Early Modern Whale

'With the sudors of thy industry shalt thou spend thy days'. Loredano's 'Life of Adam', 1659.

2012-01-23T19:44:00.002Z

Writing purported or speculative biographies of Adam had gone on since Jacobus de Voragine and The Golden Legend in the 13^th century. I’ve been reading a late example, by Gian Francesco Loredan, published in Venice in 1640, and appearing in England, translated by ‘J.S.’ in 1659.

Loredan was widely translated into English, with five different works appearing between 1654 and 1682. As for The life of Adam, it’s hard to define what the original appeal was: was it, beneath its ostensible subject, actually enjoyed as a wittily anti-feminist account of that age-old target, Eve? Maybe in a work like this we get some sense of how many pictures of Adam and Eve (or some of the manifold other depictions of them) were received, in a mixture of salacity and moralization. If you think of Loredan himself as accustomed to seeing the two Tintoretto paintings of the Fall of Man in Venice (in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, and that in the Gallerie dell'Accademia, above), well, they are both Eve-centered versions. Adam has his back to us in both paintings, provoking us to our own incriminating reaction to the temptation offered by Eve.

Loredan was born into a minor branch of the Venetian clan who provided three Doges. He was founder of the Accademia degli Incogniti, noblemen who were in their way free-thinkers (and promoters of opera). Loredan’s writings emerge from that group: novellas, collections of witty essays, a romance, and a ‘scala sancta’, an ascent of the soul based on fifteen psalms.

The tone of ‘The Life of Adam’ - at least in English - is of bland moralization, as God’s intentions behind each detail of that scanty narrative in Genesis are speculated upon in a series of ‘because’ / ‘or else…’ extrapolations. Like the medieval example, the work is utterly anti-feminist, an aspect it has in common with other parts of Loredan’s writings. His view of women seems to compound an exaggerated sense of the persuasive power of female beauty with an extreme view of female moral frailty - nothing very novel about that, of course. He was himself forced into marriage (apparently).

‘The Life of Adam’ deals with Adam’s fall after some general scene-setting which seems to have been derived as much from Ovid’s Metamorphoses as from the Bible: “God had, with Ideas suitable to his own omnipotence, compiled the machine of Heaven and of the World. The Chaos retained no longer either confusion, or darkness. The Elements, though proud of their variety of qualities, united themselves for the conservation of the Whole …”

After a speech of suitable gratitude for having been created, Adam names the animals: “His Divine Majesty made all Birds and other Animals of the earth to come before Adam, that from him (who had received from God the knowledge of their Natures) they should receive their Names. The Lord did this, to make Adam see by comparison how much he was obliged, in seeing himself so different, and so upright above all other Creatures. Or, because God having created Man Prince of all creatures, would have him know his vassalls and the Animals reverence him as their Prince…” Again, the detail about the distinct human erectness among the animal creation is Ovidian, though it was a common enough observation about humankind. (Obviously, there are lots of animals you have to ignore: plenty of flightless birds are upright in stance.) Milton makes much of it.

But we progress rapidly to the nemesis of this grateful and knowledgeable Adam, his wife. Loredan has a speculation about why Adam was made to fall asleep prior to the removal of his rib: Adam had after all been granted a prophetic spirit by God, and so, if he had been awake, he might well have objected:

“Or else it might be, that he cast Adam into a sleep, as if he feared that he would contradict him; whilst with the spirit of prophesy given him, he might foresee the mischiefs accruing to mankind in the making of Eve.”

Loredan wonders why God, wanting his new world populated, didn’t create multiple humans. As answers to his own idle question, he produces both a democratic and an anti-feminist speculation: “God for the more expeditious population of the World, could have made many men, & many Women, but would, that all should descend from one Father, and one Mother, to the end Men should conserve Love, peace, and concord amongst themselves. And who knows … he would not permit Adam multiplicity of Wives for that he might not thereby multiply his miseries…”

Eve once created, and Adam revived (with his opportunity for prophetic objection missed), Loredan now turns to the dangerous and total allure of women, which he expresses in Petrarchan or Marinist cliches: “Adam stood stupefied in contemplating two Suns under one pair of eyebrows, whilst he saw no more but one in Heaven … The by-Nature-plaited tresses, so nearly resembled Gold in tincture, and purity, that they pleaded Adams excuse, if he did not refuse so honourable a prison … Her flesh appearing like a lovely composure of scarlet and milk, although at the touch it would be taken for marble. Her age was about the fourth lustre, (accompting five years to a Lustre) proper for a woman in reference to Procreation and Love.”

