The Poems of Richard Corbet, late bishop of Oxford and of Norwich / 4th edition
Date: 2021-05-18T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: English poetry

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Title: The Poems of Richard Corbet, late bishop of Oxford and of Norwich

Author: Richard Corbet

Annotator: Octavius Gilchrist

Release date: May 18, 2021 [eBook #65375]
Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Bryan Ness and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE POEMS OF RICHARD CORBET, LATE BISHOP OF OXFORD AND OF NORWICH ***

THE
POEMS
OF
RICHARD CORBET,
LATE BISHOP OF OXFORD AND OF NORWICH.

THE FOURTH EDITION,
With considerable Additions.

TO WHICH ARE NOW ADDED,
“ORATIO IN FUNUS HENRICI PRINCIPIS,”
FROM ASHMOLE’S MUSEUM,
Biographical Notes, and a Life of the Author,
BY
OCTAVIUS GILCHRIST, F.S.A.

London:
PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, HURST, REES, AND ORME,
PATERNOSTER-ROW.
1807.

Invidebam devio ac solo loco

Opes camœnarum tegi:

At nunc frequentes, atque claros, nee procul,

Quum floreas inter viros.

Ausonius.

R. Taylor, and Co. Shoe Lane.

TO
MY FRIEND
THOMAS BLORE, Esq.
THIS VOLUME,
UNDERTAKEN AT HIS SUGGESTION, AND PROMOTED BY HIS ASSISTANCE,
IS INSCRIBED BY
THE EDITOR.

THE
LIFE OF THE AUTHOR.

The public interest has been of late years so strongly manifested in favour of the poets of the seventeenth century, that little apology appears necessary for the republication of the following Poems. It would, however, be equally vain and foolish in the editor to claim for the author a place among the higher class of poets, or to exalt his due praise by depreciating the merits of his contemporaries.—Claiming only for Cæsar what to Cæsar is due, it may without arrogance be presumed that these pages will not be found inferior to the poems of others which have been fortunately republished, or familiarised to the generality of readers through the popular medium of selections.

The author of the following poems (an account of whose life may be considered as a necessary appendage to these pages) is said to have descended from the antient family of the Corbets in Shropshire. It were too laborious and pedantic in a work of this nature to trace his pedigree, but I should be pleased to find any proofs of their attachment to him: yet as the bishop did not usually “conceal his love,” I suspect he received no mark of their regard, at least till his elevation conferred rather than received obligation by acknowledgment.

Richard Corbet, successively bishop of Oxford and Norwich, was born at the village of Ewell in Surrey, in the year 1582: he was the only son of Bennet, or Benedicta, and Vincent Corbet, who, from causes which I have not discovered, assumed the name of Poynter. His father, a man of some eminence for his skill in gardening, and who is celebrated by Ben Jonson in an elegy[1] alike honourable to the subject, the poet, and the friend, for his many amiable virtues, resided at Whitton, a hamlet in the parish of Twickenham, where the poet passed his declining days. Under the will of his father[2] he inherited sundry freehold lands and tenements lying in St. Augustine’s parish, Watling-street, London, and five hundred pounds in money, which was directed to be paid him by Bennet, the father’s wife and sole executrix, upon his attaining the age of twenty-five years. After receiving the rudiments of education at Westminster School, he entered in Lent term 1597-8 at Broadgate Hall, and the year following was admitted a student of Christ-Church College, Oxford. In 1605 he proceeded Master of Arts, and became celebrated as a wit and a poet.

The following early specimen of his humour is preserved in a collection of “Mery Passages and Jeastes,” Harl. MS. No. 6395: “Ben Jonson was at a tavern, and in comes bishop Corbet (but not so then) into the next room. Ben Jonson calls for a quart of raw wine, and gives it to the tapster. ‘Sirrah!’ says he, ‘carry this to the gentleman in the next chamber, and tell him I sacrifice my service to him.’ The fellow did, and in those terms. ‘Friend!’ says bishop Corbet, ‘I thank him for his love; but pr’ythee tell him from me that he is mistaken, for sacrifices are always burnt.’”

In 1612, upon the death of the amiable and accomplished Henry Prince of Wales,

“The expectancy and rose of the fair state,”

and the theme of many a verse; the University, overwhelmed with grief, more especially as he had been a student of Magdalen College under the tutorage of Mr. John Wilkinson, (“afterwards the unworthy president of that house,”) and desirous of testifying their respect for his memory, deputed Corbet, then one of the proctors, to pronounce a funeral oration; “who,” to use the words of Antony Wood, “very oratorically speeched it in St. Maries church, before a numerous auditory[3].” On the 13th of March in the following year he performed a similar ceremony in the Divinity School on the interment of sir Thomas Bodley, the munificent founder of the library known by his name.

Amid the religious dissensions at this period, encouraged and increased by James’s suspected inclination to popery, it was scarcely possible to avoid giving offence to the supporters of the various doctrinal opinions which in this confusion of faiths divided the people. At the head of the Church was Dr. George Abbott, a bigoted and captious Puritan: opposed to this disciple of Calvin was Laud, then growing into fame, who boldly supported the opinions of Arminius. With the latter Corbet coincided: but the undisguised publication of his faith had nearly proved fatal to his future prospects; for, “preaching the Passion sermon at Christ-Church, (1613,) he insisted on the article of Christ’s descending into hell, and therein grated upon Calvin’s manifest perverting of the true sense and meaning of it: for which, says Heylyn, he was so rattled up by the Repetitioner, (Dr. Robert Abbott, brother of the archbishop,) that if he had not been a man of a very great courage, it might have made him afraid of staying in the University. This, it was generally conceived, was not done without the archbishop’s setting on; but the best was, adds Heylyn, that none sunk under the burthen of these oppressions, if (like the camomile) they did not rise the higher by it[4].”

When James, in 1605[5], visited Oxford in his summer progress, the wits of the sister University vented their raillery at the entertainment given to the royal visitor[6]. Cambridge, which had long solicited the same honour, was in the year 1614-5 indulged with his presence. Many students from Oxford witnessed the ceremonial of his reception; and the local histories of the two Universities at that period, are replete with pasquinades and ballads sufficiently descriptive of their mutual animosities. An eye-witness declares, “Though I endured a great deal of penance by the way for this little pleasure, yet I would not have missed it, for that I see thereby the partiality of both sides—the Cambridge men pleasing and applauding themselves in all, and the Oxford men as fast condemning and detracting all that was done; wherein yet I commended Corbet’s modesty, whilst he was there; who being seriously dealt withal by some friends to say what he thought, answered, that he had left his malice and judgment at home, and came there only to commend[7].” Notwithstanding this conciliatory declaration, the opportunity of retorting upon the first assailants was too tempting to Corbet’s wit to be slighted; and immediately upon his return he composed the ballad, page 13, “To the tune of Bonny Nell.”—This humorous narrative excited several replies; the most curious of which was the one, in Latin and English, (at page 24,) written, perhaps, by sir Thomas Lake, afterwards secretary of state, who performed the part of Trico in the Cambridge play of Ignoramus, and who had a ring bequeathed him by the author, Ruggles[8].

Corbet appears, says Headley[9], to have been of that poetical party who, by inviting Ben Jonson to come to Oxford, rescued him from the arms of a sister University, who has long treated the Muses with indignity, and turned a hostile and disheartening eye on those who have added most celebrity to her name[10].

We do not find that Ben expressed any regret at the change of his situation: companions whose minds and pursuits were similar to his own, are not always to be found in the gross atmosphere of the muddy Cam, though easily met with on the more genial banks of the Isis:

Largior hic campos æther.

In 1616 he was recommended by the Convocation as a proper person to be elected to the college which Dr. Matthew Surtclyve, dean of Exeter, had lately erected at Chelsea, for maintaining polemical Divines to be employed in opposing the doctrines of Papists and Sectaries. Whether he obtained his election I have not learned: nor is it of much moment; for the establishment, as might be naturally foreseen from the circumstances of the times, soon declined from its original purpose[11].

Being now in a situation to indulge his inclinations, he in 1618 made a trip to France, from whence he wrote an “epistle to sir Thomas Aylesbury,” in which he gently laughs at his friend’s astronomical fondness; and composed a metrical description of his journey, from which we may conclude that he returned less disgusted with his native country, and less enamoured of the manners and habits of his new acquaintance, than is usual with the modern visitors of our transmarine neighbours.

He was now in holy orders; and, in the language of Antony Wood, “became a quaint preacher, and therefore much followed by ingenious men.” None of Corbet’s sermons are, I believe, in existence: the modesty that withheld his poems from the press, during his life, prevented his adding to the multitude of devotional discourses with which the country was at this period infested[12]. Those who are at all acquainted with the ecclesiastical oratory of James’s reign, will be at no loss to comprehend “honest Antony’s” description; but to those who are not, it may be sufficient to observe, that, of its peculiar excellencies and demerits, the sermons of bishop King, his contemporary, (which have been republished) are a complete “picture in little.”

About this time he appears, from the following characteristic letter[13], to have solicited promotion at the hands of Villiers duke of Buckingham:

“May it please your Grace

“To consider my two great losses this weeke: one in respect of his Majesty to whom I was to preach; the other in respect of my patron whom I was to visit. Yf this bee not the way to repare the later of my losses, I feare I am in danger to bee utterly undon. To press too neere a greate man is a meanness; to be put by, and to stand too far off, is the way to be forgotten: so Ecclesiasticus. In which mediocrity, could I hitt it, would I live and dy, my lord. I would neather press neere, nor stand far off; choosing rather the name of an ill courtier than a sawsy scholer.

“I am your Grace’s most humble servant,

“Richard Corbet.”

Christ’s Church,
this 26 Feb.

“Heer are newes, my noble lord, about us, that, in the point of alledgeance now in hand, all the Papists are exceeding orthodox; the only recusants are the Puritans.”

Of the nature of the object thus supplicated, my inquiries have not informed me: he was now dean of Christ-Church, vicar of Cassington near Woodstock in Oxfordshire, and prebendary of Bedminster secunda in the church of Sarum: it was, perhaps, the appointment of chaplain to the King, which he received about this time; and if to this period may be assigned the gratulatory poem at page 83, it should seem that Buckingham was not solicited in vain.

In 1619 he sustained a great loss in the decease of his amiable father, at a very advanced age; whose praise he has celebrated in the most honourable terms, and whose death he has lamented in the language of rational and tender regret.

When James paid a second visit to Oxford in 1621, Corbet, in his office of chaplain, preached before the monarch[14], who had presented him (as it seems) with a token of his favour, such as flattered in no small degree the vanity of the dean. The progress of the court and its followers is thus ludicrously described in an anonymous poem transcribed from Antony Wood’s papers[15] in Ashmole’s Museum:

The king and the court,
Desirous of sport,
Six days at Woodstock did lie;
Thither went the doctors,
And sattin-sleev’d proctors,
With the rest of the learned fry;

Whose faces did shine
With beere and with wine,
So fat, that it may be thought
University cheere,
With college strong beere,
Made them far better fed than taught.

A number beside,
With their wenches did ride,
(For scholars are always kind)
And still evermore,
While they rode before,
They were kissing their wenches behind.

A number on foot,
Without cloak or boot,
And yet with the court go they would;
Desirous to show
How far they could go
To do his high mightiness good.

The reverend Dean,
With his band starch’d clean,
Did preach before the King;
A ring was his pride
To his bandstrings tied,
Was not this a pretty thing?

The ring, without doubt,
Was the thing put him out,
And made him forget what was next;
For every one there
Will say, I dare swear,
He handled it more than his text.

With poetical badinage of this complexion the wits of the University of Oxford, with Corbet at their head, “who loved this boy’s play to the last,” abounded. While many of the pasquinades are lost, many, however, are still preserved among Ashmole’s papers: on most occasions Corbet was at least a match for his opponents, but this misfortune of the ring became a standing jest against him: it is alluded to at page 233; and it is demanded in another poem[16], if

He would provoke court wits to sing

The second part of bandstrings and the ring.

Upon the evening of the same Sunday, the students of Christ-Church, willing to show their respect for the royal visitor, obtained leave to present a play before the King; and they chose, with no great display of taste, Barten Holyday’s ΤΕΧΝΟΓΑΜΙΑ, or “The Marriage of the Arts,” which had been acted in Christ-Church hall the 13th of February, 1617. The play was so little relished, that the king was with difficulty persuaded to sit till its conclusion: the “enactors” became subjects of ridicule to the University; and, though Corbet and King rhymed in their favour, the laugh went against them.

Indeed the Oxonians were not more unfortunate in their theatrical representations on this than on former occasions. Upon the visit of James, in 1605, two out of three dramatic exhibitions, prepared at great expense and performed by the students, were, according to the testimony of an eye-witness, received with tædium, and rewarded with unconcealed disgust[17].

The writers of the poet’s life are silent as to the period of his marriage; and if I am unable to communicate any information on this point, it will not, I trust, be attributed to any parsimony of research, or indifference as to fact when conjecture can be substituted. Those who have made literary biography their study, know that it is frequently much easier to write many pages than to ascertain a date, and hence but too frequently ingenuity supplies the place of labour and inquiry: in the present instance, every record that suggested a probability of containing any memorial relative to the family of the subject of this biography has been inspected personally; but before the passing of the Marriage Act, nothing is more uncertain than the probable place of the celebration of that ceremony[18].

In this dearth of fact as to dates, I shall presume to suppose he married about 1625 Alice the only daughter of his fellow-collegian Dr. Leonard Hutton, a man of some eminence in his day as a divine and an antiquary, and whose character is thus drawn by Antony Wood with a felicity that rarely accompanies his pencil: “His younger years were beautified with all kind of polite learning, his middle with ingenuity and judgment, and his reverend years with great wisdom in government, having been often subdean of his college.”

This union of wit and beauty was not looked upon with indifference, nor was their epithalamium unsung, or the string touched by the hand of an unskilful master:

Come, all ye Muses, and rejoyce
At this your nursling’s happy choyce;
Come, Flora, strew the bridemaid’s bed,
And with a garland crown her head;
Or, if thy flowers be to seek,
Come gather roses at her cheek.
Come, Hymen, light thy torches, let
Thy bed with tapers be beset,
And if there be no fire by,
Come light thy taper at her eye:
In that bright eye there dwells a starre,
And wise-men by it guided are[19].

The offspring of this marriage were a daughter named Alice, and a son born the 10th of November, 1627, towards whom the beautiful poem at page 150 is an undecaying monument of paternal affection.

Of these descendants of the bishop I lament that I have discovered so little: if this volume should be fortunate enough to excite attention to its author, the loss may at some future period be supplied: they were both living when their grandmother, Anne Hutton, made her will in 1642, and the son administered to the testament in 1648.

In 1628 Corbet suffered a severe privation in the loss of his patron Villiers duke of Buckingham, assassinated by Felton on the 23d of August, who, whatever were his political crimes, was, like his amiable and indulgent master, a liberal promoter of literature and science, and to his death an encourager of Corbet’s studies. If, however, this event checked his hopes of promotion for a season, it did not leave him without a patron; for, upon the translation of Hewson to the see of Durham, (to make way for Dr. Duppa to be dean of that church,) he was elected bishop of Oxford the 30th of July, was consecrated at Lambeth the 19th of October, and installed the 3d of November, 1629; “though,” in the opinion of Wood, “in some respects unworthy of such an office[20].”

Warned by the many petulant remarks on the poetical character scattered throughout the account of Oxford writers, one is little surprised at this churlish remark on the part of honest Antony, who seems to have considered all poetry as

... inopes rerum, nugæque canoræ,

and its indulgence inconsistent with the clerical profession. Corbet was certainly no “precisian,” and perhaps his only fault was possessing a species of talent to which Antony had no pretension.

The bishopric of Oxford he held but a short time, being translated to a more active see, that of Norwich, in the month of April 1632; when a dispute arose as to his right of claim to the glebe sown previous to his vacating the vicarage: the opinion of the attorney-general, (Noy,) which is preserved in the Harleian collection of manuscripts[21], was in his favour, in as much as the translation was not his own act merely.

On the 9th of March, 1633, he preached before the king at Newmarket[22].

Scarcely was he seated in the episcopal chair of Norwich when Abbott died, and Laud, who had long exercised the authority of metropolitan, was two days afterwards (August 6th, 1633) preferred to the see of Canterbury. Having now “no rival near his throne,” in the warmth of his zeal he immediately applied himself to reform abuses and exact a conformity to the established church, the discipline of which had exceedingly relaxed during the ascendancy of his calvinistic predecessor. For this purpose Laud issued certain orders and instructions to the several bishops, insisting upon a strict examination into the state of religion and its ceremonies in their several dioceses; the result of which was transmitted to that prelate, and by him laid before the King. These representations, many of which are curious, are printed in the nineteenth volume of Rymer’s Fœdera. On his part, Corbet certified that he had suppressed the lectures of some factious men, and particularly that he had suspended one Bridges, curate of St. George’s parish, Norwich; but, upon submission, he had taken off his suspension. Among others, he had heard complaint of Mr. Ward[23], of Ipswich, for words in some sermons of his, for which he was called before the High Commission.

From the following conciliating epistle I conclude that Ward submitted, and was restored to his cure:

“Salutem in Christo.

“My worthie friend,

“I thank God for your conformitie, and you for your acknowledgment: stand upright to the church wherein you live; be true of heart to her governours; think well of her significant ceremonyes; and be you assured I shall never displace you of that room which I have given you in my affection; proove you a good tenant in my hart, and noe minister in my diocese hath a better landlord. Farewell! God Almightie blesse you with your whole congregation.

“From your faithful friend to serve you in Christ Jesus,

“Rich. Norwich[24].”

Ludham Hall,
the 6 of Oct. 1633.

The zeal of Laud did not rest here: he set sedulously about suppressing the Dutch and Walloon congregations, of which there were several in London, Norwich, and other places.

It will be perhaps necessary to observe, that the Dutch, the Walloons, and the French, who had continued to refuge in England from the reign of Edward the Sixth, had obtained many privileges from former kings, and among others, the liberty of celebrating divine service after their own, that is, the presbyterian, manner. Their congregations were scattered over the kingdom; and at this period there was at Norwich one of the Dutch, and one of the Walloons, the latter of which carried on an extensive manufacture of woollen cloths, for the vending of which, they in 1564 obtained a lease of the chapel of St. Mary the Less, which they fitted up as a hall or market-place for that purpose. Where they performed divine service before the year 1619 I know not, but in that year Samuel Harsnet licensed the Walloon congregation to use during his pleasure the Bishop’s chapel, or chapel of the Virgin Mary[25]. This indulgence was continued during the government of his successor, Francis White. But the intolerance of Laud would be content with nothing short of conformity; Corbet consequently prepared to dislodge them by the following characteristic letter:

“To the minister and elders of the French church, in Norwich, these:

“Salutem in Christo.

“You have promised me from time to time to restore my stolen bell, and to glaze my lettice windows. After three yeeres consultation (bysides other pollution) I see nothing mended. Your discipline, I know, care not much for a consecrated place, and anye other roome in Norwiche that hath but bredth and length may serve your turne as well as the chappel: wherefore I say unto you, without a miracle, Lazare, prodi foras! Depart, and hire some other place for your irregular meetings: you shall have time to provide for yourselves betwixte this and Whitsontide. And that you may not think I mean to deale with you as Felix dyd with St. Paul, that is, make you afraid, to get money, I shall keepe my word with you, which you did not with me, and as neer as I can be like you in nothinge.

“Written by me, Richard Norwich, with myne own hand, Dec. 26, anno 1634.”

The congregation remonstrated to Laud, in the February following, against the commands of their poetical pastor; but the archbishop insisted that his instructions should stand, and obedience be yielded to his injunctions[26].

While, under the direction of the Archbishop, he was thus severe with the heterodox, he was equally zealous in supporting the establishment of which he was a dignitary: exertions were now making by the King, the Clergy, and indeed all orders of people, for the restoring Saint Paul’s cathedral, which had remained in ruins since its second destruction by fire, early in Elizabeth’s reign. In 1631 a special commission was issued by the King, for the purpose of collecting money, to be applied to this purpose. The subscription went on tardily till Laud contributed a hundred pounds, to be renewed annually, and “Corbet bishop of Norwich (then almoner to the king) giving four hundred pounds, multitudes of others, says Stowe, for eleven years together brought in their monies very plentifully[27].” Nor did his liberality stop here: Wood says[28] that in addition to this contribution, which at the time we speak of was an enormous bounty, he gave money to many needy ministers, thereby to excite the donations of their wealthier brethren; and he pronounced the following admonitory, persuasive and satirical address[29] to the clergy of his diocese:

“Saint Paul’s church! One word in the behalf of Saint Paul; he hath spoken many in ours: he hath raised our inward temples. Let us help to requite him in his outward. We admire commonly those things which are oldest and greatest: old monuments, and high buildings, do affect us above measure: and what is the reason? Because what is oldest cometh nearest God for antiquity: and what is greatest, comes nearest his works for spaciousness and magnitude: so that in honouring these we honour God, whom old and great do seem to imitate. Should I commend Paul’s to you for the age, it were worth your thought and admiration. A thousand years, though it should fall now, were a pretty climacterical. See the bigness, and your eye never yet beheld such a goodly object. It’s worth the reparation, though it were but for a land mark; but, beloved, it is a church, and consecrated to God. From Charles to Ethelbert she hath been the joy of princes. It was once dedicated to Diana (at least some part of it); but the idolatry lasted not long. And see a mystery in the change: Saint Paul confuting twice the idol, there in person, where the cry was, ‘Great is Diana of the Ephesians!’ and here: by proxy. Paul installed, where Diana is thrust out. It did magnify the creation, it was taken out of the darkness: light is not the clearer for it, but stronger and more wonderful: and it doth beautify this church, because it was taken from pollution. The stones are not the more durable, but the happier for it. It is worthy the standing for the age, the time since it was built, and for the structure, so stately an edifice is it: it is worthy to stand for a memorial of it from which it is redeemed, but chiefly for his house that dwells therein. We are bound to do it, for the service sake that is done in it. Are we not beholden to it, every man, either to the body, or the choir: for a walk or a warbling note: for a prayer or a thorough-path? Some way or other, there is a topick may make room for your benevolence.

“It hath twice suffered Martyrdom: and both by fire, in the time of Henry the Sixth and the third of Elizabeth.

“Saint Paul complained of Stoning twice; his church of firing: stoning she wants, indeed, and a good stoning would repair her.

“Saint Faith holds her up, I confess. Oh that works were sainted to keep her upright! The first way of building churches was by ways of benevolence; but then there needed no petition: men came on so fast that they were commanded to be kept back, but repairing now, needs petition. Benevolence was a fire once had need to be quenched: it is a spark, now and needs blowing on it: blow it hard, and put it out. Some petitions there are, for pulling down of such an isle, or changing lead for thack: so far from reparation, that our suit is to demolish. If to deny this be persecution, if to repair churches be innovation, I’ll be of that religion too.

“I remember a tale in Henry Steevens, in his Apology for Herodotus, or in some of the Colloquies of Erasmus, which would have us believe that times were so depraved in popery, that all œconomical discipline was lost by observing the œcumenical; that if an ingenious person would ask his father’s blessing, he must get a dispensation and have a licence from the bishop.

“Believe me when I match this tale with another. Since Christmas I was sued to (and I have it under the hands of the minister and the whole parish) that I would give way to the adorning of the church within and without, to build a stone wall about the church-yard which till now had but a hedge. I took it for a flout at first, but it proved a suit indeed; they durst not mend a fault of forty years, without a licence. Churchwardens, though they say it not, yet I doubt me most of them think it, that foul spirits in the Gospel said, ‘O thou Bishop or Chancellor, what! art thou come to torment us before the time, that all is come down to the ground?’ The truth went out once in this phrase: ‘Zelus domûs tuæ exedit ossa mea,’ but now vice versa, it is, ‘Zelus meus exedit domum tuam.’ I hope I gall none here.

“Should Christ say that to us now which he said once to the Jews, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will build it up again:’ we would quickly know his meaning not to be the material temple. Three years can scarce promoove three foot.

“I am verily persuaded, were it not for the pulpit and the pews, (I do not now mean the altar and the font for the two sacraments, but for the pulpit and the stools as you call them;) many churches had been down that stand. Stately pews are now become tabernacles, with rings and curtains to them. There wants nothing but beds to hear the word of God on; we have casements, locks and keys, and cushions; I had almost said, bolsters and pillows: and for those we love the church. I will not guess what is done within them, who sits, stands, or lies asleep, at prayers, communion, &c., but this I dare say, they are either to hide some vice or to proclaim one; to hide disorder, or proclaim pride.

“In all other contributions justice precedes charity. For the King, or for poor, as you are rated you must give and pay. It is not so in benevolence. Here Charity rates herself; her gift is arbitrary, and her law is the conscience. He that stays till I persuade him, gives not all his own money: I give half that have procured it. He that comes persuaded gives his own; but takes off more than he brought, God paying use for nothing. But now comes your turn to speak, or God in you by your hands: for so he useth to speak many times by the hands of Moses and Aaron, and by the hands of Esay and Ezekiel, and by the hands of you his minor prophets. Now prosper, O Lord! the works of these hands! O prosper Thou our handy work! Amen.”

He was not fated, however, to witness the elevation of the temple in favour of which he was thus active and benevolent; indeed he was then consuming with lingering disorders. “Corbet, bishop of Norwich,” says the garrulous correspondent of lord Strafford, “is dying; the best poet of all the bishops in England. He hath incurable diseases upon him, and hath been said to be dead[30].” This was written on the 30th of July, 1635, and he had rested from his labours two days preceding. He was buried in the cathedral church of his diocese, where a large stone was laid over his remains, to which a brass plate was affixed, bearing his arms and the following inscription:

Ricardus Corbet, Theologiæ Doctor,
Ecclesiæ Cathedralis Christi Oxoniensis
Primum Alumnus, deinde Decanus, exinde
Episcopus, illinc huc translatus, et
Hinc in cœlum Jul. 28. An. 1635.

By his will “he commits and commends the nurture and maintenance of his son and daughter to the faythful and loving care of his mother-in-law Anne Hutton;” from which, and the total silence as to his wife, I conclude he outlived her—and with a legacy of one thousand pounds to his daughter Alice, to be paid at her attaining the age of seventeen, or upon her marriage, he enjoins her not to marry without the consent of her grandmother. By the further provisions of his testament, his son was to be joined with Anne Hutton in the administration upon his attaining the age of seventeen; and in case of the decease of both, the whole was to devolve upon his daughter Alice.

Such was the end of this learned and ingenious prelate and poet, of whose works I have undertaken the revision, and in collecting the scattered memorials for whose biography,

et etiam disjecta membra poetæ,

I have, I hope not unprofitably to myself or others, employed some leisure hours.

His person, if we may rely upon a fine portrait of him in the hall of Christ-Church, Oxford, was dignified, and his frame above the common size: one of his companions[31] says he had

A face that might heaven to affection draw:

and Aubrey says, he had heard that “he had an admirable grave and venerable aspect.”

In no record of his life is there the slightest trace of malevolence or tyranny: “he was,” says Fullers[32], “of a courteous carriage, and no destructive nature to any who offended him, counting himself plentifully repaired with a jest upon him.” Benevolent, generous and spirited in his public character; sincere, amiable, and affectionate in private life; correct, eloquent, and ingenious as a poet; he appears to have deserved and enjoyed through life the patronage and friendship of the great, and the applause and estimation of the good.

Apology is not necessary for his writings, or it might be urged that they were not intended for publication by their author. “His merits are disclosed,” and, at the distance of near a century and a half, are now again submitted to the censure of the public.

