proved victorious.
In celebrating the Restoration, Sadler's literary imagination is often typical of his generation of royalists. On one hand he desperately wants to produce a novel sort of literary celebration, to invent a new kind; on the other, he feels compelled to show how he is taking his literary forms from the traditions and authority of the past. As an Anglican poet, Sadler often recalls and echoes Herbert, especially when focussing on the sufferings of fallen monarchy. But the biblical narrative is seldom from his thoughts. Sadler calls the new king a "Nursing Father," a key trope in the defense of the sacramental authority of kings that poets used to legitimate Charles II.20 In recasting episodes from biblical history, he makes no attempt to draw out a sustained parallel narrative in the Restoration manner soon to become familiar from Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel. He does not recast the order of biblical narrative in order to predict or offer advice on pressing political issues. When he recalls specific moments from Jeroboam's reign, he does so as part of a general pattern of using Old Testament examples of rebels who are eventually overthrown. Sadler's model is the sermon, not the parallel history. Indeed the very lack of direct engagement with contemporary political issues links Sadler's masque with the emblematic mode of the 1630s and 1640s rather than the more didactic 1660s.
Although the sacred masque proved to be a generic dead end, Sadler's Subject's Joy embraces the possibilities of print in order to celebrate the king's return by imagining the downfall of English traitors in terms of sacred history. One of the more compelling tropes of the poetry written on the Restoration, the downfall of traitors motif returned from July through October with specific vigour, violence, and indignant blood-lust during the trials leading up to the execution of the regicides. One of the longest verse works to celebrate Charles's return, The Subject's Joy is a remarkable instance of nostalgic anticipation generated by the cultural and literary excitement of the early months of the year of Restoration.
I have reproduced the original text except for dropping running headers, and correcting printer's errors as reported in the notes. Since the text is arranged into discrete parts, I have not added line numbers. Prose passages preserve original line-breaks, including hypenated word-breaks. I have recorded inked corrections to the copy in the Bodleian which are mostly adjustments to scansion since they might well be authorial: who else would have bothered?
By the Author of
INQUISITIO ANGLICANA.
LONDON:
Printed, in the year of Grace, for James Davis, and are to be sold at the Greyhound in St. Pauls Church-yard. 1660.
[22] and clapt] and they clapped Authorized Version.
THE present affairs of this Kingdom, are, so providentially managed, by God; so prudentially, by You; and so happily -- - opportunely, for the building up, the Ruins; and re- pairing of the Breaches, both in Church, and State: that, the Factionist, malignes; the Temporist, ad- mires; and Royallist, congratulates; so hopeful a beginning.
Let it not then displease (my Lord) if now, one of those poor grateful Royallists; hath (in this spring of hope) so cheerful a boldness, as to beg the favour of your Excellency, to Patronize this Peece.
This Peece (I confess) is Theatrical, New, and Strange; Strange, but yet Pertinent; New, but yet Serious; and Theatrical, but yet Sacred. Nor am I in This, either singular, or affected; while Apollinarius and Nazianzen (two antient Fathers of the Primitive Church) are known to be exemplary in this very way.23 The truth is, I am now upon the well-tun'd Pin (with my Palm, and my Psalm) to chant an Hosan- na for the Kings Reception.
I am now upon the joyful Stage, to play the devout Comædian; and by a new Triumphal, to court the affections, of the most Disloyall.
Upon the Stage I am, that (as by a true reflection, to shew the radiancy of my divine zeal) so, I might (by congruous Divinity) render Corah (notwith- standing his holy Plea) Rebellious:24 and Treason (notwithstanding Garnet's Straw, and Becket's Canonization) in the Abstract, hateful, both to God, and man.25
Religion and Allegience, are the wings of the soul, to mount her unto Heaven: and the present Masque, is, but to preserve the Beauty, of so fair an Allegati- on; and to attest before the world, my utter abhor- rency of the least Confederation, against the Higher Powers.
Oh Sir! may the Higher Powers be, as safe, as sacred: and may That saCRed Person, into whose hands, God, by his Grace; Nature, by Descent; and the Law, by Right; have successively given the Globe and the Scepter: may, He, -- -- -ah may He be, as happy, as He is Good; and as Good, as He is Great: the Best of Men, crowned with the Best of Blessings.
Sir -- -- your Excellency is now, the Renowned Instrument, of wonderful Transactions: In the name of God, go on, and prosper.
Certainly (my Lord) if your auspicious self, shall (with this hopefully-happy Parliament) go on, to Act for God; and the good of his distressed People:
By Enthroning
The most Illustrious Prince,
And
Our Lawful King,
Charles the Second:
For the Setling, of the State:
For the Reforming, of the Church:
For the Establishing, of the Lawes:
And the Maintaining, our Religion;26 That most true, Protestant Religion, Of the Church of England:
I am confident, -- -- -You shall as surely Prosper, in having, The Holy Spirit of God, to be Your Guid:
The holy Angels of God, to be Your Guard:
Here, to be Famous; and Hereafter, to be Glorious; as there is a God, in Heaven.
[23] On these church fathers, see the headnote
[24] Corah led a celebrated revolt against Moses' authority, claiming "all the congregation are holy, every one of them," but at Moses' request, the Lord caused the earth to open up and swallow the rebels (Numbers 16: 3, 31-5). Sadler returns to Corah as a type of republican in the "First" speech, and again in more detail in the "Ninth" speech.
[25] Sadler's examples of treason are both Catholic martyrs. When Henry Garnet was executed in May 1606 for his part in the gunpowder plot of the previousyear, "all Catholic Europe was listening with eager credulity to the story of Garnet's straw. It was said that one of the straws used upon the scaffold had a minute likeness of the martyr's head on one of the husks" (Samuel R. Gardiner, The History of England ... 1603-1642, 10 vols. [London: Longman, Green 1883], 1:282). An engraved image of the miraculous straw appears on the titlepage of the poem The Jesuits Miracles, or new Popish Wonders. Containing the Straw, the Crowne, and the Wondrous Child, with the confutation of them and their follies (1607).
[26] Religion] Reiigion
Anthony Sadler
[27] The caps C and R are larger typeface and bolded -- for Charles Rex.
[28] Perhaps echoing the opening line of Milton's "Nativity Ode": "This is the month, and this the happy morn." My thanks to Lois Potter for this suggestion.
In this MASQUE are
6 Shewes.
10 Speeches.
3 Songs.
Are
Psyche.
King David.
King Abijah.
His Queen-Mother.
Two Dukes, his Brothers.
The High Priest.
The Lord General.
The Prophet Shemaiah.
For the Land is Canaan.
For the Place is Bethel.
For the Person is Jeroboam.
The private Speech
OF
The AUTHOR
In Society with Friends, to entertain the
Time before the Masque begun.
YOu know (Dear Friends) That, Video, Vindico;30 is God's Motto upon Traitors: but it is our duty to wait Gods time; for, he that shall come, will: and he that will come, is; to the help of his Anointed.
God (hath in mercy) made his people to return, return to their duty, of Praying for the King.
His very Name now, is pretious; his Presence, long'd for; and a General joy, attends the hope, to see him, in his Throne.
[With that (he going off the Stage) a young Prince Enters; wearing a Purple Robe, and his head, Crown'd: in the one hand, holding an Olive branch; in the other, a Palm; and speaks -- -- -]
[The loud Musique sounds
And
The First Shew's Presented
Being
A Landskip in form of a Square; having in the one Angle, a Promontory; whereon the rural Nymphs were sporting, and under it, the Sea; wherein, was a gallant Navy sayling.
In another Angle, was a Garden; giving all the de- light that dainty flowers; pleasant walks; and Musical water-works could yeild.
In the Third Angle, was a Castle, strongly, and bravely fortified; in the face whereof, was an Army compleatly Armed, marching in Aray.
In the fourth Angle, was a Park; well-wooded, and stor'd with Deer: Gallants a hunting, and the Hounds upon a full Cry.
In the middle of this Quadrangle, was a Grove of Cedars; out of which came a Shepherdess, in a green Gown, and a Garland on her Head; attended by a Swain, in a Shepherds Coat, and a Pipe in his Hand: Each then, saluting other; the One Playes; and Both, Dance: which done -- they pull off their Disguises, and discover themselves, to be, an Angel, and Psyche: Psyche then (instructed by the Angel) making an hum- ble Address, and due Observance to R. A. the King. Kneels down, and Speaks. ]
[The King then drew off his Glove, and (holding out his hand) Psyche rose up; and (kneeling down again) she kiss'd it.
The Queen then (observing Psyche, to have a cu- rious Voyce) desired her to Sing: and (without denial, or reply) her good Angel standing by her, playing on a Lute, she sung -- -- ]
[She kneels.
With that (an Acclamation being made) the Scene, upon a suddain, chang'd; and then (the loud Musique sounding a second time.)
The Second Shew's presented
being
A pleasant Plain, encompassed with Hills: in the middle of which Plain, was a fair City; and in the City a glorious Temple; and in the Temple, a goodly Jerusalem Person: Which Person (having on, a Robe of fine lin-
Then was a noyse of chearfull Musique heard, And sights of Joy (and Angels seen) appear'd; And therewithall -- --
[The Third Shew's presented
being
A stately Pallace, wherein, was a Room of Ala- blaster (hang'd with Cloth of Gold, richly and curiously Embroydered, with the lively, and Emboss'd Imagery of David and Solomon; with the Histo- ry of both: in the Hangings, were severall Rowes of Jewels; whose Lustre was irradiant; and as so many Starres enlightened all the Room) where- into (attended by Fifty Persons, all cloth'd alike, in Coats of Crimson Velvet, with green Sattin sleeves; their Stockings green Silk; with Garters and Roses; of Gold and Crimson) came -- --
The King of Judah,
The Queen his Mother,
Two Dukes, his Brothers,
The High-Priest,
TheLevites,
The Generall of the Army,
And the Captain of the Guard.]
The King, Queen, and Princes, sate in their Chairs of State: All the rest at a distance sate bare-headed.
Then the King (lifting up his Eyes and Hands to Heaven) smote upon his Breast; and thus his minde express'd -- -- -in -- -- -
The Third Speech.
With that he sigh'd; and ceas'd.
And then begun,
The Mother Queen;
And thus bespoke her Son,
in
The Fourth Speech.
No (saith the Duke) and (with a pretty smile) Thus Courts the King, his Brother: -- -- -in
The fifth Speech.
[A bright Cloud is seen, and an Angel in the Cloud: his face shining like the Sun: and armed like a man of war, and having in the one hand a Golden Crown; in the other, a Flaming Sword; he brandishes the sword, then sets the Crown upon the Kings head, and so vanishes, being
The Fourth Shew.
Whereupon the Prince proceeds; and sayes, ]
With that all the Levites stood up, and having each of them an Instrument of Musique in his hand: They make Obeysance to the King, And then they Play, and thus they sing.
[Then, as they made a Warbling Close, both of their Song, and Musique; Behold,]
[The Fifth Shew's presented;
Being
A spacious Field, and two Armies, in Aray; the Kings, and the Rebels: and joyning Battel, the Kings side prevails.
Whereupon (all crying Victoria, Victoria) an Old man (wearing a Mantle of Camels Hair, girt about with a Lethern Girdle)67 presents Himself before the King; to whom (being demanded who he was, and what he would) he said -- -- -]
[Upon this, was an Allarm from within; and lamen- table out-cryes made; and thereupon,
The Sixt, and last Shew's presented,
Being
Two Cities, Dan, and Bethel: and in Bethel, the Juncto-Council; wherein, sate Jeroboam, in a Chair of State: Hell, under him; the Devil, behind him: and King Abijah in a Throne, above him: whom when the Rebel saw; he cries out -- -- O Treason, Treason: what have I done, and how was I bewitch't. O Treason, Treason: ceasing, to be Loyal; I left to be Religious; I first, forsook my King: and then my God:
Thus, by degrees I fell; and now, I fall;
To be more wretched, then Accursed Saul.
With that, the Devil tares him in pieces, and throwes him into Hell. Whereupon, the Party for Abijah, clap their hands: and (praising God, and Praying for the King) the Levites take again their several Instruments of Musick; and (one holding up the Picture of Jerobo- am, in a frame of Gold.) they sung
The Third and last song.
As they began, there came in six Masquers; each in green silk; wrought over with gold spangles: their Temples wreath'd with Bayes; their Vizards all diffe- rent, but beautiful and smiling.
These six (at the close of every Eight verses) dance the Antique; and Dancing, sing the Chorus.)]
[He throws the
Picture down,
and breaks it]
[With that, there was a Sound of Drums and Trum pets: and Psyche (with an observant haste) goes, to present the King, with the Masque, in writing. Which done, Psyche's good Angel bespeaks her thus;]
[With that, she Bowes, & Kneels; and (Kneeling) prayes:
The Angel comes, and each (Ascending) sayes:]
Title: Dolor, ac Voluptas, invicem cedunt. / OR / ENGLANDS / Glorious Change, by Calling Home of / KING CHARLES / THE SECOND. / Together with the Royalists Exaltation, / And the Phanatiques Diminution. / [text] / LONDON, Printed in the year 1660.
Wing: W116; brs.
Copies:
LT 669.f.25(10), ms dated "8 May"; chk 1/96
L L.23.C.1(88): COPYTEXT ent 1/96; chk 4/96
Describes events of 8 May, but in such general terms as to suggest it may have been written and published in advance of the occasion.
See "The Cavaliers Comfort" (also printed for Gilbertson) for this refrain. A selfdated description of the events of 8 May: "CHeer up your hearts kind Country-men"
Englands day of Joy and Reioycing, Or, Long lookt for is come at last. / Or the true manner of proclaiming CHARLS the Second King of Eng- / land, &c. Ths Eighth day of this present May; to the ever honored praise / of Generall Monck, being for the good of his Country and the Parliament.
On Tuesday, May 8, Charles was officially proclaimed king. This ballad agrees with standard accounts of the day's proceedings: Gilbertson also produced England's Day of Joy for this day. A ceremonial procession of both Lords and Commons started out at noon, "Which being finished the Pallace Yard did eccho with the acclamations of the people crying long live King chrles the Second" (Public Intelligencer 7 (7-14 May), p. 106). The procession moved through London via Whitehall to Temple Bar, where they were joined by the Lord Mayor and members of the City Council, then on to Cheapside and the Old Exchange, "the streets being so thronged with the multitudes of people, all manifesting how pleasing the actions of this day was to them" (ibid). See also the account in Rugg, pp. 79-80, and Mercurius Publicus (3-10 May).
The same day, Richard Cromwell resigned the Chancellorship of Oxford University.
Thomason dated his copy 10 May, 1660; Nicholas Crouch paid 4d for his copy, now in OB.The final latin epigrams on p. 17 are signed and dated "Mense Maio, 1660."
Although the second set of verses appear under the title "The same in English," they bear little resemblance to the Latin -- check. Erskine Hill calls them a "free rendering" of the original Latin, and takes them as appearing in the May of Charles's arrival.
Thomason dated his copy of Henry Brome's edition on Monday 14 May; Wood dated his simply May. An earlier and shorter version appeared under the title "For General Monk his entertainment at Cloath-workers Hall." [13 Mar]." rpt in Songs and Poems (1661, 1664, 1668), pp. 114-15, and is reprinted in Dubinski, 1.175-177.
Titlepage: A PRIVATE / CONFERENCE / BETWEEN / Mr. L. Robinson, / AND / Mr. T. Scott, / Occasioned upon the Publishing his / MAIESTIES / LETTERS / AND / DECLARATION. / [rule] / LONDON. / Printed for Isack Goulden at the Dolphin / in Pauls-Church-Yard, 1660. Verses pp. 10-12.
Luke Robinson (1610-69) was a radical parliamentarian who changed in time for Charles's return. Whitlock noted of him: "although formerly a most fierce man ag[ainst] the King, did now . . . magnifie his grace &goodnes," (Whitlock, Diary 1 May). Pepys also reports him swearing duty to the King following the reading of the king's letter promising "an act of Oblivion to all, unless they shall please to except any. . . So that Luke Robinson himself stood up and made a recantation for what he hath done and promises to be a loyall subject to his Prince for the time to come" (2 May).
Thomas Scott served as MP in the Long Parliament and had been a keen regicide. By January 1660, he was in great favour with the Rump, being appointed Secretary of State on the 14th. On the 16th, he and Robinson were sent to welcome Monck at Leicester on his march to London. After Monck had declared for the return of the secluded members on 18 February, Scott's position rapidly began to lose ground; his appointment as Secretary of State was repealed on 23 February. In late March, the Council of State ordered him to sign an engagement to keep out of Monck's way, and his name was excluded from the Act of Oblivion on 6 June.
This satiric prose dialogue between Robinson and Scott shows them debating how to respond to the change in circumstances promised by the return of the king. Robinson reckons to compound for mercy while Scott reckons he is too well known an enemy to the king to get away with it. The tract ends with these verses that pick up and develop a common motif in anti-Rump songs -- that of using city bonfires to burn up the Rumpers and their appurtanances. In this version, the Rumpers are encouraged to leap onto the fires which loyalists have kindled in imitation of the followers of Sardanaplus -- the luxurious Assyrian king who was finally forced to immolate himself in the city of Ninus rather than fall to his rebellious subjects.
The top section reads:
The ANAGRAM.
CHarls the Second, by the Grace ACcept the valiant and loyall Georg
of God, of Great Brittaine, Monck, Captain General of the
France and Ireland, King; Defender Armis, and the chief Restorer of our
of the truly, anciently Catholick and Du's, Laws, Religion and Liberti's,
Apostolick Faith, and in all Causes, his princes friend at need.
and over all persons, as well Ec'le- And recc'n Thomas Allen that is a
siastical as temporal, within these His loyal Subject, Lord Mayer of London
Majesties Realms and Dominions, by City, and a like blessed means for
and under God, Supreame Gover- us; sing prais and thanks as ever
nour. du' to the Wise God.
Thomason dated his copy 24 May. The copy now in Bodley (O) is evidently an earlier, uncorrected state of the first printing, corrected at LT; both presumably precede the large paper folio. The Bodley copy repeats lines 41-42; while the later printing adds lines 45-46: other textual variants are reported.
Thursday 24 May was declared a day of thanksgiving; Charles had set out from Breda the day before and Monk had set out from London to meet him. In Cambridge, William Godman preached Filius Heroum, subsequently published with verses.
Lluelyn also wrote: An Elegie On the Death of the most Illustrious Prince, Henry Duke of Glocester (Oxford, Printed by Henry Hall Printer to the University, for Ric. Davies 1660), LT 1080(13*), date illegible.
Martin Lluelyn (1616-81) was born in London, went up from Westminister to Christs' Church Oxford in 1636. In 1643, he fought for the king in the rank of captin. With the collapse of the royalist cause, he took up the study of medicine and was admitted doctor of Physick in 1653 by the Oxford and the College of Physicians. At the Restoration he was made personal physician to the king, retiring to Great Wycombe in Buckinghamshire in 1664 to practice medicine (Woods 2: 528-59)
On the need to insist that chas was not restored by foreign agency, (lines 69ff) compare Higgons.
Recalling Sir John Suckling's celebrated "Ballad upon a Wedding," this dialogue extends the trope of "vox populi." It uses rural voices describing the hopes of ordinary folk in terms of an idealized countryside at a time when word is being brought to the country from the city that the people have declared for the king. Talk of tigers devastating the English countryside during the king's absence, though fanciful, is entirely in keeping with the ballad's use of pastoral conventions to engage imaginatively with contemporary issues, switching back and forth between country hopes and city events. On the other hand, the requisitioning of horses by soldiers had been a major problem facing farmers during the years of civil war. As so often, the pastoral here is a formal literary gesture mingling fact with fiction and addressed to a learned audience. The ballad ends cryptically with Jack declaiming a quatrain in Latin and English that contrasts king-killers Judas and Cromwell in order, presumably, to advocate punishment of the regicides.
Judging by line 26 and the tense of the final wishes in lines 97-100, this ballad claims to be dated early May, just before the king actually arrived in England.
Harvard unicum inscribed "Harvard College Library / In Memory of / Lionel De Jersey Harvard / Class of 1915" dated Dec. 29, 1925.
Date: Internal evidence for dating is inconclusive, but the title and verses addressed to Charles asking him to "Come" suggest early May.
The publisher, Ralph Wood, also published works by Flecknoe,
What is the relation between the author of these verses and the final allusion to Henry Vaughan?
Titlepage: Scutum Regale, / THE / Royal Buckler; / OR, / VOX LEGIS, / A / Lecture to Traytors: / Who most wickedly murthered / CHARLES the I, / AND / Contrary to all Law and Religion banished / CHARLES THE II. / 3d MONARCH of / GREAT BRITAIN, &c. / [rule] / [design] / [rule] / Salus populi, Salus Regis. / LONDON, 1660. / [enclosed within double-rule box] [printed in black and red inks].
Engraved frontispiece headed "Iam redit Astr'a, Redeunt Saturnia regna, / Iam nova progenies, c'lo Demittur alto." shows Charles on his throne with the Lords and Dukes of York and Gloucester; below them the Commons; below them the Bishops with common prayer book. At the bottom, a double set of images: "Traytors rewarded:" and "Sectaries reiected."
Wing: D 2599a and B3557; mistaken double-entry.
Format and date: 8to. Advertised in the Parliamentary Intelligencer 22 (21-28 May), p. 348.
Copies: O1 Tanner 624, has an additional cut after the t/p and before the Epistle to the Reader of Charles about to be crowned by an angel, followed by a dedication page "To His Most Sacred Majestie," COPYTEXT 9/95; O2 Linc 8to c.183; additional engraving of Charles appears between sigs A and B; L1 292.a.15, plate of shepherd missing; L2 1483.aa.26; L3 G3535 (Charles 2's copy); ms note: "This Copy belonged to the Royal Library of Charles 2d whose cypher is on the binding. It has not only a very fine impression of the Frontispiece, but it has also a 2d Plate which precedes the "Shepherd's Complaint" at the end of the book, & is very seldom found with it. This Plate has been by some called "Charles 2d" but it is so unlike that it is not easy to believe it could be meant for his portrait"; C Adams 8.66.8; WF 140413; additional engraving of Charles appears between sigs A and B; CT; P; CH; CN; MH; Y; Exeter.
Giles Duncombe was a young lawyer who evidently hoped to improve his situation by declaring, in print, his loyalty to the Stuarts with strong conviction, dedication, and learning, at some length, and as soon as possible. Scutum Regale was advertised in the last week of May, but must have been in almost continuous preparation from much earlier in the year. Later in December, Duncombe identifies himself as the author of this book in the signature printed at the end of A Counter-Blast to the Phanaticks (which cannot have appeared before the death of Princess Mary on the 24th of that month): "Giles Duncombe of the Inner Temple Gent. / Author of Scutum Regale, the Royall / Buckler. Or, Vox Legis, a Lecture / to Traytors."
Evidence of haste and of last minute revision, or at least of the desire to seem to be among the first in print, abounds. Most copies are gathered differently from each other. One of the British Library copies mis-prints the anagram "Gimelgus Bonde," to which a contemporary hand has added "giles Duncomb Turn'd a -- -" (L2 sig. A5) suggesting that there were some around who knew who the author really was. The Errata page mentions that Monk, who "hath now cheared us with the hopes of a Free-Parliament," soon will "bring in our exiled King" (sig. A6v), suggesting that the book was being rushed along to appear in advance of the King. The Epistle to the Reader ends with a prayer for the arrival of "Charls the 2d our Augustus, and C'sars Successor" (sig. A4v); the major prose section of the book ends "let the Cryes of thy People come unto thee O God, and restore our Gracious King Charles the second to his H'reditary Crown: Whose Youth thou has seasoned with the Afflications of King David" (p. 393, sig. [Cc5]), while the mood of the whole enterprise is that of hopeful anticipation.
The Reader addressed by the Epistle is specifically identified as urban and supposed susceptible to arguments concerning property rights:
O purblind City, how long will you enslave your selves to ravenous woolves? who by their often changing of their feigned Governments, do but change the thief, and still your Store-houses must be the Magazine, to furnish them with plunder. You must never look to enjoy your lives, estates, or Gods blessing, with the fruition of your Wives, and Children, before your lawful King and Soveraign CHARLS the II. unjustly banished by Rebells, be restored to his Crown and Kingdom. (sig. Av).The address to city-dwelling property owners helps place the initial writing and perhaps even printing of the book during February and March while Monck, the guilds and parliament negotiated.
"The Epistle to the Reader," ends with some Latin and English verses calling for a return of the king:
Enough of hail and cruel snow,
Hath Jove now showr'd on us below,
Enough with thundering Steeples down,
Frightned the Town.
Frightned the World.
