'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).