His panegyric is liberal without grossness, and complimentary without servility: his satires on the Puritans, a pestilent race which Corbet fortunately did not live to see ascendant, and which soon after his decease sunk literature and the arts in “the Serbonian bog” of ignorance and fanaticism, evince his skill in severe and ludicrous reproof; and the addresses to his son and his parents, while they are proofs of his filial and parental regard, bear testimony to his command over the finer feelings. But the predominant faculty of his mind was wit, which he employed with most success when directed ironically: of this the address “to the Ghost of Wisdome,” and “the Distracted Puritane,” are memorable examples. Indeed he was unable to overcome his talent for humour, even when circumstance and character concurred to repress its indulgence. Of this propensity the following anecdotes, copied verbatim from Aubrey’s MSS. in Mus. Ashmole[33], are curious proofs, and may not improperly close this account of a character which they tend forcibly to illustrate.

“After he was doctor of divinity, he sang ballads at the Crosse at Abingdon; on a market-day he and some of his comrades were at the taverne by the Crosse, (which, by the way, was then the finest of England; I remember it when I was a freshman; it was admirable curious Gothicque architecture, and fine figures in the nitches; ’twas one of those built by king ... for his queen.) The ballad-singer complayned he had no custome—he could not put off his ballads. The jolly Doctor puts off his gowne, and puts on the ballad-singer’s leathern jacket, and being a handsome man, and a rare full voice, he presently vended a great many, and had a great audience.

“After the death of Dr. Goodwin, he was made deane of Christ-Church. He had a good interest with great men, as you may finde in his poems; and that with the then great favourite the duke of Bucks, his excellent wit ever ’twas of recommendation to him. I have forgot the story; but at the same time Dr. Fell thought to have carried it, Dr. Corbet put a pretty trick on him to let him take a journey to London for it, when he had alreadie the graunt of it.

“His conversation was extreme pleasant. Dr. Stubbins was one of his cronies; he was a jolly fat doctor, and a very good housekeeper. As Dr. Corbet and he were riding in Lob-lane in wet weather, (’tis an extraordinary deepe dirty lane,) the coach fell, and Corbet said, that Dr. S. was up to the elbows in mud, and he was up to the elbows in Stubbins.

“A. D. 1628, he was made bishop of Oxford; and I have heard that he had an admirable grave and venerable aspect.

“One time as he was confirming, the country people pressing in to see the ceremonie, said he, ‘Beare off there! or I’ll confirm ye with my staffe.’—Another time, being to lay his hand on the head of a man very bald, he turns to his chaplaine, and said, ‘Some dust, Lushington,’ to keepe his hand from slipping.—There was a man with a great venerable beard; said the bishop, ‘You, behind the beard!’

“His chaplaine, Dr. Lushington, was a very learned and ingenious man, and they loved one another. The Bishop would sometimes take the key of the wine-cellar, and he and his chaplaine would go and lock themselves in and be merry; then first he layes down his episcopal hood, ‘There layes the doctor;’ then he putts off his gowne, ‘There layes the bishop;’ then ’twas, ‘Here’s to thee, Corbet;’—‘Here’s to thee, Lushington.’”

One word on the subject of the former editions; which bear dates 1647, 1648, and 1672. The first and last impressions correspond in their contents, and the publisher of the latter has also copied, for the most part, the errors of his predecessor, which are so numerous as to render the poems not unfrequently unintelligible. I must observe, however, from the information of Mr. Park, that many copies of the first edition conclude at page 53. The additions extend the volume to 85 pages. The only impression with any pretension to accuracy is that of 1648, which, from its internal evidence, I suspect was published under the eye of the Bishop’s family; I have therefore retained the Preface. It contains only twenty-four poems.

An edition bearing the date of 1663 is cited in Willis’s Cathedrals; but, it is believed, through mistake.

CONTENTS.

[Additions to the former Impressions of Corbet’s Poems are distinguished by an Asterisk, thus: *]

| | Page
* | Life of the Author | v
| Preface to the Edition of 1648 | lxiii
* | Commendatory Poems | lxv
| An Elegie on Dr. Ravis | 3
* | Thomæ Coriato de Odcombe | 9
| To Thomas Coryate | 11
| A certaine Poem, &c. to the tune of “Bonny Nell” | 13
* | An Answer to the former Song, &c. | 22
* | Responsio, &c. | 25
* | Additamenta superiori Cantico | 42
| On the Lady Arabella Stuart | 43
| Upon Mistriss Mallet; an unhandsome gentlewoman who made love unto him | 47
| In quendam Anniversariorum Scriptorem | 52
| An Answer to the same, by Dr. Price | 54
| In Poetam exauctoratum et emeritum | 56
* | On Francis Beaumont, then newly dead | 58
| An Elegie on the late Lord William Howard of Effingham | 59
| To the Lord Mordaunt, upon his returne from the North | 66
* | To the Prince | 82
| A Newe-Years Gift to my Lorde Duke of Buckingham | 83
| A Letter to Sir Thomas Aylesbury | 65
| Dr. Corbet’s Journey into France | 94
| An Exhortation to Mr. John Hamon | 103
| An Elegie upon the Death of Queen Anne | 112
| An Elegie upon the Death of his owne Father | 118
| An Elegie upon the Death of the Lady Haddington | 123
| On the Christ-Church Play at Woodstock | 131
| A Letter to the Duke of Buckingham, being with the Prince in Spaine | 134
| On the Earle of Dorset’s Death | 142
| To the Newe-born Prince | 146
| On the Birth of the young Prince Charles | 148
| To his Son Vincent Corbet | 149
| An Epitaph on Dr. Donne, Dean of Pauls | 152
* | Certain few Woordes spoken concerninge one Benet Corbett after her decease | 154
| Iter Boreale | 156
| On Mr. Rice, the Manciple of Christ-Church in Oxford | 205
| On Henry Bollings | 206
| On John Dawson, Butler of Christ-Church | 207
| On Great Tom of Christ-Church | 209
| R.C. | 212
| A proper new Ballad, entituled The Faeryes Farewell | 213
* | A Non Sequitur | 218
| Nonsence | 220
* | The Country Life | 222
| To the Ghost of Robert Wisdome | 228
| An Epitaph on Thomas Jonce | 230
| To the Ladies of the New Dresse | 232
* | The Ladies’ Answer | 233
* | Corbet’s Reply | 234
| On Fairford Windows | 235
* | Another on the same | 239
| The Distracted Puritane | 243
* | Oratio in Funus Henrici Principis | 249
* | In Obitum Domini Thomæ Bodleii | 260

TO THE READER.

(From Edition 1648.)

READER,

I heere offer to view a collection of certaine peices of poetry, which have flowne from hand to hand, these many yeares, in private papers, but were never fixed for the publique eie of the worlde to looke upon, till now[34]. If that witt which runnes in every veyne of them seeme somewhat out of fashion, because tis neither amorous nor obscene, thou must remember that the author, although scarse a Divine when many of them were written, had not only so masculine but even so modest a witt also, that he would lett nothing fall from his pen but what he himselfe might owne, and never blush, when he was a bishop; little imagining the age would ever come, when his calling should prove more out of fashion than his witt could. As concerning any thing else to be added in commendation of the author, I shall never thinke of it; for as for those men who did knowe him, or ever heard of him, they need none of my good opinion: and as for those who knew him not, and never so much as heard of him, I am sure he needs none of theirs.

Farewell.

COMMENDATORY POEMS.

TO
THE DEANE,
(From Flower in Northamptonshire, 1625,)
NOW THE WORTHY BISHOP OF NORWICH.

By ROBERT GOMERSALL[35].

Still to be silent, or to write in prose,
Were alike sloth, such as I leave to those
Who either want the grace of wit, or have
Untoward arguments: like him that gave
Life to the flea, or who without a guest
Would prove that famine was the only feast;

Self tyrants, who their braines doubly torment,

Both for their matter and their ornament.

If these do stutter sometimes, and confesse

That they are tired, we could expect no lesse.

But when my matter is prepared and fit,
When nothing’s wanting but an equal wit,
I need no Muse’s help to ayde me on,
Since that my subject is my Helicon.
And such are you: O give me leave, dear sir,
(He that is thankful is no flatterer,)
To speak full truth: Wherever I find worth,
I shew I have it if I set it forth:
You read yourself in these; here you may see
A ruder draft of Corbet’s infancy.
For I professe, if ever I had thought

Needed not blush if publish’d, were there ought

Which was call’d mine durst beare a critic’s view,

I was the instrument, but the author you.

I need not tell you of our health, which here

Must be presum’d, nor yet shall our good cheare

Swell up my paper, as it has done me,
Or as the Mayor’s feast does Stowe’s History:
Without an early bell to make us rise,
Health calls us up and novelty; our eyes
Have divers objects still on the same ground,

As if the Earth had each night walk’d her round

To bring her best things hither: ’tis a place

Not more the pride of shires then the disgrace,

Which I’de not leave, had I my Dean to boot,
For the large offers of the cloven-foot
Unto our Saviour, but you not being here
’Tis to me, though a rare one, but a shire;

A place of good earth, if compared with worse,

Which hath a lesser part in Adam’s curse:
Or, for to draw a simile from the High’st,
Tis like unto salvation without Christ,
A fairly situate prison: When again

Shall I enjoy that friendship, and that braine?

When shall I once more hear, in a few words,

What all the learning of past times affords?

Austin epitomiz’d, and him that can

To make him clear contract Tertullian.

But I detain you from them: Sir, adieu!

You read their works, but let me study you.

ON
Dr. CORBET’S MARRIAGE.

(From “Wit Restored,” 8vo. 1658.)

Come all yee Muses and rejoice
At your Apolloe’s happy choice;
Phœbus has conquer’d Cupid’s charme;
Fair Daphne flys into his arm.
If Daphne be a tree, then mark,
Apollo is become the barke.
If Daphne be a branch of bay,
He weares her for a crowne to-day:
O happy bridegroom! which dost wed
Thyself unto a virgin’s bed.
Let thy love burne with hot desire,
She lacks no oil to feed the fire.
You know not poore Pigmalion’s lot,
Nor have you a mere idol got.
You no Ixion, you no proud
Juno makes embrace a cloud.
Looke how pure Diana’s skin
Appeares as it is shadow’d in
A chrystal streame; or look what grace
Shines in fair Venus’ lovely face,
Whilst she Adonis courts and woos;
Such beauties, yea and more than those,
Sparkle in her; see but her soul,
And you will judge those beauties foul.
Her rarest beauty is within,
She’s fairest where she is not seen;
Now her perfection’s character
You have approv’d, and chosen her.
O precious! she at this wedding
The jewel weares—the marriage ring.
Her understanding’s deep: like the
Venetian duke, you wed the sea;
A sea deep, bottomless, profound,
And which none but yourself may sound.
Blind Cupid shot not this love-dart;
Your reason chose, and not your heart;
You knew her little, and when her
Apron was but a muckender,
When that same coral which doth deck
Her lips she wore about her neck:
You courted her, you woo’d her, not
Out of a window, she was got
And born your wife; it may be said
Her cradle was her marriage-bed.
The ring, too, was layd up for it
Untill her finger was growne fit:
You once gave her to play withal
A babie, and I hope you shall
This day your ancient gift renew,
So she will do the same for you:
In virgin wax imprint, upon
Her breast, your own impression;
You may (there is no treason in ’t)
Coine sterling, now you have a mint.
You are now stronger than before,
Your side hath in it one ribb more.
Before she was akin to me
Only in soul and amity;
But now we are, since shee’s your bride,
In soul and body both allyde:
’Tis this has made me less to do,
And I in one can honour two.
This match a riddle may be styled,
Two mothers now have but one child;
Yet need we not a Solomon,
Each mother here enjoyes her own.
Many there are I know have tried
To make her their own lovely bride;
But it is Alexander’s lot
To cut in twaine the Gordian knot:
Claudia, to prove that she was chast,
Tyed but a girdle to her wast,
And drew a ship to Rome by land:
But now the world may understand
Here is a Claudia too; fair bride,
Thy spotlesse innocence is tried;
None but thy girdle could have led
Our Corbet to a marriage bed.
Come, all ye Muses, and rejoice
At this your nurslings happy choice:
Come, Flora, strew the bridemaid’s bed,
And with a garland crowne her head;
Or if thy flowers be to seek,
Come gather roses at her cheek.
Come, Hymen, light thy torches, let
Thy bed with tapers be beset,
And if there be no fire by,
Come light thy taper at her eye;
In that bright eye there dwells a starre,
And wise men by it guided are.
In those delicious eyes there be
Two little balls of ivory:
How happy is he then that may
With these two dainty balls goe play.
Let not a teare drop from that eye,
Unlesse for very joy to cry.
O let your joy continue! may
A whole age be your wedding-day!
O happy virgin! is it true
That your deare spouse embraceth you?
Then you from heaven are not farre,
But sure in Abraham’s bosom are.
Come, all ye Muses, and rejoyce
At your Apollo’s happy choice.

VERSES IN HONOUR OF
BISHOP CORBET,
Found in a blank leaf of his Poems in MS.

If flowing wit, if verses writ with ease,
If learning void of pedantry can please;
If much good-humour joined to solid sense,
And mirth accompanied with innocence,
Can give a poet a just right to fame,
Then Corbet may immortal honours claim;
For he these virtues had, and in his lines
Poetic and heroic spirit shines;

Though bright yet solid, pleasant but not rude,

With wit and wisdom equally endued.

Be silent, Muse, thy praises are too faint,

Thou want’st a power this prodigy to paint,

At once a poet, prelate, and a saint.

J. C.

UPON MY GOOD LORD
THE BISHOP OF NORWICHE,
RICHARD CORBET,
WHO DYED JULY 28, 1635,
AND LYES BURIED IN HIS CATHEDRAL CHURCHE.

[By Mr. JOHN TAYLOR of Norwich:
From the Cabinet, published there in 1795.]

Ye rural bardes who haunte the budding groves,

Tune your wilde reeds to sing the wood-larkes loves,

And let the softe harpe of the hawthorn vale

Melt in sweete euloge to the nightingale;

Yet haplie, Drummond, well thy muse might raise

Aires not earth-born to suit my raven’s praise.

Raven he was, yet was no gloomie fowle,
Merrie at hearte, though innocente of soule;
Where’er he perkt, the birds that came anighe
Constrayned caught the humour of his eye:

Under that shade no spights and wrongs were spred,

Care came not nigh with his uncomlie head.

Somewhile the thicke embranching trees amonge,

Where Isis doth his waters leade alonge,

Kissinge with modeste lippe the holie soyle,

Reflecting backe each hallowed grove the while;

Here did my raven trie his dulcive note,

Charming old Science with his mellow throat.

Sometimes with scholiasts deep in anciente lore,

Through learnings long defyles he would explore;

Then with keene wit untie the perplext knot
Of Aristotle or the cunning Scot;
Anon loud laughter shook the arched hall,
For mirth stood redy at his potente call.

Oxforde, thou couldst not binde his outspred wing,

My raven flew where bade his princelye king;
Norwiche must honours give he did not crave,
Norwiche must lend his palace and his grave:

And that kinde hearte which gave such vertue birth

Must here be shrouded in the greedie earth.

Ofte hath thy humble lay-clerke led along,

When thou wert by, the eve or matin song;

And oftimes rounde thy marble shall he strole,

To chaunte sad requiems to thy soothed soul;—

Sleep on, till Gabriel’s trump shall break thy sleep,

And thou and I one heavenlie holiday shall keep.

Bp. Corbet’s Poems.

DR. THOMAS RAVIS.

In the following tribute to the memory of a fellow-collegian, and predecessor in the deanery of Christ Church, it will not be too much to conjecture that Corbet was urged by gratitude for kindness experienced while the latter was young. The “Elegie” was evidently written immediately upon the interment of its subject, as towards its conclusion he complains that no tomb was raised over his remains; a complaint which was soon after obviated, when a fair monument was erected, bearing the following inscription, which contains all that is necessary to be told here of the circumstances of his life and character:

“MEMORIÆ SACRUM.

Thomas Ravis, claris natalibus Mauldenæ in Suthreia natus, Regius Alumnus in Schola Westmonasteriensi educatus, in Academiam Oxoniensem adscitus, omnes academicos honores consequutus, et magistratibus perfunctus, Decanus Ecclesiæ Christi ibidem constitutus, et bis Academiæ Pro-Cancellarius. Unde ob doctrinam, gravitatem, et spectatam prudentiam, à Rege Jacobo, primum ad Episcopatum Glocestrensem provectus, deinde ad Londinensem translatus, et demum à Christo, dum Ecclesiæ, Patriæ, Principi vigilaret, in cœlestem patriam evocatus, placide pieque emigravit, et quod mortale fuit, certa spe resurgendi, hic deposuit, die 14 Decembris, An. salutis 1609.”

AN ELEGIE
WRITTEN UPON THE DEATH OF
DR. RAVIS,
BISHOP OF LONDON.

When I past Paules, and travell’d in that walke

Where all oure Brittaine-sinners sweare and talk[36];

Ould Harry-ruffians, bankerupts, southsayers,

And youth, whose cousenage is as ould as theirs;

And then beheld the body of my lord
Trodd under foote by vice that he abhorr’d;
It wounded me the Landlord of all times

Should let long lives and leases to their crimes,

And to his springing honour did afford

Scarce soe much time as to the prophet’s gourd.

Yet since swift flights of virtue have apt ends,

Like breath of angels, which a blessing sends,

And vanisheth withall, whilst fouler deeds
Expect a tedious harvest for bad seeds;
I blame not fame and nature if they gave,

Where they could give no more, their last, a grave.

And wisely doe thy greived freinds forbeare
Bubbles and alabaster boyes to reare
On thy religious dust: for men did know
Thy life, which such illusions cannot show:
For thou hast trod among those happy ones
Who trust not in their superscriptions,
Their hired epitaphs, and perjured stone,
Which oft belyes the soule when shee is gon;
And durst committ thy body, as it lyes,
To tongues of living men, nay unborne eyes.
What profits thee a sheet of lead? What good
If on thy coarse a marble quarry stood?

Let those that feare their rising purchase vaults,

And reare them statues to excuse their faults;

As if, like birds that peck at painted grapes,

Their judge knew not their persons from their shapes.

Whilst thou assured, through thy easyer dust

Shall rise at first; they would not though they must.

Nor needs the Chancellor boast, whose pyramis
Above the host and altar reared is[37];
For though thy body fill a viler roome,

Thou shalt not change deedes with him for his tombe.

THOMÆ CORIATO DE ODCOMBE.

The following panegyric on the hero of Odcombe, Thomas Coryate, a pedantic coxcomb, with just brains enough to be ridiculous, to whom the world is much more indebted for becoming “the whetstone of the wits” than for any doings of his own, and the particulars of whose life and peregrinations may be found in every collection of biography, is printed in the Odcombian Banquet, 1611, 4to. sign. I. 3.

The Latin lines have been omitted in the former impressions of Bishop Corbet’s poems.

SPECTATISSIMO, PUNCTISQUE OMNIBUS DIGNISSIMO,
THOMÆ CORIATO DE ODCOMBE,
PEREGRINANTI,
PEDESTRIS ORDINIS, EQUESTRISQUE FAMÆ.

Quod mare transieris, quod rura urbesque pedester,

Jamque colat reduces patria læta pedes:

Quodque idem numero tibi calceus hæret, et illo

Cum corio redeas, quo Coriatus abis:

Fatum omenque tui miramur nominis, ex quo

Calcibus et soleis fluxit aluta tuis.

Nam quicunque cadem vestigia tentat, opinor

Excoriatus erit, ni Coriatus eat.

IN LIBRUM SUUM.

De te pollicitus librum es, sed in te

Est magnus tuus hic liber libellus.

TO THOMAS CORYATE.

I do not wonder, Coryate, that thou hast

Over the Alpes, through France and Savoy past,

Parch’d on thy skin, and founder’d in thy feete,

Faint, thirstie, lowsy, and didst live to see ’t.

Though these are Roman sufferings, and do shew

What creatures back thou hadst could carry so,

All I admire is thy returne, and how

Thy slender pasterns could thee beare, when now

Thy observations with thy braine ingendered,

Have stuft thy massy and voluminous head

With mountaines, abbies, churches, synagogues,

Preputial offals, and Dutch dialogues:

A burthen far more grievous then the weight

Of wine or sleep; more vexing than the freight

Of fruit and oysters, which lade many a pate,
And send folks crying home from Billingsgate.
No more shall man with mortar on his head
Set forwards towards Rome: No! thou art bred
A terror to all footmen, and all porters,

And all laymen that will turne Jews exhorters,

To flie their conquered trade. Proud England then

Embrace this luggage[38], which the Man of men

Hath landed here, and change thy well-a-day!

Into some homespun welcome roundelay.

Send of this stuffe thy territories thorough

To Ireland, Wales, and Scottish, Eddenborough.

There let this booke be read and understood,

Where is no theame nor writer halfe so good.

A CERTAIN POEM,

As it was presented in Latine by Divines and others before His Majesty in Cambridge, by way of Enterlude, styled Liber novus de Adventu Regis ad Cantabrigiam. Faithfully done into English, with some liberal Additions. Made rather to be sunge than read, to the Tune of Bonny Nell.

(The Notes are from a MS. copy in the Editor’s possession.)

It is not yet a fortnight since
Lutetia[39] entertain’d our prince,
And vented hath a studied toy
As long[40] as was the siege of Troy:
And spent herself for full five days
In speeches, exercise, and plays.

To trim the town, great care before
Was tane by th’ lord vice-chancellor;
Both morn and even he cleans’d the way,
The streets he gravelled thrice a day:
One strike of March-dust for to see
No proverb[41] would give more than he.

Their colledges were new be-painted,

Their founders eke were new be-sainted;

Nothing escap’d, nor post, nor door,

Nor gate, nor rail, nor bawd, nor whore:

You could not know (Oh strange mishap!)

Whether you saw the town or map.

But the pure house of Emanuel[42]
Would not be like proud Jesabel,
Nor shew her self before the king
An hypocrite, or painted thing:
But, that the ways might all prove fair,
Conceiv’d a tedious mile of prayer.

Upon the look’d-for seventh[43] of March,
Outwent the townsmen all in starch,
Both band and beard, into the field,
Where one a speech could hardly wield;
For needs he would begin his stile,
The king being from him half a mile.

They gave the king a piece of plate,
Which they hop’d never came too late;
But cry’d, Oh! look not in, great king,
For there is in it just nothing:
And so prefer’d with tune and gate,
A speech as empty as their plate.

Now, as the king came neer the town,
Each one ran crying up and down,
Alas poor Oxford, thou’rt undone,
For now the king’s past Trompington,
And rides upon his brave gray dapple,
Seeing the top of Kings-Colledge chappel.

Next rode his lordship[44] on a nag,
Whose coat was blue[45], whose ruff was shag,
And then began his reverence
To speak most eloquent non-sense:
See how (quoth he) most mighty prince,
For very joy my horse doth wince.

What cryes the town? What we? (said he)

What cryes the University?

What cry the boys? What ev’ry thing?

Behold, behold, yon comes the king:

And ev’ry period he bedecks

With En & Ecce venit Rex.

Oft have I warn’d (quoth he) our dirt
That no silk stockings should be hurt;
But we in vain strive to be fine,
Unless your graces sun doth shine;
And with the beams of your bright eye,
You will be pleas’d our streets to dry.

Now come we to the wonderment
Of Christendom, and eke of Kent,
The Trinity; which to surpass,
Doth deck her spokesman[46] by a glass:
Who, clad in gay and silken weeds,
Thus opes his mouth, hark how he speeds.

I wonder what your grace doth here,
Who have expected been twelve year,
And this your son, fair Carolus,
That is so Jacobissimus[47]:
Here’s none, of all, your grace refuses,
You are most welcome to our Muses.

Although we have no bells to jangle,
Yet can we shew a fair quadrangle,
Which, though it ne’re was grac’d with king,
Yet sure it is a goodly thing:
My warning’s short, no more I’le say,
Soon you shall see a gallant play.

But nothing was so much admir’d,
As were their plays so well attir’d;
Nothing did win more praise of mine,
Then did their actors most divine[48]:
So did they drink their healths divinely;
So did they dance and skip so finely.

Their plays had sundry grave wise factors,
A perfect diocess of actors
Upon the stage; for I am sure that
There was both bishop, pastor, curat:
Nor was their labour light, or small,
The charge of some was pastoral.

Our plays were certainly much worse,
For they had a brave hobby-horse,
Which did present unto his grace
A wondrous witty ambling pace:
But we were chiefly spoyl’d by that
Which was six hours of God knows what[49].

His lordship then was in a rage,
His lordship lay upon the stage,
His lordship cry’d, All would be marr’d:
His lordship lov’d a-life the guard,
And did invite those mighty men,
To what think you? Even to a Hen.

He knew he was to use their might
To help to keep the door at night,
And well bestow’d he thought his hen,
That they might Tolebooth[50] Oxford men:
He thought it did become a lord
To threaten with that bug-bear word.

Now pass we to the civil law,
And eke the doctors of the spaw,
Who all perform’d their parts so well,
Sir Edward Ratcliff[51] bore the bell,
Who was, by the kings own appointment,
To speak of spells, and magick oyntment.

The doctors of the civil law
Urg’d ne’re a reason worth a straw;
And though they went in silk and satten,

They Thomson-like[52] clip’d the kings Latine;

But yet his grace did pardon then

All treasons against Priscian.

Here no man spake ought to the point,
But all they said was out of joint;
Just like the chappel ominous
I’ the colledge called God with us:
Which truly[53] doth stand much awry,
Just north and south, yes verily.

Philosophers did well their parts,
Which prov’d them masters of their arts;
Their moderator was no fool,
He far from Cambridge kept a school:
The country did such store afford,
The proctors might not speak a word.

But to conclude, the king was pleas’d,
And of the court the town was eas’d:
Yet Oxford though (dear sister) hark yet,
The king is gone but to New-market,
And comes again e’re it be long,
Then you may make another song.

The king being gone from Trinity,
They make a scramble for degree;
Masters of all sorts, and all ages,
Keepers, subcizers, lackeyes, pages,
Who all did throng to come aboard,
With Pray make me now, Good my lord.

They prest his lordship wondrous hard,
His lordship then did want the guard;
So did they throng him for the nonce,
Until he blest them all at once,
And cryed, Hodiissimè:
Omnes Magistri estote.

Nor is this all which we do sing,
For of your praise the world must ring:
Reader, unto your tackling look,
For there is coming forth a book
Will spoyl Joseph Barnesius
The sale of Rex Platonicus.

AN
ANSWER TO THE FORMER SONG,
IN LATIN AND ENGLISH,
BY ⸺ LAKES.

(From an Autograph in the Editor’s possession.)

A ballad late was made,
But God knowes who ’es the penner,
Some say the rhyming sculler,
And others say ’twas Fenner[54]:
But they that know the style
Doe smell it by the collar,
And do maintaine it was the braine
Of some yong Oxford scholler.

And first he rails on Cambridge,
And thinkes her to disgrace,
By calling her Lutetia,
And throws dirt in her face:
But leave it, scholler, leave it,
For all the world must grant,
If Oxford be thy mother,
Then Cambridge is thy aunt.

Then goes he to the town,
And puts it all in starch,
For other rhyme he could not find
To fit the seventh of March:
But leave it, scholler, leave it,
For I must vail the bonnet,
And cast the caps at Cambridge
For making song and sonnet.

Thence goes he to their present,
And there he doth purloyne,
For looking in their plate
He nimmes away their coyne:
But leave it, scholler, leave it,
For ’tis a dangerous thing
To steal from corporations
The presents of a king.

Next that, my lord vice-chancellor
He brings before the prince,
And in the face of all the court
He makes his horse to wince.
But leave it, scholler, leave it,
For sure that jest did faile,
Unless you clapt a nettle
Under his horse’s taile.

Then aimes he at our orator,
And at his speech he snarles,
Because he forced a word, and called
The prince “most Jacob-Charles.”
But leave it, scholler, leave it,
For he did it compose
That puts you down as much for tongue
As you do him for nose.

Then flies he to our comedies,
And there he doth professe
He saw among our actors
A perfect diocess.
But leave it, scholler, leave it,
’Twas no such witty fiction,
For since you leave the vicar out,
You spoile the jurisdiction.