O thou God of Order, now hold thy punishing hand, cement our Differences, and unite the lines of our Discord in the true Centre. Let Charls the 2d. our Augustus, and C'sars Successor, revenge the bloody Murther of C'sar. O most worthy Augustus, our only lawfull Soveraign, be thou a stay to our falling Kingdom, Patiens vocari C'saris ultor, do thou hasten to be C'sars Revenger, and then
Serus in co/elum redeas, diuque
L'tus intersis populo Quirini,
Neve te nostris vitiis iniquum,
Otyor aura
Tollat, his magnos, potius triumphos,
Hic ames dici pater, atque Princeps,
Neusinas Medos equitare inultos,
Te duce C'sar.
Return to Heaven late we pray,
And long with us the Britains stay,
Nor let disdain of our offence,
Take thee from hence.
Love here victorious, Triumphs rather,
Love here the name of Prince, and father,
Nor let the Rebels scot-free ride,
Thou being our Guide.388
Which is the continual Prayer of
Your Graces most humble, true, faith-
full and obdedient Subject, and most
dutifull Servant, usque ad aras.
Cimelgus Bonde.
(sigs. [A4v-A5])
Since his style often recalls the political poetry of the early Civil War period, Duncombe would hardly claim to be an Augustan. Yet he was certainly among the first to address Charles in print directly as Augustus.389
By adopting an anagrammatic pseudonym for the publication of Scutum Regale, Duncombe perhaps wished to suggest that there was still some personal danger involved in publishing his desire for a return to monarchy as early and as earnestly as he did. The author of some dedicatory verses, signed "T. F.", possibly Thomas Flatman, draws attention to Duncombe's personal heroism for writing when he does.390 While there is no direct evidence that "T. F." was Flatman, Scutum Regale is clearly the product of the Inns of Court, a coterie context in which the initials would have been unmistakable. "T. F."'s verses, however, do not appear in any of the editions of Flatman's Poems and Songs published in 1674, 1676, 1682, and 1686.
Other internal evidence suggests that the book was being prepared in a hurry during the early months of 1660. The Errata list which precedes "T. F.'s" dedicatory verses, advises us "since the last in execution, is the first in the intention; I must request the Reader to begin with the last part of the Book, and end with the first part in his reading" (sig. [A6]). This proves to be not bad advise, since we find him complaining about Monk --
Monck prov'd worse than Pharaoh himself, and instead of relieving of our distressed Jerusalem . . . he heaped misery to misery, and executed such a grand piece of Tyranny that none in the world . . . could invent. On Thursday the ninth day of February, 1659, . . . he drew up all his souldiers into the City, with their matches lighted, in a warlike posture, doubled his guards, and tore down all the gates, and posts of the City; neither did his intoxicated malice stay upon the gates, but leapt upon the Aldermen, and other Citizens, whom he presently cast into prison, so that now he is become odious, and stinks in the nostrils of all the Citizens and People: and whereas he was the common hopes of all men, he is now the common hatred of all men, as a Traytor more detestable than Oliver himself; who, though he manacled the Citizens hands, yet never took away the doores of their City, whereby all manner of beasts, (as well the Wolves at Westminster, as other out-lying Foxes, and Birds of prey) may come in, and destroy them when they please. (pp. 373-74).
Within three pages, however, he starts a new section -- "Englands Redemption" -- and finds himself recanting this complaint: "No sooner had I written these last words of the momentary prosperity of the wicked, but immediately the same hour, news was brought me, that General Monck and the City were agreeed,[sic] and resolved to declare for a free Parliament, and decline the Rump . . . I was strucken with amazement, joy made me tremble, and the goodnesse of the news would scarce permit me to believe it" (p. 377).391
The dedicatory verses signed T. F. are followed by "The History of Phaeton," an extended allegory in which King Phoebus, "representing the King," punishes Phaeton, "the hare-brained people" (sigs B-C2). The main body of the book, "A Lecture to Traytors" (sigs C2v-Aa4v) is interspersed with verses in Latin with English translations. The prose "Lecture" draws to an end with two final sections, "Englands Confusion" (sigs Aa5-Bb4v), and "Englands Redemption" (sigs [Bb4v-Cc5v]. Pagination also ends here. Two short poems, "On the late MIRACULOUS REVOLUTIONS IN ENGLAND, &c.," also signed "T. F.," and "Repentance for the Murther of Charles the Martyr and The Restuaration of Charles the II," both printed on separate leaves, are variously tipped in amongst the final gatherings.392
The final section of the book features an engraving of a Shepherd and some Latin and English verses evidently written well before there was any public certainty that Charles would be returning. Of this engraving, marginalia in the copy that once belonged to the private library of Charles comments: "but it has also a 2d Plate which precedes the "Shepherd's Complaint" at the end of the book, & is very seldom found with it. This plate has been by some called `Charles 2d' but it is so unlike that it is not easy to believe it could be meant for his portrait." [reproduce engraving]
Some of the interest of Duncombes's version of pastoral is his use of the shepherd's voice to express a sense of natural justice in line with the call for law throughout Scutum Regale as a whole. The voice begins with a shepherd's conventional rejection of civic, political, and military ambition in favour of rural contentment, a theme Duncombe maintains throughout. At the same time, the voice nostalgically recalls and comes to personify a self-sufficient England that, disrupted by the civil wars, no longer exists. Personal greed and ambition now drive the men in political office while encouraging others to abandon their former ways of life to seek wealth in foreign lands. The shepherd, however, can still find peace away from it all in rural isolation; the same choice adopted by Astell's urban persona in Vota Non Bella.
The Latin verses "Pastor Vit' Su'" (sigs. Cc6-Cc8v) are translated as follows:
Title: A Speech made before the King's most Excellent Majesty CHARLES the Second, / on the Shore where he Landed at Dover. / By Mr. John Reading B. D. who presented his Majesty with a Bible, the Gift of the / Inhabitants there, May 25th. 1660.
Wing: R453.
Copies: brs. O Wood 398 (11).
At the outbreak of war in 1642, John Reading was a canon of Canterbury and Rector of Chartham. He was sequestered by Parliament, congratulated Charles in this oration, and was restored to office to die at Chartham on 26 October, 1667. In September 1662, Henry Oxinden wrote to his wife that he wished "Mr. Reading could procure me that [certificate] at Tenterden"; see Gardiner, ed., Oxinden Letters, p. 265-8; cf p. 273; citing Somner, Part 3, p. 127
Who was Richard Bradshaw? one Henry Bradshaw was headmaster of Wye Grammar School during the 1640s; Oxenden's son went there; did he have a son? brother? Check Wye Church and Wye College, Orwin and Williams -- ref. Oxinden Letters, p. 126. and check A. E. Everitt, Community of Kent, 1640-1660.
John Reading also wrote Christmas Revived: Or An Answer to Certain Objections Made Against the Observation of a Day in Memory of our Saviour Christ his Birth (for John Andrews, 1660; LT 1053(4) dated 12 Dec.
Richard Bradshaw's formal verses appear double-columned below Reading's speech, given here in full.
1. BE pleased to know that your Majesties loyal Subjects, the Mayor, Jurates, and Commons of this your Town and Port of Dover, seriously minding the admirable work of God's Mercy in your Majesties Deliverances, Preservations and restitution unto your long afflicted People, cannot but enquire for some Remonstrance of their due thankfulnesse to God, and Declaration of their Joy of your Majesties peaceable, and safe Return into your Kingdomes.
2. Nor can they find any means in their power here so to accommodate, As the presentation of your Majesty with this holy Book, commanding our Allegiance and faithful Obedience to our Soveraigne Lord, God's immediate Vice-gerent over us on Earth.
3. And if we may light our Taper to this Sun, we must say it is God's eternal will, in the fulness of time revealed for Mans salvation: The golden Pot of Heavenly Manna fitting every age, and palate, wherewith God having fed his Israell for a time, said of this selected Homer, of the same (sufficient for every man to salvation) recondatur posteris.
4. Nor may we be diffident of your Majesties gracious acceptance hereof, considering your invincible love of truth (according to the estimate thereof, by the Prince after God's own heart) better then thousands of gold and silver; 'tis the Treasure hid in the Lord's field, the inestimable riches of his mercy in Christ our Life, and that through which we shall prolong our dayes in the Land; the royal Ornament of holy Princes, which they carry as the Symbolum of God's presence with them and blessing on them.
5. No more shall we add concerning this tabernacle of God's testimony, whose beauty and riches are within, but our hearty prayer to the Almighty, that it may be our happy auspicium Regni to your sacred Majesty, and as the Arke at Obed Edom's house, a blessing, causing all to prosper, and the good Lord God say Amen, and let all God's people present say Amen, Amen.
Title: [missing] The second part, to the same Tune. / [cut] / [text] / London, printed for F. Grove dwelling on Snow-hill. Entred according to order.
Wing: Not listed.
Copies: Blackletter broadside. O Firth b. 20 (25). Rpt. in Ebsworth, 9: 788.
This item is the second half of a ballad, printed on one side only, that has been bound in with Englands Captivity. This title is the catch-phrase of the chorus; Ebsworth suggests "Charles, King of Engalnd, Safe on Shore," and reports that the cut -- angelic host top left -- some mounted; figure with sword and book in cloud top right; castle bottom left, host of sodiers bottom right gesturing towards the angelic troops top left appeared on Nathaniel Butter's Good Newes to Christemdome of 1620 (9:788).
Written in two parts, the first set of thirty heroic stanzas are not composed in quatrains such as Dryden had used to praise Cromwell, but rhymed pentamenter couplets organized into fours. The second part, an "Elogium Carolinum," is both more learned and more formally composed, and the poet even claims to be able to outdo Virgil since he is singing of so noble a ruler. Since these verses were reissued in Edinburgh, it is tempting to imagine that the poet of Laetitiae Caladonicae had them in mind when composing the satires of that poem. Lots of exaggerated claims are made on behalf of the peoples willingness, skill, and desire to fight foreign nations and extend the new king's empire.
The brief character sketch of Charles in the Elogium is vague and generalizing; contrast with Flecknoe's portrait.
Descriptions of crowds eagerly travelling to Dover to meet Charles were not uncommon in works published during the days immediately following his return. Here most of the commonplaces are well represented, especially the emphasis on a general desire to see this spectacular occasion. This version opens with a cosmogenic analogy -- Charles creates the world by his return -- which develops into a series of biblical references that, in turn, slide into analogies with classical mythology and Virgilian georgic. This displacement of biblical by classical allusions is singularly apt since the interregnum governments had legitimated their authority by constant reference to, and use of, the Old Testament. Against this tendency, Charles's return reintroduces the neo-classicism associated with the culture of the Stuarts. Writers who supported Cromwell had commonly identified him with the olive-branch of peace, so the careful conditional usage in l. 18 neatly marks the structural transition from biblical to classical while also suggesting how the Restoration really began with the protector's death in 1658. Severalo other poets explained that the years which Charles had spent abroad were a providentially ordained education in foreign politics that could only benefit him and his kingdom now he had returned to rule.
Only one copy of this poem seems to have survived. I have been unable to identify the author.
The model for this reissued ballad was clearly Robert Wild's Iter Boreale, perhaps the single most popular set of broadside verses published on the eve of the Restoration. Dryden glances at Wild's panegyric to Monck in the Essay of Dramatic Poesy, for exemplifying the decay of poetry into popular journalism; everyone on at the Exchange was reading this instance of terrible versification. Reprinted in POAS.
The version of this ballad ascribed to "T. H." and published by Henry Brome, tries to cash in on the famiiar and popular title, but the text makes no attempt at imitating Wild's versification. Ebsworth noted that The Noble Progresse is the same as T.H.'s Iter Boreale, with some variants, most notably the repeated catch. I have taken for copytext the slightly longer version from The Noble Progresse which includes the anti-sectarian refrain as chorus to each verse paragraph. Substantive variants appear in notes, and suggest rather more about how carelessly ballads were composed in the print shop than the date of issue of either.
In 1860, Wilkins included The Noble Progress commenting:
This curious street ballad, the original or which is in blackletter, was discovered forming part of the lining of an old trunk. It is, probably, unique. The first part relates to the final dismission of the Rump, and the election, with the concurrence of Monk, of a free parliament, or Convention, which voted the restoration of the exiled King. The second part describes the triumphal progress of Charles II. from Dovor [sic] to Whitehall, accomaonied by the princiapl nobility and gentry of the kingdom.
Lots of neologisms eg "clementest", "stook"; northern dialect sometimes seems to come through??
a brief Ottoman moment when the Army are figured as tyrannical janissaries; notice Ottoman interests in Brett and Higons.
Mayhew spends a good deal of time bemoaning the past conditions that will come to an end; he seems specially vehement about the evils of war and religious freedom.
According to Wing, Mayhew wrote an elegy to Cromwell; MH unicum broadside.
Of Thomas Mayhew I can find no record in Wood,
Despite the "1661" of the titlepage, the moment of these verses is very much that indicated in the title, 29 May.
DNB: entry for Thomas Pestell (father): vicar of Packington, Leics and chaplain to Robert Devereux, third Earl of Essex and eventually royal chaplain; published sermons. In 1644 he resigned his living at Packington to his son Thomas; published elegies and sacred verses. Wife was daughter of Mrs Katherine Carr. 2nd son, William (d. 1696), graduated BA 1634 and MA 1638 from Queen's College, Camb, became rector of Cole-Orton in 1644, "whence he and his wife were driven by the parliamentary soldiers under Sir John Gell. He appears to have resumed his benefice at the Restoration, and in 1677 was instituted to Ravenstone in addition." This seems to be his only publication.
Titlepage: AN ODE / UPON THE / HAPPY RETURN / OF / King Charles II. / TO His / LANGUISHING NATIONS, / May 29. 1660. / [rule] / By JAMES SHIRLEY, Gent. / Composed into Musick by Dr. Coleman. / [rule] / Et capitur minimo Thuris Honore Deus. / [rule] / LONDON, Printed 1660,
Rpt. in G. Thorn-Drury A Little Ark Containing 17th-Century Verses 19-25; and in Armstrong, ed., Poems.
Checked to HM original; some cropping of margins; line over-runs copied as in original.
Employs a broad series of rather forced parallels from the OT to compare Charles with the divinely annointed with David.
This ballad is attributed to John Wade by Ebsworth; see headnote to W. J., The Royall Oake. Wade also probably was the JW who wrote "A Second Charles.
Ebsworth dates this shortly after 29 May and notices the similarity of some lines in the Trunk Ballad without a title given here as "Come."
Fifth of the "trunk ballads," this broadside marks various stages in the king's progress with the putative authority of an eye-witness report, listing names and places along the way from Dover to Westminster. As with all such eye-witness reports, it provides a selective list of those the poet recognizes. Monck and the king, are greeted at Deptford by "maidens … all in white." Apprentices appear to greet him at Walworth field; the Lord Mayor joins the train at Newington Butts where a banquet is served. This ballad names several members of the Sealed Knot who had plotted the king's return.
Despite its title, this ballad's perspective is English rather than British -- at times appearing to be specifically aimed at appealing to those living in metropolitan London. There is a strong commercialist emphasis in the final emphasis on the return of trade.
Of this ballad Ebsworth writes: "A Second `Trunk Ballad' is `The Glory of These Nations; or, King and People's Happiness.' It is an imitation of Martin Parker's ballad `Upon Defacing of Whitehal' (reprinted, vii. 633), and to the same tune, When the King enjoys his own again. It begins, "Wher's those that did prognosticate, and did envy fair England's state, And said King Charles no more shall reign? Their predicitions were but in vain, For the King is now return'd" etc. It tells of his reception on 22nd May at Dover, and his progress to Canterbury, Cobham Hall, Deptford, Walworth, and Newington Butts, where he was received by the Lord Mayor." (9:786-7)
[cut: royal coat of arms]
Titlepage: Iter Australe / Attempting something upon the happy / Return of our most Gracious So-/ veraign Lord, / CHARLS II. / FROM / BANISHMENT / TO HIS / THRONE. / [rule] / By a Loyal Pen. / [rule] / -- -Virum non arma Cano. / [rule] / LONON 1, / Printed by Tho. Leach, in the Year, 1660.
The title reverses the direction of travel in Robert Wild's celebrated Iter Boreale, or journey from the North, in order to trope on Charles's arrival from the south in the final stanas. Although the poem is printed to look like Wild's -- they share similar typeface, page layout, use of a nom-de-plume -- there is no reason to think Wild wrote these lines. The poet here doesn't have a great deal to say about Monck. The text was obviously printed in a hurry; inking is poor in all copies. The copy at O=Firth would seem to be an early state, subsequetly corrected in the O=Tanner ad BL copies.
The poem provides a general history of the period from the civil wars up to and including the king's journey home; thin on explanation, wide on narrative.
Titlepage: A / POEM / UPON HIS / SACRED MAJESTIES / DISTRESSES, / AND LATE / HAPPY RESTAURATION. / [rule] / [design] / [rule] / LONDON, / Printed for R. Marriot, and are to be sold at his shop in / St. Dunstans Church-yard, Fleetstreet. 1660.
Date: Bernard's welcome is composed in very general terms that imagine Charles has recently arrived in England: so place in late May.
The publisher Richard Marriot also issued the large paper reissue of Waller's poem in early June (Thomason's is dated 9 June).
Bernard's heroic verses welcome the king in the guise of a warrior whose recent fate has been of some considerable concern to the Titans and gods of Olympus. Bernard's imagination is exhuberant to say no more.
The narrative here brings events up to the moment after Charles has returned, but only just.
This ballad evidently became a very popular piece since it was so often reprinted in slightly different forms. Internal evidence suggests that it may have been written in response to what might have been an earlier ballad called A New game at Cards. Or, The three Nimble Shuffling Cheaters. To a pleasant new tune, Or, what you please (nd; O=Wood 401 (147/148), which tells of a game between "three cheaters," an Irishman, a Scot and an "English-man so round."
Wilkins notes: "This humorous piece, in which the events of the time are narrated in a supposed game of cards, closes the satiric chronicle of the Commonwealth. It is one of the very few ballads, written against the Rump Parliament between the years 1639 and 1661, that is entirely free from licentiousness, virulence, and falsehood" (1:144).
[cuts]
Titlepage: ODE, / UPON / The Blessed Restoration / and Returne / OF / HIS SACRED MAJESTIE, / Charls the Second. / [rule] / By A. Cowley. / [rule] / Virgil. -- -- Quod optanti Div-m promittere nemo / Auderet, volvenda dies, en, attulit ultro. / [rule] / LONDON, / Printed for Henry Herringman, and are to be sold at his / Shop on the Lower Walk in the New Exchange. / Anno Dom. 1660.
Abraham Cowley (1618-1667) was among the small group of notable poets who, in 1660, found themselves liable to the embarrassing accusation of having accomodated with the enemy.
He had shown an early aptitude for writing verse while at Westminster School, publishing Poetical Blossoms in 1633 while aged 15. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge in 1637 and continued to write and publish Latin and English verses, including The Guardian, a comic drama performed in 1641 during a visit by prince Charles. Cowley subsequently revised this into The Cutter of Coleman Street for performance after the Restoration. While still at Trinity, he began his unfinished biblical epic, The Davideis, but was ejected from Cambridge in 1643-44 and moved to St Johns College, Oxford, where he became friendly with Richard Crashaw and the circle of royalists around Lord Falkland. While at Oxford he started and abandoned a second epic, The Civil War. In 1646 he followed Henrietta Maria to France, engaging in various diplomatic missions for the exiled court. His collection of poems, The Mistress (1647) became the most popular volume for a generation.
In 1656, Cowley's Poems was first published, but he was arrested in London that year and remained there on bail. According to Thomas Sprat, he was working undercover for the exiled court, abandoning poetry for medicine as part of his cover. In 1657 he was created M. D. at Oxford by a government order [check Woods] that led many to suspect he had changed allegiances.
Cowley's Ode is highly figurative, blending biblical and classical allusions with motifs from astrology and medicine. Highly dynastic in argument, the poem is structured as a royal entry in which the king, other members of the royal family, Monk, and members of the two houses of parliament mingle with allegorical personifications of Liberty, Plenty, Riches, Honour and Safety. Along the way Cowley notices the slightly embarrassing absence of Henrietta Maria, who had stayed behind in France having become estranged from Charles as a result of her Catholicism.
Thomason dated this "May 1661" and commented "Loud" at the end. Ebsworth reprinted it in volume 9 of his Roxburghe Ballads, noted that it is not to the tune of "When the king enjoyes his own again, insisted that it appeared in "early May 1660," and erroneously stated that it was printed in blackletter.
Since only the first part of this ballad survives, one can only speculate on the intriguing irony of the title. Ebsworth issued a version of the fragment of England's Captivity (RB, 9:787-8) with some commentary. He notes of the two woodcuts that the first "a square-bordered portrait of John Pym, with pointed beard and broad overlying collar; 2nd, on a large scale, the head and armoured neck of Charles II, a regal crown above," and offers May 1660 as the likely date (9:788), though without any substantial reasons.
The verso contains the second part of The True Lovers' Knot Untied (rpt. by Ebsworth, Roxburghe Ballads 7:599-603). Originally printed circa 1610-15, it concerns the secret marriage of Lady Arbella Stuart to William Seymour which had caused James to imprison her in the Tower. Seymour died in 1660, presumably causing the reprinting of this ballad. My thanks to professor Sara Jayne Steen for identifying this partial ballad. Ebsworth lists copies including the following: Rox. 11.468; Pepys IV.44 [not found]; Bagford II.30 [not found]; Euing, 356 [found]; Wood 25,16: first line variously "As I to ireland did pass."
[after 2 June]
Titlepage: A / RELATION / IN FORM of JOURNAL, / OF THE / VOIAGE And RESIDENCE / Which / The most EXCELLENT and most MIGHTY PRINCE / CHARLS THE II / KING OF GREAT BRITAIN, &c. / Hath made in Holland, from the 25 of May, / to the 2 of June, 1660. / Rendered into English out of the Original French, / By / Sir WILLIAM LOWER, Knight. / [garter arms] / HAGUE, / Printed by ADRIAN VLACK, / Anno M. DC. LX. / With Priviledge of the Estates of Holland and West-Freesland. /
On Lower see DND, Woods Ath Oxon [under Tho. Salesbury] and 3:544, and William Bryan Gates's published doctoral thesis, The Dramatic Works and Translations of Sir William Lower, with a Reprint of "The Enchanted Lovers" (Philadelphia, [University of Pennsylvania], 1932) [L 11856.bbb.4]. Gates gives us the following:
Lower was from old Cornish family, born c. 1600 at Tremere, St Tudy; Woods reports him to have travelled in France, fought for the Royalists: first play was The Phoenix in her Flames (1639). By June 1644, L rank of Lt col and made lt-governor of Wallingford where he kidnapped the mayor in order to pressure the town to pay king's levy -- didn't work, but L was knighted 27 March 1645; prisoned by Parl from jan 1646 for a year; went to Holland sometime before or by 1655 having been left some estates there; (cf Masson's Life of Milton, CPSD); he died in 1662 leaving a considerable estate. The will includes "To my Blackamore Boy John forty shillings and alsoe the silver coller and cuffes which I have ordered and directed to bee given him." (cited Gates p. 19).
Gates ignores the Relation beyond commenting that "the engravings are as excellent and interesting as the acrostics of Lower are bad" (Gates p. 23).
On Charles touching for the King's Evil: "It is certain, that the King hath very often touched the sick, as well at Breda, where he touched two hundred and sixty, from Saturday the 17. of April, to Sunday the 23. of May, as at Bruges and Bruxels, during the residence he made there; and the English assure, that not only it was not without success, since it was the experience that drew thither every day, a great number of those diseased, even from the most remote Provinces of Germany..." (p. 78) See discussion starts p. 74
This prose volume ends with a series of verses by Lower, some of them comments upon the large illustrations: "The Deputies of the Estates of Holland complement the King at Delf" (p. 109), "A Poetical Description of the Batavian Court" (pp. 110-111), "The Great Feast The Estates of Holland made to the King, and to the Royal family" (pp. 111-112), "His Majesty taking his leave in the Assembly of the Estates Generall" (p. 112), "His Majesty Taking his leave in the Assembly of the Estates of Holland" (p. 113), "On His Majesties Departure from the Hage [sic] to his Fleet before Scheveling" (p. 114), the acrostick here (p. 115), "An Acrostick Poem. On the most Illustrious and most Heroick Prince James Duke of York" (p. 116), "An Acrostick Poem In Honour of his Excellence the Lord General Monck, Duke of Albermarl, &c" (p. 116).
In "The Printer to the Reader," Vlack apologises for the volume being "tardive," but the engravers of the plates took too long (no sig). The plates are signed variously "N. Venne In. David Philippe Fc.", and "J. Tuliet in. Pierre Philippe sculpsit." "J.Tuliet in. T. Matham sc."
Titlepage: TO THE / KING, / UPON HIS / MAJESTIES / Happy Return. / [rule] / By a Person of Honour. / [rule] / [design: royal arms] / LONDON, / Printed by J. M. for Henry Herringman, and are to be / Sold at his Shop at the Blue-Anchor in lower Walk / of the New-Exchange, 1660. / [within ruled box]
Possibly by Robert Boyle, but stylistically wrong for him.
