From weeping Cheese with Argus eyes

I have been doing various bits of marking, and otherwise, in the evenings, I watch tapes of the day’s stage in the Giro d’Italia: a lot of pedaling uphill, in other words.

In a rare literary moment, I was wondering about the extent of serious and satirical verse-writing based on that processional supplication, the Litany. John Donne’s ‘A Litanie’ is the most famous; the earliest Tudor literary use of the litany I’ve so far found occurs in a semi-macaronic poem at the end of the The proude wyues pater noster that wolde go gaye, and vndyd her husbonde and went her waye (1560). This is a poem that more strongly recollects the Latin litany than Cranmer's relatively new English text (link below).

Sidney did a less serious one about love having been killed by his mistress; so here’s a stanza:

Let Dirge be sung, and Trentals richly read,
For Love is dead.
And wrong his Tombe ordaineth,
My Mistress marble hart:
Which Epitaph containeth,
Her eyes were once his Dart.
From so ungrateful fancie,
From such a female frenzie,
From them that use men thus:
Good Lord deliver us.

And we will all remember Nashe’s plangent lyric in time of plague, in Summer’s Last Will and Testament (to quote from it):

Autumn hath all the Summer’s fruitful treasure,
Gone is our sport, fled is poor Croyden’s pleasure:
Short days, sharp days, long nights come on apace,
Ah who shall hide us, from the Winters face?
Cold doth increase, the sickness will not cease,
And here we lye God knows, with little ease:

From winter, plague & pestilence, good Lord deliver us.

In the 17^th century, the mock-litany became a regular satiric form. There was a glut of them around 1680, many in connection with Titus Oates and the Popish plot:

That such as do render the Plot for a Fable,

And make it the talk of each Coffee-House Table;

To enter Heaven Gates may they never be able

~ from The Loyal Protestant's new litany (1680)

The Cavaliers litany of 1682 is partly political, partly lifestyle satire: here’s a sample stanza:

From a Popish black coat in a Protestant Cut

From going to bed with Gripes in my Gutt;

From rising next Morning with all our Throats cut …

This from a time when one of the things to pray for delivery from was “a lash with the quill of Satyricall Dryden”.

One of the more interesting mock litanies is a lampoon on George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham (the Restoration one): here’s two stanzas about his alleged proclivities:

From Monstrous Sucking, till both Tongues have Blisters,

From making our Boasts of giving three Glisters

By giving our Claps to three cheated Sisters

Libera nos

From Transposing Nature upon our Bon—Gers,

On Keniston Acting both Venus and Mars,

From owning twenty other men’s Farce

Libera nos

That’s Edward Kynaston the actor, who did perform in Buckingham’s The Rehearsal, getting a mention for his skill performing in both genders. Pepys admired this skill in the theatre, the lampoon imputes that the Duke experienced it at rather closer quarters (The litany of the D. of B., 1679-1680). I suppose ‘Bon-Gers’ must be a version of ‘bon gars’ in French.

But my favourite litany poem is by William Vaughan, in The Golden Fleece (1626). Vaughan apparently had a lot of things he was worried about, as he spins out his prayer for divine multiple rescue to 396 lines. As available rhymes tempt him, the plagues he asks to be delivered from get more and more heterogeneous (and interesting). But then, who wouldn’t want delivery from ‘weeping cheese with Argus eyes’, ‘causeless drumming’, ‘Scammonie made into Pills’, ‘From ordring Bees, when they are mov’d’, and ‘From rampant Nuns now clad in gray: / From Strumpets wholly giv’n to play’?

I wonder, though, how bad his ‘rampant nuns’ problem could have been in rural Carmarthenshire. Maybe he had trouble with them when on his trip abroad?