Next that he backes the hobby-horse,
And with a scholler’s grace,
Not able to endure the trott,
He’d bring him to the pase:
But leave it, scholler, leave it,
For you will hardly do it,
Since all the riders in your muse
Could never bring him to it.

Polonia land can tell,
Through which he oft did trace,
And bore a fardell at his back,
He nere went other pace.
But leave him, scholler, leave him,
He learned it of his sire,
And if you put him from his trott
Hee’l lay you in the myre.

Our horse has thrown his rider;
But now he meanes to shame us,
And in the censuring of our play
Conspires with Ignoramus.
But leave it, scholler, leave it,
And call ’t not “God knows what,”
Your head was making ballads
When you should mark the plot.

His fantasie, still working,
Finds out another crotchet;
Then runs he to the bishop,
And rides upon his rotchet.
But leave it, scholler, leave it,
And take it not in snuff,
For he that weares no picadell
By law may weare a ruffe.

Next that he goes to dinner,
And, like an hardy guest,
When he had cramm’d his belly full
He railes against the feast.
But leave it, scholler, leave it;
For, since you eat his roast,
It argues want of manners
To raile upon the host.

Now listen, masters, listen,
That tax us for our riot,
For here two men went to a ken,
So slender was the diet.
Then leave him, scholler, leave him,
He yieldes himself your debtor,
And next time he’s vice-chancellor
Your table shall be better.

Then goes he to the Regent-house,
And there he sits and sees
How lackeys and subsisers press
And scramble for degrees.
But leave it, scholler, leave it,
’Twas much against our mind,
But when the prison doors are ope
Noe thief will stay behind.

Behold, more anger yet:
He threatens us ere long,
When as the king comes back againe,
To make another song.
But leave it, scholler, leave it,
Your weakness you disclose;
For “Bonny Nell” doth plainly tell
Your wit lies all in prose.

Nor can you make the world
Of Cambridge praise to singe,
A mouth so foul no market eare
Will stand to hear it sing.
Then leave it, scholler, leave it,
For yet you cannot say,
The king did go from you in March
And come again in May.

RESPONSIO, &c.
PER
⸺ LAKES.

Facta est cantilena,
Sed nescio quo autore;
An fluxerit ex remige,
An ex Fenneri ore.
Sed qui legerunt, contendunt,
Esse hanc tenelli
Oxoniensis nescio cujus
Prolem cerebelli.

Nam primò Cantabrigiam
Convitiis execravit,
Quod vocitat Lutetiam,
Et luto conspurcavit.
Sed parce, precor, parcito,
Nam istud nihil moror,
Quum hujus academiæ
Oxonia sit soror.

Tunc oppidanos miseros
Horrendo cornu petit,
De quibus dixit, nescio quid,
Et rythmum sic effecit.
Sed parce, precor, parcito,
Bardos Oxonienses
In canticis non vicimus
Jam Cantabrigienses.

Jam inspicit cratera
Quæ regi dono datur,
Et aurum ibi positum
Subripere conatur.
Sed parce, precor, parcito,
Nam scelus istud lues,
Si fraudes sodalitia,
Ad crucem cito rues.

Dein pro-cancellarium
Produxit equitantem,
In equum valde agilem
Huc et illuc saltantem:
Sed parce, precor, parcito,
Nam tibi vix credetur
Si non sub ejus cauda,
Urtica poneretur.

Tunc evomit sententiam
In ipsum oratorem
Qui dixit Jacobissimum,
Præter Latinum morem.
Sed parce, precor, parcito,
Orator exit talis
Qui magis pollet lingua
Quam ipse naso vales.

Adibat ad comœdiam
Et cuncta circumspexit,
Actorum diocesin
Completam hic detexit
Sed parce, precor, parcito,
Hæc cogitare mente
Non valet jurisdictio
Vicario absente.

Fictitio equo subdidit
Calcaria, sperans fore
Ut eum ire cogeret
Gradu submissiore:
Sed parce, precor, parcito,
Hoc non efficietur
Si iste stabularius
Habenis moderetur.

Testis est Polonia,
Quam sæpe is transivit,
Et oneratus sarcina
Eodem gradu ivit.
Tam parce, precor, parcito,
Et credas hoc futurum,
Si Brutum regat Asinus
Gradatim non iturum.

Comœdiam Ignoramus
Eum spectare libet,
Et hujus delicatulo
Structura non arridet.
At parce, precor, parcito,
Tum aliter versatus
In faciendis canticis
Fuisti occupatus.

Tum pergit maledicere
Cicestriensi patri,
Et vestes etiam vellicat
Episcopi barbati.
Sed parce, precor, parcito,
Et nos tu sales pone,
Ne tanti patris careas
Benedictione.

Tum cibo se ingurgitans
Abunde saginatur,
Et venter cum expletus est,
Danti convitiatur.
Sed parce, precor, parcito,
Nam illud verum erit,
Quicquid ingrato infecerit
Oxoniensi, perit.

At ecce nos videmur
Tenaces nimis esse,
Gallinam unam quod spectasset
Duos comedisse.
O parce, precor, parcito,
Hæc culpa corrigetur
Cum rursus Cantabrigia
Episcopo regetur.

Sed novo in sacello
Pedissequos aspexit,
Quos nostra Academia
Honoribus erexit.
Sed parce, precor, parcito,
Nam ipse es expertus,
Effugiunt omnes protinus
Cum carcer est apertus.

At nobis minitatur,
Si rex sit rediturus,
Tunc iste (Phœbo duce) est
Tela resumpturus.
Sed parce, precor, parcito,
Piscator ictus sapit,
Fugatus namque miles iners
Arma nunquam capit.

Et Cantabrigiam non
Lædi hinc speramus,
Ex ore tam spurcidico
Nil damni expectamus.
O parce, ergo, parcito,
Oxonia nunquam dicit,
Cum Martio princeps abiens
In Maio nos revisit.

ADDITAMENTA SUPERIORI CANTICO.

Ingenij amplitudinem
Jam satis ostendisti,
Et eloquentiæ fructus
Abundè protulisti:
Sed parce, tibi, parcito,
Ne omne absumatur,
Ne tandem tibi arido
Nil suavi relinquatur.

Jam satis oppugnasti,
O Polyphemi proles!
Et tanquam taurus gregis
Nos oppugnare soles.
Sed parce, tandem, parcito,
Tuis laudatus eris,
Et nunc inultus tanquam stultus
A nobis dimitteris.

LADY ARABELLA STUART.

The circumstances of the life of this accomplished and persecuted lady,

“From kings descended, and to kings allied,”

are familiar to every reader of biographical history. In Lodge’s Illustrations of British History are some letters which convey an exalted idea of her mental abilities; and the editor has proved, in opposition to the assertion of the authors of the Biographia Britannica, that she was far from deficient in personal beauty.

She was the only child of Charles Stuart, fifth earl of Lennox, (uncle to James the First, and great-grandson to Henry VII.) by Elizabeth, daughter of sir William Cavendish, of Hardwick; was born about the year 1578, and brought up in privacy under the care of her grandmother, the old countess of Lennox, who had for many years resided in England. Her double relation to royalty was equally obnoxious to the jealousy of Elizabeth and the timidity of James, and they secretly dreaded the supposed danger of her leaving a legitimate offspring. The former, therefore, prevented her from marrying Esme Stuart, her kinsman, and heir to the titles and estates of her family, and afterwards imprisoned her for listening to some overtures from the son of the earl of Northumberland: the latter, by obliging her to reject many splendid offers of marriage, unwarily encouraged the hopes of inferior pretenders. Thus circumscribed, she renewed a childish connection with William Seymour, grandson to the earl of Hertford, which was discovered in 1609; when both parties were summoned to appear before the privy council, and received a severe reprimand. This mode of proceeding produced the very consequence which James meant to avoid; for the lady, sensible that her reputation had been wounded by this inquiry, was in a manner forced into a marriage; which becoming publicly known in the course of the next spring, she was committed to close custody in the house of sir Thomas Parry, at Lambeth, and Mr. Seymour to the Tower. In this state of separation, however, they concerted means for an escape, which both effected on the same day, June 3, 1611; and Mr. Seymour got safely to Flanders: but the poor lady was re-taken in Calais road, and imprisoned in the Tower; where the sense of these undeserved oppressions operating too severely on her high spirit, she became a lunatic, and languished in that wretched state, augmented by the horrors of a prison, till her death on the 27th Sept. 1615.[55]

ON
THE LADY ARABELLA.

How do I thanke thee, Death, and blesse thy power

That I have past the guard, and scaped the Tower!

And now my pardon is my epitaph,
And a small coffin my poore carkasse hath.
For at thy charge both soule and body were

Enlarged at last, secured from hope and feare;

That among saints, this amongst kings is laid,

And what my birth did claim, my death hath paid.

UPON
MISTRIS MALLET[56],
AN
UNHANDSOME GENTLEWOMAN,
WHO MADE LOVE UNTO HIM.

Have I renounc’t my faith, or basely sold
Salvation, and my loyalty, for gold?
Have I some forreigne practice undertooke

By poyson, shott, sharp-knife, or sharper booke

To kill my king? have I betrayd the state

To fire and fury, or some newer fate,

Which learned murderers, those grand destinies,

The Jesuites, have nurc’d? if of all these
I guilty am, proceed; I am content
That Mallet take mee for my punishment.
For never sinne was of so high a rate,
But one nights hell with her might expiate.

Although the law with Garnet[57], and the rest,

Dealt farr more mildly; hanging’s but a jest
To this immortall torture. Had shee bin then
In Maryes torrid dayes engend’red, when
Cruelty was witty, and Invention free
Did live by blood, and thrive by crueltye,
Shee would have bin more horrid engines farre
Than fire, or famine, racks, and halters are.

Whether her witt, forme, talke, smile, tire I name,

Each is a stock of tyranny, and shame;

But for her breath, spectatours come not nigh,

That layes about; God blesse the company!

The man, in a beares skin baited to death,

Would chose the doggs much rather then her breath;

One kisse of hers, and eighteene wordes alone
Put downe the Spanish Inquisition.
Thrice happy wee (quoth I thinking thereon)
That see no dayes of persecution;
For were it free to kill, this grisly elfe
Wold martyrs make in compass of herselfe:
And were shee not prevented by our prayer,
By this time shee corrupted had the aire.
And am I innocent? and is it true,
That thing (which poet Plinye never knew,
Nor Africk, Nile, nor ever Hackluyts eyes
Descry’d in all his East, West-voyages;

That thing, which poets were afrayd to feigne,

For feare her shadowe should infect their braine;

This spouse of Antichrist, and his alone,
Shee’s drest so like the Whore of Babylon;)
Should doate on mee? as if they did contrive
The devill and she, to damne a man alive.
Why doth not Welcome rather purchase her,
And beare about this rare familiar?

Sixe markett dayes, a wake, and a fayre too ’t,

Would save his charges, and the ale to boot.

No tyger’s like her; shee feedes upon a man

Worse than a tygresse or a leopard can.

Let mee go pray, and thinke upon some spell,

At once to bid the devill and her farwell.

HENRY PRINCE OF WALES.

Upon the death of the promising Henry (Nov. 6, 1612), a prince, according to Arthur Wilson[58], as eminent in nobleness as in blood, and who fell not without suspicion of foul play, the poets his cotemporaries, whom he liberally patronised, poured forth by reams their tributary verses.

Corbet, as it has been before observed, pronounced his funeral oration at Oxford.

Nor was this all: while his bones were perishing and his flesh was rottenness, Dr. Daniel Price, his chaplain during his life, continued to commemorate his dissolution by preaching an anniversary sermon. Neither the practice nor its execution was agreeable to Corbet, who, after a triennial repetition, thus attacked the anniversarist.

IN QUENDAM
ANNIVERSARIORUM SCRIPTOREM.

Ter circum Iliacos raptaverat Hectora muros.

Virg. Æn. 1. 483.

Even soe dead Hector thrice was triumph’d on

The walls of Troy, thrice slain when Fates had done:

So did the barbarous Greekes before their hoast

Torment his ashes and profane his ghost:

As Henryes vault, his peace, his sacred hearse,

Are torne and batter’d by thine Anniverse.

Was ’t not enough Nature and strength were foes,

But thou must yearly murther him in prose?

Or dost thou thinke thy raving phrase can make

A lowder eccho then the Almanake?

Trust mee, November doth more ghastly looke

In Dade and Hopton’s[59] pennyworth then thy booke;

And sadder record their fixt figure beares
Then thy false-printed and ambitious teares.
For were it not for Christmas, which is nigh,
When spice, fruit eaten, and digested pye
Call for waste paper; no man could make shift
How to employ thy writings to his thrift.
Wherefore forbear, for pity or for shame,
And let some richer penne redeeme his fame

From rottennesse. Thou leave him captive; since

So vile a Price ne’ere ransom’d such a Prince.

AN ANSWER,
BY
DR. PRICE[60].

So to dead Hector boys may do disgrace,
That durst not look upon his living face;
So worst of men behind their betters’ back

May stretch mens names and credit on the rack.

Good friend, our general tie to him that’s gone

Should love the man that yearlie doth him moane:

The author’s zeal and place he now doth hold,
His love and duty makes him be thus bold
To offer this poor mite, his anniverse
Unto his good great master’s sacred hearse;
The which he doth with privilege of name,

Whilst others, ’midst their ale, in corners blame.

A pennyworth in print they never made,

Yet think themselves as good as Pond or Dade.

One anniverse, when thou hast done thus twice,

Thy words among the best will be of Price.

IN
POETAM
EXAUCTORATUM ET EMERITUM.

Nor is it griev’d, grave youth, the memory
Of such a story, such a booke as hee,
That such a copy through the world were read;
Henry yet lives, though he be buried.
It could be wish’d that every eye might beare

His eare good witnesse that he still were here;

That sorrowe ruled the yeare, and by that sunne

Each man could tell you how the day had runne:

O ’twere an honest boast, for him could say
I have been busy, and wept out the day
Remembring him. An epitaph would last
Were such a trophee, such a banner placed
Upon his corse as this: Here a man lyes
Was slaine by Henrye’s dart, not Destinie’s.
Why this were med’cinable, and would heale,

Though the whole languish’d, halfe the commonweale.

But for a Cobler to goe burn his cappe,

And cry, The Prince, the Prince! O dire mishappe!

Or a Geneva-bridegroom, after grace,

To throw his spouse i’ th’ fire; or scratch her face

To the tune of the Lamentation; or delay

His Friday capon till the Sabbath day:

Or an old Popish lady half vow’d dead

To fast away the day in gingerbread:

For him to write such annals; all these things

Do open laughter’s and shutt up griefe’s springs.

Tell me, what juster or more congruous peere

Than Ale, to judge of workes begott of beere?

Wherefore forbeare—or, if thou print the next,

Bring better notes, or take a meaner text.

ON
MR. FRANCIS BEAUMONT,
THEN NEWLY DEAD.

(The following lines, which have hitherto been omitted in the bishop’s poems, are found in the collected dramas of the

“twin stars that run

Their glorious course round Shakespeare’s honoured sun.”

Beaumont was born 1585, and was buried the ninth of March 1615, in the entrance of St. Bennet’s chapel, Westminster abbey.)

He that hath such acuteness and such wit
As would aske ten good heads to husband it;
He that can write so well, that no man dare
Refuse it for the best, let him beware:
Beaumont is dead! by whose sole death appears
Wit’s a disease consumes men in few yeares.

WILLIAM LORD HOWARD,
OF EFFINGHAM,

the subject of the succeeding poem, was the eldest son of Charles Howard, earl of Nottingham, (lord high admiral of England, and defeater of the Spanish Armada in the reign of Elizabeth, a nobleman of high estimation during greater part of the reign of her successor,) by Catharine, daughter of Henry Carey, lord Hunsdon; celebrated for concealing the ring by which the life of the earl of Essex might have been saved, and upon whose death-bed discovery of the concealment Elizabeth told her, “God may forgive you, but I never can.”

Lord Howard makes no conspicuous figure in the page of history: he was summoned by writ to several parliaments during his father’s life, whom he accompanied on his embassy to the court of Spaine (1604), but died before him 10th Dec. 1615, and was buried at Chelsea.

He married in 1597 Anne, daughter and sole heiress to John lord St. John of Bletsoe, by whom he left one daughter, who became the wife of John lord Mordaunt, afterwards earl of Peterborough.

AN ELEGIE[61]
ON THE
LATE LORD WILLIAM HOWARD,
BARON OF EFFINGHAM.

I did not know thee, lord, nor do I strive
To win access, or grace, with lords alive:
The dead I serve, from whence nor faction can
Move me, nor favour; nor a greater man.
To whom no vice commends me, nor bribe sent,

From whom no penance warns, nor portion spent;

To these I dedicate as much of me,
As I can spare from my own husbandry:
And till ghosts walk as they were wont to do,
I trade for some, and do these errands too.
But first I do enquire, and am assur’d,
What tryals in their journeys they endur’d;
What certainties of honour and of worth

Their most uncertain life-times have brought forth;

And who so did least hurt of this small store,

He is my patron, dy’d he rich or poor.
First I will know of Fame (after his peace,
When flattery and envy both do cease)
Who rul’d his actions: Reason, or my lord?
Did the whole man rely upon a word,
A badge of title? or, above all chance,
Seem’d he as ancient as his cognizance?
What did he? Acts of mercy, and refrain
Oppression in himself, and in his train?
Was his essential table full as free
As boasts and invitations use to be?

Where if his russet-friend did chance to dine,

Whether his satten-man would fill him wine?
Did he think perjury as lov’d a sin,
Himself forsworn, as if his slave had been?
Did he seek regular pleasures? Was he known
Just husband of one wife, and she his own?
Did he give freely without pause, or doubt,
And read petitions ere they were worn out?
Or should his well-deserving client ask,
Would he bestow a tilting, or a masque

To keep need vertuous? and that done, not fear

What lady damn’d him for his absence there?

Did he attend the court for no man’s fall?

Wore he the ruine of no hospital?

And when he did his rich apparel don,

Put he no widow, nor an orphan on?

Did he love simple vertue for the thing?

The king for no respect but for the king?

But, above all, did his religion wait

Upon God’s throne, or on the chair of state?

He that is guilty of no quæry here,

Out-lasts his epitaph, out-lives his heir.

But there is none such, none so little bad;

Who but this negative goodness ever had?

Of such a lord we may expect the birth,

He’s rather in the womb, than on the earth.

And ’twere a crime in such a public fate,

For one to live well and degenerate:

And therefore I am angry, when a name

Comes to upbraid the world like Effingham.

Nor was it modest in thee to depart

To thy eternal home, where now thou art,

Ere thy reproach was ready; or to die,

Ere custom had prepar’d thy calumny.

Eight days have past since thou hast paid thy debt

To sin, and not a libel stirring yet;
Courtiers that scoff by patent, silent sit,
And have no use of slander or of wit;

But (which is monstrous) though against the tyde,

The watermen have neither rayl’d nor ly’d.
Of good or bad there’s no distinction known,
For in thy praise the good and bad are one.
It seems, we all are covetous of fame,
And, hearing what a purchase of good name
Thou lately mad’st, are careful to increase
Our title, by the holding of some lease

From thee our landlord, and for that th’ whole crew

Speak now like tenants, ready to renew.
It were too sad to tell thy pedegree,
Death hath disordered all, misplacing thee;
Whilst now thy herauld, in his line of heirs,

Blots out thy name, and fills the space with tears.

And thus hath conqu’ring Death, or Nature rather,

Made thee prepostrous ancient to thy father,

Who grieves th’ art so, and like a glorious light

Shines ore thy hearse.

He therefore that would write

And blaze thee throughly, may at once say all,

Here lies the anchor of our admiral.

Let others write for glory or reward,

Truth is well paid, when she is sung and heard.

LORD MORDAUNT.

The lord Mordaunt to whom this poem is addressed was John fifth baron Mordaunt of Turvey, in the county of Bedford, who was afterwards (in 1628) created earl of Peterborough by king Charles the First. He married Elizabeth, daughter and heir of William baron Howard of Effingham, (son and heir apparent of Charles earl of Nottingham,) by Anne his wife, daughter and heir of John baron St. John of Bletsoe. He was brought up in the Roman Catholic religion, but converted to that of the established church by a disputation at which he was present between a Jesuit and the celebrated Dr. Usher, (afterwards) bishop of Armagh. In 1642 he was general of the ordnance, and colonel of a regiment of foot in the army, raised for the service of the Parliament, commanded by the earl of Essex, and died the same year.

In order to understand the following poem, it will be necessary to remember, that James, in the year 1617, paid a visit to his native country, whither the lord Mordaunt accompanied him; and the ceremony of installing the knights of the garter was consequently deferred from St. George’s day to that of Holyrood.

TO THE
LORD MORDANT,
UPON HIS RETURNE FROM THE NORTH.

My lord, I doe confesse at the first newes
Of your returne towards home, I did refuse
To visit you, for feare the northerne winde
Had peirc’t into your manners and your minde;
For feare you might want memory to forget

Some arts of Scotland which might haunt you yet.

But when I knew you were, and when I heard

You were at Woodstock seene, well sunn’d and air’d,

That your contagion in you now was spent,
And you were just lord Mordant, as you went,
I then resolv’d to come; and did not doubt
To be in season, though the bucke were out.
Windsor the place; the day was Holy roode;
Saint George my muse: for be it understood,
For all Saint George more early in the yeare
Broke fast and eat a bitt, hee dined here:
And though in Aprill in redd inke he shine,
Know twas September made him redd with wine.
To this good sport rod I, as being allow’d
To see the king, and cry him in the crowd;
And at all solemne meetings have the grace
To thrust, and to be trodde on, by my place.

Where when I came, I saw the church besett

With tumults, as if all the Brethren mett

To heare some silenc’t teacher of that quarter

Inveigh against the order of the garter:

And justly might the weake it grieve and wrong,

Because the garter prayes in a strange tongue;

And doth retaine traditions yet, of Fraunce,

In an old Honi soit qui mal y pense.

Whence learne, you knights that order that have t’ane,

That all, besides the buckle, is profane.

But there was noe such doctrine now at stake,

Noe starv’d precisian from the pulpit spake:

And yet the church was full; all sorts of men,

Religions, sexes, ages, were there then:

Whilst he that keepes the quire together locks

Papists and Puritans, the Pope and Knox:

Which made some wise-ones feare, that love our nation,

This mixture would beget a toleration;
Or that religions should united bee,
When they stay’d service, these the letany.
But noe such hast; this dayes devotion lyes
Not in the hearts of men, but in their eyes;

They that doe see St. George, heare him aright;

For hee loves not to parly, but to fight.
Amongst this audience (my lord) stood I,
Well edified as any that stood by;
And knew how many leggs a knight letts fall,

Betwixt the king, the offering, and his stall:

Aske mee but of their robes, I shall relate
The colour and the fashion, and the state:
I saw too the procession without doore,

What the poore knightes, and what the prebends wore.

All this my neighbors that stood by mee tooke,

Who div’d but to the garment, and the looke;
But I saw more, and though I have their fate
In face and favour, yet I want their pate:
Mee thought I then did those first ages know,

Which brought forth knightes soo arm’d and looking soe,

Who would maintaine their oath, and bind their worde

With these two seales, an altar and a sworde.

Then saw I George new-sainted, when such preists

Wore him not only on, but in their breasts.

Oft did I wish that day, with solemne vow,

O that my country were in danger now!

And twas no treason; who could feare to dye,

When he was sure his rescue was so nigh?

And here I might a just digression make,

Whilst of some foure particular knightes I spake,

To whome I owe my thankes; but twere not best,

By praysing two or three, t’ accuse the rest;
Nor can I sing that order, or those men,
That are aboue the maistery of my pen;

And private fingers may not touch those things

Whose authors princes are, whose parents kings:

Wherefore unburnt I will refraine that fire,

Least, daring such a theame, I should aspire

T’ include my king and prince, and soe rehearse

Names fitter for my prayer then my verse:

“Hee that will speake of princes, let him use

More grace then witt, know God’s aboue his muse.”

Noe more of councell: Harke! the trumpetts sound,

And the grave organ’s with the antheme drown’d

The Church hath said amen to all their rites,

And now the Trojan horse sets loose his knightes;

The triumph moues: O what could added bee,
Save your accesse, to this solemnitye?
Which I expect, and doubt not but to see ’t,

When the kings favour and your worth shall meete.

I thinke the robes would now become you soe,

St. George himselfe could scarce his owne knights know

From the lord Mordant: Pardon mee that preach
A doctrine which king James can only teach;
To whome I leaue you, who alone hath right

To make knightes lords, and then a lord a knight.

Imagine now the sceane lyes in the hall;
(For at high noone we are recusants all)
The church is empty, as the bellyes were

Of the spectators, which had languish’d there:

And now the favorites of the clarke of th’ checke,

Who oft haue yaun’d, and strech’t out many a neck

Twixt noone and morning; the dull feeders on

Fresh patience, and raisins of the sunne,

They, who had liv’d in th’ hall seaven houres at least,

As if twere an arraignment, not a feast;

And look’t soe like the hangings they stood nere,

None could discerne which the true pictures were;

These now shall be refresh’t, while the bold drumme

Strikes up his frollick, through the hall they come.

Here might I end, my lord, and here subscribe

Your honours to his power: But Oh, what bribe,

What feare or mulct can make my muse refraine,

When shee is urg’d of nature and disdaine?

Not all the guard shall hold mee, I must write,

Though they should sweare and lye how they would fight,

If I procede: nay, though the captaine say,
Hold him, or else you shall not eate to day;
Those goodly yeomen shall not scape my pen;
’Twas dinner-time, and I must speake of men;
So to the hall made I, with little care
To praise the dishes, or to tast the fare;
Much lesse t’ endanger the least tart, or pye
By any waiter there stolne, or sett by;
But to compute the valew of the meate,
Which was for glory, not for hunger eate;
Nor did I feare, (stand back) who went before
The presence, or the privy-chamber doore.

And woe is mee, the guard, those men of warre,

Who but two weapons use, beife, and the barre,

Began to gripe mee, knowing not in truth,
That I had sung John Dory in my youth;
Or that I knew the day when I could chaunt
Chevy, and Arthur, and the Seige of Gaunt.

And though these be the vertues which must try

Who are most worthy of their curtesy,

They profited mee nothing: for no notes

Will move them now, they’re deafe in their new coates:

Wherefore on mee afresh they fall, and show
Themselves more active then before, as though
They had some wager lay’d, and did contend
Who should abuse mee furthest at armes end.
One I remember with a grisly beard,
And better growne then any of the heard;
One, were he well examin’d, and made looke
His name in his owne parish and church booke,
Could hardly prove his christendome; and yet

It seem’d he had two names, for there were writt

On a white canvasse doublett that he wore,

Two capitall letters of a name before;

Letters belike which hee had spew’d and spilt,

When the great bumbard leak’t, or was a tilt.
This Ironside tooke hold, and sodainly
Hurled mee, by judgment of the standers by,

Some twelve foote by the square; takes mee againe,

Out-throwes it halfe a bar; and thus wee twaine

At this hot exercise an hower had spent,

Hee the feirce agent, I the instrument.

My man began to rage, but I cry’d, Peace,

When he is dry or hungry he will cease:

Hold, for the Lords sake, Nicholas, lest they take us,

And use us worse then Hercules us’d Cacus.

And now I breath, my lord, now have I time

To tell the cause, and to confesse the crime:

I was in black; a scholler straite they guest;

Indeed I colour’d for it at the least.
I spake them faire, desir’d to see the hall,
And gave them reasons for it, this was all;
By which I learne it is a maine offence,

So neere the clark of th’ check to utter sense:

Talk of your emblemes, maisters, and relate

How Æsope hath it, and how Alciate;

The Cock and Pearle, the Dunghill and the Jemme,

This passeth all to talke sence amongst them.
Much more good service was committed yet,
Which I in such a tumult must forget;
But shall I smother that prodigious fitt,
Which pass’d Heons invention, and pure witt?
As this: A nimble knave, but something fatt,

Strikes at my head, and fairly steales my hatt:

Another breakes a jest, (well, Windsor, well,

What will ensue thereof there’s none can tell,

When they spend witt, serve God) yet twas not much,

Although the clamours and applause were such,

As when salt Archy or Garret doth provoke them[62],

And with wide laughter and a cheat-loafe choake them.