Titlepage: A / Congratulatory / POEM, / ON / The Miraculous, and Glorious Return / of that unparallel'd KING / CHARLS the II. / May 29. 1660. / [rule] / By ALEX. BROME. / [rule] / Pers. -- -- Ipse Semipaganus / Ad Sacra Regum carmen affero nostrum. / [rule] / LONDON, / Printed for Henry Brome at the Gun / in Ivy-Lane 1660.
Thomason dated his copy on Monday 4 June, and the copy in the Wood collection is also dated June. A ms note on the t/p of the copy in the Huntington gives the price as "1d".
Brome did not reprint this poem in the 1661 edition of his Songs and Other Poems, which does, however, contain the first appearance of the lyric "On the King's returne," and an early version of his ballad, England's Joy. It does appear in the 1664 and 1668 editions of Songs, however.
Some interesting spleen directed at the low-born; various verbal coinages and usages.
Titlepage: A / ROYALL / LOYALL / POEM. / [rule] / LONDON, / Printed for W. Place, and are to be sold at his / Shop at Grayes-Inne Gate in Holborne, 1660.
The Crawford copy is dated in ms "June 5th, 1660.", the same day as Arthur Brett's poem, day after Brome's Congrat. WF copy dated 4th.
Ms corrections to the Tanner copy have been included in notes.
Venn lists: Thos Sanderson, baptised 1611 at Brancepeth, Durham; Sidney Sussex 1628 -- of Hedley-hope, Durham Esq; buried April 1695: See Surtees, History of Durham 4 vols: II.243.
Foster, Alum Oxon lists: Thos Sanderson of Lincoln College, matric 1639; Fellow of Corpus 1644; expelled 1648, reinstated 1649: see Burrows, Register of Visitors of Ox Uni 1647-58 (p. 496).
Title: Sol In Ascendente: / OR, / The glorious Appearance / OF / CHARLES the Second, / UPON / The Horizon of London, in her Horosco-/ picall Sign, Gemini. / [royal arms] / Iam vaga co/elo sidera fulgens, / Aurora fugat; surgit Titan / Radiante coma, mundoque diem / Reddit clarum. 1 / [rule] / London, Printed for N. Brook, at the Angel in Cornhill. 1660.
Son of a sadler, Elias Ashmole (1617-92) was born at Lichfield and received his education at the local grammar school. In 1638 he married for the first time and through the patronage of Thomas Paggit, a relative on his mother's side, began to practice law in Chancery but "had indifferent good practice" (Memoirs, 1774: 292). In 1645 while in Oxford, he met Captain George Wharton at Oxford, who introduced him to astrology and alchemy and secured him a commission in the royal ordnance. That same year, he studied mathematics at Brasenose College and was appointed commissioner of excise for Worcester, moving to London when that city fell to parliament in 1646. Here he was inducted a Freemason, and became friendly with William Lilly and John Booker, the leading astrologers of the age, with William Backhouse, the leading Rosicrucian, and with John Tradescant, keeper of the botanic gardens at Chelsea and a great collector of antiquities. Having remarried to his advantage, Ashmole spent the 1650s immersed in the study of alchemy, astrology and heraldry, learning Hebrew and editing works by John Dee and other early alchemists.
"25. [May 1659] I went to Windsor, and took Mr. Hollar with me to take views of the castle." Memoirs 1774: 326
"16. [June 1660] Hor. post merid. I first kissed the King's hand, being introduced by Mr. Thomas Chiffinch."
"18. [June] Hor, ante merid. was the second time I had the honour to discourse with the King, and then he gave me that place of Windsor Herald." ...
"About this time the King apppointed me to make a description of his medals, and I had them delivered into my hands, and Henry the VIII's closet assigned for my use." ibid. 327. At the Restoration, he was appointed Windsor herald and turned his attentions to antiquarianism. Along the way, he picked up several well-paying offices, becoming accountant general of excise and commissioner for Surinam. He inherited Tradescant's collection of antiquities, married the much younger daughter of the herald William Dugdale in 1668, and published his Institutions, Laws, and Ceremonies of the Order of the Garter in 1672. In 1677, he bequeathed his collection of antiquities to the university of Oxford provided a suitable building was cosntructed for them; by 1683 the transfer was complete. In 1690 the university awarded him an honourable M. D.
In keeping with Ashmole's interests in astrology, his poem is lagely an extended astrological conceit. It is also one of the few poems for which there is an abundance of textual material. A draft autograph copy in the Bodleian Library shows that Ashmole worked over his lines with considerable care and attention, frequently revising lines and transposing couplets and longer sections. Several lines in the manuscript never made it into print, including a Latin tag attributed to Ovid with which the manuscript opens: "C'saris arma canant alij; nos C'saris aras," -- "others have sung of Caesar in arms, we sing of Caesar on the altar."
The Edinburgh reprint displays no internal evidence of revision from the London printing. Since lines 45-58 appeared, anonymously, in Mercurius Aulicus for the week of 28 May-4 June (p. 58), we can presume that the poem was written in advance of the king's arrival. Although the lines in question are almost identical in both printed versions, the Mercurius version of line 58 reads "To shelter us from Devils, and Rump-men" rather than the more generalizing "and worser men" found in both printed versions.
The lines printed in Mercurius are preceded with a comment that might be taken as central to the large amount of publishing in late May and early June which anticipated the king's return:
As it is apparent, that our former pregnant hopes of establishing his Majesty in an honourable and peaceful Government of his three Kingdoms, would prove an astonishing Joy to revive the sunk spirits, who for many years have bin sorely depressed; even so is the fixing of his Princely Heart among them as the Center, in which all the opposite Lines of the distracted Interests of this Nation will meet and acquiesce, to the glory of God, and the perpetual settlement, peace, and welfare of his Subjects. (p. 57)
On Ashmole (1617-1692), SEE DNB, Elias Ashmole...his Autobiographical Notes ed. C. H. Josten, 5 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966) and see what he had to say about the Restoration etc.
Titlepage: [Hebrew] Filius Her"um, / THE SON OF NOBLES. / Set Forth / IN A SERMON / PREACHED / At St Mary's in Cambridge before / the University, on Thursday the / 24th of May, 1660. being the day of / Solemn Thanksgiving for the Deliverance / and Settlement of our Nation. / By WILL. GODMAN B. D. Fellow of the / King's Colledge in Cambridge. / Because the Lord hath loved his people, he hath made thee / King over them. 2 Chron. 2.11. / -- -- Nusquam libertas gratior extat / Qu…m sub Rege pio -- -- -- / [Greek epigraph] / [rule] / LONDON, / by J. Flesher, for W. Morden Bookseller in Cambridge. / An. Dom. M DC LX. [double-rule box].
Wing: G941. Daniel Nicols, "To his Majestie's loyall subject and my / dearly-beloved Friend / Mr WILLIAM GODMAN B. D. / Fellow of King's Coll." sig. B., and Theophilus Cleaver, "To his worthy Friend Mr. WIL. GODMAN / Batchelour in Divinitie," sigs: b2-[b2v].
Copies:
O Pamph C110 (4) COPYTEXT; checked 9/95; 2/96 OW Fairfax 417; chk 4/96 L 226.g.21(2) {trans l984:111} {mf}; chk 1/96 CLC Pamph. coll. Misc. Sermons v.2 {trans l985: 57-8} C, NE, DT, CN, MH, NU, Y WF 134081 chk 12/96
The epistle to the reader is dated 5 June.
A large number of the sermons preached in anticipation and in celebration of Charles's return made their way into print. William Godman preached his sermon before the Cambridge University community on Thursday, 24 May, the day of national thanksgiving declared following the announcement of the king's return, but he dated the epistle to the reader in the printed version 5 June, a Tuesday. Godman himself contributed some verses in Greek to the Cambridge volume, Academiae Cantabrigiensis äoåtrà, which appeared later that summer in July (sig. H3v). His Filius Her"um is the only sermon I have noticed containing dedicatory poems in English. The lines by Daniel Nicols of Queen's College appeared first, followed by sets of Latin verses by three poets from Gonville College, William Lyng, John Felton, and William Naylor. Theophilus Cleaver, also a fellow of King's College like Godman, wrote Englsh verses that appeared next. A final set of Latin verses by J. Boult of Gonville brought up the rear.
The biblical epigraph on the title page was addressed to Solomon by Huram the king of Tyre, though the text which Godman took for his sermon was apprpriately, Ecclesiastes 10.17, "Blessed art thou, O Lord, when thy King is the son of Nobles."
Nicols addresses Godman directly, offering the analogy between soldiers and preachers as signs of their past and continuing common loyalty to the king. Cleaver takes a more prescriptive line with a touch of the jeremiad, finding in the king's return a promise of imminent retribution. He invites us to read Charles's physical appearance in a series of allusions to the Old Testament worthy of an academic divine -- the king's hair, like Sampson's, is a promise of his divine strength; his eyebrows are compared to mounts Gerizim and Ebal and promise punishment and reward. In the lengthy peroration after receiving the ten commandments, Moses "set before" the children of Israel "a blessing and a curse . . . when the LORD thy God hath brought thee in to the land whither thou goest to possess it, that thou shalt put the blessing upon mount Gerizim, and the curse upon mount Ebal" (Deut. 11. 26, 29). The mounts appear again in the story of Joshua. After destroying Jericho, Joshua goes on to slaughter the twelve thousand inhabitants of the kingdom of Ai; he burns the city "and made it an heap for ever, even a desolation unto this day." Lest any should question his piety, Joshua then proceeded to build "an altar to the Lord God of Israel in Mount Ebal" and "wrote there upon the stones a copy of the law of Moses" which he proceeded to read to the victorious Israelites, "half of them over against Mount Gerizim, and half of them over against Mount Ebal," (Joshua, 8. 28, 32, 33). Presumably like Joshua, Charles will be both merciful and just, rewarding the faithful while brooking no resistance to the divine authority of his power.
Titlepage: The Restauration. / OR, / A POEM / on the Return of the / MOST MIGHTY / and ever / Glorious PRINCE, / CHARLES the II. / TO HIS / Kingdoms. / [rule] / By ARTHUR BRETT / of Christs-Church Oxon. / [rule] / -- Deum Delph¢sq; meos. / [rule] / LONDON, / Printed by J. H. for Samuel Thomson at the Bi-/ shops-head in St. Pauls Church-yard. 1660.
Thomason dated his copy on Tuesday, 5 June; Nicholas Cruch paid 4d for his copy, now in OB.
Arthur Brett clearly liked to be among the very first in print to commemorate a royal occasion: The Restauration appeared during the first week of June. Brett was presumably hoping that his poetic declarations of loyalty to the Stuarts would gain him notice either at court or at Oxford: a presentation copy of the poem, now in the library of Balliol College, contains an additional printed dedication to John Wall, Predendary of Christ-Church, Brett's own college. Five months later, Thomason bought a copy of Brett's Threnodia: On the Death of the Duke of Glocester on 13 September, the very day that Prince Henry died. Brett was not only quick off the mark, he was also prolific this year, contributing Latin verses to the Oxford University anthology, Britannia Rediviva, that appeared in July.
According to Woods, Brett had gone up from Westminster School in 1653. Woods thought him "a great pretender to poetry" who, after publishing a verse translation of the book of Job, Patientia Victrix (1661), "had some mean employment bestowed on him, but grew so poor, being, as I conceive, somewhat crazed, that he desired the almes of Gentlemen, especially of Oxford Scholars whom he accidentally met with in London: In which condition I saw him there in 1675." Brett died in 1677. (AO 2: 448).
With over six hundred lines of tetrameter couplets, Brett's Restoration poem is nearly twice the length of Dryden's. His poem here is full of lots of nationalistic jingoism, warning other countries that England rules now that it has a king.
The copy now on deposit in the library of Balliol contains the following dedication "To the Reverend and Profoundly Learned John Wall Doctor of Divinity and Predendary of Christ-Church" (sigs. A-[A2]). Since this was Brett's college, we may presume that this copy was specially prepared for presentation. The piece invokes learned commentary to compare Wall with Noah and Janus for having lived "in his generations, you have seen Monarch flourishing under the Grandfather, declining in the Father, and now reestablishing in the Sonne" (A2v).
THE Favours which I have sometimes received from your Worship have embolden'd mee to accost you in this manner as now I doe; The Rabbini co-criticall Commentators upon Genesis observe of Noah, that 'tis said concerning him He was perfect in his Generations; and they give this reason why he should be in the Plurall number of perfect in his Generations, because he liv'd in the age before the Flood and also in that after the Flood; upon the same account it was that the Auncients portraicted their Janus with two Faces, looking both backward and forward, both on the old World and the new; which Janus was no other in Heathen Pooetry than this Noah so famous in Sacred History; But leaving each of these to themselves (as well the Rabby's, those Pooets in prose, as the Auncient Pooets those Europ'an Rabby's) to enjoy their own conceits, I shall wave the enquiry after the Reason thereof, and only apply the Phrase to you; you likewise (Reverend Sir) have liv'd in your generations, you have seen Monarchy flourishing under the Grandfather, declining in the Father, and now reestablishing in the Sonne; you have seen a deluge of confusion overwhelme the Nation, and you have seen the waters again abated; you have seen the Glory of the Royall family, you have seen its fall; be pleased to cast a favourable eye on its RESTAURATION: For indeed who is fitter to Patronize such a Pooem then your selfe? who (as it were) foretold his Majesties glorious Restitution, and preach't his Inauguration Sermon before hand, out of that notable place, Cant.3.9,10 [Hebrew text]
At St Maries, pro] Our Solomon ha's his royall vehicle to waft inchoando Termino.]1 him over; he will also now have his Pillars of
Silver, and his reclinatory of Gold; Benigne heavens will not let mee adde and his ascent of purple; without slaughters and bloudshedd, we have done what the King of Pooets advices us to doe in that so renowned Politicall Axiom, [three lines of Greek] Let the richenss of the matter excuse the poornesse of the dresse, the Title the Pooem; It may have been done more Artificiously, more Affectionatly it could not nor with a more eager desire to be approved.
Titlepage: Epinicia Carolina, / OR AN / ESSAY / Upon the Return of His / SACRED MAJESTY, / Charles the Second. / [rule] / By S. W. of the Inner Temple. / [rule] / [design] / LONDON, / Printed for Robert Gibbs, at the Golden Ball in Chan-/ cery Lane. 1660.
Thomason dated his copy on Thursday, 7 June 1660.
Although signed by initials only, it seems likely that these verses were composed by Samuel Woodford (1636-1700). After leaving Wadham College, Oxford in 1659, Woodford entered the Inner Temple and shared chambers with Thomas Flatman. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1664 and took orders in 1669. Although he was an almost exact contemporary of Dryden, Woodford took his lead as a poet from Cowley, as can be seen in his Paraphrase upon the Psalms, which appeared in 1667 . 1 Wood knew that Woodford had written a poem on the Restoration, but was unable to find it.
Note the impacted style, contorted syntax,
The poem makes the conceited claim that Charles had to lose the battle of Worcester since victory in a civil war would have been dishonourable: contrast Willes, who imagines Charles at Worcester heroically slaughtering his way through the enemy.
Titlepage: POSTLIMINIA / CAROLI II. / THE / PALINGENESY, / OR, / SECOND-BIRTH, / OF / CHARLES the Second to his / Kingly Life; Upon the day of his First, / May 29. / [rule] / By Abiel Borfet, M. A. / [large crown] / LONDON, / Printed for M. Wright at the Kings-head in the / Old-Baily, 1660.
Both the WF and Thomason copies are hand-dated 8 June. Fortescue catalogues the LT copy for 29 May, presumably following the title.
The typographical eccentricity of placing the final letter of the king's name outside the italics suggests not so much design as an overused set of type, that is, the absence of an italic capital "i".
Borfet claims to have written a satire on the Rump; describes in some details the events of late May including some fanciful conceits based on the procession of mayor and guilds through London. He ends with the wich that Charles will soon marry and produce an heir.
The day this poem appeared, if the 8 June dating is reliable, was the day Charles rode to Hampton Court and touched for the King's Evil (Pub Int. #15. p. 238)
Thomason dated his copy of Waller's poem on Saturday, 9 June; Cowley's Ode had already appeared on Thursday 31 May, but Dryden's Astraea Redux would not appear for another ten days, on Tuesday 19 June.
Titlepage: A / PANEGYRICK / TO THE / KING. / By His Majesties most humble, / most Loyal, and most Obedient / Subject and Servant, / THOMAS HIGGONS. / Virg. 'n. Lib. 2. / Qu' Tant' tenuere mor'? queis CAROLE ab oris / Expectate venis? ut te, post multa tuorum / Funera, post varios hominumque urbisque labores / Defessi aspicimus! / [text pp. 1-11] / LONDON, / Printed for Henry Herringman, at the signe of / the Anchor in the Lower Walk of the / New-Exchange. 1660.
DNB: Thomas Higgons (1624-1691) was a career diplomat who early on showed a keen interest in the politics of the Mediteranean. Born in Shropshire, he entered St Alban Hall, Oxford in 1638, but left without a degree in order to travel in Italy. After his return, c.1647-48, married Elizabeth, widow and second wife of Robert Devereux, third Earl of Essex and daughter to Sir William Paulet of Wiltshire. Delivered oration at her funeral 16 Sept 1656, which he printed the same year.
In January 1658, while residing at Odiham near Southampton, Higgons was elected MP for Malmesbury, Wilts. That year he published, anonymously, his verse translation, from the Italian, of G. F. Busenello's A Prospective of the Naval Triumph of the Venetians over the Turk, which Waller so admired that he wrote a poem to Higgons's wife. Higgons knowledgeable interest in relations between Christian nations and the Ottoman empire infiltrates his poem to Charles and resulted in his later publication, The History of Isuf Bassa, Captain General of the Ottoman Army At the Invasion of Candia (London: Printed for Robert Kettlewel, at the Hand and Scepter over against St Dunstans Church in Fleetstreet. 1684).
After the Restoration, Higgons was returned MP for New Windsor, Berks, on 9 April 1661. Knighted on 17 June 1663; services to crown rewarded with a pension of oe500 a year and gifts worth oe4,000. From 1665 on, Higgons was sent on various diplomatic missions: to Paris in 1665 (CSPD); to Savoy in 1669; to Vienna in 1673 wherre he was three years envoy. In 1685 he was elected MP for St Germans in Cornwall; died suddenly in court on 24 Nov 1691. Remarried by licence c. 1691;
Refs: Woods; Chalmers, Bio Dict; Evelyn's Diary;
Higgons emphasizes the secular causes and political consequences of the king's return. He opens with a warning to foreign nations and insists that it was the English people who brought Charles back, unassisted by foreign aid. Charles is placed in a line of Greek and Roman heroes and rulers, including Augustus and Aeneas, rather than biblical figures; his return assures a new age, one of Roman/republican virtue and civic liberty that promises an era of unprecendented global empire. In many respects, Higgons's poem resembles Astraea Redux in it's Virgilian emphasis on arts and empire but without the attempt to link this with scared kingship.
NB Secular agency here; not the French or Dutch, or providence but the English people have brought Charles back.
Titlepage: TO THE / KING'S / Most Excellent Majesty: / ON HIS / Happie and Miraculous / RETURN / To The Government of his Three (now ) flourishing / KINGDOMS. / [text: pp. 1-6] / LONDON : / Printed by James Cottrel , for Humphry Robinson , at the / three Pigeons in St. Paul 's Church-yard. / M D C L X.
The son of a royalist commander from Carlisle, Clement Ellis (1630-1700) entered Queen's College, Oxford in 1649 and was elected fellow in 1657. Until the Restoration, he lived on anonymously donated funds that he later suspected were paid by Jeremy Taylor and Henry Hammond. In 1661 he was appointed domestic chaplain to William, marquis of Newcastle, who presented him to the rectory of Kirkby-in-Ashfield, Notts. A prolific and popular writer on religious matters -- his The Gentile Sinner (1660) was reprinted at least 7 times by 1680 -- he was by his own admission not much of a poet. His sermon on the anniversay of the Restoration, preached before the marquis of Newcastle on 29 May 1661, was published in Oxford.
In his poetic lament for the kingless past and his anticipation of the return of the anglican church, there is little that is original. Thomason dated his copy 11 June and noted: "The gift of the Author, my son George's Tutor."
Title: A CONGRATULATION / For His Sacred Majesty, CHARLES, the third / Monarch of Great Britain, His happy Arrival / at WHITE-HALL. / By a Loyal Member of His Majesties Army. / Edinburgh, June 13. 1660.
Manuscript annotations to copy EN1 indicate that at some time during or after the 1740s, the events of 1660 were interpreted as prefigurations of the Jacobite dream. The title, for instance, is emended to read "A Congratulation For His Sacred Majesty, James the 8, the fyfte Monarch of Great-Britain," and there are subsequent emendations to make the application good: "Lozzain" for "Bredah" (l. 11), "Treasurer" for "General" (l. 26), "James" for "CHARLES" (l. 33) and "James the 8's" for "CHARLES the Seconds" (l. 44).
Titlepage: TO THE / KINGS / MOST SACRED / MAJESTY, / Upon his Happy and Glorious / RETURN / An endeavoured / POEM. / [rule] / BY / SAMUEL WILLES. / [rule] / Cressa ne careat pulcra dies nota. Horat. / [rule] / LONDON, / Printed by T. R. for John Baker at the sign of the / Peacock in St. Pauls Church-yard 1660. / [within double ruled box]
Thomason dated his copy on Friday, 15 June 1660.
Opens with some rather curious images of the national landscape and fauna welcoming back the king; noone else tells of the "shelled inhabitants" coming ashore to witness his landing.
Presents a rather bloodthirsty version of Charles at the battle of Worcester; compare "S. W." who also sees Charles battling away at Worcester.
Titlepage: Anglia Rediviva: / A / POEM / ON HIS / MAJESTIES / Most joyfull Reception / INTO / ENGLAND. / [rule] / [design] / [rule] / LONDON, / Printed by R. Hodgkinsonne for Charles Adams, and are to be / sold at the signe of the Talbot in Fleetstreet, 1660.
Thomason dated his copy on Sunday, 17 June, 1660.
Another set of verses that was so rushed into print that, as so often seems to happen, there is a printer's error in the title on p. 1.
Titlepage: Astr'a Redux. / A / POEM / On the Happy / Restoration & Return / Of His Sacred Majesty / Charles the Second. / [rule] / By John Driden. / [rule] / Iam Redit & Virgo, Redeunt Saturnia Regna. Virgil. / [rule] / LONDON, / Printed by J. M. for Henry Herringman, and are to be sold at / his Shop, at the Blew-Anchor, in the lower Walk of the New-/ Exchange, 1660.
Dryden's poem was advertized in Mercurius Publicus for 21-28 June. Thomason dated his copy on Tuesday, 19 June but since this is the second state of the poem, it may have appeared some days before this. Standard scholarly editions in Kinsley and Swedenberg contain full textual histories with historical collations to subsequent editions.
Paul Hammond reckons that D knew poems by Lluelyn (24 May), Higgons (10 June), Cowley (31 May), Waller (9 June) "But many of D.'s images are the common stock of other panegyrics, notably in the two university collections"
Titlepage: POEM, / UPON HIS / SACRED MAJESTIES / MOST HAPPY / RETURN / TO HIS / DOMINIONS. / [rule] / Written by / Sr William Davenant. / [rule] / LONDON, / Printed for Henry Herringman, and are to be sold at / his Shop at the signe of the Anchor on the Lower walk / in the New Exchange. 1660.
Sir William Davenant (1606-68) managed the King's Company of players from 1660 until his death, having organized musical performances in private houses during the commonwealth; most notably The Siege of Rhodes.
Davenant's editor Gibbs reports: "A note in Bishop Kennett's A Register And Chronicle Ecclesiastical and Civil, 1728, p. 246, dates the publication of this poem to August 1660. ... The 1673 text shows some authorial revision" (p. 392). Thomason however dated his copy on Monday, 25 June. Some of Gibbs's glosses are given to lines as notes.
Titlepage:TO / His Sacred Majesty, / CHARLES / The Second, / ON HIS / HAPPY RETURN.
Thomason dated his copy 26 June, 1660. Edwards does not appear in the DNB.check Ath Oxon
Compare Flatman's verses in Duncombe's Scutum Regale;
Check authorship; who ascribed this to Flatman?? Wing accepts it as Flatman BUT: In no edition of his Poems and Songs (1674, 1676, 1682, 1686) does it appear; why not? why would he leave it out? The 1686 Poems includes "On the much Lamented Death of our late Sovereign Lord King Charles II of blessed Memory, Pindarique Ode" (pp. 239-45) so why, if this were his, would they be omitted? Saintsbury does not include this with F.s other poems in Caroline Poets; -- see F. A. Child, The life and uncollected poems of Flatman Phila 1921 [O=Eng Fac Lib J74.60CH1]
Both Hazlitt, Handbook p. 208 and NCBEL p. 473 suggests this is perhaps by Thomas Forde.