Here’s a full section of Vaughan, and, below that, his prayers for delivery from idle amusements like plays, poetry, and card games (I was tempted to foist in a few extra verses about the Internet, but refrained):

From Spanish Pensions , and their Spies:
From weeping Cheese with Argus eyes,
From slumbering long in careless Peace:
From dreaming oft of cureless ease.
From fond Masks, and idle mumming:
From fain'd Plays and causeless drumming.
From preferring Peace with danger
Before just War, wrong’s revenger.
From suffering Foes to triumph still;
From letting Sathan have his will.
From falling from Saint Michael’s arms,
Not taking heed by others’ harms.
From puffing up proud Giants grown:
From pulling David’s courage down.
From loving Money more then God;
From keeping Beans within the cod.
From disbursing needful treasure,
To maintain phantastick pleasure.
From greasing Lawyers’ hands with Gold,
Which better serves to keep a Hold.
From fostring Suites (O pois'nous Toad)
For Money , which ends Wars abroad.
From those men, which sue Protections
To shroud their lewd shrewd Defections.
Great Britain’s Genius
Guard and restore vs.

… From spending time at Tragedies :
Or hard got Coin at Comedies .
From reading foolish Rimers’ Books,
Or lying Tales, like baited hooks.
From much Play at Noddy and Trump:
As from the Smell of foul ship-pump.
From many Horses, Hounds, and Hawks:
Actæon’s end, or plots of Faukes.
From idle Tales, Wares, and Fables:
From Primero, Gleek , and Tables.
From Irish, Lurch, Chance, and Ticktack.
The Boot deserving, or the Rack.

Vaughan ought to have included a prayer against lightning, for his first wife died in 1608 after their house was hit by a bolt. As a memo to myself, his The spirit of detraction conjured and convicted in seven circles: a work both divine and morall, fit to be perused by the libertines of the age, who endeavour by their detracting and derogatory speeches to embezell the glory of God and the credit of their neighbours (1611) apparently answered local imputations that he was somehow implicated in this death, though it is hard to imagine how. I must investigate what he says in self-defence.

I must also read at some point this series of pamphlets in 1637, in which John Bastwick first published his own litany, was attacked, then answered the attacks, and finally went completely onto the offensive:

1) The letany of John Bastvvick, Doctor of Phisicke being now full of devotion, as well in respect of the common calamities of plague and pestilence; as also of his owne patticular miserie: lying at this instant in Limbo Patrum.

2) The ansvver of Iohn Bastwick, Doctor of Phisicke, to the exceptions made against his Letany by a learned gentleman which is annexed to the Letany it selfe, as articles superadditionall against the prelats

3) A more full answer of John Bastwick, Dr. of Phisick made to the former exceptions newly propounded by another wellwiller to him, against some expressions in his Letany, with his reasons for the printing of it.

4) The vanity and mischeife of the old letany. Or A further answer of John Bastwick, Doctor of Physick, to some other exceptions made against his Letany

My image is from A litany from Geneva, in answer to that from St. Omers (1682), which I liked because someone annotated the poem with identifications of some of the people it attacks.

http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/Litany1544/Exhortation&Litany_1544.htm

http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/Litany1544/Litany_1544.htm

Two images

I bought these two old photographs because I liked them. No provenance at all, though the rather bohemian gentleman with his daughter is on an unused English postcard.

The sisters out tricycling together are in a Victorian photograph. I think those might be Humber tricycles, and it could be as far back as the mid 1880's. Those seem to be all steel wheels, I can see a spoon brake to the front wheel, and foot pegs for descents. These must have been children from a wealthy family: these machines were expensive, the girls have matching natty hats to ride in, and of course their father (I guess) is in the road with his camera, and has asked the girls to look right and left as they approach. The avenue of oaks suggests parkland, or long-lost bucolic England at its most idyllic.

I cannot work out the gentleman with his daughter. He has a safety bicycle with pneumatic tyres, and his daughter in the tag-along. He doesn't look wealthy (no watch chain with trinkets, and his shoes are worn; the little girl too wears a simple shawl). He has two tools in his upper pocket; he looks stylishly foreign. But the rear wheel of the tag-along is chocked front and rear, as though he had been helping set up the camera.