What was the jest doe you aske? I dare repeate it,

And put it home before you shall entreat it;
He call’d mee Bloxford-man: confesse I must
’Twas bitter; and it griev’d mee, in a thrust

That most ungratefull word (Bloxford) to heare

From him, whose breath yet stunk of Oxford beere:

But let it passe; for I have now passd throw

Their halberds, and worse weapons, their teeth, too:

And of a worthy officer was invited

To dine; who all their rudeness hath requited:

Where wee had mirth and meat, and a large board

Furnish’t with all the kitchin could afford.
But to conclude, to wipe of from before yee
All this which is noe better then a story;
Had this affront bin done mee by command
Of noble Fenton[63], had their captaines hand
Directed them to this, I should beleive
I had no cause to jeast, but much to greive:

Or had discerning Pembrooke[64] seene this done,

And thought it well bestow’d, I would have run

Where no good man had dwelt, nor learn’d would fly,

Where noe disease would keepe mee company,
Where it should be preferment to endure
To teach a schoole, or else to starve a cure.

But as it stands, the persons and the cause
Consider well, their manners and their lawes,
Tis no affliction to mee, for even thus

Saint Paul hath fought with beasts at Ephesus,

And I at Windsor. Let this comfort then

Rest with all able and deserving men:

Hee that will please the guard, and not provoke

Court-witts, must suite his learning by a cloake:

“For at all feasts and masques the doome hath bin,

“A man thrust out and a gay cloake let in.”

Quid immerentes hospites vexas canis,

Ignavus adversus lupos?

TO
THE PRINCE.
(AFTERWARDS CHARLES THE FIRST.)

Born at Dumferling, November the 19th, 1600; crowned 27th March 1625; beheaded 30th January 1648-9.

(From a Manuscript in Ashmole’s Museum.)

For ever dear, for ever dreaded prince,
You read some verse of mine a little since,
And so pronounced each word and every letter

Your gratious reading made my verse the better:

Since that your highness doth by gifte exceeding

Make what you read the better for your reading,

Let my poor muse thus far your grace importune

To leave to reade my verse, and read my fortune.

A NEW-YEARES GIFT
TO
MY LORDE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.

(Born 28th August 1592; assassinated by Felton, 23d August 1628.)

When I can pay my parents, or my king,
For life, or peace, or any dearer thing;
Then, dearest lord, expect my debt to you
Shall bee as truly paid, as it is due.
But, as no other price or recompence
Serves them, but love, and my obedience;
So nothing payes my lord, but whats above
The reach of hands, ’tis vertue, and my love.
“For, when as goodnesse doth so overflow,

“The conscience bindes not to restore, but owe:”

Requitall were presumption; and you may
Call mee ungratefull, while I strive to pay.
Nor with a morall lesson doe I shift,
Like one that meant to save a better gift;
Like very poore, or counterfeite poore men,
Who, to preserve their turky or their hen,
Doe offer up themselves: No; I have sent
A kind of guift, will last by being spent,
Thankes sterling: far above the bullion rate
Of horses, hangings, jewells, or of plate.
O you that know the choosing of that one,
Know a true diamond from a Bristow stone:
You know, those men alwaies are not the best
In their intent, that lowdest can protest:
But that a prayer from the convocation,
Is better than the commons protestation.

Trust those that at the test their lives will lay,

And know no arts, but to deserve, and pray:

Whilst they, that buy preferment without praying,

Begin with broyles, and finish with betraying.

SIR THOMAS AYLESBURY,

A Londoner born, was second son of William Aylesbury by Anne his wife, daughter of John Poole, esq., and from Westminster School removed to Christ-Church, Oxford, in 1598, where he became a fellow-student with Corbet, and where, on the 9th of June 1605, they took the degree of master of arts together.

Aylesbury, after he had left Oxford, became secretary to Charles Howard, earl of Nottingham, lord high admiral of England, and in 1618, when the latter resigned his office, was continued in the same employment under Howard’s successor, George Villiers, then marquis, and afterwards duke of Buckingham. Under the patronage of Villiers he was appointed one of the masters of the requests, and on the 19th of April 1627 created a baronet, and soon afterwards obtained the office of master of the mint. He retained his places until the breaking out of the civil wars in 1642, and faithfully adhering to the cause of Charles the First, retired with his family, in 1649, after the execution of that unfortunate monarch, to Antwerp in Brabant, and continued there until 1652, when he removed to Breda, where he died in 1657, aged 81, and was buried in the great church.

He was “a learned man, and as great a lover and encourager of learning and learned men, especially of mathematicians, (he being one himself) as any man in his time.”

He had a son, William, who was a man of learning, and tutor to the two sons of his father’s patron, Villiers, but died issueless in Jamaica in the service of Cromwell in the same year with his father: and a daughter, Frances, (sole heir of her father and brother) who, in 1634, became the wife of Edward Hyde, afterwards earl of Clarendon, and was grandmother to queen Mary the Second, and to queen Anne.

I have been the more particular in noticing what relates to sir Thomas Aylesbury, since bishop Corbet’s advancement at court followed, though it trode close upon the heels of, that of Aylesbury, which leads me to presume that the latter was in some degree Corbet’s patron as well as friend and companion.

A LETTER
SENT FROM
Dr. CORBET TO Sir THOMAS AILESBURY,
December the 9th, 1618.
ON THE OCCASION OF A BLAZING STAR.

My brother and much more, hadst thou been mine,

Hadst thou in one rich present of a line
Inclos’d sir Francis, for in all this store
No gift can cost thee less, or binde me more;
Hadst thou (dear churle) imparted his return,
I should not with a tardy welcome burn;
But had let loose my joy at him long since,
Which now will seem but studied negligence:

But I forgive thee, two things kept thee from it,

First such a friend to gaze on, next a comet;
Which comet we discern, though not so true
As you at Sion, as long tayl’d as you;
We know already how will stand the case,
With Barnavelt[65] of universal grace,

Though Spain deserve the whole star, if the fall

Be true of Lerma duke and cardinal[66]:
Marry, in France we fear no blood, but wine;
Less danger’s in her sword, than in her vine.
And thus we leave the blazers coming over,
For our portents are wise, and end at Dover:
And though we use no forward censuring,
Nor send our learned proctors to the king,
Yet every morning when the star doth rise,

There is no black for three hours in our eyes;

But like a Puritan dreamer, towards this light

All eyes turn upward, all are zeal and white:
More it is doubtful that this prodigy
Will turn ten schools to one astronomy:
And the analysis we justly fear,
Since every art doth seek for rescue there;
Physicians, lawyers, glovers on the stall,
The shopkeepers speak mathematics all;

And though men read no gospels in these signes,

Yet all professions are become divines;
All weapons from the bodkin to the pike,
The masons rule and taylors yard alike
Take altitudes, and th’ early fidling knaves

On fluits and hoboyes made them Jacobs-staves;

Lastly of fingers, glasses we contrive,
And every fist is made a prospective:
Burton to Gunter cants[67], and Burton hears

From Gunter, and th’ exchange both tongue and ears

By carriage: thus doth mired Guy complain,

His waggon in their letters bears Charles-Wain,

Charles-Wain, to which they say the tayl will reach;

And at this distance they both hear and teach.

Now, for the peace of God and men, advise

(Thou that hast where-withal to make us wise)

Thine own rich studies, and deep Harriots mine[68],

In which there is no dross, but all refine:

O tell us what to trust to, lest we wax

All stiff and stupid with his parallax:

Say, shall the old philosophy be true?

Or doth he ride above the moon, think you?

Is he a meteor forced by the sun?

Or a first body from creation?

Hath the same star been object of the wonder

Of our forefathers? Shall the same come under

The sentence of our nephews? Write and send,

Or else this star a quarrel doth portend.

DR. CORBET’S
JOURNEY INTO FRANCE.

I went from England into France,
Nor yet to learn to cringe nor dance,
Nor yet to ride or fence;
Nor did I go like one of those
That do return with half a nose
They carried from hence.

But I to Paris rode along,
Much like John Dory in the song[69],
Upon a holy tide.
I on an ambling nag did jet,
I trust he is not paid for yet;
And spur’d him on each side.

And to Saint Dennis fast we came,
To see the sights of Nostre Dame,
The man that shews them snaffles:
Where who is apt for to beleeve,
May see our Ladies right-arm sleeve,
And eke her old pantofles;

Her breast, her milk, her very gown
That she did wear in Bethlehem town,
When in the inn she lay.
Yet all the world knows that’s a fable,
For so good clothes ne’re lay in stable
Upon a lock of hay.

No carpenter could by his trade
Gain so much coyn as to have made
A gown of so rich stuff.

Yet they, poor fools, think, for their credit,

They may believe old Joseph did it,

’Cause he deserv’d enough.

There is one of the crosses nails,
Which whoso sees, his bonnet vails,
And if he will, may kneel.
Some say ’twas false, ’twas never so,
Yet, feeling it, thus much I know,
It is as true as steel.

There is a lanthorn which the Jews,
When Judas led them forth, did use,
It weighs my weight downright:
But to believe it, you must think
The Jews did put a candle in ’t,
And then ’twas very light.

There’s one saint there hath lost his nose;
Another’s head, but not his toes,
His elbow and his thumb.
But when that we had seen the rags
We went to th’ inn and took our nags,
And so away did come.

We came to Paris on the Seine,
’Tis wondrous fair, ’tis nothing clean,
’Tis Europes greatest town.
How strong it is I need not tell it,
For all the world may easily smell it,
That walk it up and down.

There many strange things are to see,
The Palace and great Gallery,
The Place Royal doth excel:
The New Bridge, and the Statues there,
At Nostre Dame, Saint Q. Pater,
The Steeple bears the bell.

For learning, th’ Universitie;
And for old clothes, the Frippery;
The House the Queen did build.
Saint Innocents, whose earth devours
Dead corps in four and twenty hours,
And there the King was kill’d:

The Bastile and Saint Dennis-street,
The Shafflenist, like London-Fleet,
The Arsenal, no toy.
But if you’ll see the prettiest thing,
Go to the court and see the King,
O ’tis a hopeful boy.

He is of all his dukes and peers
Reverenc’d for much wit at ’s years,
Nor must you think it much;
For he with little switch doth play,
And make fine dirty pyes of clay,
O never king made such!

A bird that can but kill a fly,
Or prate, doth please his majesty,
’Tis known to every one.
The duke of Guise gave him a parret,
And he had twenty cannons for it
For his new galeon.

O that I ere might have the hap
To get the bird which in the map
Is called the Indian Ruck!
I’de give it him, and hope to be
As rich as Guise, or Livine,
Or else I had ill luck.

Birds round about his chamber stand,
And he them feeds with his own hand;
’Tis his humility.
And if they do want any thing,
They need but whistle for their king,
And he comes presently.

But now then, for these parts he must
Be enstiled Lewis the Just[70],
Great Henry’s lawful heir;
When to his stile to add more words,
They’d better call him King of Birds,
Than of the great Navarre.

He hath besides a pretty quirk,
Taught him by Nature, how to work
In iron with much ease.
Sometimes to the forge he goes,
There he knocks, and there he blows,
And makes both locks and keys:

Which puts a doubt in every one,
Whether he be Mars or Vulcan’s son,
Some few believe his mother.
But let them all say what they will,
I came resolv’d, and so think still,
As much the one as th’ other.

The people, too, dislike the youth,
Alledging reasons, for, in truth,
Mothers should honour’d be:
Yet others say, he loves her rather
As well as ere she lov’d his father,
And that’s notoriously.

His queen, a pretty little wench,
Was born in Spain, speaks little French,
She’s nere like to be mother:
For her incestuous house could not
Have children which were not begot
By uncle or by brother.

Now why should Lewis, being so just,
Content himself to take his lust
With his Lucina’s mate;
And suffer his little pretty queen,
From all her race that yet hath been,
So to degenerate?

’Twere charity for to be known
To love others children as his own,
And why? It is no shame;
Unless that he would greater be
Than was his father Henery,
Who, men thought, did the same.

JOHN HAMMON.

John Hammon, M.A., to whom the following “Exhortation” is addressed, was instituted to the rectory of Bibbesford and chapel of Bewdley in Worcestershire the 2d of March 1614, on the presentation of sir William Cook. The new zeal with which he was inspired arose most probably from the intrusion of the “Book of Sports,” by James, in 1618[71], in which the king’s pleasure is declared, “that, after the end of divine service, our good people be not disturbed, letted or discouraged from any lawfull recreation; such as dauncing, either men or women; archerie for men, leaping, vaulting, or any other such harmlesse recreation; nor from having of May games, Witson ales, and Morris dances, and the setting up of Maypoles and other sports therein used; and that women shall have leave to carry rushes to the church for the decoring of it, according to their old custome.”

AN EXHORTATION
TO
MR. JOHN HAMMON,
MINISTER IN THE PARISH OF BEWDLY,

For the battering downe of the Vanityes of the Gentiles, which are comprehended in a Maypole.

Written by a Zealous Brother from the Black-fryers.

The mighty zeale which thou hast new put on,
Neither by prophet nor by prophetts sonne
As yet prevented, doth transport mee so

Beyond my selfe, that, though I ne’re could go

Farr in a verse, and all rithmes have defy’d
Since Hopkins and old Thomas Sternhold dy’de,
(Except it were that little paines I tooke
To please good people in a prayer-booke
That I sett forth, or so) yet must I raise
My spirit for thee, who shall in thy praise
Gird up her loynes, and furiously run
All kinde of feet, save Satans cloven one.

Such is thy zeale, so well dost thou express it,

That, (wer ’t not like a charme,) I’de say, Christ blesse it.

I needs must say ’tis a spirituall thing

To raile against a bishopp, or the king;

Nor are they meane adventures wee have bin in,

About the wearing of the churches linnen;

But these were private quarrells: this doth fall

Within the compass of the generall.

Whether it be a pole painted, and wrought

Farr otherwise, then from the wood ’twas brought,

Whose head the idoll-makers hand doth croppe,

Where a lew’d bird, towring upon the topp,

Lookes like the calfe at Horeb; at whose roots

The unyoak’t youth doth exercise his foote;
Or whether it reserve his boughes, befreinded
By neighb’ring bushes, and by them attended:
How caust thou chuse but seeing it complaine,
That Baalls worship’t in the groves againe?
Tell mee how curst an egging, what a sting
Of lust do their unwildy daunces bring?
The simple wretches say they meane no harme,
They doe not, surely; but their actions warme
Our purer blouds the more: for Sathan thus
Tempts us the more, that are more righteous.
Oft hath a Brother most sincerely gon,
Stifled in prayer and contemplation,

When lighting on the place where such repaire,

He viewes the nimphes, and is quite out in ’s prayer.

Oft hath a Sister, grownded in the truth,
Seeing the jolly carriage of the youth,
Bin tempted to the way that’s broad and bad;
And (wert not for our private pleasures) had
Renounc’t her little ruffe, and goggle eye,
And quitt her selfe of the Fraternity.
What is the mirth, what is the melody,
That setts them in this Gentiles vanity?
When in our sinagogue wee rayle at sinne,
And tell men of the faults which they are in,
With hand and voice so following our theames,

That wee put out the side-men from their dreames.

Sounds not the pulpett, which wee then be-labour,

Better, and holyer, then doth the tabour?

Yet, such is unregenerate mans folly,

Hee loves the wicked noyse, and hates the holy.

Routes and wilde pleasures doe invite temptation,

And this is dangerous for our damnation;

Wee must not move our selves, but, if w’ are mov’d,

Man is but man; and therefore those that lov’d

Still to seeme good, would evermore dispence

With their owne faults, so they gave no offence.

If the times sweete entising, and the blood

That now begins to boyle, have thought it good

To challenge Liberty and Recreation,
Let it be done in holy contemplation:
Brothers and Sisters in the feilds may walke,
Beginning of the Holy Worde to talke,
Of David, and Uriahs lovely wife,
Of Thamar, and her lustfull brothers strife;

Then, underneath the hedge that woos them next,

They may sitt down; and there act out the text.

Nor do wee want, how ere wee live austeere,

In winter Sabbath-nights our lusty cheere;

And though the pastors grace, which oft doth hold

Halfe an howre long, make the provision cold,
Wee can be merry; thinking ’t nere the worse
To mend the matter at the second course.

Chapters are read, and hymnes are sweetly sung,

Joyntly commanded by the nose and tongue;
Then on the Worde wee diversly dilate,
Wrangling indeed for heat of zeale, not hate:
When at the length an unappeased doubt

Feircely comes in, and then the light goes out;

Darkness thus workes our peace, and wee containe

Our fyery spiritts till we see againe.

Till then, no voice is heard, no tongue doth goe,

Except a tender Sister shreike, or so.

Such should be our delights, grave and demure,

Not so abominable, not so impure,

As those thou seek’st to hinder, but I feare

Satan will bee too strong; his kingdome’s here:

Few are the righteous now, nor do I know
How wee shall ere this idoll overthrow;
Since our sincerest patron is deceas’t,
The number of the righteous is decreast.

But wee do hope these times will on, and breed

A faction mighty for us; for indeede

Wee labour all, and every Sister joynes

To have regenerate babes spring from our loynes:

Besides, what many carefully have done,

Getting the unrighteous man, a righteous sonne.

Then stoutly on, let not thy flocke range lewdly

In their old vanity, thou lampe of Bewdly.
One thing I pray thee; do not too much thirst
After Idolatryes last fall; but first
Follow this suite more close, let it not goe

Till it be thine as thou would’st have ’t: for soe

Thy successors, upon the same entayle,

Hereafter, may take up the Whitson-ale.

ANNE,
WIFE OF JAMES THE FIRST,
Daughter of Frederick the Second, king of Denmark,
died of a dropsy the 2d of March 1619.

On the 18th of November 1618, a comet (as alluded to in a foregoing poem) was seen in Libra, which continued visible till the 16th of December; and the vulgar, who think

Nunquam futilibus excanduit ignibus æther,

considered it indicative of great misfortunes; and the death of the queen which closely followed, the first object of its portentous mission.

“The queen was in her great condition,” says Wilson, “a good woman, not tempted from that height she stood on to embroyl her spirit much with things below her, only giving herself content in her own house with such recreations as might not make time tedious unto her; and though great persons’ actions are often pried into, and made envy’s mark, yet nothing could be fixed upon her that left any great impression, but that she may have engraven upon her monument a character of virtue.”

AN ELEGY
UPON
THE DEATH OF QUEENE ANNE.

Noe; not a quatch, sad poets; doubt you,

There is not greife enough without you?

Or that it will asswage ill newes,

To say, Shee’s dead, that was your muse?

Joine not with Death to make these times

More grievous then most grievous rimes.

And if ’t be possible, deare eyes,
The famous Universityes,
If bold your eyes bee matches, sleepe;
Or, if you will be loyall, weepe:
For-beare the press, there’s none will looke
Before the mart for a new booke.

Why should you tell the world what witts
Grow at New-parkes, or Campus-pitts?
Or what conceipts youth stumble on,
Taking the ayre towards Trumpington?
Nor you, grave tutours, who doe temper
Your long and short with que and semper;
O doe not, when your owne are done,
Make for my ladyes eldest sonne
Verses, which he will turne to prose,
When he shall read what you compose:
Nor, for an epithite that failes,
Bite off your unpoëticke nailes.
Unjust! Why should you in these vaines,
Punish your fingers for your braines?

Know henceforth, that griefes vitall part

Consists in nature, not in art:

And verses that are studied

Mourne for themselves, not for the dead.

Heark, the Queenes epitaph shall bee

Noe other then her pedigree:

For lines in bloud cutt out are stronger

Then lines in marble, and last longer:

And such a verse shall never fade,

That is begotten, and not made.

“Her father, brother, husband, ... kinges;
Royall relations! from her springes
A prince and princesse; and from those
Faire certaintyes, and rich hope growes.”
Here’s poetry shall be secure
While Britaine, Denmarke, Rheine endure:
Enough on earth; what purchase higher,
Save heaven, to perfect her desire?
And as a straying starr intic’t
And governd those wise-men to Christ,
Ev’n soe a herauld-starr this yeare
Did beckon to her to appeare:
A starr which did not to our nation
Portend her death, but her translation:
For when such harbingers are seene,
God crownes a saint, not kills a queene.

VINCENT CORBET,

Who, from causes which I have not conclusively ascertained, assumed the name of Poynter, was one of those by whose experience and information sir Hugh Platt, at a period when the horticultural arts in this country were in their infancy, was enabled to publish his “Garden Of Eden.” The beautiful “Epitaph” of Ben Jonson, and the following “Elegy,” are high testimonials of his amiable and virtuous disposition.

His father’s name I have not learned; but his mother, whose name was Rose, was buried at Twickenham, September the 13th, 1611, and the register of the same parish proves that her son pursued her path the 29th April, 1619.

Among other legacies, he bequeathed to the poor of Twickenham forty shillings, to be paid immediately after his decease; and four loads of charcoal, to be distributed at the discretion of the churchwardens. These bequests are overlooked by Ironside and Lysons, and I am happy in recording the father of bishop Corbet as a benefactor to my native village.

Nescis quâ natale solum dulcedine captos

Ducit, et immemores non sinit esse sui.

AN ELEGIE
UPON
THE DEATH OF HIS OWNE FATHER.

Vincent Corbet, farther knowne
By Poynters name, then by his owne,
Here lyes ingaged till the day
Of raising bones, and quickning clay.
Nor wonder, reader, that he hath
Two surnames in his epitaph;
For this one did comprehend
All that two familyes could lend:
And if to know more arts then any
Could multiply one into many,
Here a colony lyes, then,
Both of qualityes and men.
Yeares he liv’d well nigh fourscore;
But count his vertues, he liv’d more;
And number him by doeing good,
He liv’d their age beyond the Flood.
Should wee undertake his story,

Truth would seeme fain’d, and plainesse glory:

Beside, this tablet were too small,
Add to the pillers and the wall.
Yet of this volume much is found,
Written in many a fertill ground;
Where the printer thee affords
Earth for paper, trees for words.
He was Natures factour here,
And legier lay for every sheire;
To supply the ingenious wants
Of some spring-fruites, and forraigne plants.
Simple he was, and wise withall;
His purse nor base, nor prodigall;
Poorer in substance then in freinds;
Future and publicke were his endes;
His conscience, like his dyett, such
As neither tooke nor left too much:
Soe that made lawes were uselesse growne
To him, he needed but his owne.
Did he his neighbours bid, like those
That feast them only to enclose?
Or with their rost meate racke their rents,
And cozen them with their consents?
Noe; the free meetings at his boord
Did but one litterall sence afforde;
Noe close or aker understood,
But only love and neighbourhood.
His alms were such as Paul defines,
Not causes to be said, but signes;
Which alms, by faith, hope, love, laid down,
Laid up what now he wears ... a crown.
Besides his fame, his goods, his life,
He left a greiv’d sonne, and a wife;
Straunge sorrow, not to be beleiv’d,
Whenas the sonne and heire is greiv’d.
Reade then, and mourne, what ere thou art
That doost hope to have a part
In honest epitaphs; least, being dead,
Thy life bee written, and not read.

THE LADY HADDINGTON

Was first wife of John Ramsey, viscount Haddington in Scotland, and daughter of Robert Radcliffe, earl of Sussex. Her marriage was celebrated by Ben Jonson, in a masque presented at court on the Shrove-Tuesday at night (1608)[72]; and here is her monody by Corbet.

She had two sons, Charles and James, and a daughter, Elizabeth, who all died young. Her father died without surviving issue, September 22d, 1629.

Her husband, who was a great favourite with king James, survived her, and was created baron of Kingston upon Thames, and earl of Holderness, 22 Jan. 1620-1. He had a second wife, daughter of sir William Cockayne, alderman of London[73]:

But his first lady, the subject of the present article, was evidently dead before his elevation to the English peerage.

AN ELEGIE
UPON THE DEATH OF
THE LADY HADDINGTON,
WHO DYED OF THE SMALL POX.

Deare losse, to tell the world I greive were true,

But that were to lament my selfe, not you;

That were to cry out helpe for my affaires,

For which nor publick thought, nor private, cares:

No, when thy fate I publish amongst men,

I should have power, and write with the States pen:

I should in naming thee force publicke teares,

And bid their eyes pay ransome for their cares.

First, thy whole life was a short feast of witt,

And Death th’ attendant which did waite on it:

To both mankind doth owe devotion ample,

To that their first, to this their last example.

And though ’twere praise enough (with them whose fame

And vertue’s nothing but an ample name)

That thou wert highly borne, (which no man doubtes)

And so mightst swath base deedes in noble cloutes;

Yet thou thy selfe in titles didst not shroud,

And being noble, wast nor foole, nor proud;

And when thy youth was ripe, when now the suite

Of all the longing court was for thy fruit,

How wisely didst thou choose! Foure blessed eyes,

The kings and thine, had taught thee to be wise.

Did not the best of men thee virgin give

Into his handes, by which himselfe did live?

Nor didst thou two yeares after talke of force,

Or, lady-like, make suit for a divorce:

Who, when their owne wilde lust is falsely spent,

Cry out, “My lord, my lord is impotent.”

Nor hast thou in his nuptiall armes enjoy’d

Barren imbraces, but wert girl’d and boy’d:

Twice-pretty-ones thrice worthier were their youth

Might shee but bring them up, that brought them forth:

Shee would have taught them by a thousand straines,

(Her bloud runns in their manners, not their veines)

That glory is a lye; state a grave sport;
And country sicknesse above health at court.
Oh what a want of her loose gallants have,

Since shee hath chang’d her window for a grave;

From whence shee us’d to dart out witt so fast,

And stick them in their coaches as they past!

Who now shall make well-colour’d vice looke pale?

Or a curl’d meteor with her eyes exhale,

And talke him into nothing? Who shall dare

Tell barren braines they dwell in fertill haire?

Who now shall keepe ould countesses in awe,

And, by tart similyes, repentance draw

From those, whome preachers had given ore? Even such

Whome sermons could not reach, her arrowes touch.

Hereafter, fooles shall prosper with applause,

And wise men smile, and no man aske the cause:

Hee of fourescore, three night capps, and two haires,

Shall marry her of twenty, and get heyres

Which shall be thought his owne; and none shall say

But tis a wondrous blessing, and he may.

Now (which is more then pitty) many a knight,

Which can doe more then quarrell, less then fight,

Shall choose his weapons, ground; draw seconds thither,

Put up his sword, and not be laught at neyther.

Oh thou deform’d unwoeman-like disease,

That plowst up flesh and bloud, and there sow’st pease,

And leav’st such printes on beauty, that dost come

As clouted shon do on a floore of lome;
Thou that of faces hony-combes dost make,
And of two breasts two cullenders, forsake

Thy deadly trade; thou now art rich, give ore,

And let our curses call thee forth no more.
Or, if thou needs will magnify thy power,
Goe where thou art invoked every houre

Amongst the gamsters, where they name thee thicke

At the last maine, or the last pocky nicke.

Get thee a lodging neare thy clyent, dice,

There thou shalt practice on more then one vice.

There’s wherewithall to entertaine the pox,

There’s more then reason, there’s rime for ’t, the box.

Thou who hast such superfluous store of game,

Why struckst thou one whose ruine is thy shame?

O, thou hast murdred where thou shouldst have kist;

And, where thy shaft was needfull, there it mist.

Thou shouldst have chosen out some homely face,

Where thy ill-favour’d kindnesse might adde grace,

That men might say, How beauteous once was shee!

Or, What a peece, ere shee was seaz’d by thee!