What do we know of Flatman? Woods calls him "an eminent Poet of his time" who came from "Aldersgate street in the Suburb of London." An anonymous notice of Flatman tipped in to a Bodleian copy of Poems (1674) dates his birth c. 1635. He was elected to a fellowship at New College in 1654, but left Oxford without a degree to enter the Inner Temple. While at the Inns of Court, Flatman never practised law, preferring poetry and painting. Oldys wrote of him:
Should Flatman for his client strain the laws,In 1681, the Duke of Ormond was so pleased with a poem on the death of his son, Lord Ossory, that he presented Flatman with a mourning ring and diamond worth oe100 (Wood, AO 2: 626). 1 Pope imitated F.'s "A Thought on Death" in his "The Dying Christian to his Soul."
The Painter gives some colour to the cause:
Should critics censure what the Poet writ
The Pleader quits him at the bar of with.
Despite an early contempt for marriage, Wood reports that F. was "afterwards smitten with a fair Virgin, and more with her fortune, did espouse her 26 nov. 1672; whereupon his ingenious COmrades did serenade him that night, while in the embraces of his Mistress" with a song F. had written in contempt of marriage (AO 2: 626-27). F. died 8 December 1688 at his house in Fleet street and was buried at St Brides.
At the time of the Restoration, F. was chamber mate with Sam Woodford at the Inner Temple. Flatman included verses on Woodford's trans of the Psalms in his Poems (1674, 1676, 1682, 1686). SW's Epinicia also published by a Chancery Lane publisher.
-- check Don Juan Lamberto or a Comical history of the late times. By Montelion LT E 1048 (6), November 1660 [ascribed to John Phillips and to Flatman}
Flatman's Poems and Songs (1674; UL copy Syn. 766.68.2) does not include these verses, though it does include an elegy to Monck. There are commendatory verses by: Walter Pope, Charles Cotton, Ric. Newcourt, Francis Knollys, Octavian Pullen, Franc. Bernard. The volume also includes an elegy to Orinda, and verses to Sam. Woodford "on his excellent version of the Psalms."
Flatman rumoured to be in a "Poetical war" with Robert Wild, poet of Iter Boreale, in 1672 "but how it was teminted" Wood cannot tell (AO 2: 706).
F. and Cowley were among the dedicatees of Katherine Philips' Poems: see Woods AO 2:284 for a life of KP.
Emphasizes Charles's power and promise of authority over other nations, especially France, Spain and the German republic. Flatman is not alone in ascribing many of Charles's former troubles to Catholic conspiracy.
Titlepage: AN / ESSAY / OF A / LOYAL BREST; / In four Copies of Verses, viz. / I. To His Majesty, CHARLES the 2d. / II. To His two Houses of PARLIAMENT. / III. To His General, the Lord MONCK. / IV. To that His good Angel, Madam JANE LANE. / [rule] / By WILLIAM FAIREBROTHER, of Kings / Colledge in Cambridge. / [rule] / LONDON, / Printed by JOHN FIELD, 1660.
A manuscript note on the Bodleian copy gives the date as June, 1660.
F. was a fellow of King's College, Cambridge. Venn reports:
Adm at Kings aged 17, a scholar from Eton 19 April 1630. Of London. Matric 1631; BA 1633-hyphen;4; MA 1637; LLD 1660 (Lit Reg). Fellow 1633-hyphen;81. Vice-hyphen;Provost 1653. Senior Proctor, 1654-hyphen;5. Incorp at Oxford, 1669. Served in the Royal Army. Prisoner at Naseby, 1645. Died 10 Aug. 1681. (see Thomas Harwood, Alumnae Etonenses, 1797). Venn part 1:2.
Like Daniel Nicols, another Cambridge don who wrote verses on the Restoration, William Fairebrother is keen to remind anyone interested of his past loyalties to the royalist cause; he sets out by claiming to have composed verses to Charles while he was still prince of Wales and subsequently refers to his own active service in the royalist army at the battle of Naseby. Fairebrother also contributed a short Latin poem to Charles in the Cambridge volume, Academiae Cantabrigiensis äoåtrà, employing the same anagram -- "Charles Stuart STET LAR CHARUS" (sig. D3v) -- that he uses to end his verses to Charles here.
The four sets of verses contained in An Essay of a Loyal Brest all offer a variety of biblical, classical and historical analogies for their various subjects. Fairebrother's verses to the houses of Parliament, for example, which are more conciliatory than many, seek to apportion blame generally by comparing Parliament with Phaeton driving the chariot of the nation too close to the sun; youthful exhuberance and lack of skill are the faults, not the kind of diabolical greed and rapacity often attributed to the Rumpers. The same figure is used by Forde to describe the overreaching nature of the parliamentary party.
Fairebrother is among the few to draw attention to the slaughter of the Irish under Cromwell; see also John Crouch.
Fairebrother's verses to Jane Lane open with a fairly outlandish comparison, suggested by an anagram, between Jane Lane and Jael, the Kenite who slew the Canannite general Sisera. In addition to reporting may of the standard tropes of the royal escapades after Worcester, he makes rather extravagant use of the fact that the king had his hair cut short.
Titlepage: POEMS, / viz. / 1. A PANEGYRICK to the KING. / 2. SONGS and SONNETS. / 3. The BLIND LADY, a COMEDY. / 4. The Fourth Book of VIRGIL, / 5. STATIUS his ACHILLEIS, / with ANNOTATIONS. / 6. A PANEGYRICK to GENERALL / MONCK / [rule] / By the Honorable / Sr ROBERT HOWARD. / [rule] / [design] / [rule] / LONDON, / Printed for Henry Herringman, and are to be sold at his / shop at the sign of the Anchor on the lower Walk / of the New Exchange. 1660.
Thomason dated his copy June, 1660. Dryden wrote dedicatory poem at unsigned sigs [A6-A8].
Sir Robert Howard (1626-98) a younger son of the Earl of Berkshire, was a career MP from 1661 until his death.
Comming in with the Scots, who were before
Conquer'd by the English at Dunbar.
Stat casus renovare omneis, omnemque revertiVirg. lib. 2. 'neid.
Per Trojam, et rursus caput objectare periclis.
Titlepage: ANGLIA REDIVIVA. / OR / The Miraculous Return of / THE BREATH OF OUR NOSTRILS. / A POEM. / [rule] / by EDMUND ELIS, Master of Arts. / [rule] / [design: crowned rose and thistle] / [rule] / Printed in the Year, 1660.
NB ms correction to line 35 found in several copies.
In addition to the Latin version, a shortened version of 24 lines was reprinted circa 1745 on one side of a single sheet under the title "A POEM Upon the 29th of May, the Day of King CHARLES II. His Birth and Happy Restoration;" the other side contains a 16-line sonnet entitled "June 10th, 1745. Being the Anniversary of His MAJESTY's Birth," starting: "SHALL Britons still at feeble Wishes stay,/ And hail with nothing else this happy Day!" [BL=c.38.g.14(11)]. This later Jacobite version gives lines 1-4, 67-78, 91-94 {93 and 94 are reversed}, 111-113 and a final new line]. These verses are transcribed at the end of this file from the BL copy.
According to Madan, Elys was a fellow of Balliol College; see Wood Ath. Oxon. iv.470. In 1659 when he published The Quiet Soule, two sermons, he was "of East Allington in Devonshire, and succeeded his father as rector at the close of the year" (#2439). Other works include Dia Poemata (London 1655) containing 19 poems and 61 epigrams in English [Wing E667 at LT WF Y]; Divine Poems (Oxford, 1658; Madan 2383) [WING E668 AT LT O CLC MH NPT; rpt 1659 O CH], Miscellanea (Oxford 1658, 1662 Madan 2384, 2591) and Poemata (Oxford 1660; Madan 2496 [error in entry at 2383; Index also in error, listing 2466 which is Brit Red; no entry for this in Madan??]): Madan comments "they are all of inferior merit, poor echoes of George Herbert" (at 2383).
In 1660 he published a tract attacking cock-fighting: The Opinion of Mr. Perkins and Mr, Bolton, and others, concerning the Sport of Cockfighting; Published formerly in their Works, and now set forth to shew, That it is not a Recreation meet for Christians, though so commonly used by those who own that Name (Oxford, 1660; Madan 2494) [WING E684A AT OU=University College, depostied at O, Y]. Wing also lists: E698: A Vindication of the Honour of King Charles 1 (1691), a "reply" to Ludlow, listing only O=Wood 363(7) and E675B: Joannis Miltoni sententiae potestati regiae adversantis refutatio (1699) at OB and CH only.
The copy in LLP, which is bound in very fine vellum with gilt stamping on front and back covers, contains the following verses in ms bound before tp:
The poem proper follows:
Numquam Libertas
gratior extat /
Quam sub Rege
Pio -- Claud
Date: Full of evidence of rushed printing, but Charles is clearly back in the country.
Plenty of medical metaphors; the interegnum is represented as an illness infecting both the king and the nation. Saintsbury tells us Chamberlayne was a doctor, and calls this the best of the Restoration poems after Dryden's -- perhaps a rather exaggerated claim.
Anticipates the king's marriage
Titlepage: ITUR / Satyricum: / IN / LOYALL / Stanzas. / [rule] / By John Collop, M. D. / [double rule] / LONDON, / Printed by T. M. for William / Shears, and are to be sold at his Shop at the Signe of / the Bible in Bedford-street neer Covent-/ Garden, 1660.
Collop had earlier addressed Charles in "To the Son of the Late King" included in his 1656 volume, Poesis Rediviva: Or, Poesie Reviv'd. The piece argues for stoical self-sufficiency and acceptance -- better to be content with one's lot in life than to have the worries of a king -- while at the same time focussing on the author's hopes that Charles will restore the national Church.
Notice Collop's early concern that not all might be as enthusiastic about the return to monarchy as the author would wish.
Date: References to the celebrations accompanying Charles's arrival in London (lines 25-48) were clearly written after the fact, so I have placed this poem among those issued during June.
For the note on St. George,
ITUR
Satyricum:
IN
LOYALL
Stanzas.
By John Collop, M. D.
LONDON,
Printed by T. M. for William
Shears, and are to be sold at his Shop at the Signe of
the Bible in Bedford-street neer Covent-
Garden, 1660.
Titlepage: Carmen Triumphale: / OR, / ENGLANDS / TRIUMPH / FOR / Her Restored LIBERTIE. / WITH / WHITE-HALLS SPEECH to her / Royal Master, CHARLES the Second KING of Great / BRITAIN, FRANCE and IRELAND, / Also her sad Complaint against the pretended Committee of Safety, Rumpers, / and the rest of those Cruel Tyrants, and unjust 1 Judges, who not / only defaced and spoiled Her Stately Buildings, but / also unjustly condemned her to be sold. / With two short Panagyricks to the Right Honourable 2 the City of LON-/ DON, and the University of CAMBRIDGE. / -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- Numquam LIBERTAS gratior extat / Quam sub REGE pio. -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- / Claudianus. / [rule] / By WILLIAM SMITH, Gent. / [rule] / LONDON, Printed for Wa. Jones, 1660.3
Clearly a rushed printing job; lots of inverted letters and missing letters: notice two on the titlepage. Could this be the same William Smith (d. 1696), of high birth, who became an actor after the Restoration? DNB has him starting out as a lawyer who quit the Inns for the stage. Claims to have attended Clare Hall. Evident interest in matters religious; offers some interesting details ie it rained on the 29th of May during the procession. Use of Ottoman details for contrast. Lots of "augustan" epithets -- noun + participle to form adjectival phrase.
Scattered Ottoman content throughout.
Blackletter.
Date: Charles has evidently arrived and Starkey dutifully reports the celebrations in London, but offers little by way of commentary on any real achievements other than hoping trade will recover.
The Thomason copy is dated 7 July, but since it was published in Oxford, it might well have taken a while to reach Thomason. This volume is said to predate the Woodstock School volume, and that is recorded as June in Wood.
This volume contains verses in Latin, Greek, Arabic and Hebrew scripts.
Only the English poems are given below. Those by John Locke and John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, are among the most interesting.
In several copies, gathering Cc is misfolded, causing several poems to be broken up and shuffled with parts of different poems. Some copies also have parentheses in the final verses by Lichfield but these are not always found elsewhere.
Madan comments: "Great must have be the heart-searching of the Vice-Chancellor [John Conant] (who had to contribute, and was ejected from office within a month of publication) . . . . On the whole there is no change of style, but the English part is composed of poems longer than was formerly usual. The general hope of rewards ought to have raised the quality of the verse, but it is still rhetorical and artificial."
Madan also notes "the usual signs of haste in its make up...the two parts being concomittantly set up in type. Some misprints and corrections . . . mark not so much an early or late issue, as corrections made in particular sheets while the book was passing through the press . . . ."
"Mrs. [Anne] Lichfield was paid oe20 for `printing the Verses' and for some occasional losses . . . and 2s. 6d. was given to the `printers' ie the compositors."
Of the verses at the end, signed by the printer Leonard Lichfield, Madan comments: "The verses were of course written for him by some scholar."
I have used asterisks to indicate those who also contributed poems to Cromwell in the Oxford volume of 1654.
Titlepage: VOTIVUM CAROLO, / OR / A WELCOME to his Sacred / MAJESTY / CHARLES the II. / [rule] / From the Master and Scholars of Wood-/ stock-School in the County of Oxford. / [rule] / [design: crowned rose and crowned thistle] / [rule] / Printed in the Year 1660./ [enclosed within ornamental box]
Wing: W3475. [Published in Oxford by Henry Hall, according to Madan]. Qto. tp + [A]-[D4] last two blank.
Copies:
Commentaries: Madan #2540. "The royal borough of Woodstock contained a free Grammar School, founded in 1585, and at this time presided over by Francis Gregory, a native of that town and educated at Westminster and Cambridge. He had already issued several school-books, and according to Wood (Fasti Oxon. ii.258) `did much good by his sedulous instrution'. Anyway he induced his scholars to weep over Charles I in correct style and to rejoice in the new King to order he himself showing them how to do it, by example. Any sincerity there might have been was disturbed by the unfortunate doubt whether Charles after all would not be sent off, bag and baggage, to Holland again (p. [7]). In fact, the poems were a little `previous' when written. The Verses are fairly correct, and dictionaries and grammars produced [cites some gk and latin] [lists names of writers] "The volume seems to have been issued after [Brtannia Rediviva] which is referred to in the preface, that is to say, not before the middle of July."
Francis Gregory is listed in Wing for numerous items up to 1696, including the following:
NB [there is a dating problem-sig A3 gives "The Scholars to the Reader," in which the boy-poets speak of being inspired by the scholars at Oxford University -- were this so, there may be a dating problem; Thomason only got his copy of Brit Red on 7 July, making the June dating of Vot Carolo difficult unless it took a very long time for him to receive the University volume. But since the Woodstock volume is also dated June 1660 in ms at Wood 319 (10), Brit Red may have come out very early June.??
Of the academic collections, this is the only one produced by a school. Most of the work is by Francis Gregory of whom Woods writes: "the son of Francis Gregory, was born at Wodstock in Oxfordshire, educated in Gram. Learning in the Coll. school at Westminster, in Academical at Cambr. whence he returned to Westm. and was an Usher under Mr. Rich. Busby. Afterwards he became Master of the Free-school in the Town of his nativity (founded by Rich. Cornwell Cit and Skinner of Lond. 27 Eliz. dom. 1585) and at length the first master of the Free school founded at Witney in Oxfordshire by Hen. Box a Druggist of Lond, after his Majesties restauration: At both which places continuing several years, he did much good by his sedulous instruction. In 1672, or thereabouts, he became Rector of Hambleton near Great Wycomb in Bucks, and about that time one of his Majesties Chaplains in ordinary." (AO 2: 822-3).
Gregory was certainly prepared for the king's return; on Sunday 27 May he preached on 2 Sam 19.30 at St. Mary's in Oxford, publishing his sermon as Davids returne from his Banishment.
Votivum Carolo contains fifteen poems in English, given here; omitted are six in Latin (signed by Francis Gregory, Abraham Greg, Willoughby D'ewes, Carol Cocks, Johanne Cocks, Richard Woodward) and three in Greek (signed by Carol Cocks, J. Rogers, R. Woodward). The two English poems by Gregory on the death of Charles 1 are included. Although they claim to have been printed at the time of the execution, I have found no evidence of them.
I Am a stranger to your Person; but no man is a stranger to your Name and Worth. I love you for what you are; I honour You for what you have done; I cannot say, which is greatest in You, your Vertue, or your Valour; your Prudence, or your Loyalty.
His Majestie's Return is (under God) your glory, and our Comfort: we did not enjoy our selves, when we wanted him. It was my sorrow, yet my Allegiance, to drop some Tears upon His Majesty's Royall Fathers Tomb; in those Teares there was then, as something of duty, so much of danger too. It is now my Ambition, and yet my Loyalty, to offer some Devotion at his Majesty's Throne. Our former losse of the Royall Father was by Death; our present enjoyment of his Royal Son, is by a kind of Resurrection. Indeed, our desires for his Sacred Majesty's Return, were never grown so much as faint or weak; but, our Hopes, a few Months since, were almost Dead; we had Reason enough to long for Our Soveraigne, but little ground so soon to expect him: Now, blessed be God, who, by you his Glorious Instrument, hath disappointed our fears, and, in mercy prevented our Hopes, and brought in our King the Object of both.
I have suffered my young Scholars to use his Majesty's Name in Verse; I hope, they have not profaned it. If, for this, I need his Majesty's Pardon, I trust, your Excellency will beg it for me. Children are the Hopes of Gods Kingdome, and his Majesty's too; my work is, to teach them Religion, Loyalty, and Learning; Religion towards their GOD; Loyalty towards their KING; and Learning to fit them for the service of both. Besides, I cannot better evidence my own Allegiance, then by Teaching young Gentlemen Theirs.
I dare not put this Paper into his Majesty's hand; it's highest Ambition is to fall down before His footstool; I dare not present it to any Noble-man, but Your self; It is above all other Persons, though not for its worth, yet for its Subject; the mercy, we enjoy, under God, we enjoy by You; the Acknowledgments, we return, under God, we Return to You. I am, among Thousands,
IN these Verses you may expect many expressions of joy, none of wit. Expressions may not be light, where the subject is Majesty. It is as hard a Task to bear the heigth of joy with sobriety, as the depth of sorrow with Patience. Joy, when it is in excesse, (and such is ours) doth not so much heighten as Transport and Ravish. The Product of our brain must needs be poor and beggarly, when our Passion groweth Head-strong and Plunders our Reason. Such is our joy for the long desired Returne of his Majesty, that we are even beside our selves, and no wonder then, if we are beside our wits too. It is not our design to Proclaim our learning, but our Loyalty; we care not to passe under the name of bad Poets, if we may but prove our selves good subjects. Indeed, it may look like ambition in school-boyes to be in Print; But, if young Students at Oxford doe much this way, why may not we at Woodstock doe a little? we think, Poetry is no more confind'd to Gownes and Caps, then Philosophy to Beards. It is our hope ere long to reach the University, we suppose, it is not our Crime to follow it now; indeed to have got the start and met the KING, before the Unversitie, had not been in us good manners, but yet to follow it, Proves our great disadvantage. Our Woodstock Verses after those of Oxford, must needs seem as dul as a Country Homily after a St Mary's Sermon. If University men shall read our verses, we must entreat them first to forget their own. Yet, not as if we like Plagiaries, had stolne any of theirs, surely if we are Theeves, we are fools too; 'tis not only dishonesty but imprudence to bring stolne goods so quickly to so neer a market, and expose them to sale at the right Owners door. Our Expressions are somewhat like the Aire we live in, Thin enough, but not piercing; though our School be neerer, yet our wits and fancies are above six miles from Oxford. However, what we would have done, accept; what we have done, excuse; it will be our honour, if our Gracious Soveraign please but to reckon us among his Minor Poets.
[double ornamental rules]
Titlepage: STEMMA SACRUM, / The / Royal Progeny / Delineated, and with some / Notes explained, Shewing His / SACRED MAJESTIES / Royal and Lawful Descent to / His Crown and Kingdoms, from all / the Kings that ever reigned in this / NATION. / [rule] / By Giles Fleming, Rector of Wadding-/ worth, in the Diocess and County of / LINCOLN. / [rule] / Blessed art thou O Land, when thy King is the Son of / the Nobles, Eccles. 10. 7. / And the remnant that is escaped of the house of Ju-/ dah, shall yet again take root downward, and / bear fruit upward, 2 Kings 19. 30. / [rule] / London, Printed for Robert Gibbs, at the golden / Ball in Chancery-lane. 1660. / [whole is boxed] 1
Reissued in 1664 as His Majesty's Pedigree. This is not so much a reprint, as the original work with a cancel titlpage -- "Printed for Tho. Rooks at the Lamb and Inkbottle at the East end of S. Pauls near S. Austins gate, 1664" and a final leaf listing works printed by Rooks. Gibbs's colophon has been erased from the genealogical table.
The Folger copy is signed "Katherine Willughby her booke 1661 sent her by her deare Sister, S. W." and, on the titlepage, is signed by "Doro Winstanley." An engraved portrait of Charles II precedes the titlepage in the WF copy; not found in MR
Anticipation of the king involved checking out his dynastic credentials once more and, in doing so, insist upon the principle of royal inheritance. This is the task that Giles Fleming took upon himself in producing a pocket-book sized genealogy of the returning king.
Giles Fleming is identified as "Rector of Waddingworth, in the Diocess and County of Lincoln" on the titlepage. From Lincoln Cathedral Library, Dr. Nicholas Bennett reports: "Waddingworth is a small parish, six miles west-north-west of honrcastle in Lincolnshire. The Village is still in existence, although the church of St Margaret has sadly been made redundant. Giles Fleming was presented to the rectory of Waddingworth by King Charles I on 28 August 1629 and was instituted to the living on 4 September. 2 According to Venn, Alumni Cantabrigenses, he was educated at St. John's College, Cambridge (BA 1622-3) and ordained deacon and priest by the Bishop of Peterborough in 1626. He held the living of Waddingworth until his death early in 1665; he was buried in Beverly Minster on 23 January 1664/5. I have found no record to suggest that he was ejected from his living dring the Commonwealth period." 3
Author of the sermon Magnificence exemplified: and, the repair of Saint Pauls exhorted unto, preached at St Paul's on 31 August 1634 (STC 11052); copy at Lincoln Cathedral.
Fleming dedicated Stemma Sacrum to George, Lord Viscount Castleton; recently chosen to represent Lincoln in Parliament, according to the dedicatory epistle. After the dedication, the book contains a fold-out genealogical table [present in copies CH, WF, O=Ash; the 1664 copy at O; missing from MR, O=E.109], establishing Charles as dynastic heir to the throne of Britain "from all the Kings that have ever reigned in this Island, whereby the people may perceive how properly, rightly, legally, and intirely he is their own, whom they now thus joyfully receive" (sigs. [A3v]-A4). It is preceded by the following verses.
After the table, there follows a 48 page [sigs. B-D[8v], pp. 1-48] prose text on the wonders of Charles's return, interlarded with classical anecdotes and a discussion of the various kinds of people who make up the inhabitants of Britain: the "Aborigines," or Britons; the "Indigenae" or "Inhabitants," the Saxons; the "Inquilini," or Intruders, the Danes; the "Victores" or Conquerors, such as the Normans; "Convenae," or Associates, the Scots; "Advenae," or strangers, the Dutch. Each group is shown to have inter-married leading to the ascendancy of the Stuarts, thereby proving Charles the rightful leader. It ends with a series of Latin monograms suited to the monarchs since William. Racial discourse of this kind was not unfamiliar to readers of the Restoration period.
The verses are given in reverse italics.
Titlepage: verses in: Londons Glory / Represented by / TIME, TRUTH, and FAME: / AT / The Magnificent TRIUMPHS and / ENTERTAINMENT / of His most Sacred MAJESTY / CHARLS the II. / The DUKES of York and Glocester, / The two Houses of Parliament, / Privy Councill, Judges, &c. / At Guildhall on Thursday, being the 5th. day / of July 1660. and in the 12th. Year of His / Majesties most happy Reign. / [rule] / TOGETHER / With the Order and Management of / the whole Days Business. [rule] / Published according to Order. / [rule] / London, Printed by William Godbid in Little Brittain. 1660. / [ornamental box]
John Tatham wrote the Lord Mayor's pageants between 1657-1664.