Utterly vanished lives, apart from these golden moments.

http://www.tricyclefetish.com/tricycle_photos.php

'Hurried hence...'

‘Windows has encountered a problem and needs to close’ has been a large a part of my life in the last month or so, and so my PC is getting a new hard drive, which sounds at first as drastic as having a new engine put in a car (the inexact analogy maybe creates a mood in which one is relatively cheerful about what proves to be a relatively limited cost).

I have been reading R. B.’s Delights for the Ingenious (1684) and have been casting around on MLA and JSTOR to try to find out whether anyone has written on the ‘Majestie in Misery’ poem someone ghosted for Charles I. A Herbert scholar ought to have done so, for the poem is modeled on Herbert’s ‘The Sacrifice’, being a dramatic monologue for the guiltless sufferer, using Herbert’s tercets, but without the ‘Was ever grief like mine’ refrain. I assume that the writer wanted to nudge the reader towards an identification of his Charles Stuart with Christ, not scream it out: nor could his King repeat the Herbertian refrain without sounding ignorant of the analogy the poem invites. It must all have been written up already.

But here’s another Delights for the Ingenious poem, which I have put alongside the version in R. Fletcher’s translation of Martial’s epigrams, Ex otio Negotium (1656)], ‘An Epitaph’. It is about the executed Charles I:

Stay Passenger; behold and see, The widdow’d Grave of Majesty, Why tremblest not? Here’s that will make The most stupid, Soul to shake, Here lies intomb’d the sacred Dust. Of Peace and Piety, Right and Just. The blood (O start’st thou not to hear!) Of a blest King 'twixt hope and fear, Shed, and hurried hence to be The Miracle of Misery. The Lawgiver amongst his own, Sentenc’d by a Law unknown; Voted Monarchy to Death, By the course Plebeian breath The Soveraign of all Command Suffering by a Common hand. A Prince (to make the Odium more) Martyr’d at his very door. The Head cut off! Oh, Death to see’t, In Obedience to the Feet! And that by Justice you must know, If thou hast faith to think it so; We’ll stir no further than this sacred clay, But let it slumber till the Judgment day. Of all the Kings on Earth, it’s not deni’d, Here lies the first that for Religion dy’d.

Stay Passenger: Behold and see The widdowed grave of Majestie . Why tremblest thou? Here’s that will make All but our stupid souls to shake. Here lies entomb’d the sacred dust Of Peace and Piety , Right and Just. The bloud (O starrest not thou to hear?) Of a King , 'twixt hope and fear Shedd, and hurried hence to bee The miracle of miserie. Add the ills that Rome can boast. Shrift the world in every coast, Mix the fire of earth and seas With humane spleen and practises, To puny the records of time, By one grand Gygantick crime, Then swell it bigger till it squeeze The globe to crooked hams and knees, Here’s that shall make it seem to bee But modest Christianitie . The Lawgiver, amongst his own, Sentenc’d by a Law unknown. Voted Monarchy to death By the course Plebeian breath. The Soveraign of all command Suff’ring by a Common hand. A Prince to make the odium more Offer’d at his very door. The head cut off, ô death to see’t! In obedience to the feet. And that by Justice you must know, If you have faith to think it so. Wee’le stir no further then this sacred Clay, But let it slumber till the Judgment day. Of all the Kings on earth, 'tis not denyed, Here lies the first that for Religion died.

The later version drops one bombastic section of the fuller text, but corrects ‘starest’ for ‘startest’,‘Offer’d’ to ‘Martyr’d’, etc.