Thou shouldst have wrought on some such ladyes mould

That ne’re did love her lord, nor ever could
Untill shee were deform’d, thy tyranny
Were then within the rules of charity.
But upon one whose beauty was above

All sort of art, whose love was more then love,

On her to fix thy ugly counterfett,
Was to erect a pyramide of jett,
And put out fire to digg a turfe from hell,

And place it where a gentle soule should dwell:

A soule which in the body would not stay,
When twas noe more a body, nor good clay,
But a huge ulcer. O thou heav’nly race,

Thou soule that shunn’st th’ infection of thy case,

Thy house, thy prison, pure soule, spotless, faire,

Rest where no heat, no cold, no compounds are!

Rest in that country, and injoy that ease,

Which thy frayle flesh deny’de, and her disease!

ON THE
CHRIST-CHURCH PLAY.

The failure of success in the representation of this play has been detailed in the Life of the Bishop: indeed it seems to have subjected the Oxonians to much ridicule, which the elegant bishop King[74] joined with Corbet in retorting. One of the numerous banters on this occasion is recorded by Wood, and deserves to be preserved:

“At Christ-Church ‘Marriage,’ done before the king,

Lest that those mates should want an offering,

The king himself did offer—What? I pray.

He offer’d twice or thrice to go away.”

ON
CHRIST-CHURCH PLAY
AT WOODSTOCK.

If wee, at Woodstock, have not pleased those,

Whose clamorous judgments lye in urging noes,

And, for the want of whifflers, have destroy’d

Th’ applause, which wee with vizards hadd enjoy’d,

Wee are not sorry; for such witts as these
Libell our windowes oft’ner then our playes;
Or, if their patience be moov’d, whose lipps
Deserve the knowledge of the proctorships,
Or judge by houses, as their howses goe,
Not caring if their cause be good or noe;
Nor by desert or fortune can be drawne

To credit us, for feare they loose their pawne;

Wee are not greatly sorry; but if any,

Free from the yoake of the ingaged many,

That dare speake truth even when their head stands by,

Or when the seniors spoone is in the pye;

Nor to commend the worthy will forbeare,

Though he of Cambridge, or of Christ-church were,

And not of his owne colledge; and will shame

To wrong the person, for his howse, or name;

If any such be greiv’d, then downe proud spirit;

If not, know, number never conquer’d merit.

THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.

Of the romantic expedition to Spain of “Baby Charles and Stennie” an account is given by Clarendon, and a more minute narrative by Arthur Wilson in his Life of James. The voyage was conducted with great secrecy, and very few attendants: but it is worthy remark, that Archee “the princes fool-man” was one of the party. Howell, who was at Madrid at the time, says, “Our cousin Archy hath more privilege than any, for he often goes with his fool’s-coat where the Infanta is with her Meninas and ladies of honour, and keeps a blowing and blustering amongst them, and flurts out what he list.” One of his “flurts” at the Spaniards is related in the same page[75].

The poem, as far as it describes the various rumours during the absence of the parties, a period of great consternation, is curious: the report of Buckingham’s “difference with the Cond’ Olivares” rests upon better authority than the then opinion of the poet.

They left the court Feb. 17th, and returned to England the 5th Oct. 1623.

A LETTER
TO
THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM,
BEING WITH THE PRINCE IN SPAINE.

I’ve read of ilands floating and remov’d
In Ovids time, but never heard it prov’d
Till now: that fable, by the prince and you,
By your transporting England, is made true.

Wee are not where wee were; the dog-starr raignes

No cooler in our climate, then in Spaines;

The selfe-same breath, same ayre, same heate, same burning,

Is here, as there; will be, till your returning:

Come, e’re the card be alter’d, lest perhaps

Your stay may make an errour in our mapps;

Lest England should be found, when you shall passe,

A thousand miles more southward then it was.
Oh that you were, my lord, oh that you were
Now in Blackfryers, in a disguis’d haire;
That you were Smith againe, two houres to bee
In Paules next Sunday, at full sea at three;

There you should heare the legend of each day,

The perills of your inne, and of your way;
Your enterprises, accidents, untill
You did arrive at court, and reach Madrill.

There you should heare how the State-grandees flout you,

With their twice-double diligence about you;

How our environ’d prince walkes with a guard

Of Spanish spies, and his owne servants barr’d;

How not a chaplaine of his owne may stay

When hee would heare a sermon preach’d, or pray.

You would be hungry, having din’d, to heare

The price of victuailes, and the scarcity, there;

As if the prince had ventur’d there his life

To make a famine, not to fetch a wife.

Your eggs (which might be addle too) are deare

As English capons; capons as sheepe, here;

No grasse neither for cattle; for they say

It is not cutt and made, grasse there growes hay:

That ’tis soe seething hott in Spaine, they sweare

They never heard of a raw oyster there:

Your cold meate comes in reaking, and your wine

Is all burnt sack, the fire was in the vine;
Item, your pullets are distinguish’t there
Into foure quarters, as wee carve the yeare,
And are a weeke a wasting: Munday noone
A wing; at supper something with a spoone;
Tuesday a legg, and soe forth; Sunday more,
The liver and a gizard betweene foure:
And for your mutton, in the best houshoulder
’Tis felony to cheapen a whole shoulder.
Lord! how our stomackes come to us againe,

When wee conceive what snatching is in Spaine!

I, whilst I write, and doe the newes repeate,

Am forc’t to call for breakfast in, and eate:

And doe you wonder at the dearth the while?

The flouds that make it run in th’ middle ile,

Poets of Paules, those of duke Humfryes messe,

That feede on nought but graves and emptinesse.

But heark you, noble sir, in one crosse weeke
My lord hath lost a thowsand pound at gleeke;
And though they doe allow but little meate,
They are content your losses should be great.

False, on my deanery! falser then your fare is;

Or then your difference with Cond’ de Olivares,

Which was reported strongly for one tyde,

But, after six houres floating, ebb’d and dyde.

If God would not this great designe should be

Perfect and round without some knavery,

Nor that our prince should end this enterprize,

But for soe many miles, soe many lyes:

If for a good event the Heav’ns doe please

Mens tongues should become rougher then the seas,

And that th’ expence of paper shall be such,
First written, then translated out of Dutch:
Corantoes, diets, packets, newes, more newes,

Which soe much innocent whitenesse doth abuse;

If first the Belgicke[76] pismire must be seene,

Before the Spanish lady be our queene;

With such successe, and such an end at last,

All’s wellcome, pleasant, gratefull, that is past.

And such an end wee pray that you should see,

A type of that which mother Zebedee

Wisht for her sonnes in heav’n; the prince and you

At either hand of James, (you need not sue)
Hee on the right, you on the left, the king
Safe in the mids’t, you both invironing.
Then shall I tell my lord, his word and band
Are forfeit, till I kisse the princes hand;

Then shall I tell the duke, your royall friend

Gave all the other honours, this you earn’d;

This you have wrought for; this you hammer’d out

Like a strong Smith, good workman and a stout.

In this I have a part, in this I see

Some new addition smiling upon mee:

Who, in an humble distance, claime a share

In all your greatnesse, what soe ere you are.

RICHARD,
THE THIRD EARL OF DORSET,

Is described by his wife, the celebrated lady Anne Clifford, daughter of George earl of Cumberland, in the manuscript memoirs of her life, as a man “in his own nature of a just mind, of a sweet disposition, and very valiant in his own person. He had a great advantage in his breeding, by the wisdom and devotion of his grandfather, Thomas Sackville, earl of Dorset, and lord high treasurer of England, who was then held one of the wisest of that time; by which means he was so good a scholar in all manner of learning, that, in his youth, when he was at the university, there was none of the young nobility then students there that excelled him. He was also a good patriot to his country, and generally well beloved in it; much esteemed in all the parliaments that sat in his time, and so great a lover of scholars and soldiers, as that, with an excessive bounty towards them, or indeed any of worth that were in distress, he did much diminish his estate; and also with excessive prodigality in house-keeping, and other noble ways at court, as tilting, masking, and the like; prince Henry being then alive, who was much addicted to those noble exercises, and of whom he was much beloved.” He died at the age of 35, March 28th, 1624.

I should be very unwilling to deprive Corbet of the praise due to a poem of so much intrinsic merit; but as the following epitaph is printed among the poems of his contemporary, King, bishop of Chichester, and again attributed to the latter in MS. Ashmole, A 35, Corbet’s claim to the composition of it is rendered very disputable.

ON
THE EARL OF DORSETS DEATH.

Let no prophane, ignoble foot tread here,

This hallowed piece of earth, Dorset lyes there:

A small poor relique of a noble spirit,
Free as the air, and ample as his merit:
A soul refin’d, no proud forgetting lord,
But mindful of mean names, and of his word:
Who lov’d men for his honour, not his ends,
And had the noblest way of getting friends
By loving first, and yet who knew the court,
But understood it better by report
Than practice: he nothing took from thence
But the kings favour for his recompence.
Who, for religion or his countreys good,
Neither his honour valued, nor his blood.
Rich in the worlds opinion, and mens praise,
And full in all we could desire, but days.
He that is warn’d of this, and shall forbear
To vent a sigh for him, or shed a tear,
May he live long scorn’d, and unpitied fall,
And want a mourner at his funeral!

TO THE
NEW-BORNE PRINCE,
AFTERWARDS CHARLES II.

(Born May 29th[77], 1630; died 6th of February, 1684-5.)

UPON THE APPARITION OF A STARR, AND THE FOLLOWING ECCLYPSE.

Was heav’ne afray’d to be out-done on earth

When thou wert borne, great prince, that it brought forth

Another light to helpe the aged sunn,

Lest by thy luster he might be out-shone?

Or were th’ obsequious starres so joy’d to view

Thee, that they thought their countlesse eyes too few

For such an object; and would needes create

A better influence to attend thy state?

Or would the Fates thereby shew to the earth

A Cæsars birth, as once a Cæsars death?

And was ’t that newes that made pale Cynthia run

In so great hast to intercept the sunn;

And, enviously, so shee might gaine thy sight,

Would darken him from whome shee had her light?

Mysterious prodigies yet sure they bee,
Prognosticks of a rare prosperity:
For, can thy life promise lesse good to men,

Whose birth was th’ envy, and the care of heav’ne?

ON
THE BIRTH
OF
THE YOUNG PRINCE CHARLES.

When private men gett sonnes they get a spoone[78],

Without ecclypse, or any starr at noone:

When kings gett sonnes, they get withall supplyes

And succours, farr beyond all subsedyes.

Wellcome, Gods loane! thou tribute to the State,

Thou mony newly coyn’d, thou fleete of plate!

Thrice happy childe! whome God thy father sent

To make him rich without a parliament!

VINCENT CORBET,

The only son of the poet, was born (if the authority of a manuscript in the Harleian collection may be relied upon, in which this pathetic address appears,) on the 10th of November, 1627. From the following injunction in the bishop’s will[79], it seems he was educated at one of the universities: “I commit and commend the nurture and maintenance of my sonne and daughter unto the faythfull and loving care of my mother-in-law, declaring my intent, &c., that my sonne be placed at Oxford or Cambridge, where I require him, upon my blessing, to apply himself to his booke studiously and industriously.”

In 1648 he administered to the will[80] of his grandmother Anne Hutton; and of the further circumstances of his life I am ignorant.

TO HIS SON,
VINCENT CORBET,

On his Birth-Day, November 10, 1630, being then Three Years old.

What I shall leave thee none can tell,
But all shall say I wish thee well;
I wish thee, Vin, before all wealth,
Both bodily and ghostly health:
Nor too much wealth, nor wit, come to thee,
So much of either may undo thee.
I wish thee learning, not for show,
Enough for to instruct, and know;
Not such as gentlemen require,
To prate at table, or at fire.
I wish thee all thy mothers graces,
Thy fathers fortunes, and his places.
I wish thee friends, and one at court,
Not to build on, but support;
To keep thee, not in doing many
Oppressions, but from suffering any.
I wish thee peace in all thy ways,
Nor lazy nor contentious days;
And when thy soul and body part,
As innocent as now thou art[81].

AN EPITAPH
ON
Dr. DONNE, Dean of Pauls.

Born in 1573; died March 31, 1631.

He that would write an epitaph for thee,
And do it well, must first begin to be
Such as thou wert; for none can truly know

Thy worth, thy life, but he that hath liv’d so.

He must have wit to spare, and to hurl down
Enough to keep the gallants of the town;
He must have learning plenty, both the laws
Civil and common, to judge any cause;
Divinity great store, above the rest,
Not of the last edition, but the best.
He must have language, travel, all the arts,
Judgment to use, or else he wants thy parts:
He must have friends the highest, able to do,
Such as Mecænas and Augustus too.
He must have such a sickness, such a death,
Or else his vain descriptions come beneath.
Who then shall write an epitaph for thee,
He must be dead first; let ’t alone for me.

CERTAIN FEW WOORDES
SPOKEN CONCERNINGE ONE
BENET CORBETT
AFTER HER DECEASE.

She died October the 2d, Anno 1634.

(From MS. Harl. No. 464.)

Here, or not many feet from hence,

The virtue lies call’d Patience.

Sickness and Death did do her honour

By loosing paine and feare upon her.

Tis true they forst her to a grave,

That’s all the triumph that they have....

A silly one.... Retreat o’er night

Proves conquest in the morning-fight:

She will rise up against them both....

All sleep, believe it, is not sloth.

And, thou that read’st her elegie,

Take something of her historie:

She had one husband and one sonne;

Ask who they were, and then have doone.

ITER BOREALE

Seems a sort of imitation of Horace’s Brundusian journey. Davenant has “a journey into Worcestershire” (page 215. fol. edit.) in a similar vein, says Headley. If the popularity of this poem may be estimated by the frequency of manuscript copies in the public libraries, we may conclude it was valued very highly, as the transcripts of it are very numerous.

Misled by one of these, I considered this poem, the longest and most celebrated of bishop Corbet’s productions, to have been written in 1625: subsequent examination has induced me to place the date of its composition considerably earlier: the reasons on which this opinion is grounded, will be detailed in the following analysis of the Tour.

Our author commences his journey from Oxford in a company consisting of four persons, two of whom then were, and two of whom wished to be, doctors: but there is nothing in the course of the tour to show us which of the classes he belonged to, unless we are to suppose, from the shortness of cash which discovers itself before the termination of his adventures, that he was rather one of those who had wealth in expectancy than in possession.

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12

They set off on the 10th of August, and, long as the days are about that period, had a good chance of sharpening their appetites by their first half-day’s ride, thirty miles before dinner, when they sat down to dine with Dr. Christopher Middleton, at his rectory of Ashton on the Wall in Northamptonshire, about eight miles north of Banbury; where we learn that their entertainment was better than the looks of their host, whom they left in the evening, and rode to Flore, about twelve miles north-east, and took up their lodgings for the night.

At Flore they were entertained by a country surgeon, or (in the vulgar phrase) bone-setter, the tenant of Dr. Leonard Hutton, the rector of Flore and dean of Christ-Church, who fed them upon venison.

5

The third morning they set off for Daventry, about five miles. Here it happened to be the market- and lecture-day: and after having washed down the dust which their throats had acquired in the ride, one of them was summoned by the serjeant at mace to deliver the lecture; for which they were all rewarded with thanks and wine.

16

13

The fourth morning they rode to Lutterworth in Leicestershire, about sixteen miles. This was once the benefice of Wickliffe, the father of English reformers; and here the tourist very properly remarks on the double injustice done to that venerable character, first by the Papists in burning his body, and afterwards by the Puritans in destroying the sacred memorial of the interment of his ashes. At Lutterworth they were met by a parson, who though well-beneficed was better-mannered, and was their guide to his dwelling within a mile of Leicester. A note on the older editions of Corbet calls this gentleman the Parson of Heathcot: but there is no place of the name of Heathcot in that neighbourhood; and as, by comparison with other parts of the tour in which miles are mentioned, one mile will be invariably found to signify one and a half at the least; and as less than two reputed miles is accounted only one mile in the distance of places, I presume it was Ayleston, and not Heathcot, where the party rested, and were regaled with stale beer. At length they arrived at Leicester, thirteen miles north of Lutterworth, where, passing over six steeples and two hospitals, (“one hospital twice told,”) which he refers to the eye of Camden, he censures the ignorance of the alms-man, who, notwithstanding it was written on the walls that Henry of Grisemont laid the foundation, told them it was John of Gaunt. Henry Plantagenet, earl of Lancaster, was the first founder of the hospital in the Newark at Leicester in the year 1330, which was considerably enlarged and improved, and converted into a college by his son Henry, the good duke of Lancaster, in 1355; but there is a more general sense in which the word Founder is used, namely, that in which it is extended to all those who inherit, either by descent or by purchase, the patronage under the original founder. And in this sense it may be applied to John of Gaunt, the second duke of Lancaster, who married his near kinswoman the heiress of the former duke, and perfected both in buildings and endowments what the others had commenced. The other hospital alluded to, is that founded by William Wigston, merchant of the Staple, about 1520.

The tourist next observes on the extortion of the innkeeper, who, reckoning by the number of his guests rather than the goodness of his provision, charged them seven shillings and sixpence for bread and beer; but, after a kindly caution to the publican to forbear such cozenage upon Divines in future, lest they should be suspected of drinking as freely as he charges them, turns from a subject so unworthy of his Pegasus in disgust, and inquires if this be not the burial-place of Richard the Third; and, finding that there is no memorial for him, moralizes upon the neglected state in which he lies, as the eventual fate of all greatness: then from Richard proceeds to Wolsey, who was also buried at Leicester, and produces similar reflections; and from Wolsey, to William the ostler of the inn, who outdoes the company in years as well as drink, and calls them to horse as imperiously as if he had a warrant from the earl of Nottingham.

The earl of Nottingham here glanced at was Charles lord Howard of Effingham, lord high admiral of England under queen Elizabeth and king James the First. He died in 1624.

25

From Leicester to Nottingham (twenty-five miles) the travellers pass without noticing any thing on their way, until approaching the latter place they cross the Trent, pray to St. Andrew as they ride up hill, into the town, and observe that the people burrow, like conies, in caverns, from whence the smoke ascends at the feet of the woman who stands on the surface watching, down the chimney, the cooking of her dinner. The part of the town at which they enter is described as the Rocky Parish, higher than the rest; and the church of St. Mary, as embracing her Baby in her arms. From hence they proceed to the Castle, which is described as a ruin, with two statues of giants at the gates, whom the tourist severely censures for their negligence in permitting their charge to come to ruin, and reproaches them with the fidelity of the giants at Guildhall and Holmeby, who had carefully kept the buildings committed to their charge when the founders were dead. The poet might still compliment the giants at Guildhall; but of Holmeby (Holdenby House, Northamptonshire, built by queen Elizabeth’s lord chancellor, sir Christopher Hatton,) not one stone remains upon another: nay, the very memory of the giants might have perished but for the Iter Boreale.

The travellers then go to dinner at the Bull’s Head, where the archbishop of York had been before them, and where their discontent with bed and diet was answered by a reference to the satisfaction which he had received; and where the aged landlord, formerly an ostler, is noticed as a rare example to those who have an itch for gold.

20

Their next stage was to Newark, (about twenty miles, or, according to the reckoning of the poet, twelve), which is spoken of as no journey, but only a walk; and the banks of the Trent as so fertile and beautiful, that the English river takes away the palm from the celebrated Meander. The pleasure of this part of their journey was not diminished by their reception at Newark, where they met with a friend, out of respect to whom the town united as a family to give the travellers a hearty welcome; and even the landlord of one inn did not repine that they had passed his house to go to another, and the landlord of the inn where they rested was more solicitous of their approbation than his own profit. The very beggars rather prayed for their friend than begged of his guests, and the Puritans were willing to “let the organs play,” if the visitors would tarry.

From Newark they saw Bever (Belvoir) and Lincoln, and would fain have gone there but for the limitation on their purse and horses. At three o’clock they set off, with twenty (thirty) miles to ride, (probably to Melton Mowbray); and having neither guide, nor horse of speed, after losing their way, two hours after sun-set blundered upon a village, from whence they obtained a guide to Loughborough. From thence they set off next morning for Bosworth, (eighteen miles,) but in their way thither are lost in Charley Forest, and ask their way from the travellers they meet about the coal-mines at Coalorton, without receiving an answer; when William, their attendant, seeing a man approach, imagines himself to be in Fairyland. But the party are agreeably surprised by finding him one of the keepers of the forest, who conducts them within view of Bosworth.

At Bosworth they meet with far better treatment than the appearance of the place had promised; and, when their host there, who was their guide the next morning, brought them near to the field on which the battle of Bosworth was fought, are greatly amused by his romantic description of the battle. The guide seems to leave them at Nuneaton in Warwickshire, six miles (about nine) from Bosworth; from whence they proceed to Coventry, nine miles; and from thence, having scarcely had time to dine, depart for Kenilworth, five miles, where they are offended by the indecency of an aged parson, who attended the servant of the lord Leicester, it is presumed, to show them the Castle. The Castle of Kenilworth was once the splendid residence of Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, one of the favourites of queen Elizabeth, and on his death, in 1588, passed to his son, Robert Dudley, who used the title of earl of Leicester,—but by a decree of the Star-Chamber was declared to be illegitimate, and from disgust at that sentence retired into Italy, under a license for three years; and being summoned by the privy-council, at the instigation of his enemies, to return into England, and refusing to obey the summons, the Castle of Kenilworth was, for his contumacy, seized by the Crown under the statute of Fugitives; and Henry prince of Wales, in the year 1611, purchased a release of the inheritance of it from sir Robert Dudley, who was to have the constableship of the Castle, under prince Henry, for life. It does not appear, however, that sir Robert Dudley resided at Kenilworth afterwards: he probably had little regard for a place of which he had been compelled to relinquish the inheritance. This may account for the neglected state in which it was found by our poet and his companions.

From Kenilworth they proceed to Warwick, three (five) miles, noticing in their way the Cave of the celebrated hero of English romance, Guy earl of Warwick, as also his Pillar: and at Warwick we have a humorous description of the landlady of the inn. From the inn they proceed to the Castle, where they are received by “the lord of all this frame, the honourable Chancellor,” whose politeness and elegance of manners receive favourable notice. Sir Fulk Greville obtained a grant of Warwick Castle from king James the First, in the second year of his reign, (1604,) and was about the same time appointed chancellor of the exchequer; and resigned his office of chancellor, on being elevated to the peerage by the title of lord Brooke, 19th of January, 1620-21. It may be observed, that the author of the Iter notices him as an honourable chancellor, not as noble lord; which he certainly would have done if the Iter had not been of an earlier date than 1621.

With sir Fulk Greville they found a prelate of the church, an archdeacon, whom a note in the old editions calls archdeacon Burton. This, I presume, was Samuel Burton, A. M. of Christ-Church, Oxford, who paid first-fruits for the archdeaconry of Gloucester, in the cathedral of Gloucester, the 9th of May, 1607, and died the 14th of June, 1634, and was buried at Dry-Drayton in Gloucestershire. He is described as sufficiently corpulent to deserve the displeasure of the Puritans, whom our author never loses an opportunity of lashing.

From Warwick they arrive at Flore, (about twenty-one miles,) having been able to make both ends (of their purse) meet; and, after staying there four days, arrive at Banbury on St. Bartholomew’s day, (24th of August,) desirous to see what sport the saint would produce there. At this place (where they rested at the sign of the Altar-Stone) the tourist finds the altar converted into an inn, and, judging by the sign, lodged in a chapel, but, by the wine, in a bankrupt tavern; and yet, by the coffins converted into horse-troughs, a church. But though you may judge, by what is found at the inn, that the church is full of monuments, you will be disappointed; for there was not an inscription in the church except the names of the last year’s churchwardens,—with buckets and cobwebs hanging, instead of painted saints, in the windows. In short, the town seems to have been a strange collection of sectaries differing from each other.

From hence he returns to Oxford, twenty-two miles, with as little coin in his purse as sir Walter Raleigh brought from his unsuccessful expedition to Guiana in 1618; between which period and 1621 it is clear the poem was written.

ITER BOREALE.

Foure clerkes of Oxford, doctours two, and two

That would be doctors, having lesse to do

With Augustine then with Galen in vacation,

Chang’d studyes, and turn’d bookes to recreation:

And on the tenth of August, northward bent

A journey, not so soon conceiv’d as spent.

The first halfe day they rode, they light upon

A noble cleargy host, Kitt Middleton[82];

Who, numb’ring out good dishes with good tales,

The major part o’ th’ cheere weigh’d downe the scales:

And though the countenance makes the feast, (say bookes,)

Wee nere found better welcome with worse lookes.

Here wee pay’d thankes and parted; and at night

Had entertainement, all in one mans right[83],

At Flore, a village; where our tenant shee,
Sharp as a winters morning, feirce yet free,
With a leane visage, like a carved face
On a court cupboard, offer’d up the place.

Shee pleas’d us well; but, yet, her husband better;

A harty fellow, and a good bone-setter[84].
Now, whether it were providence or lucke,
Whether the keepers or the stealers bucke,
There wee had ven’son; such as Virgill slew
When he would feast Æneas and his crew.
Here wee consum’d a day; and the third morne
To Daintry with a land-wind were wee borne.
It was the market and the lecture-day,
For lecturers sell sermons, as the lay
Doe sheep and oxen; have their seasons just

For both their marketts: there wee dranke downe dust.

In th’ interim comes a most officious drudge[85],

His face and gowne drawne out with the same budge;

His pendant pouch, which was both large and wide,

Lookt like a letters-patent by his side:
He was as awfull, as he had bin sent
From Moses with th’ elev’nth commandement;
And one of us he sought; a sonne of Flore

He must bid stand, and challendge for an hower.

The doctors both were quitted of that feare,
The one was hoarce, the other was not there;
Wherefore him of the two he seazed, best
Able to answere him of all the rest:
Because hee neede but ruminate that ore
Which he had chew’d the Sabbath-day before.
And though he were resolv’d to doe him right,
For Mr. Balyes sake, and Mr. Wright[86],
Yet he dissembled that the mace did erre;
That he nor deacon was, nor minister.

No! quoth the serjeant; sure then, by relation,

You have a licence, sir, or toleration:

And if you have no orders ’tis the better,

So you have Dods Præcepts, or Cleavers Letters[87].

Thus looking on his mace, and urging still

Twas Mr. Wrights and Mr. Bayleyes will

That hee should mount; at last he condiscended

To stopp the gapp; and so the treaty ended.

The sermon pleas’d, and, when we were to dine,

Wee all had preachers wages, thankes and wine.

Our next dayes stage was Lutterworth[88], a towne

Not willing to be noted or sett downe

By any traveller; for, when w’ had bin

Through at both ends, wee could not finde an inne:

Yet, for the church sake, turne and light wee must,

Hoping to see one dramme of Wickliffs dust[89];

But wee found none: for underneath the pole
Noe more rests of his body then his soule.
Abused martyr! how hast thou bin torne

By two wilde factions! First, the Papists burne

Thy bones for hate; the Puritans, in zeale,

They sell thy marble, and thy brasse they steale.

A parson[90] mett us there, who had good store

Of livings, some say, but of manners more;

In whose streight chearefull age a man might see

Well govern’d fortune, bounty wise and free.

He was our guide to Leister, save one mile,

There was his dwelling, where wee stay’d awhile,

And dranke stale beere, I thinke was never new,

Which the dun wench that brought it us did brew.

And now wee are at Leister, where wee shall

Leape ore six steeples, and one hospitall

Twice told; but those great landmarkes I referr

To Camdens eye, Englands chorographer.
Let mee observe that almesmans heraldrye,
Who being ask’d, what Henry that should be
That was their founder, duke of Lancaster,

Answer’d: Twas John of Gaunt, I assure you, sir;

And so confuted all the walles, which sayd
Henry of Grisemond this foundation layd.
The next thing to be noted was our cheere,

Enlarg’d, with seav’ne and sixpence bread and beere!

But, oh you wretched tapsters as you are,
Who reckon by our number, not your ware,
And sett false figures for all companyes,
Abusing innocent meales with oathes and lyes;
Forbeare your coos’nage to Divines that come,

Least they be thought to drinke up all your summe.