London's Glory is dedicated to Sir Thomas Aleyn, Lord Mayor of London and contains a brief epistle to the reader. After the speechs given here, the rest of the tract describes the order of the procession to Whitehall by the Mayor and representatives of the major guilds, where they are met by the royal party, including members of both houses of parliament, and the privy council. En route to Guildhall, the procession is variously interupted by pageants: at the conduit at Fleet Street, Time gives his speech, and then at St Pauls, Truth speaks. Apparently not all went according to plan: "Another Pageant presents its self at Foster-lane, being a large and goodly Fabrick, a Trumpeter placed on the Top, where it was intended Fame should speak; But at the great Conduit in Cheapside, Fame presents her Speech" (p. 8). Another poetic account appears in the broadside, The Royal Entertainment (cf)
In 1660, 29 October, he produced a pageant The Royal Oake with Other various and delightfull Scenes presented on the Water and the Land, Celebrated in Honour of the deservedly Honoured Sir Richard Brown Bar. Lord Mayor of the City of London the 29th. day of October in the 12th year of his majesties most happy, happy, Reign, An. Dom. 1660. And performed at the Costs and Charges of the Right Worshipfull Company of Merchant-Taylors, Being twice as many Pageants and Speeches as have been formerly showen (London, 1660; O=Gough London 122.12) for the new Lord Mayor, Sir Robert Brown, a member of the Merchant Taylor's Company [Wing T232; L,O,CH]. In the year of Charles's return, Tatham also published The Rump: Or The Mirrour of the late Times. A New Comedy (1660), which claimed to have been "Acted Many Times with Great Applause, at the Private House in Dorset Court." O=Mal. 215(3). seen 4/96. In the first issue of the play, Lambert, Fleetwood, Wareston and Whitlock appear as characters with the names of Bertlam, Woodfleet, Stoneware, Lockwhit; a second issue calls them by their own names. Pepys bought a copy in November. Maidment and Logan reckon the play would have been performed in February, 1660 (p. 284).
Titlepage: The Royall Entertainment, / Presented by the Loyalty of the City, to the Royalty of their Soveraign, on Thursday the fourth of July / 1660. When the City of London invited his Majesty, the Duke of York, the Duke of Gloucester, and / their Royall Retinue, to a Feast in the Guild-hall, London, to which the King was conducted by the / chiefest of the City Companies on Horse-back, entertained by the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Com-/ mon-Councill, Guarded from White-hall to Guild-hall by the Artillery-men, led by the Illustrious / James Duke of York; met by diverse Pageants, with sundry devices, and the Livery attending in / their Order. The Hall was richly appointed with costly Hangings, the Floores raised, Organs erected / [wi]th all sorts of Musick, performed by the Ablest Masters in England, with all Varieties that Art, Plen-/ [ty], and Curiosity can present, / To the Tune of Packington's pound. / [cuts] / [text] / London, Printed for Francis Grove, on Snow[-hill.] / Entred according to Order.
The "royal entertainment" described here actually took place at the Guildhall on Thursday 5 July, and is described by John Tatham in London's Glory (cf). According to the Loyal Scout (No. 102 for 29 June-6 July), preparations for the event had begun well in advance: "notwithstanding it was begun before His Majesties happy Arrival in the City, yet much is still to do, though many persons of several faculties are employed therein" (p. 419. CHECK FOR FULLER ACCOUNT
See also Richards 1977:65, Fairholt, Lord Mayor's Pageants, Parl Int for 9 July, Merc Pub No.28 (5-12 July), Rugge, Mundy,
Pepys reports that it rained all day: "Being at White-hall, I saw the King -- the Dukes and all their attendants go forth in the rain to the City and bedaggled many a fine suit of clothes. I was forced to walk all the morning in White-hall, not knowing how to get out because of the rain." (5 July).
Ingelo's "Song of Thanksgiving" which was sung at the banquet, is included.
See Ian Spink, Restoration Cathedral Music 1660-1714 (OUP, 1995), for notes on Ingelo and Rogers; see Woods Ath Oxon, 4:307
A manuscript note on the verso of O1 reads: "This musique was performed at Guildhall in the year 1660. at the great ffeast, for King Charles the second, (with about 20 of his maties servants, and the 2 Houses of pliament at Dinner in the said Hall: Composed by Ben: Rogers then of Windsor by order of Sir Tho: Allen Lord mayor, and the Court of Aldermen formed to his Maties Great Satisfaction being Instrumentall, and Vocall Musique in Lattin. about the year 1653 was severall sets of Avis of the gd B[enjamin]. R[ogers]. for the violins, and organ, of 4 parts, sent into Germany for the ArchDuke Leopolds Court, (who is now Emporour) and plaid there by his own Musitians to his great content He himself, being a Composer."
Woods' futher manuscript note to his copy of the Latin version, Hymnus Eucharisticus at O3 reads: "Made by Dr Nathan Ingelo, Fellow of Eaton Coll. near Windsor, sometimes of Qu. coll in Cambridge -- -an. 1660. It was then put into English by the author. To His Hymnus Eucharisticus Ben. Rogers of Windsor, Bach. of Musick, did at the request of the Lord Mayor of Lond. & Aldmen compose a song of four parts. This song was admirably well pformed by about 12. voices, 12 Instruments & an Organ, by mostly his Majesties servants, in the Guildhall of the citie of London, on the 12 [ie 5]of July (thursday) 1660, on wh. day his maj. K Ch.2. James Duke of York Hen. Duke of Gloc. & both Houses of parliament were entertained with a most sumptuous dinner & banquet. Copies of these paps were printed in Lat. & English: one was delivered to the K. & the two Dukes & others to the Nobility for purposely that they might look on them when it was pformed by the said servants belonging to his majesty. It gave very great content, & Benj. Rogers who composed the song, being then present, gained great credit for wt he had done, & a good reward. It was sung in the Lat. tongue."
The Guildhall entertainment at which this piece was performed actually took place on Thursday, 5 July (see ms note O2 and Ath Oxon ref above). John Tatham's London's Glory provides a full account; see also Pepys, 1:193; Parliamentary Intelligencer (2-9 July), pp. 445-6; Mercurius Publicus 28 (5-12 July), pp. 437-8; Rugg, pp. 98-9. Preparations for the celebration had started before Charles's arrival in London, according to the Loyal Scout 102 (29 May-6 June), p. 419.
Broadsides were often signed with the initials of the authorizing agent of the stationers company; CHECK JP as the signatory of broadside ballads for these and other printers. See also item 18. J[oy], T[homas], A Loyal Subjects Admonition, undated, anticipating king.
Ebsworth claims that J. P.'s ballad appeared "within a week after Thursday 4 [ie 5] July" (9:xl), in part basing his attribution on the fact that this ballad refers to the king touching for the King's Evil, which Evelyn records began on 6 July. However, as Ebsworth himself admits, Evelyn is unreliable on this matter; Pepys reports hearsay evidence that Charles touched on 23 June, and he had been touching back in May before leaving for England (see Lower, Relation, pp. 74-8). 5 July was a the day of Charles's entertainment by the City of London -- but this is not referred to in the text.
On the Trunk ballads, see Bal.int for notes by Ebsworth.
Among the Trunk Ballads, this one is bound in first; then:
2. The Noble Progresse Ebs chk 7/96
3. The Case is altered, or Sir Reverence, The Rumps last Farewell. To the Tune of Robin Hood. Ebs chk 7/96
4. [title missing] first line "Come you poets drink a round" and badly torn -- mostly missing: Ebs chk 7/96
5. The Glory of these Nations ebs chk 7/96
6. A Relation of the ten grand infamous *Traytors / who for their horrid Murder and detestable Villany..." ebs chk 7/96
These ballads are bound with item 7. "An Elegy on the Death of his Sacred Majesty King Charles II. Of Blessed memory"
The Loyal Subjects hearty Wishes employs a number of distinct and original features; instead of putting biblical references in the margins, it exhorts us directly to read the bible, it questions the sincerity of the jubilations, and it makes a great deal of Charles touching for the Evil as evidence of his sacramental power. One of the few poems to raise the question of just how authentic all the rejoycing over the king's return really was; just how much sincerity did those most loudly proclaiming the new king feel? how much of the jubilation was covering up former guilt?
Stuart mythology is in the making here, as Charles is regaled in all the poetic tropes of power and authority as a magical king. Old Testament types, Moses and David, are developed to attribute his power with sacramental qualities; this is one of the few poems to make much of the fact that Charles touched for the king's evil. At the same time, the king's foes, from infidels to Quakers, are given a stout warning of the king's might. Many of the traditional Stuart tropes being used here will reappear in the Jacobite balladry of the 1740s.
Titlepage: A / PANEGYRICK / TO HIS / MAJESTY, / ON HIS / Happy Return. / [rule] / By Tho. Fuller B. D. / [rule] / LONDON, / Printed for John Playford at his Shop in the / Temple, 1660.
See John Eglinton Bailey, Life of Thomas Fuller (1874) for detailed bibliographical notes.
-- accused of popery by John Ley in Flagellum Flagelli (woods 2: 193)
-- from the same town as Dryden
Thomas Fuller (1608-61), went up to Queens College, Cambridge in 1621 aged 13, later moving to Sidney Sussex as a fellow commoner. He moved to Oxford during the civil wars, but preached in London during 1647 and 1655-56, earning the admiration of Pepys who attended. He was patronized by the Mountagus of Broughton and served as chaplain to the 8th and 9th Barons Berkeley (Pepys Companion, p. 152). He may have accompanied a member of the same family, John, Lord Berkeley of Stratton to the Hague to meet Charles in 1660: this might have provided the occasion for updating his Worcester verses as a tribute.
In keeping with the generally unexpected nature of Charles return, Fuller treats the removal of the City gates as a providential paradox (stanza 11).
Of this poem, Fuller was his own first critic, and he set a trend for high standards. Commenting on the version of this poem found in The Worthies, Fuller himself promises "never to make Verses more" (p. 184), against which a contemporary wit wrote in the copy now in the Clark Library UCLA: "your Muse is a dull jade." Fuller's editor, Alexander Grosart, seems rather to have liked the poem, but agrees in the end:
The `Panegyrick' has happy lines: and was the genuine utterance of our large-hearted Worthy's loyalty to his idea of monarchy. Hence the transfiguration of Charles the Second. Historically it is valuable as an evidence of the glowing hopes that centred in the `merry monarch.' The actual `Life' Fuller did not witness. He was `gone' before the brightness of the exile-years paled into foulest Night. High pitched as is his praise it is low compared with innumerable con/[end p. 15]temporary `Welcomes' still preserved in the British Museum and elsewhere. (pp. 15-16)
Titlepage: TO HIS / MAJESTY / UPON HIS / HAPPY ARRIVALL / In our late discomposed / ALBION. / [rule] / [royal arms] / [rule] / Sidon. / Vidi quod speravi, vidisse tamen dolui, per'grŠ spectando quod petii. / [rule] / By R. Brathwait Esq. / [rule] / LONDON, / Printed for Henry Brome, at the Gun in Ivie-lane. 1660.
Thomason dated his copy on Thursday, 12 July.
Titlepage: THE / Royal Chronicle: / Wherein is contained, / An Historical Narration of His Majesties Royal Progress; The / Princely Cabinet laid open, with an Embleme to Great Britain; / The Peoples Diadem, proceeding from the Ornament / and Crown of their gracious Lord and Soveraign; The / incomparable Studies of His Majesty in the Governement of / Kings, to the admiration of all forreign Princes; and His / Majesties Liege People within these His Realms and Dominions; / His great Endowments and Experience, in Religion, Law, and / Governments; His Mercy rejoycing over Justice, and his Justice / cutting out work for his Mercy; His gracious Pardon to / Offenders, and His Christian Speech to the London Ministers. / [line] / C [DESIGN] R / [line] / LONDON, Printed for G. Horton, living near the three / Crowns in Barbican. 1660.
The following verses are attributed to Selden in the text.
IF Violence and Time had conspired to wear out all the Memorials of former Ages, give me leave to present you with a brief (but pleasant) Chronicle to all Posterity, of his Royal Majesties Birth; Education, and Progress; And should modern worth be blotted out of all Records, a restored Charles sufficeth, in whom the forlorn Vertue of our worst of Times took sanctutary: 'Tis his Soveraign Graces, that delights the Soules of his loyal Subjects: And we need not wonder, that Nature was 5 years meditating on the great piece that was to result from such a Royal Conflux, both of Father and Mother; in whose Bed all the Royal Families of Europe met; in his Father there was by his great Grandmother the wife of James the Fourth Brittish Majesty; by his Grandfather he shared of the Saxon Royalty, by his Mother of the Danish, by his Father of the Norman, by his Sister he was allied to the Elector Palatine; as he was related to Denmark, so he was to Sweden and Poland, and to most of the German or Italian Princes; in our Soveraigns Mother there lodgeth all that's Soveraign in the Bourbons of France, the Austrians of Spain, the Medices of Florence, (so true is it that God made all Nations of one blood.) It was after five years mutual enjoyment of each other Charles the first King of England, & c. and Mary Daughter to a great and Sister to a just King of France received this Son, the sacred pledge to them of Heavens, and each others Love. For He was born the 29 Day of May, 1630. St. Augustines birth-day, where we may hope this Nursing Father of our Church will with his sword which He bears not in vain, prove as great a Defender of the faith once delivered to the Saints, as the other Holy Father did with his pen, and we made as happy in this Crown and Scepter, as the Ancient Church was in thae Miter and Crosier. May never knew a more hopeful Flower then this that happily sprung up from the Roses of York and Lancaster joyned to the Lillies of France; a flower to whose composure it seems Nature summoned its divided glories, as Ziuxis did his several Beauties to make up one Venus; well this May was then thought most happy until now, we have lived to see another May, as much more happy, as it is to be brought to a Kingdom then to be brought to the world, to be received as a Prince into the discreet embraces of Nations, then as a Child into the fond Embraces of a Nurse; to be crowned then to be cradled: Great was the remark of this Royal Infant through each tender Line, relating to so worthy a Prince, as is fit to be consecrated to Solemnities worthy a Chronicle. The Heavens seemed to congratulate his royal birth, a Star appearing at mid-day over St. James, displaying its modest beams in spight of Sun-shine in the middle of the Air, (an embleme of his future glory,) Thus did the Heavens express themselves in miracles and wonders; and it is our duty to admire them, as the works of the Lord, and therefore wonderful in our eyes: Yet the great Selden attempted to interpret that Star thus:
When to Pauls Cross the greatful King drew near?
A shining Star did in the Heavens appear,
Thou that consult'st with Divine Mysteries,
Tell me what this bright Comet signifies?
Now is there born a valiant Prince it'h West,
That shall eclipse the Kindgoms of the East.
The King our Soveraigns Father being sensible that Children to any man especially to a Prince are an inheritance from the Lord, went solemnly to St. Pauls, (once a Cathedral, since a stable; once a Church to entertain Christ in, since a Manger for Rebels to revel in) and there acknowledged with the Emperour Antoninus in St. Pauls phrase, that by God, and through God, and therfore to Him, and the glory of his praise are all things.
This Bud of Majesty was committed to the care of the honorable Contess of Dorset, to be by her tender hands, and softer care cherished to grow up a Soveraign, where He sucked graces in with milk, and vertues as early as nourishment; as appears by the most incomparable gifts and graces where with God hath bin pleased to endow his Majesty. To pass by his outward Man, comelier, and with Saul higher then all the people, so that there is none like him among all the people; so exactly formed, that with Absalon from the Crown of his head to the soul of his foot the most curious eye could not discern an error or a spot; the pleasing severity and soft rigorousness of that face which is both Majestick and beautiful, solemn and comely; though of late he is grown leaner with cares and age; the dark and night complexion of his face, and the twin-stars of his quick and sharp eyes sparkling in that night; He is most beautiful when he speaks, his black shining Locks naturally curled into great Rings hath hither to been his Ornament and Crown; his motions easie and graceful, and plainly Majestick! & c. I say to pass by these lower worths of neat shaped dust and well framed earth, come we to his Mind which is indeed himself; which you may guess noble by that body wherein it dwels, such Cabinets were made onely for the most precious Jewel: the pleasing parts and motions of that body are emblems of his mind; beauty, comeliness, proportion, & c. the gross Ornaments of the body, are so many refined vertues in his soul: 1. His vast Understanding, as spreading, and as wide as the things to be understood; three Nations put limits to his power, its the world onely that confines his thoughts. His Majesty understands Spanish and Italian, writes French correctly; the French, Italian, Spaniards, (like those Parthians, Medes, and Elamites in the Acts) are amazed to hear Him, replying to each of them in their own tongue wherein they were born. In these several Languages he peruseth such parts of knowledge as may compleat a Soveraign: Logick seems to be his Nature as well as Reason, He cannot speak inconsequently. He hath read divers of the choicest pieces of policy, & gathered the scattered wisdom and reason that run through Politicians writings and actions in his own breast, and there digested them into axiomes of an entire and well framed policy; to policy He that added ancient and modern History; whereupon he seeth those thing performed, that He saw in policy contrived. When we have admired the gracious contents of any of His Majesties Writings, we cannot but admire also his excellent Rhetorick.
1. His Majesty being naturally averse from that lawless power he saw exercised in the Countryes where he sojourned; and resolved to Govern by Laws; he proceeds to study the Law of Nations, and that of his own Countrey too; wherein his Father so excelled, that few Gentlemen in England came near him; his skil in Georgraphy, what with his study, what with his Travels is admitable: Indeed the useful parts of the Mathematicks, the Globe, Fortification, & c. take him up very much, in Navigation, what by his own Genius, what by converse with Marinners, and his own Observations in the Downes, and elsewhere, he is so good a Proficient, that expert Seamen have admired him, and dare promise, that his skil that way will be no small advantage to the Nation, whose Interest lyes in forraign Voyages and Trades; But Divinity is his Mistress, with whose wholesome principles he hath well stocked the great spirit of his mind, upon which this Soul may rest; he searches that word of God which is able to made a man wise to salvation, and perfect to every good work, in a word, he hath all the advantages of knowledge. 1. A cleer apprehension to receive a right and distinct notion of the things represented to him. 2. Solidity of Judgement to weigh the particulars he apprehends. 3. Fidelity of Retention; for as Nature hath given to the bodies of men for the furtherance of Corporal strength, a Retentive power to clasp and hold fast that which preserveth it, until a thorough concoction be wrought, so he hath a Retentive faculty of Memory given to Reason as a means to consolidate and inrich it.
2. His great wisdome, as of an Angel of God, as large a heart to know good and evil, as great education, the difference of Nation and Factions he had to deal with, his Enemies opposition, his Friends treachery, his personal converse with men of all sorts, the variety of his experience from the distinct knowledge of the Natures of the People of several Countreys of their chief Ministers of State Ecclesiastick and Civil, and all this as a noble Pen observes in adversity, which opens the undersanding; and confirms the judgement, could make; he with his Grand-father of France carriet a Councel with him upon one Horse.
3. But this wisdome were dangerous, were it not accompanied with justice, his wisdom is not a crafty or sordid subtilty, nor devilish policie; but pure, good, and just Judgement: He hath a Justice that becomes the Throne, a constant will to give every Man his due, as he hath well or ill deserved: A person of Honour who hath spent 18 years in his Majesties Court and service, doth upon distinct knowledge let the World know he can as confidently believe that his Marjesty is just as that he is a Man; he observes a Justice in his word, and in his action, the one is an Oracle, and the other Law.
4. But he hath a mercy that rejoyceth over his Justice, a mercy claculated for our time and Nation, wherein Subjects were never so obnoxious to Justice, nor a Prince so enclined to mercy; a People was hardly every so guilty as we, and hardly a Prince ever so gracious as himself; we are not more ready to offend then he to pardon; with what tender Majesty doth he pass by the guilty prostrate? his Justice [letters unintel]h but cut out work for his Mercy! what stubborn Offenders that brings upon their knees, this stoops to bring them up again; they that fall by his severity, rise up again by his favour; he is more compassionate to Men then they are to themselves: It is but the least part of his mercy that he can be merciful to others while they are most cruel to him; he is exercising the highest charity towards them, while they are exercising the greatest injuries towards him; this Nature taught him, then God, and afterwards his Father, in that incomparable advice to him.
5. A general goodness, (whereof that mercy is but a branch) familiar converse, easiness of access, a readiness to communicate himself, his fair carriage towards all, how unwilling he is to force men to do him right, how (when he who rears not to do others justice) afraid is he to do it to himself? I know not whether he be more good then great, more Charlebone then Charlemaine; I am sure his virtues are esteemed by him more then his Kingdome, and he doth not exercise these vertues (as malice, as Hell once suggested) that he might dissemble himelf to his, just Right; but he would obtain his Right that he might be the more able to exercise his vertues; his Right will therefore please him, because then he is able to forgive them that did him wrong.
6. His magnanimity, fortitude, and courage; he is as magnanimous in suffering wrong, as he is valiant in attempting to recover his Right; his Innocence being guilty of nothine, is afraid of nothing, the Righteous is as bold as a Lyon, fearing no Enemy, because he hath justly provoked none; his Religion is not the least support of his valour; He with David encourageth Garisons, and wraps up himself in his God, where Reason leaves doubting, their Faith begins in hope even against hope. In a word, God hath indued His Majesty with those incomparable Graces that are seldome poured forth any where below the Throne; for whatsoever things are true, just, pure, and lovely, they are in Him; This is the Person whom God and all Men think worthy of a Kingdom, but those over whom He is a King; (meaning the Phanatique) these are the Vertues in whose enjoyment other Nations hug themselves: These are the Princely Rayes that shine with Majestick Lustre in most parts of Europe: And this the great and Christian Conqueror, who attributes not any thing to Himself, but with Holy King David, giveth the glory of all to the King of Kings, saying, I will not trust in my Bow, neither shall my Sword save me: But thou hast saved us from our enemies, and hast put them to shame that hated us; Or, as His Majesty graciously expressed Himself in His short Speech to the Ministers, in his passage through the City: "The deliverance" which God hath wrought for me, I own as the work of his own right hand, beyond humane contrivance, and desire that all the glory of them may be ascribed to Him.
Titlepage: VOTA, / NON BELLA. / [rule] / NeW-CastLe's / HeartIe GratULatIon / TO HER / SaCreD SoVeraIgn / KIng CharLes The SeConD; / ON / HIs noW-GlorIoUs RestaUratIon / To HIs BIrth-rIght-PoWer. / [rule] / By Ralph Astell, M. A. / [rule] / Gateshead, Printed by Stephen Bulkley, 1660. / [enclosed within ornamental box]
One of the few poems to address the specific concerns of a provincial city, and one of the few poems printed outside London. By the uncle of Mary Astell; see Ruth Perry's Life.
Date: evidently composed after the first flood of formal panegyrics wer in print, so July?
Note use of pastoral resolution -- of isolation, retreat and fantasy; compare with Duncombe's pastoral.
Although it cannot be dated with any certainty this ballad addresses concerns that were at issue during late February and early March. Following the readmission of the secluded MPs in February, parliament ordered the republication of the Solemn League and Covenant on 5 March, more as a challenge to Monck than an attempt to win over presbyterian suport. On the Covenant, see also L'titi' Caledonic', which is slightly cynical about the effect of renewing the Covenant as a promise to the king.
Internal evidence suggests that the ballad appeared before the king's return was at all certain since its concerns bear directly on the terms of the Restoration settlement. At issue is the dilemma facing those who felt their loyalties divided between religious principles and a return of monarchy. The ballad is delivered in the voice of an old covenanting soldier who claims to have fought in the parliamentary army of the Earl of Essex for the protestant cause against the perceived catholicism of Charles I. Essex had died in 1646, three years after parliament issued the Solemn League and Covenant on 5 Sept 1643. Although it is less likely that the title refers specifically to the Scottish National Covenant, which had been declared in defense of presbyterianism in 1638, both documents contain clauses mentioned in the ballad. Signatories to the Scottish National Covenant declared themselves to be against the falling off of religion and to be equally determined to stop the threat of "popish religion" (Gardiner, Constitutional Documents, p. 62) while at the same time protesting and promising "that we shall defend [the King's] person and authority with our goods, bodies, and lives, in the defence of Christ His evangel...against all enemies within this realm or without" (ibid, p. 57). Following the inconclusive battles of the first year of the civil war, and the failure of negotiations during the summer of 1643, parliament issued the Solemn League and Covenant largely in order to secure Scottish support by guarenteeing a national church without bishops, thereby seeking to keep the support of the presbyterians. Signatories were called upon to defend the reformed church, to extirpate popery and prelacy, to discover plots, to defend the union of the kingdoms, to assist all working to these ends, and to endeavour to preserve "the rights and privileges of Parliament, and the liberties of the kingdom, and to preserve and defend the King's Majesty's person and authority" (ibid, p. 188).
The first part of this ballad recalls these declarations of loyalty to the king by way of defending those who fought for the protestant cause. The second part continues this defense by way of carefully distinguishing Charles II from his father, and making the case for suporting his return.
In terms of printing evidence, the publisher Charles Tyus 1 only appears to have become active during 1660, publishing broadside ballads throughout that year on contemporary events, including J. W.'s The Royall Oak, which also makes use of the same initial woodcut of a mounted king preceded by two mounted pages, and T. R.'s The Royall Subjects Joy, both included here. Tyus also issued two ballads on Prince Henry's death (to be found at GU 65 and GU 290), and A Warning For all such as desire to Sleep upon the Grass (GU 375) dated 1664. 2
Although Thomason dated his copy 30 June, the content of the piece take us back to March and April, shortly after the secluded members were returned, but during the days when there was still some doubt about the direction parliament was going to take.