But what interests me here is the way in which a prior poem to this surfaces in the otherwise hagiographically loyal text: in the lines

Here lies intomb’d the sacred Dust.
Of Peace and Piety, Right and Just.
The blood (O start’st thou not to hear!)
Of a blest King 'twixt hope and fear,
Shed, and hurried hence to be
The Miracle of Misery…

one can surely hear a more famous mid seventeenth century epitaph, John Cleveland’s on the Earl of Strafford, ‘Black Tom Tyrant’, the autocrat’s autocrat, Thomas Wentworth:

Here lies Wise and Valiant Dust,
Huddled up 'twixt Fit and Just:
Strafford, who was hurried hence
'Twixt Treason and Convenience.
He spent his Time here in a Mist;
A Papist, yet a Calvinist .
His Prince’s nearest Joy, and Grief.
He had, yet wanted all Reliefe.
The Prop and Ruine of the State;
The People’s violent Love, and Hate:
One in extreames lov’d and abhor’d.
Riddles lie here; or in a word,
Here lies Blood; and let it lie
Speechlesse still, and never crie.

The foreboding end to this poem is the reason why it came to the mind of the poet, Fletcher (or whoever it was) who wrote the epitaph on the king who sacrificed Strafford, and whose own blood answered the cry of the blood shed in 1641.

My image is Charles I on the scaffold, from Royall and loyall blood shed by Cromwel and his Party, &c. viz. King Charles the martyr. The Earl of Strafford. The Arch-bishop of Canterbury ... Doctor Hewit to which are added 3 other murthers of publique note (1662).

Walking Trees in an Early Modern Poem

I somehow found my way to William Basse’s Spenserian eclogue, ‘The Metamorphosis of the Walnut Tree of Borestall’. It involves a number of trees withdrawing their roots, stirring their stumps, and setting off across the south of England to be present at a final tribute to a fallen walnut tree at Boarstall House. Here’s a walnut tree at Thame setting off (each tree is rather reluctant to move, but the walnut is encouraged by the Muse herself playing her harp):

The Wallnut tree so ravish’d with the charmes
Proceeding from these mystique ayres of hers
That dive his darke foundation, spreads his armes,
His curled corpes and crisped shoulders stirs,
And teares his russet bootes and crooked spurres
Out of the dungeon of their earthly layre,
Into the lightsome freedome of the ayre.

http://www.thamehistory.net/places/ThamePark.htm

gives us a history of Thame Park, with a separate web page on Basse’s patrons, the Wenham family.

Here, a chestnut tree and a filbert, having met the walnut tree, cross the Thames:

Then through the Towne that stands on flowing Thame,
And o’re his bridge, they did next morning goe,
The Wallnut leading way (who knew the same)
So early, that but few could see or know,
More then the Muse who would not leave them so
But with them went, out of the Fryth to call
The Hazle last; and then to Borestall all.

Finding the number gathered to commemorate their fallen friend deficient, the trees first of all debate whether an oak counts as a nut-bearing tree, and, rather swayed by the 300 year old raven who acts as their messenger, invite an oak from Rycote to join them. He too crosses the Thames at Ickford near Thame:

Tow’rds the brode mouth of roreing Thame, affrayd
When as the trembling bridge of Ickford swet
Under his pond’rous steps, and all that met
Or saw this huge & wond’rous pilgrim walke,
Through the vast country caus’d as vast a talke.

The following web pages show Rycote Chapel, and explain what became of the palace that once stood there:

http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/server/show/nav.001001001013007006007

http://www.thamehistory.net/places/RycotePalace.htm

And here is Boarstall Tower, where the trees meet to mourn:

http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-vh/w-visits/w-findaplace/w-boarstalltower/

http://www.erros.co.uk/boarstallhome/Boarstall_Images_As_it_was.htm

The local historian’s website has a late 17th century engraving of the house that stood behind the imposing gatehouse which survives, and I have borrowed his Victorian re-cutting of the 17th century print, which he wants to keep copyright. It is too late to have the walnut tree, which must have fallen between 1646 and the elderly Basse’s effort to get his Pastorals published, brought to nothing by his death in 1653.

I can trace the notion of perambulating trees back to Mark 8:

22 And he cometh to Bethsaida; and they bring a blind man unto him, and besought him to touch him. 23 And he took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the town; and when he had spit on his eyes, and put his hands upon him, he asked him if he saw ought. 24 And he looked up, and said, I see men as trees, walking. 25 After that he put his hands again upon his eyes, and made him look up: and he was restored, and saw every man clearly.