Spare not the Laity in your reckoning thus,
But sure your theft is scandalous to us.
Away, my muse, from this base subject, know
Thy Pegasus nere strooke his foote soe low.
Is not th’ usurping Richard buryed here,

That king of hate, and therefore slave of feare;

Dragg’d from the fatall feild Bosworth, where hee

Lost life, and, what he liv’d for,—cruelty?

Search; find his name: but there is none. Oh kings!

Remember whence your power and vastnesse springs;

If not as Richard now, so shall you bee;

Who hath no tombe, but scorne and memorye.

And though that Woolsey from his store might save

A pallace, or a colledge for his grave,
Yet there he lyes interred as if all
Of him to be remembred were his fall.

Nothing but earth to earth, no pompeous waight

Upon him, but a pibble or a quaite.

If thou art thus neglected, what shall wee[91]

Hope after death, who are but shreads of thee?

Hold! William calls to horse; William is hee,

Who, though he never saw threescore and three,

Ore-reckons us in age, as he before

In drink, and will baite nothing of foure score:

And he commands, as if the warrant came

From the great earle himselfe of Nottingham.

There wee crost Trent, and on the other side

Prayd to Saint Andrew; and up hill wee ride.

Where wee observ’d the cunning men, like moles,

Dwell not in howses, but were earth’t in holes;

So did they not builde upwards, but digg thorough,

As hermitts caves, or conyes do their borough:

Great underminers sure as any where;

Tis thought the Powder-traitors practis’d there.

Would you not thinke the men stood on their heads,

When gardens cover howses there, like leades;
And on the chymneyes topp the mayd may know
Whether her pottage boyle or not, below;

There cast in hearbes, and salt, or bread; their meate

Contented rather with the smoake then heate?

This was the Rocky-Parish; higher stood

Churches and houses, buildings stone and wood;

Crosses not yet demolish’t; and our Ladye

With her armes on, embracing her whole Baby[92].

Where let us note, though those are northerne parts,

The Crosse finds in them more then southerne hearts.

The Castle’s next; but what shall I report

Of that which is a ruine, was a fort?

The gates two statues keepe, which gyants[93] are,

To whome it seemes committed was the care
Of the whole downfall. If it be your fault;
If you are guilty; may king Davids vault[94],

Or Mortimers darke hole[95], contain you both[96]!

A just reward for so prophane a sloth.
And if hereafter tidings shall be brought
Of any place or office to be bought,
And the left lead, or unwedg’d timber yet
Shall pass by your consent to purchase it;
May your deformed bulkes endure the edge
Of axes, feele the beetle and the wedge!
May all the ballads be call’d in and dye,

Which sing the warrs of Colebrand and sir Guy!

Oh you that doe Guild-hall and Holmeby keepe
Soe carefully, when both the founders sleepe,
You are good giants, and partake no shame

With those two worthlesse trunkes of Nottinghame:

Looke to your severall charges; wee must goe,

Though greiv’d at heart to leave a castle so.

The Bull-head[97] is the word, and wee must eate;

Noe sorrow can descend soe deepe as meate:

So to the inne wee come; where our best cheere

Was, that his grace of Yorke had lodged there:

Hee was objected to us when wee call,

Or dislike ought: “My lords grace” answers all:

“Hee was contented with this bed, this dyett.”

That keepes our discontented stomackes quiett.

The inne-keeper was old, fourescore allmost,
Indeede an embleme rather then an host;
In whome wee read how God and Time decree
To honour thrifty ostlers, such as hee.
For in the stable first he did begin;
Now see hee is sole lord of the whole inne:
Mark the encrease of straw and hay, and how,
By thrift, a bottle may become a mow.
Marke him, all you that have the golden itch,
All whome God hath condemned to be rich[98].
Farwell, glad father of thy daughter Maris,
Thou ostler-phœnix, thy example rare is.
Wee are for Newarke after this sad talke;
And whither tis noe journey, but a walke.
Nature is wanton there, and the high-way
Seem’d to be private, though it open lay;
As if some swelling lawyer, for his health,
Or frantick usurer, to tame his wealth,
Had chosen out ten miles by Trent, to trye
Two great effects of art and industry.

The ground wee trodd was meddow, fertile land,

New trimm’d and levell’d by the mowers hand;

Above it grew a roke, rude, steepe, and high,

Which claimes a kind of reverence from the eye:

Betwixt them both there glides a lively streame,

Not loud, but swifte: Mæander was a theame
Crooked and rough; but had the poetts seene
Straight, even Trent, it had immortall bin.
This side the open plaine admitts the sunne
To halfe the river; there did silver runne:

The other halfe ran clowdes; where the curl’d wood

With his exalted head threaten’d the floude.
Here could I wish us ever passing by
And never past; now Newarke is too nigh:
And as a Christmas seemes a day but short,
Deluding time with revells and good sport;
So did these beauteous mixtures us beguile,

And the whole twelve, being travail’d, seem’d a mile.

Now as the way was sweet, soe was the end;

Our passage easy, and our prize a friend[99],

Whome there wee did enjoy; and for whose sake,

As for a purer kinde of coyne, men make
Us liberall welcome; with such harmony
As the whole towne had bin his family.
Mine host of the next inne did not repine

That wee preferr’d the Heart, and past his signe:

And where wee lay, the host and th’ hostesse faine

Would shew our love was aym’d at, not their gaine:

The very beggars were s’ ingenious,

They rather prayd for him, then begg’d of us.

And, soe the Doctors friends will please to stay,

The Puritans will let the organs play.

Would they pull downe the gallery, builded new,

With the church-wardens seat and Burleigh-pew,

Newarke, for light and beauty, might compare
With any church, but what cathedralls are.
To this belongs a vicar[100], who succeded

The friend I mention’d; such a one there needed;

A man whose tongue and life is eloquent,
Able to charme those mutinous heads of Trent,
And urge the Canon home, when they conspire

Against the crosse and bells with swords and fire.

There stood a Castle, too; they shew us here

The roome where the King slep’t[101], the window where

He talk’t with such a lord, how long he staid
In his discourse, and all, but what he said.
From hence, without a perspective, wee see

Bever and Lincolne, where wee faine would bee;

But that our purse and horses both are bound
Within the circuite of a narrower ground.
Our purpose is all homeward, and ’twas time
At parting to have witt, as well as rime;
Full three a clock, and twenty miles to ride,
Will aske a speedy horse, and a sure guide;
Wee wanted both: and Loughborow may glory,
Errour hath made it famous in our story.

Twas night, and the swifte horses of the Sunne

Two houres before our jades their race had runn;

Noe pilott moone, nor any such kinde starre

As governd those wise men that came from farre

To holy Bethlem; such lights had there bin,

They would have soone convay’d us to an inne;

But all were wandring-starrs; and wee, as they,

Were taught noe course, but to ride on and stray.

When (oh the fate of darknesse, who hath tride it)

Here our whole fleete is scatter’d and divided;

And now wee labour more to meete, then erst

Wee did to lodge; the last cry drownes the first:

Our voyces are all spent, and they that follow

Can now no longer track us by the hollow;

They curse the formost, wee the hindmost, both

Accusing with like passion, hast, and sloth.

At last, upon a little towne wee fall,

Where some call drinke, and some a candle call:

Unhappy wee, such stragglers as wee are

Admire a candle offner then a starre:

Wee care not for those glorious lampes a loofe,

Give us a tallow-light and a dry roofe.

And now wee have a guide wee cease to chafe,

And now w’ have time to pray the rest be safe.

Our guide before cryes Come, and wee the while

Ride blindfold, and take bridges for a stile:

Till at the last wee overcame the darke,

And spight of night and errour hitt the marke.

Some halfe howre after enters the whole tayle,

As if they were committed to the jayle:

The constable, that tooke them thus divided,

Made them seeme apprehended, and not guided:

Where, when wee had our fortunes both detested,

Compassion made us friends, and so wee rested.

’Twas quickly morning, though by our short stay

Wee could not find that wee had lesse to pay.

All travellers, this heavy judgement heare:

“A handsome hostesse makes the reckoning deare;”

Her smiles, her wordes, your purses must requite them,

And every wellcome from her, adds an item.
Glad to be gon from thence at any rate,
For Bosworth wee are horst: Behold the state
Of mortall men! Foule Errour is a mother,

And, pregnant once, doth soone bring forth an other;

Wee, who last night did learne to loose our way,

Are perfect since, and farther out next day.
And in a forrest[102] having travell’d sore,
Like wandring Bevis ere hee found the bore;
Or as some love-sick lady oft hath donne,

Ere shee was rescued by the Knight of th’ Sunne:

Soe are wee lost, and meete no comfort then

But carts and horses, wiser then the men.

Which is the way? They neyther speake nor point;

Their tongues and fingers both were out of joynt:

Such monsters by Coal-Orton bankes there sitt,

After their resurrection from the pitt.

Whilst in this mill wee labour and turne round

As in a conjurers circle, William found

A menes for our deliverance: Turne your cloakes,

Quoth hee, for Puck is busy in these oakes:

If ever yee at Bosworth will be found,

Then turne your cloakes, for this is Fayry-ground.

But, ere this witchcraft was perform’d, wee mett

A very man, who had no cloven feete;

Though William, still of little faith, doth doubt

Tis Robin, or some sprite that walkes about:

Strike him, quoth hee, and it will turne to ayre;

Crosse your selves thrice and strike it: Strike that dare,

Thought I, for sure this massy forrester
In stroakes will prove the better conjurer.
But twas a gentle keeper, one that knew
Humanity, and manners where they grew;
And rode along soe farr till he could say,

See yonder Bosworth stands, and this your way.

And now when wee had swett ’twixt sunn and sunn,

And eight miles long to thirty broad had spun;

Wee learne the just proportion from hence

Of the diameter and circumference.

That night yet made amends; our meat and sheetes

Were farr above the promise of those streetes;

Those howses, that were tilde with straw and mosse,

Profest but weake repaire for that dayes losse

Of patience: yet this outside lets us know,

The worthyest things make not the bravest show:

The shott was easy; and what concernes us more,

The way was so; mine host doth ride before.
Mine host was full of ale and history;
And on the morrow when hee brought us nigh

Where the two Roses[103] joyn’d, you would suppose,

Chaucer nere made the Romant of the Rose.

Heare him. See yee yon wood? There Richard lay,

With his whole army: Looke the other way,

And loe where Richmond in a bed of gorsse

Encampt himselfe ore night, and all his force:

Upon this hill they mett. Why, he could tell

The inch where Richmond stood, where Richard fell:

Besides what of his knowledge he could say,

He had authenticke notice from the Play;

Which I might guesse, by’s mustring up the ghosts,

And policyes, not incident to hosts;
But cheifly by that one perspicuous thing,
Where he mistooke a player for a king.

For when he would have sayd, King Richard dyed,

And call’d—A horse! a horse!—he, Burbidge cry’de[104].

Howere his talke, his company pleas’d well;

His mare went truer then his chronicle;

And even for conscience sake, unspurr’d, unbeaten,

Brought us six miles, and turn’d tayle at Nuneaton.

From thence to Coventry, where wee scarcely dine;

Our stomackes only warm’d with zeale and wine:

And then, as if wee were predestin’d forth,
Like Lot from Sodome, fly to Killingworth.
The keeper of the castle was from home,

Soe that halfe mile wee lost; yet when wee come

An host receiv’d us there, wee’l nere deny him,

My lord of Leisters man; the parson by him,
Who had no other proofe to testify
He serv’d the Lord, but age and baudery[105].

Away, for shame, why should foure miles devide

Warwicke and us? They that have horses ride.

A short mile from the towne, an humble shrine[106]

At foote of an high rock consists, in signe
Of Guy and his devotions; who there stands
Ugly and huge, more then a man on ’s hands:

His helmett steele, his gorgett mayl, his sheild

Brass, made the chappell fearefull as a feild.

And let this answere all the Popes complaints;

Wee sett up gyants though wee pull downe saintes.

Beyond this, in the roadway as wee went,

A pillar stands, where this Colossus leant;

Where he would sigh and love, and, for hearts ease,

Oftimes write verses (some say) such as these:

“Here will I languish in this silly bower,

Whilst my true love triumphes in yon high tower.”

No other hinderance now, but wee may passe
Cleare to our inne: Oh there an hostesse was,
To whome the Castle and the Dun Cow are
Sights after dinner; shee is morning ware.
Her whole behaviour borrowed was, and mixt,

Halfe foole, halfe puppet, and her pace betwixt

Measure and jigge; her court’sy was an honour;

Her gate, as if her neighbour had out-gon her.

Shee was barrd up in whale-bones which doe leese

None of the whales length; for they reach’d her knees:

Off with her head, and then shee hath a middle:

As her wast stands, shee lookes like the new fiddle,

The favorite Theorbo, (truth to tell yee,)

Whose neck and throat are deeper then the belly[107].

Have you seene monkyes chain’d about the loynes,

Or pottle-potts with rings? Just soe shee joynes

Her selfe together: A dressing shee doth love

In a small print below, and text above.

What though her name be King, yet tis noe treason,

Nor breach of statute, for to aske the reason

Of her brancht ruffe, a cubit every poke:

I seeme to wound her, but shee strook the stroke

At our departure; and our worshipps there

Pay’d for our titles deare as any where:

Though beadles and professors both have done,

Yet every inne claimes augmentation.

Please you walke out and see the Castle[108]? Come,

The owner saith, it is a schollers home;

A place of strength and health: in the same fort,

You would conceive a castle and a court.

The orchards, gardens, rivers, and the aire,

Doe with the trenches, rampires, walls, compare:

It seemes nor art nor force can intercept it,

As if a lover built, a souldier kept it.

Up to the tower, though it be steepe and high,

Wee doe not climbe but walke; and though the eye

Seeme to be weary, yet our feet are still

In the same posture cozen’d up the hill:

And thus the workemans art deceaves our sence,

Making those rounds of pleasure a defence.

As wee descend, the lord of all this frame,

The honorable Chancellour, towards us came[109].

Above the hill there blew a gentle breath,

Yet now we see a gentler gale beneath.

The phrase and wellcome of this knight did make

The seat more elegant; every word he spake
Was wine and musick, which he did expose
To us, if all our art could censure those.

With him there was a prelate[110], by his place

Arch-deacon to the byshopp, by his face
A greater man; for that did counterfeit
Lord abbot of some covent standing yet,
A corpulent relique: marry and tis sinne
Some Puritan gets not his face call’d in;
Amongst leane brethren it may scandall bring,
Who seeke for parity in every thing.
For us, let him enjoy all that God sends,
Plenty of flesh, of livings, and of freinds.
Imagine here us ambling downe the street,
Circling in Flower, making both ends meet:

Where wee fare well foure dayes, and did complain,

Like harvest folkes, of weather and the raine:

And on the feast of Barthol’mew wee try

What revells that saint keepes at Banbury[111].

In th’ name of God, Amen! First to begin,
The altar was translated to an inne;
Wee lodged in a chappell by the signe,
But in a banquerupt taverne by the wine:
Besides, our horses usage made us thinke

Twas still a church, for they in coffins drinke[112];

As if twere congruous that the ancients lye

Close by those alters in whose faith they dye.

Now yee beleeve the Church hath good varietye

Of monuments, when inns have such satiety;

But nothing lesse: ther’s no inscription there,

But the church-wardens names of the last yeare:

Instead of saints in windowes and on walls,
Here bucketts hang, and there a cobweb falls:
Would you not sweare they love antiquity,
Who brush the quire for perpetuity?
Whilst all the other pavement and the floore
Are supplicants to the surveyors power

Of the high wayes, that he would gravell keepe;

For else in winter sure it will be deepe.

If not for Gods, for Mr. Wheatlyes sake

Levell the walkes; suppose these pittfalls make

Him spraine a lecture, or misplace a joynt

In his long prayer, or his fiveteenth point:

Thinke you the dawes or stares can sett him right?

Surely this sinne upon your heads must light.
And say, beloved, what unchristian charme
Is this? you have not left a legg or arme
Of an apostle: think you, were they whole,

That they would rise, at least assume a soule?

If not, ’tis plaine all the idolatry
Lyes in your folly, not th’ imagery.
Tis well the pinnacles are falne in twaine;
For now the divell, should he tempt againe,
Hath noe advantage of a place soe high:
Fooles, he can dash you from your gallery,
Where all your medly meete; and doe compare,

Not what you learne, but who is longest there;

The Puritan, the Anabaptist, Brownist,

Like a grand sallet: Tinkers, what a towne ist?

The crosses also, like old stumps of trees,

Are stooles for horsemen that have feeble knees;

Carry noe heads above ground: They which tell,

That Christ hath nere descended into hell,
But to the grave, his picture buried have
In a far deeper dungeon then a grave:
That is, descended to endure what paines

The divell can think, or such disciples braines.

No more my greife, in such prophane abuses

Good whipps make better verses then the muses.

Away, and looke not back; away, whilst yet
The church is standing, whilst the benefitt
Of seeing it remaines; ere long you shall
Have that rac’t downe, and call’d Apocryphal,
And in some barne heare cited many an author,

Kate Stubbs, Anne Askew, or the Ladyes daughter[113];

Which shall be urg’d for fathers. Stopp Disdaine,

When Oxford once appears, Satyre refraine.

Neighbours, how hath our anger thus out gon ’s?

Is not Saint Giles’s this, and that Saint Johns?

Wee are return’d; but just with soe much ore

As Rawleigh from his voyage, and noe more.

Non recito cuiquam nisi amicis, idque coactus,

Non ubivis, coramve quibuslibet.

Hor. lib. i. sat. 4.

ON
MR. RICE,
THE MANCIPLE OF CHRIST-CHURCH IN OXFORD.

Who can doubt, Rice, but to th’ eternall place

Thy soule is fledd, that did but know thy face?

Whose body was soe light, it might have gone

To heav’ne without a resurrection.

Indeed thou wert all type; thy limmes were signes,

Thy arteryes but mathematicke lines:

As if two soules had made thy compound good,

That both should live by faith, and none by blood.

ON
HENRY BOLINGS.

If gentleness could tame the Fates, or wit
Deliver man, Bolings had not di’d yet;
But One which over us in judgment sits,
Doth say our sins are stronger than our wits.

ON
JOHN DAWSON,
BUTLER OF CHRIST-CHURCH.

Dawson the butler’s dead: Although I think
Poets were ne’re infus’d with single drink,
I’ll spend a farthing, muse; a watry verse
Will serve the turn to cast upon his herse.
If any cannot weep amongst us here,
Take off his cup, and so squeeze out a tear.
Weep, O ye barrels! let your drippings fall

In trickling streams; make waste more prodigal

Than when our beer was good, that John may float

To Styx in beer, and lift up Charons boat
With wholsome waves: and, as the conduits ran
With claret at the Coronation,
So let your channels flow with single tiff,

For John, I hope, is crown’d: Take off your whiff,

Ye men of rosemary[114], and drink up all,

Remembring ’tis a butlers funeral:

Had he been master of good double beer,

My life for his, John Dawson had been here.

ON
GREAT TOM OF CHRIST-CHURCH.

Be dumb, ye infant-chimes, thump not your mettle,

That ne’re out-ring a tinker and his kettle;
Cease, all you petty larums; for, to-day
Is young Tom’s resurrection from the clay:
And know, when Tom rings out his knells,
The best of you will be but dinner-bells.
Old Tom’s grown young again, the fiery cave
Is now his cradle, that was erst his grave:
He grew up quickly from his mother earth,
For, all you see was but an hours birth;
Look on him well, my life I dare engage,
You ne’re saw prettier baby of his age.
Some take his measure by the rule, some by
The Jacobs-staff take his profundity,
And some his altitude; but some do swear

Young Tom’s not like the Old: But, Tom, ne’re fear

The critical geometricians line,

If thou as loud as e’re thou did ring’st nine.

Tom did no sooner peep from under-ground,

But straight Saint Maries tenor lost his sound.

O how this may-poles heart did swell

With full main sides of joy, when that crackt bell

Choakt with annoy, and ’s admiration,
Rung like a quart-pot to the congregation.
Tom went his progress lately, and lookt o’re
What he ne’re saw in many years before;
But when he saw the old foundation,
With some like hope of preparation,

He burst with grief; and lest he should not have

Due pomp, he’s his own bell-man to the grave:

And that there might of him be still some mention,

He carried to his grave a new invention.

They drew his brown-bread face on pretty gins,

And made him stalk upon two rolling-pins;

But Sander Hill swore twice or thrice by heaven,

He ne’re set such a loaf into the oven.
And Tom did Sanders vex, his Cyclops maker,
As much as he did Sander Hill, the baker;

Therefore, loud thumping Tom, be this thy pride,

When thou this motto shalt have on thy side:

“Great world! one Alexander conquer’d thee,

And two as mighty men scarce conquer’d me.”

Brave constant spirit, none could make thee turn,

Though hang’d, drawn, quarter’d, till they did thee burn:

Yet not for this, nor ten times more be sorry,

Since thou was martyr’d for the Churches glory;

But for thy meritorious suffering,

Thou shortly shalt to heaven in a string:

And though we griev’d to see thee thump’d and bang’d,

We’ll all be glad, Great Tom, to see thee hang’d.

R. C.

When too much zeal doth fire devotion,

Love is not love, but superstition:

Even so in civil duties, when we come

Too oft, we are not kind, but troublesome.

Yet as the first is not idolatry,

So is the last but grieved industry:

And such was mine, whose strife to honour you

By overplus, hath rob’d you of your due.

A PROPER NEW BALLAD,
INTITULED
THE FAERYES FAREWELL;
OR,
GOD-A-MERCY WILL.

To be sung or whiseled to the Tune of “The Meddow Brow,” by the Learned; by the Unlearned, to the Tune of “Fortune.”

Farewell rewards and Faeries,
Good houswives now may say,
For now foule slutts in daries
Doe fare as well as they.
And though they sweepe theyr hearths no less
Then maydes were wont to doe,
Yet who of late for cleaneliness,
Finds sixe-pence in her shoe?

Lament, lament, old abbies,
The Faries lost command;
They did but change priests babies,
But some have changd your land:
And all your children sprung from thence
Are now growne Puritanes;
Who live as changelings ever since
For love of your demaines.

At morning and at evening both
You merry were and glad,
So little care of sleepe or sloth
These prettie ladies had;
When Tom came home from labour,
Or Ciss to milking rose,
Then merrily merrily went theyre tabor,
And nimbly went theyre toes.

Wittness those rings and roundelayes
Of theirs, which yet remaine,
Were footed in queene Maries dayes
On many a grassy playne;
But since of late, Elizabeth,
And later, James came in,
They never daunc’d on any heath
As when the time hath bin.

By which wee note the Faries
Were of the old profession;
Theyre songs were Ave Maryes;
Theyre daunces were procession:
But now, alas! they all are dead,
Or gone beyond the seas;
Or farther for religion fled,
Or elce they take theyre ease.

A tell-tale in theyre company
They never could endure,
And whoe so kept not secretly
Theyre mirth was punisht sure;
It was a just and christian deed
To pinch such blacke and blew:
O how the common welth doth need
Such justices as you!

Now they have left our quarters
A register they have,
Who looketh to theyre charters,
A man both wise and grave;
An hundred of theyre merry prancks
By one that I could name
Are kept in store, conn twenty thanks
To William for the same.

I marvell who his cloake would turne
When Pucke had led him round[115],
Or where those walking-fires would burne,
Where Cureton would be found;
How Broker would appeare to be,
For whom this age doth mourne;
But that theyre spiritts live in thee,
In thee, old William Chourne.

To William Chourne of Stafford shire
Give laud and prayses due,
Who every meale can mend your cheare
With tales both old and true:
To William all give audience,
And pray yee for his noddle,
For all the Faries evidence
Were lost, if that were addle.

A NON SEQUITUR.

(From “Wit Restored,” 8vo. 1658.)

Marke! how the lanterns clowd mine eyes,
See where a moon-drake ’gins to rise;
Saturne crawls much like an iron catt,
To see the naked moone in a slipshott hatt.
Thunder-thumping toadstools crock the pots
To see the mermaids tumble;
Leather cat-a-mountaines shake their heels,
To heare the gosh-hawke grumble.
The rustic threed
Begins to bleed,
And cobwebs elbows itches;
The putrid skyes
Eat mulsacke pyes,
Backed up in logicke breches.
Munday trenchers made good hay,
The lobster weares no dagger;
Meale-mouthed she-peacocke powle the starres,
And made the lowbell stagger.
Blew crocodiles foame in the toe,
Blind meale-bagges do follow the doe;
A ribb of apple braine spice
Will follow the Lancashire dice.

Harke! how the chime of Plutoes pispot cracks,

To see the rainbowes wheele-gann made of flax.

NONSENCE.

(Ashmole’s Museum, A. 37.)

Like to the thundring tone of unspoke speeches,

Or like a lobster clad in logicke breeches,

Or like the graye-furre of a crimson catt,

Or like the moone-calfe in a slip-shodde hatt:

Even such is hee who never was begotten

Untill his children were both dead and rotten.

Like to the fiery tombstone of a cabbage,

Or like a crabbe-louse with its bag and baggage,

Or like the four square circle of a ring,
Or like to hey dinge, dingea dingea dinge:
Even such is he who spake, and yet no doubt

Spake to small purpose, when his tongue was out.

Like to a fairs, fresh, faiding, withered rose,

Or lyke to rhyming verse that runs in prose,
Or lyke the stumbles of a tynder box,
Or lyke a man that’s sound yet hath the pox:
Even such is he who dyed, and yet did laugh
To see these lines writt for his epitaph.

THE COUNTRY LIFE[116].

Thrice and above blest (my souls halfe!) art thou

In thy though last yet better vowe,
Canst leave the Cyttye with exchange to see
The Country’s sweet simplicitie,
And to knowe and practise, with intent
To growe the sooner innocent,
By studdyinge to knowe vertue, and to ayme
More at her nature than her name.

The last is but the least, the first doth tell

Wayes not to live, but to live well.

And both are knowne to thee, who now canst live,

Led by thy conscience, to give

Justice[117] to soon pleas’d Nature, and to showe

Wisdome and she togeather goe,

And keepe one center: this with that conspires

To teach man to confine’s desires;
To knowe that riches have their proper stint
In the contented minde, not mint;

And canst instruct, that those that have the itch

Of cravinge more, are never rich.

These thinges thou knowst to th’ height, and dost prevent

The mange, because thou art content

With that Heaven gave thee with a sparinge hand,

More blessed in thy brest than land,
To keepe but Nature even and upright,
To quench not cocker appetite.
The first is Nature’s end; this doth impart
Least thankes to Nature, most to Art.
But thou canst tersely live, and satisfie
The bellye only, not the eye;
Keepinge the barkinge stomache meanly quiet
With a neat yet needfull dyett.
But that which most creates thy happy life,
Is the fruition of a wife,

Whom (starres consentinge with thy fate) thou hast

Gott, not so beautifull as chast.

By whose warm’d side thou dost securely sleepe,

Whilst Love the centinell doth keepe

With those deeds done by day, which ne’er affright

The silken slumbers in the night;
Nor hath the darkenesse power to usher in
Feare to those sheets that knowe no sinne:
But still thy wife, by chast intention led,
Gives thee each night a maidenhead.

For where pure thoughts are led by godly feare,

Trew love, not lust at all, comes there;

And in that sense the chaster thoughts commend

Not halfe so much the act as end:

That, what with dreams in sleepe of rurall blisse,

Night growes farre shorter than shee is.

The damaske meddowes, and the crawlinge streames,

Sweeten, and make soft thy dreams.

The purlinge springes, groves, birdes, and well-weav’d bowers,

With fields enamelled with flowers,

Present thee shapes, whilst phantasye discloses

Millions of lillyes mixt with roses.