Charles is clearly back and in some sense in command, so the sense that these verses commemorate a particular day -- "This Day, This Solemn-memorable Day" -- suggest composition shortly after 29 May.
Title: GRAMPIUS / CONGRATULATION / In plain / SCOTS LANGUAGE / TO HIS / MAJESTIES / Thrise Happy Return. / [rule] / [design] / [rule] / Printed Anno Dom. 1660. / [ornamental double-ruled box]
Since we hear of how the Scots are already well known to have been using the king's return as an excuse for doing a great deal of celebrtory drinking, and since English poets already have been penning celebrations, Grampius Congratulation most likely appeared during the summer.
Wringing the hackneyed clichees one more time, or: is this in part a literary response to Vox Populi, which was reissued in Scotland? There claims are made about Virgil are made in some pretty apauling verses; and boasting about the potential martial loyalties of Englishmen abound: though martial fury and claims of how the people wat to die for Charles are found commonly -- see also Brome's England's Joy etc
One of the wittiest and probably the most ironical of the poems working over the comon tropes used to celebrate the king's return, L'tit' Caledonic' opens by saying how glad he is that the great Virgil isn't around trying to celebrate such an event as the return of Charles; and the innuendo is unmistakable. But the poet's display of wit here is framed within the outdoing topos, a figure of heroic verse by which the poet insists that the subject outgoes all previous and sometimes all possible parallels. Use of this trope almost allows him to say anything. The return of Charles here is seen as so far beyond comparison that only a poetaster would attempt to find words for what is literally the "unuterable happiness" of the occasion The poet's loyalty comes with a satiric edge being sharpened at the expense of some recent goings on in London and the way other poets have written about them. How is Scoltand to express joy? Drinking toasts led to so much rowdiness that they were banned the very day -- 30 May -- after Charles had arrived in Whitehall, and that ban immediately put an end to all the drunken bragging about how we'll all go to sea and beat the Dutch.
Of interest in Scotland, the Solemn League and Covenant had been reissued by Parliament on 5 March, but only a very foolish king would believe that it promised him safety. The poetic voice is that of a canny analyst of the times, someone who can read between the lines of events and proclamations. Given the wit and this cannyness, all the more credible seem the fairly straitforward expressions of loyalty that end the poem.
Titlepage: SCOTLANDS / PAR'NESIS / To Her Dread Soveraign, / KING / CHARLES / THE SECOND. / [rule] / Mens Scoti'. / All Presbyterians, pure, sincere and true, / Afflicted by that Independent crue, / Are here untouch'd, and are declar'd to be / Joyn'd in the League and Covenant with me. / [rule] / [design] / [rule ] / Printed in the Year, 1660.
The authorship of this poem has excited scholarly attention over the last century and a half. In his 1823 edition of the poem, Laing wrote shrewdly of the Restoration in general:
Such a general feeling of satisfaction was manifested at the return of the exiled Monarch, as being an event which promised to bing back peace and tranquility to the Country, that it was unfortunate the King, and his Ministers should have proved unmindful of their past experience, and have used no endeavours either to conciliate the affections, or to promote the interests of the People at large.
The writer of this congratualtory Poem, which is sufficiently expressive of loyalty and attachment, has not been ascertained. (p. xv)
During the next fifty years, word got about that the poem was by William Lithgow, an Aberdonian adventurer who would have been in his eighties in 1660. In 1863, Maidment took the attribution seriously enough to argue against it, a tactic subsequently adopted by the DNB in their entry for Lithgow. Maidment makes no case from Lithgow's age, but points out that because Scotland's Paranesis contains a marginal reference to the author having written a poem in 1633 entitled "Scotlands welcome to King Charles," "thence it was conjectured that as Lithgow had written an address to the unhappy Charles in 1633, he reasonably was the author" (p. xxxii). In the National Library in Edinburgh, a copy of Lithgow's verses from 1633 are bound in just ahead of the 1660 poem at shelfmark EN 1.88. Maidment continues with the attribution to Lithgow:
This idea was to a certain degree countenanced by the fact that the volume [EN 1.88] had belonged to Robert Mylne, a well-known book-collector and enthusiastic antiquary, who having survived for above one hundred years, must have been a young man of more than twenty years of age when the "Paraenesis" appeared in 1660; and, as he had arranged the contents of the volume in the order in which it at present remains [still true 1986] it might be taken for granted that he did so in the belief that it was a supplement to the poem that preceded it. (pp. xxxii-xxxiii)So, here then we have a reader and collector of verses who was alive in 1660 and what do we learn? That he seems to have read no further than the marginalia of the poems he collected, for as Maidment points out, the two poems differ so greatly as to be hardly from the same poet. But then again, perhaps Mylne knew Lithgow still to be alive, with a finer poetic control than he showed in his middle years.
Maidment fails to notice Lithgow's age, but does notice other poems from the 1630s with titles just like the one mentioned in the margin. 1 And he has his own candiate, one William Douglas, author of "Grampius Gratulation to his High and Mightie Monarch, King Charles" which appeared in a 1630 volume entitled Addresses by the Muses of Edinburgh to his Majesty (printed in small Qto by "the heirs of Andro Hart, 1630"). After quoting a section of this poem, to suggest stylistic similarities, Maidment cites a biographical entry for Douglas from a volume he calls the "Catalgues of Scotish Writers" as published by Stevenson in Edinburgh, 1833. Unable to find this volume in any of the major libraries in Scotland, I can only quote Maidment again:
William Douglasse, Professor of Theology at old Aberdeen. He wrote a Treatise on Pslam edia, 4to; Item Acad'miarum Vindicas, 4to; item, orationem Panegyricam de Carolo Secundo, 4to; item, stable Truth, 4to, 1660. He dyed toward the year 1670. item, Vindicacias Veritatis, 4to, 1655" (cited, ibid, p. lii)
The case for Douglas seems as weak to me as the likelihood of the poem being by Lithgow. Douglas's poem on the Restoration, referred to here, is presumably the Latin Oratio Panegyrica ad eisodia (Wing STC item D 2043) to be found in several places.
On the Covenant, see also The Covenant.
Opens with defense of the Covenant -- details
Sees loyalty to a divinely appointed monarch to be an absolute duty to God, taking Samuel Daniel's line that even tyrants in office are to be obeyed. The position of a presbyterian Stuart loyalist in 1660 requires a great deal of irony and ventriloquizing to negotiate, but a great deals hangs on the poet's argument that
Then doth God favour Ethnick Princes cace,
Though alians from the Covenenant of Grace,
Redress their wrongs, confound their enemies
Detect and punish lewd conspiracies...
The poet skillfully uses enjambment to finesse arguments, turning against the seeming closure of the rhythm and stress of the couplet by continuing the syntax to extend or change the argument. The poet takes the position of never having lost loyalty to Stuart kings, being among those to write pro-Stuart verses in the 1630s when Charles came to Scotland. Dynastic loyalty and racial difference were seldom found apart at this time, so the "Ethnick Prince"'s Scottish bloodlines are as important as the different kind of loyalty owed by the Irish. Snub -- chalres neveractually made it to scotland back then; CHECK
Poet ends with provsional endorsement of Charles; not questioning his right, but implictly suggesting that a king would behave a certain way towards Scotland.
A unicum from the library at Worcester College, Oxford.
Blackletter.
Dodgy author since this is one of those signatures that could be a a licencing authority. What do we know; it looks like the same "T. R." that is signed to a Charles Tyus ballad called The Royall Subjects Joy that has been attributed to Thomas Robbins. Why is that one ascribed and not this?
This is not a restoration poem as defined by this anthology, but is included here for its rarity value and the fact that it provides a useful example of the kinds of vituperative satire that were developed during the course of the year of celebration. Anti-Rump satires were perhaps one of the most prolific subgenres to apear in the early months of 1660, but here we see features carried over to the question of how to punish living traitors, such as the regicides. The text is unreadable in several places, marked here with ellipses.
This ballad appears in two signifcantly different states. An earlier version with some slightly different material appears in a single sheet broadside, King Charles his Glory, And Rebels Shame (np., nd.; L c.20.f.4); it does not list the names of those executed at the end. The version of the ballad given here was presumably re-issued to commemorate the executions of the regicides during the late autumn.
| Sat. Harrison. | A Relation of the ten grand infamous * Traytors |
| Mund. Carew. | who for their horrid Murder and detestable Villany against our |
| late Soveraigne 1 Lord King CHARLES the first, that ever | |
| and Cooke. | blessed Martyr, were Arraigned, Tryed, and Executed |
| Greg. Clement, | in the Moneth of October, 1660. Which in |
| Iones, Scot, and | perpetuity will be had in remembrance |
| Scroope. | perpetuity will be had in remembrance |
| Hacker, Axtel. | unto 2 the worlds end. |
The copytext (L=11626.c.5) includes a frontispiece portrait of Charles by A. Hertochs.
A Mixt Poem was printed twice during 1660 and again, in variant form, under the title "A Poem Upon the Happy Restauration" in John Crouch's collection of verses -- Census Poeticus (printed for the Author, by H. Brugis at the Red Lyon in New-Street, neer Fetter-Lane. 1663). 1 Although the evidence is finally inconclusive, of the two 1660 printings, the edition published by Daniell White, containing 346 lines {and an errata list}, is probably earlier than that by Thomas Bettertun, who published later poems by Crouch, containing 356 lines. 2 Bettertun's edition has been taken for copy text here. {In line with editorial policy, substantive variants affecting meaning have been reported from the White printing; I have also recorded corrections from the errata list and several corrected by hand in the C copy.}
Since the Dedication acknowledges the existence of the commemorative volumes published by Oxford and Cambridge, Crouch's poem cannot have appeared before July.
An inveterate scandal-monger, Crouch couldn't resist mixing his praise of the returning king with retrospective personal attacks on -- among others -- Cromwell, the journalist Marchamont Nedham, and the astrologer William Lilly. Much of what he says here about Cromwell and Nedham he had already said a decade earlier in issues of The Man in the Moon, his weekly newsletter that ran between April 1649 and June 1650 in which he set new standards in royalist vituperation and personal invective, effectively inventing the kind of news reporting familiar in modern tabloids. See Underdown, A Freeborn People: Politics and the Nation in Seventeenth-century England (Clarendon, 1996).
According to Lois Potter, Crouch's family lived in the Smithfield area where they were associated with popular ballad printing and "scurrilous `low' royalist propaganda" (Potter, p. 15). John Crouch appears engaged in anti-government publications from 1647-1650 both as author and publisher. Despite concerted parliamentary attempts to supress them, the group associated with these newsbooks survived, falling relatively quiet during the trial and execution of Charles I, to re-emerge in April 1649 with a new version of Mercurius Pragmaticus subtitled "For King Charls II." That month The Man in the Moon -- "the most violent of the royalist Mercuries" (Potter, p. 18) -- began appearing, in which Crouch turned from criticizing government policies to attacking people in terms of their personal -- usually sexual -- habits. Using the same alias, Crouch issued several occasional pamphlets containing pointed and scurrilous libels, 3 that doubtless helped inspire the Printing Ordinance of September 1649 which set out to silence the clandestine press. Within days of the Ordinance passing, Crouch writes:
The uncontroulable, almighty, and everlasting Commons, have out of their great Care for the good of the Commonwealth, passed an Act for Regulating Printing, and punishing all such as Write, Print, Publish, or Disperse, Scandalous and Unlicensed Books; Laying great Penalties on the Offenders. A sad story my Lord; but now I think on't, must not Walkers Occurences 4 and the Ly-urnals cease by this Act? Who the Devil has the Authority to license them: I deny the Juncto or any of their spawn to have the least Authority to License so much as a ballad to the tune of King Thomas ye cannot; and therefore I the Man in the Moon (mark what I say) can shew lawful Authority (Cum Privilegio & permissi Superiorum) to Write, Print, Publish, and Disperse in the World, all the Knaveries Committed under the Sun, whether in Juncto, Councell of State, Army, City, or Country; and to this I can (if I please) shew my Imprimatur. 5Despite this Ordinance, The Man in the Moon itself carried on weekly publication until June 1650. 6
Like other royalist newsbooks, issues of The Man in the Moon typically begin with a prefatory set of quatrains in doggerel, but another of Crouch's innovations was to intersperse prose passages with short sets of verse in pentameter, the form adopted for his Restoration panegyric. Evidently Crouch thought that his views on current affairs and those involved in them deserved the serious consideration owed to neoclassical forms. Although the Dedication of A Mixt Poem suggests this might be his first public appearance as a poet, Crouch's name appears on a few earlier publications in pentameters. Signed "John Crowch," A Congratulation In Honour of the Annual Festival of the Lords, Knights, Esq; and Yeomandry [sic] of the County of Hertford, at Merchant Taylors Hall, on Thursday Sept. 6. 1655, is a commemorative broadsheet that claims its author is originally from Hertfordshire. It illustrates a different, though complementary, side of Crouch's literary ambition from his impulse to libel, one that he would be able to indulge following the Restoration: that of grovelling before civic notables, aristocrats, and members of the royal family. "I hope you cannot think," he writes, "that there can be / In me (dear SIRS!) the seeds of flattery," but it is hard to imagine anyone would have thought otherwise.
Crouch's other pre-Restoration verses in iambic pentamenters are both shrewd attempts to ingratiate himself with Francis Talbot, eleventh Earl of Shrewsbury; an elegy on the nobleman's first wife appeared in 1657, 7 followed the next year by an epithalamium, The Muses Joy, on his subsequent marriage to the notorious Anna Maria, daughter of Robert, Lord Brudenell. 8 The wedding poem, like his panegyric to Charles, is portentiously signed "J. C. Gent," a characteristic bit of self-promotion implying that the author is of a social rank too exalted to sign a printed poem. Here, as in his newsbooks, Crouch stuck to his principle that partisan bias and self interest should always take precedence over the truth, for "the Vertuous Lady Anne Brudnel" named on the titlepage had been engaged in a well known scandalous affair with George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham, since 1654. {cf: poem transcribed as file: crouch.ep} Crouch dedicated his epithalamium "To the Virtuous and Right honorable Anna-Maria, Countess of Shrewsbury," writing:
... although I never had the honor to be related to those noble Families the Shrewsburies and Brudenals (now in a happy conjunction) yet when I hear the high Expressions of both from a Brother and a Sister, I cannot be unconcern'd in their debt of duty, or passive in their transportations: [sig A2] but as I am warm'd, so I must admire by reflection. This (the greater her presumption) is my Muses second Service to your Ladyship; though yet she never brought an Embassy of ill news, never put your fair eyes to the expense of one pearl. Before she solemniz'd your auspicuous Nuptials: perhaps the dress of that Poem might, the subject could not be troublesom, which was so pleasing to your Ladyship. At this time my Muse celebrates the new espousals of a Royal Widdow to her Crown, I wish I could say to her King. Now though your ladyship be entertain'd in the Porch, the Dedication of this Poem; yet the fabrick, namely the Subject, is part of her Majesties Revenue; unto whom I need no nearer Access than your Ladyship your person being as near the Queen as her shadow to her Body, or rather as her Body to her Head; joyn'd not onely bu propinquity, but by influence also. And now, Madam, I have unbosom'd my whole design, which is, that the world by me, and her Majesty by you may know, how much I am her Majesties loyal Subject, andThe wedding took place on 10 January 1659. Their son, Charles Talbot, born in July 1660, was named after the king and was the first of the royal godchildren after the Restoration. But Anna Maria continued her affair with Buckingham, leading to a duel that "cost her husband his life" (DNB) when he died of a wound in 1668. {see Pepys, Evelyn}. His brother, Gilbert Crouch, was serving as agent to the Earl of Shrewsbury in 1666 (CSPD 1666-67, p. 422).
Your Ladyships humblest Servant,
JO. CROUCH. (sig A2v)
With the return of the Stuarts, Crouch sought opportunities to ingratiate himself with the new powers by addressing pentameter verses to various members of the royal family. The Muses Tears For the Loss of the Illustrious Prince Henry Duke of Gloucester 9 and The Muses Joy For the Recovery of that weeping Vine, Henretta Maria, The most Illustrious Queen-Mother, and her Royal Branches 10 both appeared during 1660, soon to be followed by a poem on Charles's coronation. 11 He was quite unashamed about grovelling in public. "And now, Madam," he ends his dedication to the Countess of Shrewsbury prefaced to The Muses Joy, "I have unbosom'd my whole design, which is, that the world by me, and her Majesty by you may know, how much I am her majesties loyal Subject, and Your Ladyships humblest Servant" (sig. A2v). Crouch's poems addressing the royal oak and Charles's marriage to Catharine of Braganza appeared in 1662. 12 These were followed in 1665 by poetic attacks on England's major trading competitors, the Dutch 13 . The next year he published poems lamenting the plague, 14 and the great fire of London. 15 Crouch also published heroic elegies on Andrew Rutherford, Earl of Tiveot (1664), 16 Henry Pierrpont, the Marquis of Dorchester (1680) 17 , and Thomas Butler, the Earl of Ossory (1680). 18
A Mixt Poem, nonetheless, was his first direct address to a member of the royal family using the heroic couplet, a fact that did not prevent him from indulging his aptitude for personal invective while directly alluding to his own loyalist past efforts in The Man in the Moon.
IT hath ever been the Ambition of Writers to climb as high as they can to an Honourable Patronage, even to Heaven it self, if the Nobility of the subject might authorize the Presumption; Now Poets rankt (especially by the more earthly 21 part of the World) amongst the most airy of Pen-men, are priviledg'd by common Opinion to soar up with the Highest: But my present Obligations 22 instruct me to the contrary. As Loyalty was the Muse inspir'd this Poem, so Love shall appoint the Dedication. Though my weak Muse hath sometimes borrowed the expeditious Aids of the Presse, yet not till now appeared in publick: As she never knew the triumphs of Fame, so she never felt the blushes of Dishonour, was never injurious to any person but her self. But in this subject, Secrecy had been a kind of Combination, Privacy a privative Treason; so ill do clandestine joyes become an universal Jubilee, That I come behind in the rear of our Poetique 23 Forces, must be imputed to some unkind contingencies; 24 my thoughts being conceived with the first, 25 but by some misprisions met with hard labour from the midwifry 26 of the Press. Neverthelesse, it will be honour enough for me, if I may have leave 27 to wait upon (as their obsequious shadows) the heroick poems 28 of those 3. 29 Seraphims, Waller, Cowley, & Lluellin, whose sudden march Alarum'd both Universities. 30 Mine, if they come not too early, will come soon enough to blush. But in earnest I must thank the Presse for a second benefit, besides the manifestation of my Allegiance, that it furnisheth me with a kind occasion of acknowledging unto the ungrateful world even in Print, the many kindnesses I have received from so good a Brother. In fine, You, whose Heart and Sword, so long maintain'd the Royal Cause, are obliged to protect the Heraulds of it. Accept therefore Good Brother, (which compellation I prefer before all Titles) accept of this Poem (whose onely merit is its Subject) as a mark of Loyalty to my Prince, and as a Token of my Love to your self, from
.úú"Tredah," i.e. Tredagh or Drogheda, the scene of one of Cromwell's most brutal massacres of 3-11 September 1649. Clarendon comments: "though the govenor and some of the chief officers retired in disorder into a fort where they hoped to have made conditions, a panic fear so possessed the soldiers that they threw down their arms upon a general offer of quarter: so that the enemy entered the work without resistence, and put every man governor, officer, and solider, to the sword; and the whole army being entered the town, they executed all manner of cruelty, and put every man that related to the garrison, and all the citizens who were Irish, man, woman, and child, to the sword" Rebellion, xii.116.
Crouch himself covered the seige in the pages of The Man in the Moon as it was taking place, though his reports were usually several weeks behind events. Shortly before the massacre, Crouch had confidently written: "Droheda is questionless in a good and firm Condition, and Prince Rupert there with 6000 Foot, and 2000 Horse, to entertain Cromwel if he should dare to be so foolhardy, as to attempt any Landing there, which is a thing impossible" (No. 18 [15 Aug to 23 Aug, 1649], p. 153). By the second half of September, Crouch was still holding out hope -- "Tredah still untaken; and like to be for ought I can understand..." and "Cromwel for certain hath made three several Attempts to storm Tredagh, and is beaten off with shame and loss. Marquess Ormond lying between Dublin and he, that he cannot stir" (No. 23 [19-26 Sept, 1649]), pp. 193, 194. By the second week of October, while admitting that Cromwell's forces had taken the town, he insists the victory was pyrrhic: "they tell us of the loss of about a hundred at the taking the Town, but not what they lost in their two fruitless Assaults before . . . their loss at the utmost were not above some three thousand, besides what are dead since of their wounds, that in all conscience they need not bragge, for they paid deer enough for that town" (No. 25 [10-17 Oct, 1649]), p. 207. A week later, Crouch had more news: "After these bloudy Monsters had Sacrificed in Tredagh, Men Womem and Children to their cursed Rage, yet could not take the White Tower, nor the Windmill-Mount, whereupon (my letter saith) That their Commanders (a thing odious so much as to e mentioned) got four of the Commanders Wives, and their sucking Infants, and placed them before them where they thought their Cannon should play mot, and finding they would not refrain shooting, Ravished them in the sight of their Husbands, and dlew their tender Infants; a Fact odious to God and man . . . Their barbarous Cruelty in that abhorid Act not to be parralell'd by any of the former Massacrees of the Irish, sparing neither Women nor Children but putting them all to the Sword: 3000 indeed they killed; but 2000 were Women and Children, and divers aged Persons that were not able to support themselves, muchless unable to Resist them." (No. 26 [17-24 October 1649]) p. 213.
Did Gilbert Crouch fight there in the garrison of the Duke of Ormond?
Now Parliaments are summon'd, but in vain
Wise Cato's all, come in go out again.
Three Lords in one day, gently layd aside,
Offer'd as Victim's to Nol's bloody pride:
Titlepage: THREE / Royal POEMS / UPON THE / Return of Charles the II. / KING / OF / ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, / France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith. / [rule] / The Most Illustrious / Prince James Duke of York. / [rule] / The Illustrious / Henry Duke of Glocester. / [rue] / [design: garter arms] / [rule] / LONDON: / Printed by Edward Cole, Printer and Book-seller, at the Sign of the / Printing-press in Cornhil, neer the Royal Exchange. 1660. / [ruled box]
Thomason dated his copy 4 August, 1660.
Titlepage: Exultationis Carmen / TO THE / KINGS / MOST EXCELLENT / MAJESTY / UPON HIS MOST / Desired Return. / [rule] / By Rachel Jevon, Presented with her own Hand, Aug. 16th. / [rule] / CAROLUS En rediit, redeunt Saturnia regna. / [rule] / [design: royal arms] / [rule] / London, Printed by John Macock, 1660. / [within ruled box]
Rachel Jevon was one of a very few women to have composed a formal verse celebration of Charles's return. Although it was still extraordinary for women to know Latin, she produced both a Latin version -- Carmen éPIAMBEYTIKON (J 729) 1 -- and the English translation given here. Hobby reports that "two years later, on or around the anniversary of the restoration, she made a personal (unpublished) petition to the king for `a place of one of the meanest servants about the queen.' It would be interesting to know whether she was successful in what seems a planned strategy of publicising her learning, royalism and humility, and won herself a job" (p. 19).
The original woodcut represents six members of the royal family with their dates of birth; on the right, Charles, his brothers James and Henry, together with, on the left, Mary, Elizabeth and Anne. 1 Henry is represented touching a skull on a table, suggesting that the illustration was designed after his death on 13 September. The text of the ballad, however, is written throughout in anticipation of the return and would seem to indicate that Henry is still very much alive (line 79). Ebsworth thought it dated from the end of May from the title.
The appeal of this ballad is very much directed to the self-interest of the middling sort of people who are assured that they will benefit in many different materials ways from the reestablishment of the nobility and church hierarchy. Since this broadside was evidently issued after prince Henry's death, it is interesting to note that such generalized expressions of optimistic joy were still being produced.
Title: POEMS / UPON / SEVERAL / OCCASIONS. / [rule] / By S. P. Gent. / [rule] / [design] / [rule] / LONDON, Printed by W. G. for Henry Marsh / at the Princes Arms in Chancery-lane, / and Peter Dring at the Sun in the / Poultrey neer the Counter, / 1660.
The epistle at the opening of Troades is dated "Bradfieldi' Cal. Novembris;" the Poems must also have appeared after 13 September since it includes an elegy to Henry.
POEMS opens with "A Panegyrick to his Excellency General Monck March 28. 1660." beginning "Now almost twenty years have roul'd about / Since first the flames of our late Wars broke out..." (sigs B2-[B2v]), followed by "The Genius Speech" to Monck (sigs [B2v]-B4), and then the poem to Charles (sigs [B4v]-[B5v], which is followed by "Some Tears Drop't o're the Herse of the Incomparable Prince Henry Duke of Gloucester" (sigs. [B6]-[B7]).