There must be more in tree mythologies. But I can well imagine C S Lewis enjoying this poem, and transmitting the notion behind the ents of Lord of the Rings to his friend Tolkien.

Basse’s charming poem was obviously written to commemorate and condole the loss of a tree that must have provided the owners of Boarstall year after year of fresh or pickled walnuts. Once the trees have laboriously gathered, they decide they must have their fallen friend anatomized, to see what he died of: the raven, however, mishears, and (as the poem veers out of its gentle fantasy into reality) brings two sawyers, not two surgeons:

But they (now come) upon their scaffold layd
The naked cors, and thereunto applyed
Th’indented razour, and by mutuall ayd
Of eithers hands th’anatomy divide;
Wherein the mourning standers-by descryed
No blemishes of age, nor surfeit found,
But heart & all intestines fayre & sound.

‘The indented razor’ having revealed sound wood throughout, the fallen tree becomes his own commemoration, as some fine walnut wainscoting:

The freinds gave order to the men that wrought,
His body sound in Wainscot to dissect,
And then the Lady of the place besought
Therewith to trim some gallery select,
And cause his limbes with pictures to be dect
Of the Nut-trees, the Raven, and the Muse,
Who did their parts herein so freindly use.

Here’s a Google map: Rycote is just south of Shabbington, Thame a couple of miles east, and Boarstall north, a couple of miles west of Brill, two clicks upwards on this scale:

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?ie=UTF8&q=Ickford,+Aylesbury,+Buckinghamshire,+UK&ll=51.727028,-1.058807&spn=0.085488,0.230713&z=12

'Knubby knuckles rusty rough' and early modern ring wearing

I have spent the week reading a doctoral thesis, a task from which almost anything could distract me, even the extreme ineptitude of the madly obscure and oddly named C.Thimelthorpe, who in 1581 published what he himself describes as a ‘hotpotch’ (and even this is perhaps immodest), to which he gave the floundering title, A short inventory of certayne idle inventions the fruites of a close and secret garden of great ease, and litle pleasure.

It mainly consists of a dialogue between Idleness, and a Student (the idea is more winning than its execution), introduced like this:

“The friendly greeting and comminge together betweene Idlenes, & a student

The godly & wel disposed man, satlinge hymselfe both in body and mynd, (bowing as faithfully the knees of his hart, as many do faynedly in most dissemblyinge manner the knees of their outward bodyes) unto his devoute meditations, & prayers, is very sensibly to his feeling as he certaynlye thinkes, pulled oftentimes by the head oftimes by the legg, and some tyme by other parts of the body…”

I doubt that Thimelthorpe really meant the innuendo, as he isn’t that sharp. Such talents as he was persuaded he had also extended to versing, and here he is on the subject of ring wearing. He can’t quite make his mind up whether it’s a good or bad thing, but as (to his regret) every man wears rings, he is eager to propound a small restoration of social distinction, by laying down some rules about what finger it is proper to wear a ring upon, according to your status:

For wearing of rings

For that it is a proverbe olde,

the winners may best weare the gold

We knubby knuckles rusty rough

do see more fit to lead the plough,

Which fond to see their fingers shine,

in steede of fatt, with golden mine

~

But wisely wayed it is most vayne

and brings such thinges in great disdayne,

When ringes be knackes for every knave

for then no wiseman wil them crave

~

But were it trim to ring the nose

I thinke I might soone fynd out those

That would to please their dainty gyrles

rend that with ringe and pretious pearles

~

Disorder marreth every thinge

so doth miswearing of your ringe,

~

Cost is comly wher order is

good order therefore should not misse

And such as weare them as they ought

the worthier then shall they be thought

~

But some men thinke and so do I

that natures flesh when it is bare,

Without such pearles or paultery

if fayre, is fittest for the glare.