Adam nearly idolizes her: “Adam was about to have adored her as a Goddess. For but only that it was infused into him by revelation, that the woman was a part of himself, doubtless disobedience should not have been the first of his sins.”

Once acquainted, Adam duly informs Eve about the one prohibition under which they are to live. Eve immediately sets off, on her own, in quest to see the forbidden fruit. The novelisation of Genesis treats this as yet unfallen Eve as though all post-lapsarian accusations of women apply to her: “The Woman became at those prohibitions the more curious. To forbid a woman, is to increase her appetite … The Woman therefore, transported by those impatiencies, that interposed between them and their felicity, left Adam; desiring to enjoy … the sight of that fruit, which being forbidden, was to be supposed the more exquisite.”

In a particularly breathtaking piece of misogyny, Loredan manages to imply that Eve provokes her own temptation: “Having found the tree, she beheld the fruits with so much curiosity, that it induced the Devil to tempt her.”

The serpent itself is in the shape of that familiar monster, the serpentine female: “Amongst the infinite forms of animals there was a Serpent with the face of a Damsel, which God had replenished with all subtility.” I think this notion goes all the way back to the Venerable Bede. It set off, no doubt, in a mixture of anti-feminism and crack-brained rationalization: for it provides an answer of sorts to questions about why Eve wasn’t alarmed by a serpent that spoke to her: the serpent-tempter had in part assumed her shape. As Loredan puts it: “She started not at the sight of a Serpent; for seeing it resemble her self in countenance she rather rejoiced then feared”. It seems nobody dared to suggest either to the Venerable Bede, or any of those who repeated him, that this half-human serpent would in fact be a far more alarming sight.

The serpent-maiden flatters Eve. Eve repeats the terms of the prohibition, and Loredan does not fail to score a point against women by exploiting the disparity between Genesis 2, 17 and Genesis 3,3: “His Divine Majesty had commanded only that they should not eat of the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil; but the Woman moreover adds the Touching it: because as a Woman she could not discourse without aggravating or over-reaching.”

The narrative briefly pauses to suggest the more perceptive things Eve might have said to refute her tempter (“How came I to merit so much of thy affection that thou shouldst desire, that I should first obtain a benefit so great, a prerogative so rare, as to be divine?”) before noting her precipitate belief: “The unfortunate woman believed all for truth, because she desired all to be true.”

When Eve eats the fruit, Loredan introduces another piece of anti-woman needling, now taking offence that “She called not Adam to eat of the Apple before her, as was the duty of her subjection; because believing divinity to be reposed in that fruit, she would not admit any to have the precedence of her.”

When Eve, having failed in her duty to give the fruit first to her husband, eventually gets back to Adam with her story, Loredan gives Adam a firmly reasoned refusal to join her in disobedience:

“Content your self with having your self alone transgressed the commands of God’s law. Desire not company in evil. Lead not others into your precipices. I am your companion, I am your Lover; but will know how to be your Enemy.”

But Eve resorts (what else?) to “sighs and tears, the wonted artifices with which women betray the honour, liberty, and safety of men”, and to allurement: “Casting therefore her arms about the neck of Adam, she so besieged his constancy, with her glances, caresses, and kisses that, after some small resistance, he yielded himself overcome …What cannot women do in an amorous soul!”

As soon as Adam has a morsel of the fruit going down his throat, he repents, and he sees their nakedness. Loredan makes a firmly Augustinian point about how, previously, “lust had not ability to suscitate sensual affects, without the consent of Man”. Adam now knows his, and his wife’s, nakedness, and doesn’t like the effect it has.