Titlepage: ARETINA; / Or, The Serious / ROMANCE.1 [rule] / Written originally in English. 2 / [rule] / Part First. / [rule] / [design] / [rule] / EDINBURGH, / Printed for Robert Broun, at the / sign of the Sun, on the North-/ side of the Street, 1660. / [ornamental box].
Date: These verses are followed by an elegy on Henry, Duke of Gloucester, "Great Gloucester's Cipresse-hearse, wreathed by a Loyal hand" (pp. 13-14), so after 13 September.
Titlepage: A / POEM / To His most Excellent Majesty / Charles the Second. / Ego Beneficio tuo (C'sar) quos ante Audie-/ bam hodiŠ vidi Deos: Nec feliciorem ul-/ lum vit' me' aut Optavi, aut sensi Diem. /Paterc', &c. / [rule] / By H. Beeston Winton'. / Together with another / By Hen. Bold olim Winton'. / [rule] / [design] / [rule] / LONDON: / Printed by Edward Husbands, and Thomas Newcomb, Printers to the / Commons House of Parliament, 1660. / [double-ruled box]
Bold's poem was reprinted in his Poems Lyrique, Macaronique (Henry Brome, 1664), pp. 205-206.
Thomason dated his copy on Monday, 24 September, 1660 so Beeston and Bold had the terrible luck of seeing their poems appear shortly after the death of prince Henry, hardly an auspicious time for publishing a celebration.
Henry Beeston was the first son of William Beeston of Posbrook and Elizabeth, daughter of Arthur Bromfield. He was a master at Winchester school and Warden of New College, Oxford. His younger brother, Sir William Beeston, was active in the government of Jamaica following the Restoration.
Henry Bold (1627-1683) was the fourth son of Capt Wiliam Bold of Newstead, Hants., and descended from the ancient Lancashire family of Bold Hall. Educated at Winchester school, he was elected to a fellowship at New College, Oxford in 1645 from which he was ejected in 1648. He then worked in the Examiner's Office in Chancery, died on 23 October 1683, and is buried in West Twyford, near Acton. He published several poetic volumes, including Wit a Sporting in a Pleasant Grove of New Fancies (1657), a good deal of which is plagiarized from Herrick and 50 pages from Thomas Beedome's Poems of 1641. In addition to his verses here, he published Latin verses for the Oxford University volume's on the death of the Duke of Gloucester -- Epicedia Academiae Oxoniensis, in Obitum Celsissimi Principis Henrici Ducis Glocestrensis (Oxford, 1660) -- and the arrival of Catharine of Braganza -- Domiduca Oxoniensis: Sive Musae Academicae Gratulatio Ob Auspicatissimum Serenismae Principis Catharinae Lusitanae (Oxford, 1662) -- in addition to two separate works on the Coronation, St Georges Day and On the Thunder, an Elegy On the Death of Her Highness Mary Princess Dowager of Aurange, Daughter to Charles the First, King of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, &c (London, Printed for Edward Husbands, and are to be sold at the Sign of the Golden Dragon in Fleet-street, 1660), [L=c.20.f.2(44) NB this copy is not listed in Wing, which only mentions the LT copy at 669.f.26(55)], Satyr on the Adulterate Coyn, Inscribed the Common-Wealth, &c (London, Printed, and are to be sold in Littl-britain. 1661) [L=c.20.f.2(46)]. His Poems Lyrique, Macaronique appeared in 1664. (see DNB): check Lowndes 1834, Corser 1860-80, Hazlitt 1867, Dibdin 1836, Woods
Titlepage: Virtus Rediviva / A Panegyrick / On our late / King CHARLES the I. &c / of ever blessed Memory. / ATTENDED, / With severall other Pieces from the / same PEN. / Viz.[bracketing I-IV] / I. A Theatre of Wits: Being a Col-/ lection of APOTHEGMS. / II. Fo/enestr... in Pectore: or a Century of / Familiar LETTERS. / III. Loves Labyrinth: a Tragi-comedy. / IV. Fragmenta Poetica: Or Poeticall / Diversions. / Concluding, with / A PANEGYRICK on His / Sacred Majesties most happy / Return. / [rule] / by T. F. / [rule] / Varietas delectat. / [rule] / Printed by R. & W. Leybourn, for William Gran-/ tham, at the Sign of the Black Bear in St. Pauls / Church-yard neer the little North door; / and Thomas Basset, in St. Dunstans Church-/ yard / in Fleet-street. 1660. / [ruled box]
A series of secondary titlepages then appear: the first of which is usually present in all copies of the 1661 "edition": VIRTUS REDIVIVA: / OR, A / PANEGYRICK / On the late / K. Charls the I. / Second Monarch / OF / GREAT BRITAIN / [rule] / By THO. FORDE. / [rule] / Honoris, Amoris, Doloris ergo. / Propositum est mihi Principem Laudare non Principis facta, nam / laudabilia multa etiam mali faciunt. Plin. Panegyric. in Trajan. [rule] / [design: rose, thistle, fleur-de-lys, harp] / LONDON, Printed by R. and W. Leybourn, for William / Grantham at the Black Bear in St. Pauls / Church-yard, neer the little / North Door. 1660.
Continuous signatures through the volume lead to the section titlepage which reads:
Fragmenta Poetica: / OR, / Poetical Diversions. / WITH / A PANEGYRICK / UPON HIS /SACRED MAJESTIE'S / Most happy Return, on the / 29. May, 1660. / [rule] / By THO. FORDE, Philothal. / [rule] / LONDON, / Printed by R. and W. Leybourn, for William / Grantham, and are to be sold at the Signe / of the Black Bear in St. Pauls / Church-yard. 1660.
The Folger Library copy at WF 138401 contains frontispiece portrait of C1; "Printed by R. and W. Leybourn, for William Grantham at the Black Bear in St. Pauls Church-yard, neer the little North Door." Fragmenta Poetica is missing from this copy, which collates: tp-A4, pp. 1-27 (sigs A-C3), + C3-[D2]; unpaginated pages give: Oweni Epigr. in Regicidas (C3v), An Elegie on Charls the First, &c. (C4-[D1]), An Anniversary on Charls the First, &c. 1657 ([D1-D1v]), Second Anniversary on Charls the First, 1658 [signed T. F.] ([D2-D2v]). A manuscript version of the first twenty lines at O=Eng poet e.4(167) is dated "1672."
Thomas Forde is not to be confused with the Devonian puritan divine of the same name, but there is no entry for our Forde in Woods or the DNB entry: Who was Thomas Forde???
other works include:
Lusus Fortunae: The Play of Fortune. Printed for R. L. 1649. LT E.1348(1) full title in RESTLIST; 7/96 -- a small 8to with pious meditations.
BUT The Time's anatomiz'd in severall Characters. By T. F[ord, servant to Mr. Sam. Man.] London: Printed for W. L. 1647. The insertion is adopted from the ms interlineation in the LT copy; Hazlitt, Handbook p. 208. -- this is the other Thomas Ford, the Devonian puritan divine.
Hazlitt and the NCBEL suggest that the brs Panegyrick signed "T. F." (cf file: FLAT) is by Ford, not Flatman: who said it was by Flatman?? Wing lists this as Flatman.
The various reprintings of Forde's works during 1660, suggest that he was at some pains to make a name for himself as a writer.
Forde dwells on the sufferings of the English during Charles's exile while blaming the parliamentary leaders. He praises Charles for being forgiving rather than vengeful.
Title: THE / PROLOGUE / TO HIS / MAJESTY / At the first PLAY presented at the Cock-pit in / WHITEHALL, / Being part of that Noble Entertainment which Their MAIESTIES received Novemb. 19. / from his Grace the Duke of ALBERMARLE. / [text] / [rule] / LONDON, Printed for G. Bedell and T. Collins, at the Middle-Temple Gate in Fleet-street. 1660.
Sir John Denham (1615-69) was appointed Surveyor-General of the King's Works at the Restoration, in which office he succeeded Sir Christopher Wren. Greenwich Palace and Burlington House are sometimes attributed to his influence. In 1665, he married his second wife, Margaret Brooke who shortly afterwards became mistress of the Duke of York. Her early death in 1667, aged only 20, started rumours that the Duchess of York had arranged for her to be poisoned. (Pepys companion)
On the reopening of the theatres: At the Theatre Royal, Vere St, Thomas Killigrew's King's Company performed from 8 November until May 1663.
Of the performance on Monday 19 November at the Cockpit in Whitehall (not to be confused with the Cockpit or Pit Court Theatre), Pepys reports on the following day: "this morning I found my Lord in bed late, he having been with the King, Queene, and Princesse at the Cockpitt all night, where Generall Monke treated them; and after supper, a play -- where the king did put a great affront upon Singleton's Musique, he bidding them stop and bade the French Musique play -- which my Lord says doth much out-do all ours."
Titlepage: TO / The Most High and Mighty MONARCH, / Charles the II. / By the Grace of GOD, / King of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, / Defender of the Faith: / THOMAS PECKE of the Inner Temple, Esq; / Wisheth an Affluence of both Temporal and / Eternal FELICITY; / And most humbly Devoteth this / Heroick Poem, / In Honour of His Majesties Establishment / in the Throne of His Ancestours. / [rule] / LONDON: / Printed by James Cottrel. MDCLX.
Born in 1637 in Norfolk, Thomas Pecke entered Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge on 3 October 1655, but left without taking a degree. He entered the Inner Temple on 22 June 1657 and was called to the bar 12 February 1664. He published an elegy to Cleveland in 1658, 1 and the next year published Parnassi Puerperium, 2 containing English verse translations of epigrams by John Owen (whom Woods called "the most noted Epigrammatist in the age he lived" AE 1:400), Martial and Sir Thomas More, together with "A Century of Heroick Epigrams." A portrait appears attached to some copies. (DNB)
Pecke refers to: "The Nations Patron, hath pleas'd to confer / The honour of a Privy Counsellour, / On History: That Bosome-friend of time; / And Calculation, fit for every Clime" (lines 212-215) -- is this Raleigh?
Dating: the reference to the performance of masques and plays (line 180) suggests that the poem was composed during November at the earliest. James Cottrel also published Clement Ellis.
Titlepage: verses in: The Strange and Wonderfull / PROPHESIE / OF / DAVID Cardinal / OF / FRANCE, / Touching His Sacred Majesty / King Charles II. / DESCRIBING / The manner how part thereof hath been / already fulfilled, And also foretelling what shall happen / in the Kingdom of England for the space of / three hundred years yet to come. / [rule] / Newly translated out of the French Chronicles into English, but never / suffered to be put to publick view till this present. / [rule] / LONDON, / Printed by J. C. for S. R. and are to be sold near the Royal Exchange / in Cornhill, 1660
This is a short prose tract containing the embedded poem below, which is followed by the explanatory prose note which I have included. Curiously, the tract ends with a "prose" version of Sadler's Majestie Irradiant.
Reverse italics throughout.
This prophesie hath been fuliflled in part in our age, as for the first hundred, it was King Charles the first of blessed memory, after the cruel murther committed on him, came in that usurping tyrant Cromwel, whose name began with a hundred, he tyranizeed for a time over them that install'd him, by cropping off the head of the Thistle and the Rose, the next after him the half hundred for a while opposed the thousand, as appeared by Lamberts withstanding that happy Gen. the Lord Monck Duke of Albermarle, who gathered the Thistle and the Rose presenting it to the Last hundred, which is his sacred Majesty Charles the second, whose Royal Issue (as is plain by this Prophesie) shall govern this Kingdom in peace for three hundred years.
Check the "Gulielmus Duncombe" who wrote Latin verses to Charles in the Cambridge volume at sigs. G2v-G3, signing himself as of "Coll. Regal. Soc." ie Kings College
Since Duncombe's poem was composed after the deaths of both Prince Henry (13 September) and Mary, Charles's sister (24 December, 1660), the "phanaticks" of the title are, presumably, those involved in the conspiracy that came to be known as "White's Plot" of December: see C. H. Hells Master-piece discovered.
Duncombe has some claims upon being considered an early Augustan. The English Augustan style often found its early models in the religious satires and political poetry written during the first Civil War (Doody 198?). See the headnote to Scutum Regale.
These disorganized couplets recall Cowley's "Satire Against the Separatists" and the anti-sectarian passages of The Civil War.
"You must to Squire Dun / except [?] repent."
Blackletter broadside.
Throughout the summer and autumn, government efforts to secure the realm by disbanding the army while searching for leading radicals had proceeded cautiously. "In December, however, it increased tension by publicizing the so-called "White's Plot," said to be a plan by former soldiers to seize the capital" (Hutton 1985: 136).
This ballad offers a version of those events and presumably appeared during the final days of December. Early that month, Major Thomas White, who had served in the army since 1648, attempted to bribe a porter at the gate to Whitehall; the porter told Monck and White was arrested. Investigation showed that White had earlier conspired to assasinate Monck and "pull the king from his throne" by Christmas (Greaves 1986: 35). Lists of possible confederates were discovered in his chambers and, on 15 December, further arrests of former army radicals were ordered in and around London. Of more than forty men arrested, only sixteen were detained, including Major-General Robert Overton, former commander in Scotland. When Pepys arrived at Whitehall on the 16th, he was "surprized with the news of a plott against the King's person and my Lord Monkes." He visited the Tower "where I heard [Overton] deny that he is guilty of any such things, but that whereas it is said that he is found to have brought many armes to towne, he says it was only to sell them, as he will prove by oath" (1:318-9). Although caches of weapons were indeed discovered, proof of an organized uprising was hard to establish and many of those arrested were quickly released for lack of evidence. Meanwhile, fear had spread to provincial areas leading to investigations of linked conspiratorial activities in Lincoln, York, Hull, Wiltshire, Essex, Leicester and elsewhere (Greaves 1986: 37). In Edinburgh, city authorities required residents to report the names of all guests. Back in London, a proclamation issued on the 17th required all former soldiers to stay at least twenty miles away from London and Westminster, while Clarendon made much of rumours linking the plot with Lambert and Ludlow. "In a speech to the Convention on 29 December, [Clarendon] blamed the plot on discontent arising from the regicide's execution. . . . Ludlow, he averred, was expected to lead the fanatics" (Greaves 1986: 39). But Ludlow had already fled to Europe. "What the authorities unearthed was no organized plot, no insurrection planned for a specific time with designated leaders, but a growing number of disenchanted men who had begun to gather weapons and explore possibilities for an uprising" (Greaves 1986: 39).
See: Rugg 132 for his view of the affair, which is also reported in Parliamentary Intelligencer (10-17 December), (17-24 Dec), (24-31 Dec), Mercurius Publicus 51 (13 -- 20 December), 53 (20-27 Dec), 54 (27 Dec-3 Jan), and Kingdomes Intelligencer (31 Dec-7 Jan)
And see Duncombe's Counter-blast to the Phanaticks
Robert Overton formerly called Major Generall Overton, Francis Elstone, John Disborow formerly Collonel, John Hargrass, El. Hunt, Gabriel Hopkins, Wil. Kirk, Fran. Booth, C. Bagster, C. Babinton, W. Wright, Anthony Barnshaw, Thomas Millard, Tobias Hill, Rich. Dilling, Peter Thompson, Tho. Simcock, Frederick Barnwel, Ric. Danie, Ric. Shoopel, John Lucan, W. Howard, Tho. Nicols, Henry Limrick, Francis Gavill, Henry Simboll, James Eglefield, Jeffery Hookins, Sam. Jepp, Isaac Benton, Rich. Young, John Steward, John Ward, Tho. Butler, Rich. Glover, George Thomas, James Sanford, Ro. Parker, Rich. Burt,John Decks, Owen Davis.
Titlepage: 'NEAS / HIS / DESCENT / INTO / HELL: / As it is inimitably described by the / Prince of Poets in the sixth / of his 'NEIS. / [rule] / Made English by JOHN BOYS of Hode-Court, Esq; / [rule] / Together with an ample and learned Comment upon the same, / wherein all passages Criticall, Mythological, Philoso-/ phical and Historical, are fully and clearly explained. / To which are added some certain Pieces relating to the / Publick, written by the Author. / [rule] / Invia virtuti nulla est via. -- -- -- Ovid. Met / [rule] / LONDON, Printed for the Author, and are to be sold by Henry Brome / at the Gun in Ivy-lane, 1661. / [ornamental box]
By his own account, at least, John Boys was among those who took an active part in the final preparations for the king's return. On Tuesday 24 January, just as Monck was reaching Northampton where he received a petition calling for the return of the secluded members, Boys claims to have delivered a speech before the mayor in the Town Hall at Canterbury on behalf of Kent and the City of Rochester calling for a Free Parliament; a transcript of that speech is included in 'neas His Descent (pp. 218-20). This was not an entirely safe thing to do; on Tuesday 7 February, the day after Monck addressed the Commons, several individuals who had petitioned the general or parliament were arrested (Davis 1955: 277). Boys also prepared a speech that he had been planning to deliver to the king at Dover "but forasmuch as he was prevented therein by reason his Majesty made no stay at all in that Town" he had to be content with publishing it (ibid. pp. 226-28).
Check Oxenden letters for Boys and place seeking during May; p. 232,
Boys published annotated translations of books 3 and 6 of the Aeneid; 'neas His Errours, or his Voyage from Troy into Italy. An Essay upon the Third Book of Virgils 'neis (London, Printed by T. M. for Henry Broome, at the gun in Ivy-lain, 1661) 1 and 'neas His Descent which treats book 6. 'neas His Descent is dedicated to Edward Hide, who was already Lord High Chancellor at the time the volume appeared; 'neas His Errours is dedicated to his son, Lord Viscount Cornbury and was evidently published second since Boys writes of "the more then merited recpetion my late Essay upon this great Author found with your greater Father . . . hath encouraged me to continue my Addresses to the same Family" (sig A2v).
'neas His Descent also contains dedicatory poems by Charles Fotherby and Thomas Philipott.
Both of Boys's volumes invite readers to make the obvious connections between the Virgilian hero and the newly installed king of England. In his commentary to 'neas His Errours, Boys insists that it is the prophetic nature of Virgil's epic that has been fulfilled rather than that he has falsified the original to make the application. He reminds us:
it was not, Reader, the ultimate end of our Poet, in this precendent Poem, barely to deliver the story of 'neas his Errours, or Perigrination from Troy into Italy, with those Accidents which befell him therein. . . . No: our wise Authour had a more covert and mysterious design; and, in this wel-built fabric of his gives us the full prospect of a well-order'd Commonwealth, with all the integral parts thereof; which whilest we endeavour to make out, let not the Reader passe sentence upon us, as guilty of perverting or violating the sense or meaning of our Authour, whose constant manner it is, to have a more remote drift, then what is perceptible to the eye of every vulgar Reader (pp. 52-3).
Since the action of Aeneid 3 largely takes place on board a ship, Boys has no difficulty inferring that the entire book is an allegory of the commonwealth -- the "integral parts" are Prince Aeneis himself, the Council, the Minister of State, and finally the people (p. 53). Boys glosses each in turn, spending some while on the Prince's piety, wisdom and valour (pp. 54-7). Having done so, Boys changes his addressee from the "reader" in general to the king. "And, now," he writes,
most gracious Soveraign, it is not that I have wrested this Character, in delivering things otherwise, then they are represented by our Authour in the precedent Poem, that, I might direct this Application to your Royal Self: No, should I therefore compare your Majesty with our 'neas, in those three princely qualifications, none could truly object to me either force or flattery. (p. 57)
Once he has specified Charles's pietry, wisdom and valour, Boys illustrates how a line or two from Virgil's Latin could be taken out of context and made to fit present circumstances. "Here then as the same Poet speaks in the person of Anchises concerning his 'neas in this very book, let us, as prophetically, I hope affirm and conclude, (changing one word) concerning your Sacred Majesty.
This use of Virgil's text for purposes of divination -- the sortes Virgiliana -- was well established long before the Restoration. Charles I was reported to have consulted the Aeneid for its oracular qualities.
Hic Carolina domus Cunctis dominabitur oris,
Et nati natorum, & qui nascentur ab illis:
Great Charles his house, with those who thence descend,
Here far and near its Empire shall extend." (pp. 60-61)
The flyleaf of the BL copy is signed "Wm Amherst," dated "Novemb: 1660" and priced "3s-0d": the WF copy is priced 1s 4d. Despite the titlepage dating of 1661, Boys's translation evidently appeared late in the previous year -- Thomason dated his copy on 30 December -- and it dutifully includes verses lamenting the death of Prince Henry (pp. 214-15) [in WF, CS and L copies] on Thursday, 13 September.
Compare: [M. Atkins?] Cataplus: or, Aeneas his Descent into hell. A mock poem in imitation of the sixth book of Virgils Aeneis; copies in O at Harding C 3320; G. Pamph.1273 (4)
The following epigram appears on p. 229 (Sig. Gg2). Since it is so short, I have also included the Latin version.
Titlepage: Non est mortale quod opto. / 1647. 1 / CHARLS / TRIUMPHANT, / &c. / [rule] / This is that CHARLS, who did from CHARLS proceed; / Who shall in Greatness CHARLS the Great exceed. / [rule] / CAROLUS e CAROLO descendens, / erit CAROLO magno major. / [rule] / [design: laurel crown] / [rule] / LONDON, Printed in the year, MDCLX.
Manuscript sources relating to the author and circumstances of this poem's publication are to be found in the British Library: BL MSS: family correspondence -- Add. Mss. 27,999 and 28,000; family papers -- Add MSS. 28,006 to 28,011; 28,010=Henry's early commonplace books and misc. verses etc: includes transcriptions of "The Doctrine of Mahomet which is of great authority amongst the Saracens," and "The Law of the Saracens which they call the Alcoran, that is a gathering together of Commandments into one booke" (ff.45-53v=) -- ms circa 1626, aged 17.
Henry's commonplace book (Add MSS 28,012; also Add MSS 28,013) is a long scroll, made up from a large legal document cut up into three-inch strips that are stitched together into a roll -- of proverbs he collected/transcribed -- : eg: "The Turkes hold the foundation of all empire to consist in exact obedience, & that in exemplary severity"
further letters -- Add MSS. 44,846=Thos Peynton's letter book (1640-56), 44,847=letters from Charles Nichols to Henry O; 44,848=misc letter book, containing transcript copies of various state letters. -- check Bodleian for ms papers linking Oxenden with Needham
Other works ascribed include:
The copytext is taken from the Bliss copy at O which has ms note on flyleaf: "Oxenden, Henry of Bumstead. See some account of H Oxenden in the [Brydges] Censura Literaria vol. 10. and in the 4to. edition of Woods' Ath. Oxon. Sir Egerton Brydges, Watt and the last editor of Wood were not aware of this Poem which has all the appearance of a privately printed book, there being no bookseller's name, nor place of sale &c."
The titlepage seems to have been cropped by binder. Irregularly gathered; the first text page appears as sig A3, and is followed by sig A. This copy has been corrected in hand, most often for the better, suggesting authorial intervention: I have incorporated many of the hand corrections but included a full record in the notes.
In A List of Knights made since His Majestie came to London, May 29. 1660, London, Printed by S. Griffin, 1660; LT 669.f.25(66) dated 1 August), the name appears of "Sir Henry Oxendine", that is of Deane, his first cousin of that name, MP for Sandwich.
On Oxenden and the circumstances of this poem's publication, see the Introduction. Kent was a site of obvious importance and we have general good record of other Kent writers
Henry Oxenden or Oxenden (1609-1670) was born to an old land-owning family from Kent, entered Corpus Christi on 10 November 1626 and graduated B. A. in 1627. In 1632, he married Anne, daughter of Sir Samuel Peynton, who died eight years later. In 1642, he married Katherine, daughter of James Cullen, who survived him. A staunch anti-prelate, Oxenden fought for parliament at Arundel in 1644, nearly dying from illness the next year. It was presumably in the early 1640s that he composed the verse satire, "A dismall summons, to Doctors Commons":
Thou Cage full of foule birdes & beasts,
attend thy diosmall doome,
Thy Canonists now murdered are,
with Canons of their owne.
Civillians civill villaines are,
old doting knaves are Doctors,
Notorious knaves are Notaries,
bold prating Knaves are Proctors.
. . . .
Thy Court is called Christian,
yet Antichristian is,
The Court of hell is not so full
and divelish as is this.
The Bishops they are bitesheepes,
the Deanes they now are Dunces,
Thy Preists they are the Preists of Ball,
the Devill take all by Bunches. 2
But Oxenden's political allegiances proved weak and circumstantial: in 1647 he published a call for the return of the king. Involved in wrangling for land and wealth throughout the 1650s, Oxenden found himself so much in debt at the Restoration that he started selling off family property while searching for a church living. In 1663, the same year that the family house at Great Maydekin was finally sold (28 May), Oxenden was appointed rector of Radnage in distant Buckinghamshire, where he held office until his death in 1670.