~

For when dame Venus plainly shows

her selfe in natures naked weed

Your eyes then flye not after crows,

but stayes to feede your wanton neede

~

To this the wisest men of all

as we see dayly they be thrall

~

But as for pearles, of precious stones

they passe not for they be but toyes

And gaudy geaugawes for the nones

which they accompt as childish joyes

~

But since they have bene greatly usd

though much perhappes by some abusd

It is not good to take awaye

such comly costly gold array

~

But who so useth it aright

reserves the thumbe as for the knight

And here in order as they lye

your finger rynges you may apply.

~

Miles, Marcator, Stultus, nuptie, & amator

~

To weare the ringe upon the thum is for the Knight

~

The forefinger for the Marchaunt.

~

The middle finger for the Foole

~

The third finger for the maried man

~

The little finger for the Lover

~~

My first image is Rogeir van der Weyden’s portrait of Francesco d’Este, of c.1460. The Web Gallery of Art commentary suggests that ‘the ring and hammer he holds may be emblems of office or tournament prizes’. That looks like a goldsmith’s hammer, type of tool wielded in Niklaus Manuel’s ‘St Eligius in the Workshop’. Francesco wears a ring on his little finger, and has a ruby set in a ring of gold to offer. He is half St Eligius, the saint who could fashion, and then scorn such worldly things, and half the wooer who has an ultimatum: ‘accept it this instant, or I put it under the hammer’.

The second is a composite of ringed fingers from Renaissance portraits (Weyden, Memling, Lotto), just for fun. Two more ring poems, both sexual, neither as good as Donne’s ‘A Jet Ring Sent’:

Richard Lovelace, from Lucasta

Depose your finger of that Ring,
And Crowne mine with't a while
Now I restor't---Pray do's it bring
Back with it more of soile?
Or shines it not as innocent,
As honest, as before 'twas lent?

So then inrich me with that Treasure,
Will but increase your store,
And please me (faire one) with that pleasure
Must please you still the more:
Not to save others is a curse
The blackest, when y'are ne're the worse.

Sir John Harington, ‘In Cornutum’ (1618)

What curld-pate youth is he that sitteth there
So neere thy wife, and whispers in her eare,
And takes her hand in his, and soft doth wring her,
Sliding his ring still vp and downe her finger?
Sir, tis a Proctor, seene in both the Lawes,
Retain'd by her, in some important cause;
Prompt and discreet both in his speech and action,
And doth her busines with great satisfaction.
And thinkest thou so? a horne-plague on thy head:
Art thou so like a foole, and wittoll led,
To thinke he doth the businesse of thy wife?
He doth thy businesse, I dare lay my life.

The Wise Virgin: Martha Hatfield, 1652

James Fisher’s The wise virgin, or, A wonderfull narration of the hand of God wherein his severity and goodnesse hath appeared in afflicting a childe of eleven years of age, when stricken dumb, deaf and blinde through the prevalence of her disease, yet upon her wonderfull recovery was heard at severall times to utter many glorious truths concerning Christ, faith, and other subjects: to the wonderment of many that came far and neer to see and hear her (1653) is partly a narrative of the illness endured by Martha Hatfield of Leighton, Yorkshire, from April 1652 through to December of that year (the child turned 12 years old during her illness). The greater part of the work, however, consists of a journal of the edifying things said by this extraordinarily devout child (“piously principled even from her Cradle, the Spirit blossoming in her in the very Spring of her age) in various stages of her afflictions. When she was able to, Martha fell into a pattern for her utterance of the things she had been thinking about on her sickbed: “she continued speaking from May the 19, until June the 21, 1652: beginning usually about eight of the clock at night, and so continued with some little intermission between every sentence to speak for two houres or more, and then ceased until the next night about the same time”.