God appears in the Garden, and finds Adam, in his fig-leaves, hiding with all the self-exculpatory wiles of, say, Captain Francesco Schettino, beneath the forbidden tree itself. Adam stoutly blames God for making Eve too alluring: “Who can resist the power of beauty? The commands of her, that thou gavest me for a Companion, hath in such manner tyrannized over my reason, and intellectuals, that I have not power to dispose of my self … He that can withstand the importunate solicitude of the fairest piece that ever came out of thy hands, either knows not how to Love or deserves not to be Beloved. Alone I should not have known sin, for bad-company is a fomenter of the greatest sins. Lord, turn against her thy reproofs and chastisements.”

Eve perhaps makes a rather better job of self-exculpation “I could not persuade my self that there were treacheries in Paradise, nor deceits in the face of a Damsel. Thunder therefore, O Lord, thy punishments upon the Serpent, as upon the author of all evil.”

God passes his curses on the serpent, the earth, Eve and Adam (“With the sudors of thy industry shalt thou spend thy days”), and expels them, addressing Adam in particular: “Get thee packing therefore out of the Paradise of delights, and fix thine abode where thou wast formed, cultivating that earth from whence thou hast derived thy being.”

Loredan asserts that the expulsion counts as one of God’s acts of mercy: “It was one of the wonted effects of God’s benignity to drive Adam out of Paradise, because, if he had continued amongst those delights without enjoying them, he would have received too much torment; there being no greater punishment to be found then to be in the midst of felicities and to be denied the fruition.”

He then proceeds to sum up. There’s the usual notion that Adam and Eve were only in Paradise for a few hours: “Poor Adam! that didst not scarce one whole day enjoy the gifts of Gods favour. His felicity being shorter then that of an Ephemeris [a mayfly]. About three of clock he was brought into the Garden; at six a clock, he sinned; and in the Evening, was expulsed.”

Once outside Eden, Eve is given a speech of thorough contrition, which is undermined by Adam turning lustful: “ ‘The sorrow for my sin shall die with my heart, which I believe shall be the last part of me alive’ … Adam, with a smile begot by the stimulations of sensuality, thus replied, ‘I need no longer now to fear your company (my Eve) since you become to me an incentive to good’ …Thus saying & with glances, and kisses having thrown his arms about his wife’s neck they gave themselves wholly up to delight, which peradventure for the time begot in them an oblivion of all the accidents past.”

Loredan then spells out the underlying belief, the prejudice that constrained the duration of man’s unfallen state to less than a day. You had to get them out of Paradise before they can have sex, and beget any offspring without the taint of original sin: “Till this instant Adam had been kept a Virgin, to intimate unto us that Matrimony fills the earth, but Virginity Paradise.”

After sex, Eve has an instant awareness that she is pregnant: “Scarce had Eve satisfied the instinct of nature, and appeased in part the allurements of sense, when with the signs of pregnancy, she was assaulted by repentance, the indivisible companion of fleshly delights.”

Loredan lobs in another of his quite appalling misogynistic observations. The pregnancy proves to be a difficult one: “Here I will not mention the extremes of her passions, in loathing, and longing for every thing; in the burden of her belly, in her vigils, and in the acerbity of those pangs, the more grievous, by how much the more strange: because the most that I can speak, would be the least part of what they were. Much less will I speak of the sufferance of Adam; because it is known that to have a wife, and a wife pregnant, is a species of martyrdom.”

Poor Eve gives birth to a boy and a girl. In these quotations, I suppose the daughters’ names are derived from Rabbinical lore: “Eve brought forth two births, Cain was the name of the male, and Calamana that of the female … Eve afterwards bore Abel, and Delbora, whereby she increased the joy of Adam.”

Meanwhile, Adam emerges as well worth a place on the radio show ‘Gardeners’ Question Time’: “Adam, not content with what the Earth repaid him with interest for the seed received, employed himself also in continual grafting. He transplants wild trees into the meliorated, makes the sterile fructiferous, and dulcorates the insipid … He transmutes one species into another, and inoculates many species upon one sole stock.” And he progresses from living in caves to mud huts: “Poor Adam sheltered himself (necessity constraining him) in certain Caverns, the palaces of Nature … He learnt, for his greater shame [his] first Architecture from the Swallow.”

