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)

    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.