But she was undoubtedly ill, and was mute for long spells (June 21^st till July 29^th, then till August 11^th). Martha’s words were carefully recorded, and Fisher annotated them with references to the Bible passages to which she was apparently alluding (I give a page image above). At her most ecstatic, Martha sounds like Thomas Traherne at his woosiest. Like Traherne, she tends to repeat favoured formulae, as Fisher himself notes: “the next thing she spake (after such frowning fits) was alwayes something against Satan that roaring lurking lion”, and he has her delivering almost forty variations on “Christ hath pulled back Satan that roaring lurking lion, that would destroy my poor soul”.

Here’s a sample passage, but one where I have intervened in the text with some modernizing (mainly of punctuation). It shows the child under some strain, perhaps in delivering a more spontaneous thought in a suitable form:

“Oh let us suck sweetness from Jesus Christ, as the childe sucks milk from the mother’s breast; the harder we draw, the more we shall get; the childe wrangles and wrangles till the mother give it the pap in the mouth, and then it’s quiet and satisfied: so…” and there she stayed a good space, going oft over with the word “so” before she could get any more words; at last, she said, “so a poor soul seeks, and knows not what it wants, and wrangles, and wrangles till it get Christ; all the world will not satisfy it, but -” (and then she lifted up her self, and struck with her hand upon her thighs with much fervour of spirit) “- when it gets Christ, then it is satisfied” (and then using the same actions again, said) “when it gets Christ, then it’s abundantly satisfied; all the world will not satisfy him, but Christ will give him full satisfaction.”

I’d really like a medical practitioner to read this pamphlet for a verdict on the symptomology. I think she was suffering from tetanus. The diagnosis in Fisher is of “Spleen-wind”. When they were able to feed her at the start of the illness, poor Martha vomits up food (“and that which she vomited was like gall or soot, and bloud”), she would lie with her head, leg or arm at an odd angle, and her limbs would remain in whatever position they are placed. By September, she had the full symptoms of what seems to be lockjaw: “September the 8th.This day a Physician came to visit her, being sent for by her parents; they desiring to use what means could be procured for her: and it pleased God (whilest the Physician was there with her) to shut up her mouth, her teeth being set in her head, so as they could not open them; her upper teeth were drawn somewhat over her nether teeth; and so they continued (save onely that the workings of the Convulsions opened them sometimes, & drew her tongue out of her mouth. I say, so they continued) until the seventh of December following”.

The next bit of the quotation reminds me of the Throckmorton children (one of whom could only be fed through a straw through the gap a merciful providence had contrived by ordaining her to have lost a tooth): “all which time she lived with the least quantity of food that could be for they put milk into her lips, and how any should go into her stomack we know not except some of it passed at each side of her mouth, where one tooth was wanting, and yet in this time she grew very fat, and her flesh very firm and solid, and she did look very fair and fresh.”

17^th century medicine being what it was (Martha herself, embracing her imminent arrival in Christ’s company, brushes off the physician as irrelevant), we get the full details of her excrement: “Whereas you might rather apprehend that she was a lean, dried, and withered Anatomy; and yet we conceiv’d, she did take down something; though before the setting of her teeth, we could not perceive that she took any thing down, but spurted it out presently; onely by the effects, we gathered that she did receive some nourishment, because she had the benefit of nature; but her stools were such, as all that behold them admire: they are round, of the quantity of a Nutmeg, very hard, and like a piece of earth rolled in lime, and they have no smell.”

But I am writing about this case very much in the context indicated by my reference to the Throckmorton children. What is remarkable in Martha’s case is that she did not account for her condition by reference to witchcraft (as the Throckmorton children so fatally did - surrounded by equally helpless adults, 17th century children did sometimes seem to have to come to their own diagnoses). It was touch-and-go, and Fisher is anxious about this other possible interpretation: “6 These wonderfull providentiall allurances some have sinisterously interpreted surmizing, nay, some speaking that she was bewitched, possessed, &c. and that Satan did speak in her, and that it was not her voice, but a voice in her…”

