[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.

   

[102] According to Plato, Gyges was a Lydian shepherd who, discovering a magical ring that made him invisible, used it to help him usurp the throne; Republic 2.359d.

   ____________________________________________________________

   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.