His early published poems are both satires on religion: Religionis funus, & Hypocriti' finis (1647) is in Latin hexameters; Iobus Triumphans (1651) contains prefatory verses by Alexander Ross and others and was reported to be much read in foreign schools (DNB). A small engraved portrait appears with Religionis funus here reproduced from the copy in Bodleian. It also appears bound in with the copy of Charls Triumphant currently in the Huntington.
Despite its considerable length and the care which the author and several friends put into its publication, Charls Triumphant has been much ignored and even for a time, appears to have been lost. Dorothy Gardiner was unable to find a copy of this poem when, in 1936, she sent her edition of The Oxenden and Peyton Letters, 1642-1670 to the press. Thanks to Gardiner's work, however, we do know a great deal about the circumstances surrounding the writing and publishing of this poem. Gardiner was in good company since other scholars have failed to notice Oxenden's poem. As the author of the manuscript note to the copy currently in the Bodleian Library commented, "Sir Egerton Brydges, Watt and the last editor of Wood were not aware of this Poem which has all the appearance of a privately printed book, there being no bookseller's name, nor place of sale &c." Perhaps scholars had been looking for it under the Latin title which Henry himself uses in his letters to describe it.
The turbulence of the times was unkind to Henry Oxenden, whose 1647 portrait nevertheless suggests a man younger than Henry's 38 years who is still full of hope, energy, and optimism. In many ways, the ignominity that later overcame Oxenden's Restoration poem sadly resembles this poet's ambitions for a speedy appointment to a lucrative position and indicates something of the speed with which formal and lengthy panegyrics to the restored monarch very quickly became old stuff of which noone took much notice. The rectorship of Radnage "a small living in the King's gift" (Gardiner, xli) which he finally secured in 1663 proved poor. Unfortunately there is insufficient evidence to know whether Oxenden's labours over his poetic tribute three years previously helped him to the appointment. But in the spirit of 1660, Oxenden labored over publishing his poem at considerable personal expense. Indeed, he so far expected promotion through writing poetic tributes that he payed for two long poems to be printed that year, circulating copies of both to people about the royal court. His other poem, Eikon Basilike, is a lengthy set of verses on the wedding of Sir Basil Dixwell to Dorothy Osborne, eldest daughter to Sir Thomas Peyton and niece of the famous letter writer. Oxenden wrings everything he can out of Sir Basil's name being the Greek word for "king." His notebooks tell us that 97 copies were printed, and were distributed to likely patrons in the hopes that Henry's courtly poem would help find him a job.
By 1660, Henry had been out of work for several years and, at the king's return, was among the many educated middle-class men without obvious employment who flocked to London in hopes of finding something suitable. On 4 June, Phineas Andrews writes to Henry that he passed a copy of the wedding poem to Sir Basil, who sends his thanks, and then reports that there are no jobs in the Customs (BL Add Mss 28,004, f. 128; Gardiner, 234). Later that summer, Henry writes home to his wife from London where he has been looking for a job: "In short thousands ar come to London in expectation of great matters who wil returne worse then they came: for nothing is here to be had without money, and that at very high rates" (Gardiner, 235).
In his poem, Oxenden claims to have been "Finished June 1660," but the poem was still being printed in December; and the author himself was receiving page proofs as late as March 1661. Presumably he had completed writing his poem during June, and then sent copies to various friends while negotiating with printers. During the summer, months Oxenden received advice of different sorts on how to revise his poem, but seems not to have ignored most of it. On the 20th of September, Thomas Williams, whose dedicatory verses appear in the prefatory material, reported that the printer David Maxwell had failed to print Oxenden's poem and that other printers were unlikely to do it because the "mournefull state of the Court, and indeed of all ye Citty . . . hath taken of their eyes and mindes from all things of this nature, And fearing your poeme (as tryumphal) will not nowe bee soe reasonable -- they demand more for the print than I shall wish you to give" (BL Add Mss 28,004, f.140; Gardiner, 239) following the death on the 15th of Prince Henry; this was not a good time to be publishing a poem about Charles in triumph.
The poem was still looking for a printer on 2 December when Williams wrote that Henry Birkhead will arrange printing "at 13.s the sheete to the number of 100 copies, makeing about 4 sheetes, and in no place in London under" and advises Oxenden to think of issuing the poem for the New Year (BL Add Mss 28,004, f., 161; Gardiner, 241). On the 17th, Henry Birkhead, probably the "H. B." whose dedicatory verses appear in the prefatory material, writes "One sheete of your Charles Triumphant is printed off, the next is setting" (BL Add MSS 28,004, f.173; Gardiner, 242.)
By 17 March 1661, Birkhead is finally sending "an inclosed poem corrected as well as I could obtaine it to be done" together with "twelve title pages"; on 28 March, he undertakes to "present Sr Kenhelm Digby with a coppy superscribed ex Dono Autoris" (BL Add MSS 28,004, ff.212, 236).
Perhaps the most fascinating letter sent to Oxenden about his poem, came from Charles Nichols dated 9 July since it not only gives us a witty account of the manuscript poem, but shows us a reader actually at work reading a Restoration poem. It's fortunate for us that Nichols is such a clever critic who knows how to offer friendly advise on another's poetry, since the opening of the letter indicates how sensitive he is about returning a poem with suggestions for revision. It also appears that Henry himself is very shy of having his verses read by others. Lest he has caused the poet offence, Nichols casts his apology in the fashionable cant of a stage wit, but includes sound advice about language, metre, and style. Nichols reports enclosing dedicatory verses for Oxenden's poem, so his may well be the anonymous verses calling Oxenden an English Virgil:
Heroicke Sr
The tayle, rather rump, of my paper lookes like one of the tribe of the beast Momus, but its teeth are either not grown, or els dropt out, it rather kisses (though not Al a mode) then bites its generous friend. I am soe ashamed of my presumption, that if you send mee not a pardon under yor hand & seale in short time, my Phantasie, to avoid a Lingring death, will turn ffelo de se & knock it selfe on the head, as the last shift of despayre. Noe one in the world hath seene yor booke but my selfe, & I only, last night in a Nodding houre could reade it over in dreameing hast. It is a pitty you tooke not a Little more time to polish every syllable, ffor, Beleeve mee Sr, the princelienes or sovereignetie of your subiect matter, the essays alreadie nibling at yt grand baite of honor (though most mubble it as an old woeman doth a Crust) the Curiositie of our times impresse all acuratnes in his Maiesties service. Ye fancie is truely Noble & rich, (it made me laugh to see yor muse greene her Teeth at Hugh, threatening the gentle Craft a new sett of St Hughs-bones, though I bitt my lipps) yor style Copious. but Me-thinkes, Now and then a Monysillable rushes in on purpose to tell us that you was in hast, and some of yor wordes Transposd would sound much sweetlyer, wch for mee to have essayed further (wthout order) would have beene to have turned Pargmatical in grayne, & it may bee have spoyled all.
I have made only a few offers. Ha, ha, he, who hath made mee A Correctr? Am I contagiond with the epidemical disease of the world? & know not my selfe in this paper; oh sure I grow insolent; well Sr I dictate noothing, I only humbly propose you are the Judge. Workmen must not sett a stitch a misse in the King's robe, every one's eye will bee upon it. In a little more Time, you might make yor Copie an original, if you would bestow it thereon. Our novelists will tell us yt Whilome, (wch is twice us'd) is growne rotten wth age, & that O repeated above 20 times in one booke, stands for nought but a stilt to help a verse to hop out its Number when it wants otherwise a foote; or yt Oh is an interiection of groaneing, when Henry hath hard stooles. I meete wth some fancis rich enough for a Coronation day. But there be some Phrases, about Sisters, &tc, wch if my own ffather should Antedate the resurrection, & come from the dead & whisper them into my eare I could not possibly approove of them. Your designe is obvious; I iudj you an Inocent man, you Love good men, but the smoothest way to step up into esteeme, is without treading upon others' Soulls, though not ye surest.
To Add my Signett to all my papers wch ensure thee my Love I have signed thine And Daunced a little Jygg whilst garlands attend yor Brow. & therin shew how yor verses worke wonders beyond all that ever I heard of. The most yt I ever observed sayd of the best writeings, was that they were Celebrated by everybody. Yors exceede them, for as it is admir'd by everybody, soe hath it inspir'd Noebody
& Noebody thus sings. 3
In its finally printed form, Oxenden's poem shows that he didn't heed Nichols' advice about revising and cutting. The printed version contains over a thousand lines; there are nearly 30 uses of "O," and the scurrilous passage about Hugh Peters and the Sisters is still there for the curious.
In printed form, Oxenden's poem opens with some prefatory verse addresses to the reader by Oxenden, then a series of dedicatory poems by, respectively, Jo Hobart of Kent; "H. B." is probably Henry Birkhead; Thomas Williams; The anonymous verses that follow, rather extravagantly call Oxenden an English Virgil and might be by Nichols. A final set of dedicatory verses are signed "J. W."
Oxenden's own poem is over a thousand lines of pentamter couplets; it is made up of three books composed of 15, 18, 15 verse paragraphs of varying length. Plenty of anti-Rump satire here, together with an account of Worcester, Jane Lane and the escape, a great deal of rather pious sentimentalizing, and some explicit requests for a place at court. The second part recounts some events of Charles's arrival. The final part opens by making much of Charles touching for the Evil, then addresses the king directly in order to enumerate the horrors suffered during his absence by loyalists such as the poet. His attacks on the Rumpers are typically personal and scurrilous, making evident use of Howell's Proverbs which had recently appeared in print.
It remains unclear whether the poem had any influence on Henry's appointment in 1663 to a rectorship in Buckinghamshire.
Title: AN IMPERFECT / POURTRAICTURE / OF HIS / SACRED MAJESTY / CHARLS the II. / BY THE GRACE OF GOD / KING / Of Great BRITAIN, FRANCE, and IRELAND, / Defender of the Faith, &c. / Written by a Loyal Subject, who most / Religiously affirms, / Se non diversas spes, sed incolumitatem / C'saris simpliciter spectare. / [rule] / LONDON, / Printed for Henry Herringman, at the Sign of the An- / chor in the Lower Walk of the New-Exchange. 1661.
Walter Charleton (1619-1707) was born in Somerset, entering Magdalen Hall, Oxford in 1635. In 1643, aged only 24, he was made M. D. and appointed physician to Charles I, whose court was then at Oxford. In 1650 he moved to London, was admitted to the Royal College of Physicians and made physician to the exiled king. During the decade before the Restoration he wrote ten weighty books on medical and philosophical subjects, composing another eighteen before his death. He was an original Fellow of the Royal Society. His best known work is probably Chorea Gigantum (1663), arguing that Stonehenge was built by the Danes as a place to crown kings.
An Imperfect Pourtraicture is a prose tract that flatteringly attributes numerous virtues to the new king. It includes the following verses in Latin with English translations. The first set are attributed to Horace:
... what Horace said to Augustus C'sar, is more due to His MAJESTY,
Instar veris enim, vultus ubi Tuus
Assulsit, populo gratior it dies,
Et soles melius nitent.
The Lustre of His Royal sight
Makes the day passe with more delight,
And Suns to shine more bright. [p. 10]
Later, regarding how much Charles has achieved in the first nine months of his reign, Charleton gives us:
Jam fides, et Pax, et Honor, Pudorque
Priscus, et neglecta redire Virtus
Audet, apparetque beata pleno
Copia cornu.
Now Faith, and Peace, and Shame begin
To rise again, as from the dead:
Now antient Virtue dares come in,
And shew her long-neglected head:
And blessed Plenty, with her load,
Appears abroad. [p. 20]
misc:
He is, moreover, a KING of so Mild, and withall so Great a Spirit, that His Severity (if He hath any) is conceal'd, but Clemency visible to all. (p. 10)
Titlepage: SONGS / AND OTHER / POEMS. / [rule] / BY / ALEX. BROME, / GENT. / Dixero siquid jocosius, hoc mihi juris / Cum Venia dabis -- -- Hor. I. Sat. 4. / [rule] / [crown] / [rule] / LONDON, / Printed for Henry Brome, at the Gun / in Ivy-Lane. 1661. /
Although both these verses take the events of May 1660 as their subject, I have not found them in print before Brome's Poems of 1661, and have placed them here to illustrate how such effusions were continuing to appear long after their immediate moment had passed. Brome's song was among the most popular of the year, it would seem, so its late appearance in print suggests something of poetic endurance.
Titlepage: CEDRUS BRITANICA / ET / LAURUS REGIA / SIVE / REX & CORONOA / A / POETICAL HEXAMERON. / Shewing, / 1. The Invention,} / 2. The Distinction,} / 3. The Designation,} / 4. The Necessity, } / 5. The Dignity,} / 6. The Perpetuity.} / [parallel to long bracket} Of Crownes. / [design: angels hold rose and thistle] / Printed, Anno Dom. 1660.
Undated, but included here for its anticipation of the Coronation.
Echoes of Herbert in the final verses anxiously awaiting the coronation; and possibly echoes of Marvell's "Garden" in lines 77-79?
Thomason's date.
Variant broadside, reprinted in An Antidote Against Melancholy: Made up in Pills (London, 1661), pp. 49-51; by Dryden, in Miscellany (1716) 4:352-4; Wright, Political Ballads, pp. 257-59; Wilkins, 1: 162-66; Ebsworth Merry Drollery Compleate, pp. 52-4.
Wright, p. 257, notes: "The two ballads which follow ["The Cavaleers Letany", pp. 261-65] express the discontent of the now truimphant Cavaliers at the few personal advantages which they reaped from the Restoration, and at the ingratitude of King Charles to the old suporters of the fortunes of his family. The first is taken from the nineteenth volume of the folio broadsides, King's Pamphlets, British Museum. "I tell thee, Dick," &c. is the first line of Sir John Suckling's famous song on a wedding" (p. 257).
Wilkins comments: "The Cavaliers were much disappointed at the neglect with which their claims to the royal favour were treated at the Restoration, and expressed great dissatisfaction [sic] at the preferments bestowed upon the Presbyeterians, whose return to loyalty was thus conciliated and confirmed. It was commonly said of the "Act of Oblivions and Indemnity," that the King had passed an "act of oblivion for his friends and of indemnity for his enemies." The famous divine, Dr. Isaac Barrow, who may be accpted as a fair exponent of the views of the Royalists at this juncture, conveyed, in the following sistich, his sense of the inattention he experienced:
Wilkins also reprints A Turn-Coat of the Times (1: 167-71) dating it 1661, though it is usually given a much later date (Wing T3264A-3265C c. 1663-1700).
"Te magis optavit rediturum, Carole, nemo,
Et nemo sensit te redisse minus."
"Oh! how my breast did ever burn
To see my lawful King return;
Yet whilst his happy fate I bless,
No one has felt his influence less." Wilkins 1: 162.
See also The Cavalier's Genius: Being a Proper New Ballad. To the Tune of, 'Ods bodikins chill work no more, and forty other good Tunes (O=Wood 416(78)), which parodies Suckling's poem in itermitant dialect and satirizes court behaviour.
Among the early complaints, see An Humble Representation of the sad Condition of may of the Kings Party, Who since His Majesties Happy Restauration have no Relief, and but Languishing Hopes. Together with Proposals how some of them may be speedily relieved, and others assured thereof, within a resonable time. Printed for A. Seile, in the Year, 1661. O=G.Pamph. 1119 (9).
"We joyfully, indeed, partake in the Glory of His Majesties Restitution, the Peace of our Country, the security of Laws, & the Propect of future settlements is most pleasant to us: But, alas, we are still exposed to the same necessities, Nay many of us are in worse Condition, as to livelyhood, than ever, Partly by exhausting ourselves with unusual Expences, That we might appear (like our selves) concerned in his Majesties welcome, & Coronation, partly, by prosecuting honest, but fruitless, pretences, Chiefly by the fate of Poverty, which, seldome, continues, without encreasing, And (for Accomplishment of our Misery), Hope, (which, hitherto, alone, Befriended, & Supported,) hath now forsaken us." (p. 5)
The Cavaliers Comfort is, in some respects, a reply to this ballad.
Thomason's date.
Another unicum in the library at Worcester College, Oxford, this is perhaps the most cynical of the contemporary verses on the king's return, satirizing all those who have welcomed the exile for their own selfish ends.
Titlepage: Lexicon Tetraglotton, / AN / English-French-Italian-Spanish / DICTIONARY: / WHEREUNTO IS ADJOINED / A large NOMENCALTURE of the proper Terms / (in all the four) belonging to several Arts and Sciences, to Recreations, to / Professions both Liberal and Mechanick, &c. / Divided into Fiftie two SECTIONS; / [rule] / With another Volume of the Choicest / PROVERBS / [etc.] / LONDON, Printed by J. G. for Samuel Thomson at the Bishops head / in St. Pauls Church-yard. 1660.
James Howell (1593/4-1666) was born in Carmarthenshire; his father was a curate and his elder brother Thomas was to become Bishop of Bristol. He attended Jesus College, Oxford, 1610-1613, then worked for Sir Robert Mansell as a steward in his glass factory in London. In 1617, he was commissioned to travel into Europe to find skilled workmen and materials for the factory. He travelled from Amsterdam, to Paris and St Malo, then on to Barcelona and Alicante, spending a year in Spain, finally reaching Venice in the autumn of 1618. After sending two workmen back to Mansell, Howell stayed on in Italy on his own, visiting the major cities, then back through the Alps arriving back in England late in 1620. After an illness for which he was treated by William Harvey, he went to the court of Spain to sue on behalf of an English merchant vessel seized by the court of Sardinia; while there, Charles and Buckingham arrived on their mission to marry the king off the the spanish princess; the failure of the court caused his own mission to be unsuccessful and he returned. Turning down a fellowship at Jesus, he became secretary to Lord Scrope which led to a parliamentary seat for Yorkshire in 1627. Various appointments and missions brought him into close personal contact with Jonson, Carew, Herbert of Cherbury, Kenelm Digby through the 1630s. On 30 August 1642 he was sworn in as Clerk to the Council. In November he was arrested and sent to the Fleet where he stayed 8 years.
Having already published Dodona's Grove and the Instructions for Travel, he spent his yeas in prison writing. At the Restoration, Howell was among those who hoped that Charles would reward them for their loyal suffering -- in February 1661 he was finally appointed Historiographer Royal at a salary of oe200.
For the life, see DNB and Joseph Jacob's edition of Howell's Familiar Letters (1892).
Howell published a number of items in 1660, but his verses "Upon his Majesties Return, With the Dukes of York and Glocester" did not appear until 1663, in Payne Fisher's edition of James Howell's POEMS / On several / CHOICE and VARIOUS / SUBJECTS. / Occasionally Composed / By An Eminent Author. / [rule] / Collected and Published / BY Sergeant-Major P. F. / [rule] LONDON: / Printed by Ja: Cottrel; and are to be sold by / S. Speed, at the Rain-bow in Fleetstreet, / near the inner Temple-gate. 1663. [L=1076.f.14] contains the following verses, which are reprinted in the 1664 edition (really a reissue with new tp):
The Poems, however, do not include the epigram that appears in the Lexicon.
Upon his Majesties Return,
With the Dukes of York and Glocester.
THe Stars of late Eccentrick went
Out of the British Firmament,
But now they are fix'd there again,
And all concentred in Charles wain;
Where, since just Heaven did them restore,
They shine more glorious then before.
Long may they glitter in that Sky
With Beams of new Refulgency;
May great Apollo from his Sphear
Encrease their light, and motions chear,
So that old Albion may from thence
Grow younger by their Influence.
May no ill-boding Blazing Star,
No Northern Mist, or Civil War,
No lowring Planet ever raign
Their lustre to obscure again,
But may whoole Heav'n be fair and cleer,
And every Star a Cavalier.
pp. 118-119.
The above verses do not appear to have been printed in 1660: I have not located them in Howell's edition of Cotgave's French and English Dictionary (1660), or The Parly of Beasts (1660), or Divers Historicall Discourses of the late Popular Insurrections in Great Britain (1661), or Philanglus; Som Sober Inspections Made into the Cariage and Consults of the Late-long Parlement (1660), or A Brief Account of the Royal Matches (1662)
TRY: A Cordial for the Cavaliers (1661) Wing=H3058A at MH only; Sober Inspections into those Ingredients that went to ...the Cordial (1661) Wing=H3118 at Leeds; CH, MH
The dedicatory epistle to Charles in the Lexicon ends with Howell's version of Grebner's prophecy concerning Charles:
It remains now that I implore your Majesties Royall Goodnes to cast some gracious influences upon this large peece of Industry, which, in regard it is of a publique concernment, and tending to the Honor of the English Nation as well as of the Language, being associated by the Civill'st Toungs of Christendom (wherein your Majesty is so well vers'd as also in the nature of the peeple) I thought fit to cast at your Majesties feet as a Sacrifice of my tru Allegeance; And humbly take leave to conclude with the famous prophecy of Grebner a great Modern Mathematician, whose pr'ditions are so highly cryed up all Europe over (in regard that divers of Them are already fulfill'd). Among which This signall prognostique relating to these Northwest Islands is found, which ends thus. Carolus . . . Carolo erit major Magno Carolo, Charles from Charles shall be greater then Charles the Great; put thus to run on feet.
A Carolo Carolus, si quid pr'sagia Veri
Contineant, Magno major erit Carolo.
Charles son of Charles, if Prophecies contain
Som Truth, shall greter be then Charlemain.
Quarto Nonas So prayeth,
Maii, 1660.
The Loyall'st of your Majesties
Vassalls,
and
Votaries,
Howell.
Note: Howell's source may have been A brief Description of the future History of Europe (1650), where Grebner's ms is given "Interea, unus e stirpe Caroli ... eritque Carolo magno major" (sig A4), but there were numerous printed versions of Grebner, including The Lord Merlins prophecy Concerning the King of Scots (London: G. Horton, 1651) William Lilly, in his notorious Monarchy or no Monarchy in England. Grebner his Prophecy (1651), argued "That England shall no more be Governed by KINGS, or that this PARLIAMENT shall be subdued by any of the Issue or Race of the late KING" (p. 66), basing his argument on what he claimed to be the true transcription and meaning of various prophecies in refutation of false copies and readings. He reports that Paul Grebner presented Elizabeth with a prophecy of the future history of Europe in 1582 that was deposited in Trinity College, Cambridge. A corrupt version was issued in 1648 (sig. A2) and a second in 1650 as The future History of Europe cf below) both aimed at encouraging Scottish Presbyterians in their struggle against parliament.
In Lilly's transcription of Grebner, Howell's lines do not appear, but the following do:
Et sic Š Carolo Magnus Carolus regnans fit, qui magno successu & fortuna septentrionalibus populis dominabitur. (p. 21)
which Lilly translates:And then from a Charles a great Charles shall obtaine the Scepter, who with great successe and prosperity shall reigne over the Northerne parts of the World. (p. 22)
Lilly subsequently declares: "By what I have delivered out of many reverend mens Prophecies, I onely evince thus much: That the late King Charles is not the Lyon of the North; or that his Sonne, the present King of Scotland is that Charles, or that Eagle which the Wise Men of former times Prohesied of; or that he shall act either such wonderfull Deeds in War or Peace, as the admirers of Grebners false Printed Prophecy would fasten upon him." (p. 64).
See too:A brief Description of the future History of Europe, from Anno 1650 to An. 1710. Treating principally Of those grand and famous Mutations yet expected in the World, as, The ruine of the Popish Hierarchy, the final annihilation of the Turkish Empire, the Conversion of the Eastern and Western Jews, and ther Restauration to the ancient inheritances in the holy Land, and the FIFTH MONARCHY of the universall Reign of the Gospel of Christ upon Earth. With principal passages upon every of these, out of that famous Manuscript of PAUL GREBNER extant in Trinity-Colledge Library in Cambridge. Composed upon the Occasion of the young KINGS Arrival into Scotland, to shew what will in probability be the Event of the present Affairs in ENGLAND and SCOTLAND. 1650. O=Ash.538(8) probably Lilly's own copy.
Titlepage: ITER BRITANNICUM / OR / ENGLANDS / SAD JOURNALL. / FROM HER FIRST ENTRANCE / into the wilderness of SIN: which was at the begin-/ in of that long unhappy PARLIAMENT, Novemb.3. / 1640. when the people began to murmur against MOSES / and AARON, to this present year of Jubile. 1660. / By a rurall and rufull observator, and old Barzillai; though / poor, yet faithful to the interest of his Soveraign, / the Lords Anointed: / Who had the happiness to hear King JAMES pro-/ claimed King of England, Scotland, &c at Cambridge Cros: after he had been 14 Moneths admitted Scholar in Christs-/ Colledge, viz. March 25. Anno Dom. 1603. / [rule] / Dan. 12.4. / Shut up the words, and seal the book; even to the time of the end, many shall run too and fro, and knowledge shall be increased. / Vers. 10. Many shall be purified and made white and tryed, but the / wicked shall do wickedly, and none of the wicked shall understand, but the / wise shall understand. / [rule] / LONDON, / Printed by Peter Lillicrap. 1660.
Wing: I1092A+
Copies: Qto; OW BB 1.5(31).
Another unicum from Worcester College, Oxford.