Then dreame thou hear’st the lambe with many a bleat

Woo’d to come sucke the milkey teate;
Whilst Faunus, in the vision, vowes to keepe
From ravenouse wolfe the woolley sheepe;

With thowsand such enchantinge dreames, which meet

To make sleepe not so sound as sweet.
Nor can these figures in thy rest endeere,
As not to up when chanticleere

Speaks the last watch, but with the dawne dost rise

To worke, but first to sacrifice:

Makinge thy peace with Heaven for some late fault,

With holy meale and cracklinge salt.

That done, thy painfull thumbe this sentence tells us,

God for our labour all thinges sells us.
Nor are thy daylye and devout affayres
Attended with those desperate cares

Th’ industriouse marchant hath, who for to finde

Gold, runneth to the furthest Inde[118],
And home againe tortur’d with fear doth hye,
Untaught to suffer povertye.
But you at home blest with securest ease,
Sitt’st and beleev’st that there are seas,
And watrye dangers; but thy better hap
But sees these thinges within thy mapp,
And viewinge them with a more safe survaye,
Makst easy Feare unto thee say,

A heart thrice wall’d with oake and brass that man

Had, first durst plough the ocean.
But thou at home, without or tyde or gale,
Canst in thy mapp securely sayle,
Viewinge the parted countryes, and so guesse
By their shades their substances;
And from their compasse borrowing advise,
Buy’st travayle at the lowest price.

Nor are thy eares so seald but thou canst heare

Far more with wonder than with feare.

—Cætera desiderantur.

ROBERT WISDOM

Was rector of Settrington in Yorkshire, and was presented to the archdeaconry of Ely by Elizabeth the 27th of February 1559-60. In bishop Cox’s Certificatorium (MS. Bennet Col. Lib.) he is returned to the archbishop as “a priest and B. D. usually residing upon his living of Wilberton, appropriated to the archdeaconry, was qualified for preaching, and licensed thereunto by the Queen’s majesty.”

He died, and was buried at Wilberton the 20th of September, 1568.

He is chiefly memorable for his metrical prayer intended to be sung in the church against the Pope and the Turk, of whom he seems to have had the most alarming apprehensions; and in consequence of which he has been ridiculed by sir John Denham, Corbet, Butler, and others.

TO
THE GHOST
OF
ROBERT WISDOME[119].

Thou, once a body, now but aire,
Arch-botcher of a psalme or prayer,
From Carfax come;
And patch mee up a zealous lay,
With an old ever and for ay,
Or, all and some.
Or such a spirit lend mee,
As may a hymne downe send mee,
To purge my braine:
So, Robert, looke behind thee,
Least Turke or Pope doe find thee,
And goe to bed againe.

THOMAS JONCE.

The name of this man, (Jones,) which Corbet, for the sake of the rhyme, has corrupted, sufficiently denotes his extraction; and I would have ascertained the time of his death, but the register was not to be found upon application for that purpose.

Antony à Wood says, in his History of the City of Oxford, “Thomas Jonce, a clergyman and inhabitant of this place, (St. Giles’s parish, Oxford,) desiring here to lay his bones, was of note sufficient to excite bishop Corbet to write an epitaph on him.”

‘Say’st thou this of thyself, or did others tell it thee of me?’

AN EPITAPH
ON
THOMAS JONCE.

Here, for the nonce,
Came Thomas Jonce,
In St. Giles church to lye.

None Welsh before,
None Welshman more,
Till Shon Clerk die.

I’ll tole the bell,
I’ll ring his knell;
He died well,
He’s sav’d from hell;
And so farwel
Tom Jonce.

TO THE
LADYES OF THE NEW DRESSE,
THAT WEARE THEIR GORGETS AND RAYLES DOWNE TO THEIR WASTES.

Ladyes, that weare black cipress-vailes
Turn’d lately to white linnen-rayles,
And to your girdle weare your bands,
And shew your armes instead of hands;
What can you doe in Lent so meet
As, fittest dress, to weare a sheet?
’Twas once a band, ’tis now a cloake,
An acorne one day proves an oke:
Weare but your linnen to your feet,
And then your band will prove a sheet.
By which devise, and wise excesse,
You’l doe your penance in a dresse;
And none shall know, by what they see,
Which lady’s censur’d, and which free.

THE LADIES’ ANSWER.

(Harl. MS. No. 6396.)

Blacke cypresse vailes are shroudes on night,
White linnen railes are raies of light,
Which though we to the girdles weare,
We’ve hands to keep your hands off there.
A fitter dresse we have in Lent,
To shew us trewly penitent.
Whoe makes the band to be a cloke
Makes John-a-style of John-an-oake.
We weare our garments to the feet,
Yet neede not make our bandes a sheet:
The clergie weare as long as we,
Yet that implies conformitie.
Be wise, recant what you have writt,
Least you doe pennance for your witte;
Love’s charm hath power to weare a stringe,
To tye you as you tied your ringe[120];
There by love’s sharpe but just decree
You may be censured, we go free.

CORBET’S REPLY.

(Ashmole’s Museum, A. 38. Fol. 66.)

Yff nought but love-charmes power have
Your blemisht creditt for to save;
Then know your champion is blind,
And that love-nottes are soon untwinde.
But blemishes are now a grace,
And add a lustre to your face;
Your blemisht credit for to save,
You needed not a vayle to have;
The rayle for women may be fitte,
Because they daylie practice ytt.
And, seeing counsell can you not reforme,
Read this reply—and take ytt not in scorne.

FAIRFORD WINDOWS

Are much admired, says the provincial historian of Glocestershire, for their excellent painted glass. There are twenty-eight large windows, which are curiously painted with the stories of the Old and New Testament: the middle windows in the choir, and on the west side of the church, are larger than the rest; those in the choir represent the history of our Saviour’s Crucifixion; the window at the west end represents Hell and Damnation; those on the side of the church, and over the body, represent the figures in length of the prophets, apostles, fathers, martyrs and confessors, and also the persecutors of the church. The painting was designed by Albert Durer, an eminent Italian Master: the colours are very lively, especially in the drapery: some of the figures are so well finished, that sir Anthony Vandyke affirmed that the pencil could not exceed them. This curious painting was preserved from zealous fury in the great rebellion, by turning the glass upside down.

John Tame, esq. founded this church in the year 1493. He was a merchant, and took a prize-ship bound for Rome, in which was this painted glass: he brought both the glass and workmen into England, built the church for the sake of the glass, and dedicated it to the Virgin Mary.

Atkyns’s Hist. of Glocestershire, p. 226. 1768. fol.

It is to be observed that the tradition of the famous Albert Durer having furnished the drawings will not, as Mr. Dallaway justly observes, bear the test of chronology; for he was not twenty years of age when these windows were put up; nor is it probable that he had then attained to such proficiency—to say nothing of the time necessary for the perfecting such works.

UPON FAIRFORD WINDOWS.

Tell me, you anti-saints, why brass
With you is shorter lived than glass?
And why the saints have scap’t their falls
Better from windows than from walles?
Is it, because the Brethrens fires
Maintain a glass-house at Blackfryars?
Next which the church stands North and South,
And East and West the preacher’s mouth.
Or is ’t, because such painted ware
Resembles something that you are,
Soe py’de, soe seeming, soe unsound
In manners, and in doctrine, found,
That, out of emblematick witt,
You spare yourselves in sparing it?
If it be soe, then, Faireford, boast
Thy church hath kept what all have lost;
And is preserved from the bane
Of either warr, or puritane:
Whose life is colour’d in thy paint,
The inside drosse, the outside saint.

UPON
FAIREFORD WINDOWES[121].

(Misc. MS. Poems, Mus. Brit. Bib. Sloan. No. 1446.)

I knowe no painte of poetry
Can mend such colour’d imag’ry
In sullen inke, yet (Fayreford) I
May rellish thy fair memory.
Such is the echoe’s fainter sound,
Such is the light when the sunn’s drown’d,
So did the fancy look upon
The work before it was begun.
Yet when those showes are out of sight,
My weaker colours may delight.
Those images doe faithfullie
Report true feature to the eie,
As you may think each picture was
Some visage in a looking-glass;
Not a glass window face, unless
Such as Cheapside hath, where a press
Of painted gallants, looking out,
Bedeck the casement rounde about.
But these have holy phisnomy;
Each paine instructs the laity
With silent eloquence; for heere
Devotion leads the eie, not eare,
To note the cathechisinge paint,
Whose easie phrase doth soe acquainte
Our sense with Gospell, that the Creede
In such an hand the weake may reade.
Such tipes e’en yett of vertue bee,
And Christ as in a glass we see—
When with a fishinge rod the clarke
St. Peter’s draught of fish doth marke,
Such is the scale, the eie, the finn,
You’d thinke they strive and leape within;
But if the nett, which holdes them, brake,
Hee with his angle some would take.
But would you walke a turn in Paules,
Looke up, one little pane inrouls
A fairer temple. Flinge a stone,
The church is out at the windowe flowne.
Consider not, but aske your eies,
And ghosts at mid-day seem to rise,
The saintes there seemeing to descend,
Are past the glass, and downwards bend.
Look there! The Devill! all would cry,
Did they not see that Christ was by.
See where he suffers for thee! See
His body taken from the tree!
Had ever death such life before?
The limber corps, be-sully’d o’er
With meagre paleness, does display
A middle state ’twixt flesh and clay.
His armes and leggs, his head and crown,
Like a true lambskin dangle downe:
Whoe can forbeare, the grave being nigh,
To bringe fresh ointment in his eye?
The wond’rous art hath equall fate,
Unfixt, and yet inviolate.
The Puritans were sure deceav’d

Whoe thought those shaddowes mov’d and heav’d,

So held from stoninge Christ; the winde
And boysterous tempests were so kinde,
As on his image not to prey,
Whome both the winde and seas obey.
At Momus’ wish bee not amaz’d;
For if each Christian’s heart were glaz’d
With such a windowe, then each brest
Might bee his owne evangelist.

THE DISTRACTED PURITANE.

Am I madd, O noble Festus,
When zeale and godly knowledge
Have put me in hope
To deal with the Pope,
As well as the best in the Colledge?

Boldly I preach, hate a crosse, hate a surplice,

Miters, copes, and rotchets:

Come heare mee pray nine times a day,

And fill your heads with crotchets.

In the house of pure Emanuel
I had my education;
Where my friends surmise
I dazeled mine eyes
With the Light of Revelation.
Boldly I preach, &c.

They bound mee like a bedlam,
They lash’t my foure poore quarters;
Whilst this I endure,
Faith makes mee sure
To be one of Foxes martyrs.
Boldly I preach, &c.

These injuryes I suffer

Through Anti-Christs perswasions:

Take off this chaine,

Neither Rome nor Spaine

Can resist my strong invasions.

Boldly I preach, &c.

Of the Beasts ten hornes (God blesse us!)

I have knock’t off three already:

If they let mee alone,

I’ll leave him none;

But they say I am too heady.

Boldly I preach, &c.

When I sack’d the Seaven-hill’d Citty

I mett the great redd Dragon:

I kept him aloofe

With the armour of proofe,

Though here I have never a rag on.

Boldly I preach, &c.

With a fiery sword and targett

There fought I with this monster:

But the sonnes of pride

My zeale deride,

And all my deedes misconster.

Boldly I preach, &c.

I unhorst the whore of Babel

With a launce of inspirations:

I made her stinke,

And spill her drinck

In the cupp of abominations.

Boldly I preach, &c.

I have seene two in a vision,

With a flying booke betweene them:

I have bin in dispaire

Five times a yeare,

And cur’d by reading Greenham[122].

Boldly I preach, &c.

I observ’d in Perkins Tables[123]

The black lines of damnation:

Those crooked veines

Soe struck in my braines,

That I fear’d my reprobation.

Boldly I preach, &c.

In the holy tongue of Chanaan

I plac’d my chiefest pleasure:

Till I prickt my foote

With an Hebrew roote,

That I bledd beyond all measure.

Boldly I preach, &c.

I appear’d before the arch-bishopp,
And all the high commission:
I gave him noe grace,
But told him to his face
That he favour’d superstition.

Boldly I preach, hate a crosse, hate a surplice,

Miters, copes, and rotchets:

Come heare mee pray nine times a day,

And fill your heads with crotchets.

ORATIO
DOMINI DOCTORIS CORBET,
EX ÆDE CHRISTI,
IN FUNUS HENRICI PRINCIPIS.

(Mus. Ashm. No. 1153.)

Quam sit semper vobis facile, et pronum, justo servire, sobriisque lachrimis obtemperare, ipsi mihi vos dixistis modo, qui egregio oratori, et invicto argumento fideliter cessistis, mihi tantum post consumptum humorem, et historiæ, meæ fidem vestram et suspiria præstituri. Si qua autem unquam ageretur causa quæ suis viribus staret, neque patrono aliquo, aut oratore indigeret, hæc ipsa profecto hodierna est, quæ nec adversarium infestum habet, nec facilem auditorem postulat; hæc ipsa est, quæ in omni familia versata, vexata, compressa, ad forum postea, et cœlum provocat, humano generi se dat obviam, et una Britannia nunc orbem replet. Tam multa, variaque unius mors est, ut ubique moriatur; tam frequens dolor ut humanitatem omnem hac ipsa cogitatione imbuat. Nescit enim domestica esse aut paucorum fama, pervia simul et ambitiosa, utrumque simul minatur polum, rumpetque mœnia aut transibit caprificus: ideoque facti repetitione aliqua opus est; ad metus vestros, et necessitates descendite, affectus vestros interrogate, quis desiderii modus aut finis. Dicite tandem utrum timere quicquid possitis, aut amare sine Henrico, sitque ille miseriæ vestræ vera causa, qui felicitati vestræ sola spes emicuit—quare aures ego hodie vestras non appello, sed oculos, neque auditores ut olim neque censores alloquar, sed homines, sed Britannos. Adeste igitur, Anglosissimi Academici, lassi, queruli, mihique per hunc mensem a primo hujus nuncio ruinæ, non tacito sed muto post lachrimas jam deliberatas aspirate, et dolorem illum, quem vel vita nostra vincere non possumus, data quasi opera dolendo leniamus. Exanimat enim possessorem ægrum luctus longus, et prodigus mentem sine sensu vulnerat, et quasi jam humanitas potius aut natura, quæ morbus dici vellet, lachrimarum suarum epulis impleri gaudet, et imperiosa consuetudine satiatur. Quare redeat jam ad se oculus unusquisque vestrûm, animamque in oculos arripiat. Henricum cogitet sive principem sive nostrum et vincet, credo ratio, aut suadebit pietas, ut omnes hodie simus Heracliti sive enim ad majorum sepulchra et imagines, proavosque ejus multum remotissimos revertimur, honor est et crescit acervus, nec sine centum regibus potest prodire, si patremque matremque jam superstites, quod sæpius proferre juvat jam superstites, jam supra cyathum, et cultrum, pyram flammamque jam superstites, et si quid votis nostris precibusque jam litare possumus, sero superstaturos. Hos si repetimus Deus est in utroque parente. Si cunabula respicimus, et Lucinam ejus, quid in illa infantia non debuit esse plus quam mortale, quæ a sponsoribus Belgiis et immortali Elizabetha Christo initiata, et æternitati, pueritiam autem nullam habuit, qui annum ... unum excessit ex ephebis, et tanquam tempus præcipitare mallet, quam expectare, annos non ætate sed virtute æstimat, neque hominem se longævum esse sed virum cupit. In omni actione, rebusque gestis se juvenem præbuit, solum in affectu senem, et suos annos sic explevit, ut nonagenarium esse illum vellet quis libenter agnoscere. Senectutem pariter nec habuit nec exoptavit, neque exhæreditavit eum morbus, sed industriam, vitæque suum patrimonium reliquum aut laboribus vendidit, aut studio decoxit. Diuturnioris spem vitæ ei natura dederat, dare melioris non poterat; indicium prorsus quod illum cæca fortuna non vidisset maximum; mens pariter condidisset optimum, adeone raro succumbit tenuiori, et æternum elementum gloriæ perituræ auræ infeliciter serviet? Adeone virtus qua vivimus minor erit vilissimo illius aeris haustu, quo vivendum est. Atqui redeat in Chaos unde prognatum est, ingratum illud aeris elementum, si malis tantum indulgeat, invideat bonis, si inutili populo spiret, principibus lateat, principibus huic. Ecquis mihi vestrûm hanc Syntaxim imputat, illum ut dicam principibus, qui et multus erat, virtutemque in aliis fractam et remissam, totam sibi suisque imperiis mancipasset; unaque sua anima effecit præstantissima, ut si veteres philosophos interrogamus, infinitum animarum exercitum in hoc uno extitisse crederent? Sed consulite memoriæ vestræ et officio, historiam revocate, narrate Principem; quisquamne melior? quisquamne major? Deo scilicet et cœlo stirpeque sua animoque proximus: non tamen ideo humani oneris, aut terreæ vicinitatis immemor, Deumque immortalem quem metu subditissimo coluit, semper et admiratus est; precibus imperatoriis, et quasi libera servitute quotidie vincit; movet hortatu, docet Salomonis æmulus familiam sensu, populum fama concitat, prælucet ipse omnibus pietate, neque autoritate bonos sed exemplo facit. Irasci aliquando, neque potuit, neque vellet, neque pœna cujusque, sed pœnitentia contentus est, credo itaque ut qui sine felle viveret, sine sanguine imperaret. Neque amabilis magis, et mansuetus quam domesticus et frugalis; servorum nomina, studia, vitæque instituta cognovit, in domo sua mensaque ipse paterfamilias, nimirum ut qui Œcumenicus esse debuit, Œconomicus quandoque esse posset. Studia sua et exercitia corporis, (quam cœli et Decembris patientissimus erat) campestria plerumque et in sole fuerunt.

Gaudet equis, canibusque, et aprici gramine campi,

et quo longius a luxuria, oppidoque decessit, eo proxime accessit famæ et probitati. Rei militaris non tam studiosus, quam peritus fuit, eoque timore simul a transmarinis optimè ... redde Deo populum suum, I, curre per Alpes, Romamque diu personatam et histrionicam aut vero cultu induas, aut falso spolies. Hoc unum restat faciendum, tuisque illud artibus permissum est, et in tua solius sæcula servatum opus. Nec male præsagiebat Roma præstigiatrix illa famelica, quæ longo te jejunio et siti petiit, quæ ferro et igni liberalem dat operam, morti principum plus quam scientiæ et religioni incumbit, et quasi jam virtuti morbus adhæreret, potius quam invidiæ, nullam non pyxidem, herbamque eruit, quo suis exorcismis, et impudicæ nequitiæ superstes non fiat. Tu vero quam facile illudis ... ejus, et crudelem industriam antevertis, ni virtus ipsa pro Jesuita, et febris pro veneno est. His tu remediis hac demum medicina sanaris (H. P.) et dum medicus ... studium, gloria tua, et proprium meritum interficiunt, unus Peleo juveni non sufficit, Henrico sufficeret (ut transeam finitimos) Sabaudia et Hispania ab utraque India timeris, nec audet vexisse tuam Oceanus carinam, atque iisdem non ita pridem ægrotavit Henricus magnus ille Galliæ rex, qui ferro et hostili parricidio transfixus Henricis omnibus mortem propinavit.

Credamus tragicis quicquid de Colchide torva
Dicitur et Progne: nam clamat Roma peregi,
Confiteor, puerisque meis aconita paravi,

Quæ deprensa patent; facinus tamen ipsa peregi.

Tune duos unâ sævissima vipera cœnâ?

Tune duos?—Septem, septem si forte fuissent[124].

Verum credo nihil horum est (Academici) orationis meæ horribilius est non religionis. Egoque cæsus olim pulvere Novembris, hodie cæcubio, hodie insanio. Nos utinam vani: Totus igitur est in apparatu Henricus noster quem quærimus, jamque aut equo insidet, aut choræis hasta vel gladio dominatur, ipse Hymenæus etiam et nuptias coronat, ovant et triumphant una dulcissima mortalium, pax, Anna et Jacobus, et fervet annis nitentibus fratri Carolus et totus in illos. Invitant, properant, parant Fredericus et Elizabetha, et ver illud perpetuum et poeticum hac solum in regione deprehenditur. Æstate prima Woodstochiam suam cogitat Henricus, et vicinam academiam adventu primo, scholaresque (quos vocat suos) accersit, ut habeat convivas musas, et si placuerit, convictores; juvat et meminisse potestis, qualis ibi tum in scena prodierit, in qua ipse erat pro triumpho, ipse pro spectaculo. Quotus illa nocte adest Henricus?—Quotus princeps, quam magnificus, quam innocens, cui vel esuriens Jesuita potuit ignoscere. O dementiam suavem, gratissimum errorem, et religiosum delirium, in vobis redivivum Principem, Britanni, jubilate Henricum, O beatum impostorem.

Qui istud nec audiunt, nec credunt malum, nos miseros, qui in illa hostium multitudine et via fortunæ viximus, et nescire dolorem non minus sit difficile, quam cognitum extinguere. Quod si vox populi, quæ aliquando Dei esse dicitur, eadem potuisset de morte tua et fama decernere, caruisses hodie lachrimis, et longo nostrorum funeri superfuisses. In te enim non tam morientis fatum, quam pacis, quam reipublicæ situm est; non peris sed destruis, neque mors hæc dat, sed confusio; diluvium est, nec caret prodigio. Oraculum est, nec sine sacerdote aut pontifice potest intelligi. Quam non mortalis eras Henricus, mortalis; adeone nonus esse nunquam potes, et nullus esses, brevis est quia bonus, minorque quia melior.

Nobis interim quod reliquum, quam ut festinetis juvenes, animamque principis fugitivam, per silentium et solitudinem sequamini: ut longitudinem vitamque inimicis posthac exoptetis, sociisque vestris, fratribusque suadeatis, quam sit senectus post fatum principis vilis et ignominiosa. Nos interim viri, qui in longiori ludibrio constituti sumus, consulamus huic vitio, facinusque ætatis lachrimis expiemus; et experiamur modo utrum anima principis excellens, quæ palatio sui corporis clarissimo valedixit, in nostris animis et hisce lachrimarum insulis habitare velit, certemus invicem pietate, et ingenioso luctu contendamus, summus ne dolor feriet non volentem satis, nec viventem minus. Dixi.

IN OBITUM
DOMINI THOMÆ BODLEII.

(Ex Libro cui Titulus “Bodleiomnema; seu, Carmina et Orationes in Obitum ejus.” Oxon. 1613. 4to.)

Obrue Bodleium saxis, prosterne colossis,

Adde libros oneri, dimidiasque scholas,

Aut lacrymis manes lassa, aut ululante papyro,

Quæ solet afflictis incubuisse rogis;

Non tamen efficies, quin summo in culmine victor

Imperet, et molem perforet ille suam;
Nam famæ cedunt lapides, et tecta sepulchris
Dum memorant dominos hæc monumenta suos.

CORRECTIONS.

Page | 36, | verse 11, | for ken read hen.
| 50, | ”   7, | dele a.
| 80, | ” 10, | for consider read consider’d.
| 94, | note, | for brought read bought.
| 100, | ” | for Guynes read Luyne.
| 119, | line 7, | for Nescis read Nescio.

137,

verses 4 and 5.

It should have been observed, that the Prince and Buckingham on their journey wore false beards for disguises, and assumed the names of Jack and Tom Smith.

144.

The two first lines of this beautiful poem are here printed as they are found in the editions of 1647 and 1672; but they stand much better in Bishop King’s Poems, page 51, edit. 1657:

Let no profane ignoble foot tread neer

This hallow’d peece of earth, Dorset lies here.

FOOTNOTES

[1] An Epitaph on Master Vincent Corbet.

I have my piety too, which, could
It vent itself but as it would,
Would say as much as both have done
Before me here, the friend and son:
For I both lost a friend and father,
Of him whose bones this grave doth gather:
Dear Vincent Corbet, who so long
Had wrestled with diseases strong,
That though they did possess each limb,
Yet he broke them, ere they could him,
With the just canon of his life;
A life that knew nor noise nor strife:
But was by sweetning so his will,
All order and composure still.
His mind as pure, and neatly kept
As were his nourseries, and swept
So of uncleanness or offence,
That never came ill odour thence!
And add his actions unto these,
They were as specious as his trees.
’Tis true, he could not reprehend,
His very manners taught t’ amend,
They were so even, grave, and holy;
No stubbornness so stiff, nor folly
To licence ever was so light,
As twice to trespass in his sight;
His looks would so correct it, when
It chid the vice, yet not the men.
Much from him, I profess, I won,
And more, much more, I should have done,
But that I understood him scant:
Now I conceive him by my want;
And pray, who shall my sorrows read,
That they for me their tears will shed:
For truly, since he left to be,
I feel I’m rather dead than he.
Reader, whose life and name did e’er become
An epitaph, deserv’d a tomb:
Nor wants it here through penury or sloth,

Who makes the one, so it be first, makes both.

Jonson’s Underwoods.

[2] Reg. Prerog. Court Cant. Parker, 49.—Vincent Corbet left his copyholds in Twickenham and Thistleworth (or Isleworth) to his wife, and legacies to various others. See page 118.

[3] Wood’s Annals of Oxford, vol. ii. p. 312. ed. Gutch, 4to. 1796.

[4] Heylyn’s Life of Archbishop Laud, p. 68. fol. 1668.

[5] See a curious account of the proceedings on this occasion by an eye witness, in Leyland’s Collectanea, vol. ii. 626. ed. Hearne, 1770.

[6] One of the ballads written on this occasion is (through the kindness of my friend John Dovaston, esq.) in a manuscript in my possession, beginning,

To Oxenford our king is gone

With all his noble peers.—&c.

[7] Miscellaneous State Papers, vol. i. 394. 4to. 1778.

[8] A William Lake, who was M. A. and a fellow of Clare Hall in 1619, had also a ring bequeathed him by Ruggles, and might have been the author. See Hawkins’s edition of Ignoramus. Utrum horum mavis accipe.

[9] Biographical Sketches, vol. i. p. 38.

[10] Spencer, whose college disappointments forced him from the University. Milton is reported to have received corporal punishment there. Dryden has left a testimony, in a prologue spoken at Oxford, much against his own University. The incivility, not to give it a harsher appellation, which Gray met with, is well known. That Alma Mater has not remitted her wonted illiberality, is to be fairly presumed from a passage in her late most poetical son, Mr. Mason:

Science there
Sat musing; and to those that loved the lore
Pointed, with mystic wand, to truths involved
In geometric symbols, scorning those

Perchance too much, who woo’d the thriftless Muse.

English Garden.

[11] See Lysons’s Environs, vol. ii. p. 148 et seq.

[12] The forwardness of the clergy to publish their labours is thus ludicrously satyrized by Robert Burton: “Had I written divinitie positively, there be so many bookes in that kinde, so many commentators, treatises, pamphlets, sermons, expositions, that whole teams of oxen cannot draw them: and had I beene as forward and ambitious as some others, I might haply have printed a sermon at Paules Crosse, a sermon in Saint Maries Oxon, a sermon in Christ-Church, or a sermon before the Right Honourable, Right Reverend, a sermon before the Right Worshipful, a sermon in Latin, in English, a sermon with a name, without, a sermon, a sermon, &c.”

Anatomy of Melancholy, p. 15. fol. 1632.

[13] Harl. MSS. No. 7000. Cabala, p. 220. fol. 1663.

[14] On the 26th of August.

[15] It occurs, with some variations, in a scarce poetical miscellany called Wit Restored, 8vo. 1658, the use of which, in common with many other volumes of still greater rarity and value, I owe to the liberality of Thomas Hill, esq.

[16] MS. Ashmole, A 37.

[17] Martis, 27 Aug. 1605. “The comedy began between nine and ten, and ended at one; the name of it was Alba, whereof I never saw reason; it was a pastoral, much like one which I have seen in King’s College in Cambridge. In the acting thereof they brought in five or six men almost naked, which were much disliked by the queen and ladies, and also many rustical songes and dances, which made it very tedious, insomuch that if the chancellors of bothe the Universities had not intreated his majesty earnestly, he would have been gone before half the comedy had been ended.” Leyland’s Collectanea, vol. ii. p. 637. edit. 1770.