Martha herself, even in her illness, is acute enough to head off any suggestion that she is a demoniac: “when some rashly affirmed, that she was acted by Satan, they judging according to carnall reason; at the next extasie which was the onely time of her speaking) she uttered thus, I am not in the hands of Satan, but in the hands of my God: when some pretenders to Revelations, (as these times are full of such) visited her, at that very time, she was carried out to say, Take heed you sowe not tares; for if you sowe tares, you shall reap tares”. Fisher, defending his little heroine, also turns on those who imputed her plight to diabolic possession: “to whom God shall give an answer from Heaven in his late dealings and gracious dispensations towards her … this childe never spake of her temptations, or uttered any of Satans language in those her times of speaking, but all her speeches were sweet and gracious, much of Christ and Faith, and against Satan; and against many Errours of the present times, both in judgement and practice, but nothing that might tend to promote Satans Kingdome, and I cannot think that Satan would have bin a mid-wife to help to the birth so many masculine sentences, and high-born truths, as this childe hath uttered…”

As always in pamphlets like this, the response of the community to the sick child in their midst is interesting. The 9^th of November was “a Day was fixed to be set apart for Humiliation, of which many precious servants of God had notice”. In this, people were behaving in a way not unlike the days of general prayer at the bedside that served as Anglicanism’s substitute for exorcism.

Those that had been close to death were expected to come back with details of what they had seen and, better still, deliver prophesies. One thing that makes Fisher’s account so persuasive is his insistence that Martha simply didn’t utter any such prophecies either during her illness or after her recovery:

“Some have said, that she prophesied, and no such passages are here related; to which I answer, there is no ground for such a report: there is one passage related in one of her Speeches, October the 19th. (in the end of page 107, and beginning of page 108.) about, Raising of the Maid; unlesse they fancie this to be a Prophetick foretelling of her Recovery, I know not any thing uttered by her, nor could upon enquiry hear of any thing that might give ground for such a report; but the truth is, such Reporters (I hear) do some of them expect to have the gift of Miracles, and it may be of prophesying, and seemed to be much taken with Gods dispensations to this Childe, hoping it would have conduced something to the promoting of their cause, but are disappointed; for God hath opened the mouth of a dumb childe to confute their follies. It may be they prophesied that she would prophesie, and so have proved themselves to be false prophets.”

Finally, on the 7^th of December, Martha’s jaw was released from spasm, and she yawned. She ate, and recognized her little sister and her mother. A fortnight later, her lower limbs are clearing, and she is able to stand: “21th. of December, which day she being in bed about 9 a clock at night, her Father being in the room, she told him, she felt strength come into her legs: he asked her, How? she said, It trickled down, and came into her thighs, knees, and ancles, like warm water, and so continued a quarter of an hour: and after that working was past, her Sister Hannah took her up, and set her upon her feet, and she stood by her self without holding, which she had not done for three quarters of a year before.”

One final detail about this self-consciously pious child. We have seen that she had no truck with those who wanted to account her a demoniac. That role may have suited the spiteful Throckmorton girls, but she distanced herself from it firmly. But she also knows that she has been speaking when the spirit moved her, and she is equally keen not to be co-opted by the Quakers: “One night when they were undressing of her, one told her, she had no shoes, (for they had given all her clothes and wearing things to some poor children, not expecting her life) and her Father said, there was a Shoe-maker in the Town, but he was a Quaker; she asked, what that was? it was answered, he was one that sleights Ministers, and Gods Ordinances: She replied, she would have no Quakers Shoes then … Another hearing of this discourse, did ask her why she would have no Quakers shoes, did she think there was any errours sewed up in the seames of the shoes? she answered, No, but (saith she) they say I am a Quaker, and to convince them, that I am not, I will have no dealings with them.”

'What God Will', born 12th Night

A most straunge, and true discourse, of the wonderfull iudgement of God. Of a monstrous, deformed infant, begotten by incestuous copulation, betweene the brothers sonne and the sisters daughter, being both vnmarried persons. Which childe was borne at Colwall, in the country and diocesse of Hereford, vpon the sixt day of Ianuary last, being the feast of the Epiphany, commonly called Twelfth day. A notable and most terrible example against inces</