Mercurii, 28 Aug. 1605. “After supper, about nine of the clock, they began to act the tragedy of Ajax Flagellifer, wherein the stage varied three times; they had all goodly antique apparell; but, for all that, it was not so well acted by many degrees as I have seen it in Cambridge. The king was very weary before he came thither, but much more wearied by it, and spoke many words of dislike.” Ibid. p. 639.

[18] Although the register of Flore, the residence of Dr. Hutton, was preserved from an early date during the lifetime of Brydges, an early one is not now to be found. That of Christ-Church, Oxford, is not so old as the death of the bishop: his name is not found in that of Twickenham.

[19] Wit Restored, 8vo. 1658.

[20] Athenæ Oxon. vol. i. col. 736.

[21] Harl. Catalogue, 464. fol. 3. He appears to have conceded a portion of the patronage attending his elevation, as in the Museum is “Carta Ricardi Corbet episcopi Norwicensis, qua concedit Georgio Abbot, archiepiscopo Cantuariensi, preximam advocationem, nominationem, præsentationem, liberam dispositionem, et jus patronatus archidiaconatus Norfolciæ, dat. 15 Maii, an. 8 R. Caroli 1.” Harl. MSS. No. 464. Fol. 3.

[22] Strafford State Papers and Dispatches, vol. i. p. 221. folio.

[23] He was author of a curious sermon, printed in 1627, 4to. under the title of “Woe to Drunkards,” which was republished with king James’s Counterblast, and other philippics against tobacco and coffee; 4to. 1672. Upon the intrusion of the Book of Sports, Ward told his congregation that “the Church of England was ready to ring changes on religion, and that the Gospel stood on tip-toe ready to be gone.” For these words he was suspended.

[24] Harl. MS. No. 464. fol. 13.

[25] Blomefield’s History of Norfolk, vol. ii. p. 522. fol.

[26] Notwithstanding these harsh measures, which originated with Laud—for, to the praise of our amiable prelate, he had not a grain of persecution in his disposition—“the Walloon company in 1637 having undertaken to repayre and make fit the church of Little St. Maryes to be used for God’s worship by the said congregation, and also to repayre the yard on the northside, had a lease for forty years. Which lease hath been renewed, and now it is the church of the French congregation.” Blomefield’s History of Norfolk, vol. ii. 57. fol. 1739.

[27] Strype’s edition of Stowe’s Survey, book iii. page 151. edit. fol. 1720.

Perhaps his fellow-collegian Cartwright intended an immediate compliment to Corbet in the following lines:

Two sacred things were thought, by judging souls,

Beyond the kingdom’s power, Christ-Church and Pauls,

Till by a light from heaven shewn the one

Did gain his second renovation.

Poems, 188, 8vo. 1651.

[28] Ath. Oxon. vol. i. p. 601. edit. 1721.

[29] Harl. MS. No. 750. Malcolm’s Londinum Redivivum, vol. iii. p. 80. It occurs, also, with some difference, in Mus. Ashm. No. 1153.

[30] Reg. Prerog. Court Cant. 97. Sadler.

[31] Gomersall, in an epistle to Barten Holiday. See his poems, p. 7. edit. 1633.

[32] Fuller’s Worthies, page 83. fol. 1662.

[33] Headley, i. 38.

[34] From hence it should seem that the edition 1647 was not published at the time this preface was written.

[35] Robert Gomersall was entered of Christ-Church, Oxford, in 1614, at the age of fourteen, where, in 1621, he proceeded M. A. In 1625 he took refuge from the plague at Flore in Northamptonshire, of which the editor of the Biographia Dramatica erroneously supposed he was rector. He was afterwards vicar of Thorncombe in Devonshire, and died in 1646. His poems, which are rather easy than correct, were published with Lodwick Sforza, a tragedy, in 1633 and 1638, from which the above epistle is transcribed.

[36] Saint Paul’s cathedral was in Corbet’s time the resort of the idle and profligate of all classes: the author, quisquis ille fuit, of “A Sixefold Politycian,” 4to. 1609. attributed to Milton’s father, describes its frequenters as “superstitious idolaters of St. Paul (and yet they never think of Paul nor any apostle) and many of them have that famous monument in that account as Diogenes had Jovis porticus in Athens; who to them which wondered that he had no house nor corner to eat his meat in, pointing at the gallerie or walking-place that was called Jovis Porticus, said, that the people of Athens had builded that to his use, as a royal mansion for him, wherein he might dine and sup, and take his repast.

“And soe these make Paules like Euclides or Platoes school, as Diogenes accounted it, κατατριβην, a mispending of much good labour and time, and worthily many times meet with Diogenes’ fare, and are faithful and frequent guests of Duke Humphray.” P. 8.

[37] This was not the first censure of sir Christopher Hatton’s extravagant monument; as, according to Stowe, some poet had before complained on the part of Sydney and Walsingham, that

“Philip and Francis have no tomb,

For great Christopher takes all the room.”

[38] “Coryate’s Crudities hastily gobbled up in five months travels in France, Savoy, Italy, Rhetia, Helvetia, some parts of High Germany, and the Netherlands.” 4to. 1611. Re-printed in 3 vols. 8vo. 1776.

[39] Quia valde lutosa est Cantabrigia.

[40] Ludus per spatium 6 horarum infra.

[41] “A bushel of March dust is worth a king’s ransom.”

[42] Coll. Eman. abundat puritanis.

[43] The king entered Cambr. 7 Mar. 1614-5.

[44] Samuel Harsnett, then bp. of Chichester.

[45] Vestis indicat virum.

[46] Nethersoli Cant. orator, qui per speculum seipsum solet ornari.

[47] Orator hoc usus est vocabulo in oratione ad regem.

[48] Actores omnes fuere theologi.

[49] Ludus dicebatur “Ignoramus,” qui durabat per spatium sex horarum.

[50] Idem quod Bocardo apud Oxon.

[51] Insigniss. stultus.

[52] Paulus Tompsonus, qui nuper laesæ majest. reus ob aurum decurtat.

[53] Decorum quia Coll. est puritanorum plenum: scil. Emanuel.

[54] The former is Taylor, the celebrated water-poet: the latter, William Fenner, a puritanical poet and pamphleteer of that period, was educated at Pembroke-hall, Oxford. He was preferred to the rectory of Rochford, in Essex, by the earl of Warwick. He died about 1640.

Archbishop Laud in his annual account to the king 1636, page 37, mentions one Fenner, a principal ringleader of the Separatists, with their conventicles, at and about Ashford in Kent.

[55] See Lodge’s Illustrations of British History, 4to. vol. iii. p. 178; Brydges’s Peers of the Reign of James the First, vol. i.; and Winwood’s Memorials.

[56] For this vehement attack upon the weakness of an infatuated woman, the author must be screened under the example of Horace, Ep. 8 and 12.

[57] Henry Garnet, provincial of the order of Jesuits in England, who was arraigned and executed at the west end of St. Paul’s, for his connivance at, rather than for any active participation in, the Gunpowder Plot, May 3, 1605. See State Trials.

[58] Wilson’s Hist. of James I, Pa. 62. fol. 1653.

[59] Two manufacturers of almanacks and prognostics. The latter was, however, of some note as to family, being the fifth son of sir Arthur Hopton by Rachael, daughter of Edmund Hall, of Greatford in Lincolnshire; nor was his fame in learning unequal to his birth. In 1604 he was entered a gentleman commoner of Lincoln college, Oxon, and in 1607 was admitted bachelor of arts. He was held in high estimation by Selden for his mathematical knowledge, but died in the prime of life in the month of Nov. 1614.

[60] Dr. Daniel Price was the eldest son of Thomas Price, vicar of Saint Chad’s, Shrewsbury, in which borough he was born and educated. From St. Mary Hall, Oxford, where he was entered in 1594, he removed to Exeter college, where he took the degree of master of arts, and entered into holy orders. He afterwards became dean and residentiary canon of Hereford, rector of Worthyn in Shropshire, and of Lantelos in Cornwall; for which counties, as well as that of Montgomery, he officiated as magistrate. He was author of many works, wholly devotional, and died at Worthyn the 23d September 1631, and was buried there in the chancel of the church.

[61] This poem, for what reason does not appear, is printed before some of the later editions of sir Thomas Overbury’s “Wife.”

[62] These reverend gentlemen were jesters to James the First. The name of the former was Archibald Armstrong, of whom and of whose jests an account may be found in Granger, vol. ii. p. 399. ed. 1775. 8vo. They are again joined in a manuscript poem (penes me) by Peter Heylin, written in derision of Barten Holiday’s play already mentioned in the life of the bishop, of which the following are the introductory lines:

“Whoop Holyday! why then ’twill ne’er be better,

Why all the guard, that never saw more letters

Than those upon their coates; whose wit consists

In Archy’s bobs and Garret’s sawcy jests,

Deride our Christ-church scene.”

[63] Thomas Ereskine, earl of Fenton.

[64] William, earl of Pembroke, a poet himself, and an universal patron of learning, whose character is so admirably drawn by Clarendon.

[65] The compass of a note is too confined for an account of this great negociator and general, who fell by the jealousy of the Prince of Orange the 13th March 1619. He was born at Amersfort, in the province of Utrecht, was five times employed as ambassador to England and France, and had long the command of the armies of the United Provinces. De Thou says, “que c’étoit un homme très accrédité par les charges qu’il avoit remplies, et par sa grande expérience dans les affaires:”—And Moreri concludes an account of his character, and his death, which he met with an undaunted spirit, in the following words: “Barneveldt, ayant été pris, eut la tête tranchée à l’age de 72 ans, sous prétexte d’avoir voulu livrer le pays aux Espagnols, quoiqu’il le niat constamment, et qu’en effet on n’en ait trouvé aucune preuve dans ses papiers. Son crime étoit d’avoir refusé d’entrer dans le complot, à la faveur du quel le prince Maurice vouloit a ce qu’on dit se rendre maître des Pays Bas, et d’avoir défendu la liberté de sa patrie avec trop de zèle.” Tom. ii. p. 78.

[66] No minister ever exerted his power with less tyranny and more benignity than the favourite of Philip the Third: he fell “from his high estate” by the intrigues of his son, and an ungrateful monk whom he had raised to be confessor to the king, and who abandoned the friend that had elevated him as soon as the smiles of sovereignty were transferred to another. On the 4th of October 1618, he retired to his paternal estate from the capricious favour of the court, where he passed the remainder of his days in peace and privacy.

[67] William Burton is said, by Antony à Wood, to have been a pretender to astronomy, of which he published an Ephemeris in 1655.—Edmund Gunter, a mathematician of greater eminence, was astronomical professor of Gresham College, and eminent for his skill in the sciences: his publications were popular in his day. He died in Gresham College, 1626.

[68] Thomas Hariot, styled by Camden “Mathematicus Insignis,” was a pensioner and companion of sir Walter Raleigh in his voyage to Virginia (1584), of which upon his return he published an account. He was held in high estimation by the earl of Northumberland, sir Thomas Aylesbury, and others, for his mathematical knowledge, but, like his patron, Raleigh, was a deist in religion.—Ob. 1621. See Wood’s Athenæ, vol. i. p. 460. ed. 1721.

[69] Of this popular song, which is reprinted from “Deuteromelia,” 1609, in Hawkins’s History of Music, and in Ritson’s Antient Songs, the following is the introductory stanza:

“As it fell upon a holyday
And upon a holy-tide-a,
John Dory brought him an ambling nag
To Paris for to ride-a.”

[70] Louis the XIIIth, for no superior virtues surnamed “Le Juste.” I have seen it somewhere observed that he chose his ministers for extraordinary reasons: Richlieu, because he could not govern his kingdom without him; Des Noyers, for psalm-singing; and le duc de Zuynes, for being an expert bird-catcher.

The satire of Corbet seems to justify the remark.

He was born 1601; married Anne of Austria 1615; and died at St. Germain’s 1643.

[71] Upon a similar declaration being issued by Charles in 1633, “one Dr. Dennison,” says lord Strafford’s garrulous correspondent, “read it here (London), and presently after read the ten commandments; then said, ‘Dearly beloved, you have now heard the commandments of God and man: obey which you please.’”

Strafford Papers, vol. i. 166. fol.

[72] Whalley’s Ben Jonson, vol. v. 299.

[73] Dugdale’s Baronage, vol. ii. p. 444.

[74] See his Poems, p. 1657.

[75] Howell’s Letters, p. 64. ed. 1650. This fool, quasi knave, whose surname was Armstrong, had his coat pulled over his ears, and was discharged of his office, for indignity to archbishop Laud.

See Rushworth’s Collections, vol. ii. p. 471.

[76] This refers to a popular tract published in 1622, under that title, in favour of the Low Countries, and for the purpose of prejudicing the people of England against the marriage which Villiers was negotiating when this poem was addressed to him. The negotiation was not only disgraceful, but unsuccessful:

—αισχρον γαρ ἡμιν, και προς αισχυνη κακον.

[77] “On the 29th of May,” says sir Richard Baker, “the queen was brought to bed of a young son, which was baptized at St. James’s on the 27th of June, and named Charles. It is observed that at his nativity, at London, was seen a star about noon-time: what it portended, good or ill, we leave to the astrologers.” Baker’s Chronicle, p. 497. 1660. fol.

[78] If any one is at this time ignorant of the practice alluded to in this line, of the sponsors at christenings giving spoons to the child as a baptismal present, it is not the fault of the commentators on Shakespeare, who have multiplied examples of the custom in their notes on Henry the Eighth, vol. xv. p. 197. edit. 1803.

[79] Reg. Prerog. Court Cant. Sadler 97.

[80] Ibid. Rivers 18.

[81] Cartwright has not unhappily imitated this poem in his address “To Mr. W. B. at the Birth of his first Child:” a few lines may be given:

I wish religion timely be
Taught him with his A B C.
I wish him good and constant health,
His father’s learning, but more wealth,
And that to use, not hoard; a purse
Open to bless, not shut to curse.
May he have many and fast friends
Meaning good will, not private ends!—&c.

Poem, p. 208. 8vo. 1651.

[82] At Aston on the Wall, in Northamptonshire, where Christopher Middleton, as rector, accounted for the first-fruits Oct. 12th, 1612; and was buried Feb. 5th, 1627.

[83] By the right of Dr. Leonard Hutton, a man of some note in his day, the fellow-collegian and subsequent father-in-law of bishop Corbet. Hutton passed from Westminster School to Christ-Church, of which he afterwards became a canon. It was in his residence at Oxford most probably, and not, as the editors of the Biographia Britannica have conjectured, upon this tour, that Corbet first became acquainted with Hutton’s daughter. By the dean and canons he was presented to the rectory of Flore in Northamptonshire, where he accounted for the first-fruits Aug. 6th, 1601, and to the vicarage of Weedon in the same county in 1602. Having lived to the age of 75 years, he died the 17th of May, 1632, and was buried in the divinity chapel of Christ Church, where a monument remains to his memory.

[84] A note in the old copies informs us that his name was “Ned Hale.”

[85] A sergeant. Edit. 1648.

[86] These are said in the old copies to be “the ministers of Daventry;” but as no such names occur in the list of incumbents, it is probable they officiated for Thomas Mariat, the then vicar, who must have been very old, as he was inducted to the living in 1560.

[87] Dod and Cleaver, thus honourably introduced to our notice, were united by the strong ties of puritanism and authorship.

Ambo animis, ambo insignes præstantibus armis;

Hic pietate prior.

The latter has fallen into oblivion, but the superior zeal of John Dod has preserved his memory. He was born at Shottledge in Cheshire, where his family had territorial possessions, and was educated at Jesus College, Cambridge. “He was,” says Fuller, “by nature a witty, by industry a learned, by grace a godly, divine.” He had good preferment in the church, but was silenced for non-conformity, though afterwards restored. He died and was buried at Fawesly in Northamptonshire, of which he was vicar, Aug. 19th, 1645.

They were again joined in derision by Cartwright, in his “Chambermaid’s Posset.”

Next Cleaver and Doddism both mixed and fine,

With five or six scruples of conscience cases.—&c.

Poems, p. 231. 8vo. 1651.

[88] In Leicestershire.

[89] A note in Tanner’s Bibliotheca Brit.-Hibernica thus relates the indignity offered to the remains of this parent of the Reformation, after he had been ‘quietly inurned’ during the space of forty-one years: “Magister Johannes Wicliff Anglicus per D. Thomam Arundel. archiepiscopum Cantuar. fuit post mortem suam excommunicatus, et postea fuit exhumatus, et ossa ejus combusta, et cineres in aquam juxta Lutterworth projecti fuerunt, ex mandato P. Martini V.”

[90] Parson of Heathcot, Edit. 1672. It has been observed in the Introduction that there is no village of this name in this situation: the copy 1648 says Parson Heathcote, which was probably the name of the parson of Ayleston, who was their conductor.

[91] Students of Christ-Church College, Oxford, which, as well as Whitehall, the “palace” before mentioned, was founded by Wolsey.

[92] The figure in these lines is taken from the fine church of St. Mary’s, Nottingham, in which the long chancel and nave with the tower in the midst resemble the object of the bishop’s metaphor. The castle mentioned in the succeeding lines has “perished ’mid the wreck of things that were.”

[93] Guy and Colebrand.

[94] Where David king of the Scots was kept prisoner.

[95] Which is within the Castle.

[96] Every part of Corbet’s account of Nottingham Castle corresponds so closely with the relation of Leyland, in his Itinerary, vol. iii. p. 105, &c., that it would be superfluous to transcribe it. See also Speed’s Chronicle, p. 540; and Holinshed’s Chronicle, p. 349.

[97] In Nottinghame.

[98] “He that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent.” Proverbs xxviii. ver. 20.

[99] Dr. Jucks.

[100] Mr. Edward Mason.—MS. 1625.

[101] “The 25th of April, 1603, being Thursday, his highnesse (James the First) tooke his way towards New-warke upon Trent, where that night he lodged in the Castle, being his owne house, where the aldermen of New-warke presented his Majestie with a faire gilt cup, manifesting their duties and loving hearts to him; which was kindly received.”

“The true Narration of his Majesty’s Journey from Edenbrough, &c.” 1603.

[102] Leister forrest.

[103] Bosworth field. Edit. 1648.

[104] From this passage we learn that Richard Burbage, the alter Roscius of Camden, was the original representative of Shakespeare’s Richard the Third.

He was buried in the parish of St. Leonard, Shoreditch, as Mr. Chalmers discovered, on the 16th of March, 1618-19.

[105] The clerical profligate thus gibbeted for the example of posterity was John Bust, inducted the 8th of April, 1611. He seems to have been a worthy prototype of the Natta of antiquity:

Non pudet ad morem discincti vivere Nattæ?

Sed stupet hic vitio, et fibris increvit opimum

Pingue; caret culpa; nescit quid perdat, et alto

Demersus, summa rursum non bullit in unda.

Persius, iii. 31.

[106] Guyes cliff. Edit. 1648. The cliff and chapel are engraved in Dugdale’s Warwickshire, vol. i. 274. Ed. 1730.

[107] Of the Theorbo, or Cithara bijuga, so called from its having two necks, which appears from Kircher as well as the bishop’s poetry to have been highly esteemed in Corbet’s time, a graphical representation may be found in Hawkins’s History of Music, vol. iv. p. 111. 4to. 1776.

[108] Warwick Castle. Edit. 1648.

[109] Fulke Greville, lord Brooke.

[110] Arch-deacon Burton. Edit. 1648.

[111] At the signe of the Alter-stone. Edit. 1648.

[112] Which serve for troughs in the backside. Ibid.

[113] Three dames,

“Well known and like esteemed.”

“A discourse of the godly life and Christian death of Mistriss Katharine Stubbs, who departed this life at Burton on Trent, 14th of December,” (1592.) was written by her brother, the sanctimonious author of “The Anatomie of Abuses.”

Anne Askew, burned in 1546 for her rigid adherence to her faith, wrote “a balade which she sang when she was in Newgate;” printed by Bale. A long account of her examination and subsequent martyrdom may be seen in Foxe’s “Actes and Monuments,” vol. ii. p. 1284. edit. 1583. bl. let.

With the last I am less intimately acquainted; but I take her to be the same “lady” of whom the favourite son of Mrs. Merrythought sings, in the last act of “The Knight of the Burning Pestle.”

[114] It is almost superfluous to observe, that rosemary was supposed by our forefathers to be very efficacious in strengthening the retentive faculties; and, by being always borne at funerals, was calculated to perpetuate the remembrance of the deceased. “Here is a strange alteration: for, the rosemary that was washt in sweet water to set out the bridall, is now wet in teares to furnish her burial.”—Decker’s Wonderfull Yeare 1603.

[115] The belief that the turning of the cloak, or glove, or any garment, solved the benighted traveller from the spell of the Fairies, is alluded to in the Iter Boreale, (see p. 191,) and is still retained in some of the western counties.

[116] This poem, of which the leading features seem to be copied from the 10th epistle of the 1st book of Horace, has been printed in “The Antient and Modern Miscellany,” by Mr. Waldron, from a manuscript in his possession, and it is consequently retained in this edition of Corbet’s Poems; to whose acknowledged productions it bears no resemblance, at the same time that it is attributed (in Ashmole’s MSS., No. 38, fol. 91.) to Robert Heyrick, the author of “Hesperides.”

[117]

Discite quam parvo liceat producere vitam,

Et quantum natura petat.

Lucan, iv. ver. 377.

[118]

Impiger extremos currit mercator ad Indos,

Per mare pauperiem fugiens, per saxa, per ignes.

Hor. Epist. I.

[119] See Warton’s Hist. of Engl. Poetry, vol. iii. p. 170, 171.

[120] See the Life of the Bishop.

[121] This poem, which is in some manuscripts attributed to William Stroude, has already been printed in the Topographer of my very intelligent friend, Samuel Egerton Brydges, esq. vol. ii. p. 112.

[122] Richard Greenham was educated at Pembroke-Hall in Cambridge, and became minister of Dry-Drayton, three miles distant; where it should seem, from a rhyming proverb, that his success in the ministry was not proportionate to his zeal:

Greenham had pastures green,

But sheep full lean.

“What,” says Fuller (Church Hist. lib. ix. 220.), “was Dry-Drayton but a bushel to hide,—London an high candlestick to hold up the brightness of his parts?” Thither he repaired; and, after an ‘erratical and planetary life,’ settled himself at Christ-Church, where he ended his days in 1592.

“His master-piece,” says Fuller, “was in comforting wounded consciences.”—Quid multis!

[123] “Tous les tempéramens,” say our neighbours, “ne se ressemblent pas.” The Divine thus satyrized by Corbet is lauded by Fuller in high strains of eulogy. He was born at Marston near Coventry, and was educated at Christ College, Cambridge, where he took the degree of M. A. Having obtained the living of St. Andrew’s parish in that university, he resided there till his death.—“He would pronounce the word damme with such an emphasis,” says Fuller, (Holy State, p. 80. fol. 1652.) “as left a doleful echo in his auditors’ ears a good while after.” This passage is of itself a sufficient illustration of the poet. His works were published in three volumes, folio, 1612. The first in the collection is, “A Golden Chaine, containing the Order of the Causes of Salvation and Damnation, &c., in the tables annexed.”

[124] Juvenal. Sat. vi.

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Table of Contents

Bp. Corbet’s Poems.

DR. THOMAS RAVIS.

- AN ELEGIE WRITTEN UPON THE DEATH OF DR. RAVIS, BISHOP OF LONDON.

THOMÆ CORIATO DE ODCOMBE.

- SPECTATISSIMO, PUNCTISQUE OMNIBUS DIGNISSIMO, THOMÆ CORIATO DE ODCOMBE, PEREGRINANTI, PEDESTRIS ORDINIS, EQUESTRISQUE FAMÆ.

- IN LIBRUM SUUM.

TO THOMAS CORYATE.

A CERTAIN POEM,

AN ANSWER TO THE FORMER SONG, IN LATIN AND ENGLISH, BY ⸺ LAKES.

RESPONSIO, &c. PER ⸺ LAKES.

ADDITAMENTA SUPERIORI CANTICO.

LADY ARABELLA STUART.

- ON THE LADY ARABELLA.

UPON MISTRIS MALLET[56], AN UNHANDSOME GENTLEWOMAN, WHO MADE LOVE UNTO HIM.

HENRY PRINCE OF WALES.

- IN QUENDAM ANNIVERSARIORUM SCRIPTOREM.

AN ANSWER, BY DR. PRICE[60].

IN POETAM EXAUCTORATUM ET EMERITUM.

ON MR. FRANCIS BEAUMONT, THEN NEWLY DEAD.

WILLIAM LORD HOWARD, OF EFFINGHAM,

- AN ELEGIE[61] ON THE LATE LORD WILLIAM HOWARD, BARON OF EFFINGHAM.

LORD MORDAUNT.

- TO THE LORD MORDANT, UPON HIS RETURNE FROM THE NORTH.

TO THE PRINCE. (AFTERWARDS CHARLES THE FIRST.)

A NEW-YEARES GIFT TO MY LORDE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.

SIR THOMAS AYLESBURY,

- A LETTER SENT FROM Dr. CORBET TO Sir THOMAS AILESBURY, December the 9th, 1618. ON THE OCCASION OF A BLAZING STAR.

DR. CORBET’S JOURNEY INTO FRANCE.

JOHN HAMMON.

- AN EXHORTATION TO MR. JOHN HAMMON, MINISTER IN THE PARISH OF BEWDLY,

ANNE, WIFE OF JAMES THE FIRST, Daughter of Frederick the Second, king of Denmark, died of a dropsy the 2d of March 1619.

- AN ELEGY UPON THE DEATH OF QUEENE ANNE.

VINCENT CORBET,

- AN ELEGIE UPON THE DEATH OF HIS OWNE FATHER.

THE LADY HADDINGTON

- AN ELEGIE UPON THE DEATH OF THE LADY HADDINGTON, WHO DYED OF THE SMALL POX.

ON THE CHRIST-CHURCH PLAY.

- ON CHRIST-CHURCH PLAY AT WOODSTOCK.

THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.

- A LETTER TO THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM, BEING WITH THE PRINCE IN SPAINE.

RICHARD, THE THIRD EARL OF DORSET,

- ON THE EARL OF DORSETS DEATH.

TO THE NEW-BORNE PRINCE, AFTERWARDS CHARLES II.

ON THE BIRTH OF THE YOUNG PRINCE CHARLES.

VINCENT CORBET,

- TO HIS SON, VINCENT CORBET,

AN EPITAPH ON Dr. DONNE, Dean of Pauls.

CERTAIN FEW WOORDES SPOKEN CONCERNINGE ONE BENET CORBETT AFTER HER DECEASE.

ITER BOREALE

- ITER BOREALE.

ON MR. RICE, THE MANCIPLE OF CHRIST-CHURCH IN OXFORD.

ON HENRY BOLINGS.

ON JOHN DAWSON, BUTLER OF CHRIST-CHURCH.

ON GREAT TOM OF CHRIST-CHURCH.

R. C.

A PROPER NEW BALLAD, INTITULED THE FAERYES FAREWELL; OR, GOD-A-MERCY WILL.

A NON SEQUITUR.

NONSENCE.

THE COUNTRY LIFE[116].

ROBERT WISDOM

- TO THE GHOST OF ROBERT WISDOME[119].

THOMAS JONCE.

- AN EPITAPH ON THOMAS JONCE.

TO THE LADYES OF THE NEW DRESSE, THAT WEARE THEIR GORGETS AND RAYLES DOWNE TO THEIR WASTES.

THE LADIES’ ANSWER.

CORBET’S REPLY.

FAIRFORD WINDOWS

- UPON FAIRFORD WINDOWS.

UPON FAIREFORD WINDOWES[121].

THE DISTRACTED PURITANE.

ORATIO DOMINI DOCTORIS CORBET, EX ÆDE CHRISTI, IN FUNUS HENRICI PRINCIPIS.

IN OBITUM DOMINI THOMÆ BODLEII.

CORRECTIONS.

FOOTNOTES

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