After Cain slays Abel, Adam vows to give up being fruitful and multiplying, but God releases him from his vow, and so Seth is born, from whom Christ will descend.

Adam finally dies aged 930, and we get a specific day for his death: “It is the opinion of many that he dyed on Friday the 3^d of March, being the day on which he was created, to hint that misery comes in the very instant of our felicity.” We also are told where he was buried, and subsequently re-buried: “He was buried in Hebron, in a Sepulcher of Marble, and was afterwards transported to Calvary, to the very place where Christ died.”

Of Eve’s death, Loredan makes the following typically hostile remarks: “Of Eve’s age the Scriptures make no mention; perhaps because we ought not to know the death of her, that deserved to die before she was born; all the miseries of mankind taking rise from her. It’s probable that she was oppressed by age, and passion, for Adam’s death. It pleased his Divine Majesty, perhaps, that she should survive Adam to double her punishment, in beholding the death of the dearest part of herself.”

This suavely nasty work was, as I say, translated into English, and dedicated to the ‘Lady S.B.’, the translator affirming that the first of men made a suitable subject for the ‘best of women’. I suppose one should never be surprised at the crassness of 17^th century men, and their view of what women might want to read.

An elegy on a 17th century centenarian

2012-01-05T09:51:00.004Z

‘An Elegy upon Dr. Chaderton, the first Master of Emanuel College in Cambridge being above an hundred years old when he died. Occasioned by his long deferred Funeral.’

Pardon (dear Saint) that we so late
With lazy sighs bemoan thy fate;
And with an after-shower of Verse,
And Tears, we thus bedew thy Hearse:
Till now (alas!) we did not weep,
Because we thought thou didst but sleep:
Thou liv’dst so long, we did not know
Whether thou couldst now die or no:
We looked still, when thou shouldst arise,
And ope the Casement of thine eyes:
Thy feet which have been us’d so long
To walk, we thought must still go on;
Thine ears after an hundred year,
Might now plead custom for to hear.

Upon thy head that reverend snow
Did dwell some fifty years ago,
And then thy Cheeks did seem to have
The sad resemblance of a Grave.

Wert thou e’re young? For truth I hold,
And do believe thou wert born old.
There’s none alive I am sure can say
They knew thee young, but always gray:
And dost thou now, venerable Oak,
Decline at death's unhappy stroke?

Tell me (dear Sir) why didst thou die,
And leave’s to write an Elegy?
We’are young (alas!) and know thee not,
Send up old Abraham and grave Lot:
Let them write thine Epitaph, and tell
The World thy worth, they ken’d thee well:
When they were Boys they heard thee preach,
And thought an Angel did them teach.

Awake them then, and let them come,
And score thy Virtues on thy Tomb;
That we at those may wonder more,
Than at thy many years before.

~ Possibly the satirist John Cleveland writing in surprisingly affectionate terms about the (very) old Puritan divine, Laurence Chaderton. If it was Cleveland, his subject’s great age, and reverence for the dead, must have granted the subject immunity from the poet’s habitually vehement anti-Puritan satire. It might also be argued that Cleveland would have been writing not so much for himself as for the university, a community which (one gathers from the sub-title) had been reprehensibly slow to organize a funeral (there were probably disputes about details of the formalities the deceased would have preferred, and the normally observed ritual gestures).

Thomas Fuller’s brief biography of the deceased centenarian in his Worthies shares some of the same thoughts: so what we are seeing is, perhaps, the way the old man was talked about in a University then dominated by Cleveland’s wit: “What is said of Mount Caucasus, that it was never seen without Snow on the Top, was true of this Reverend Father, whom none of our Fathers generation knew in the University, before he was gray headed, yet he never used Spectacles till the day of his death.”

Still, there is either something impish about the poem, or perhaps it responds to something impish about great old age. A really old person is mildly subversive, at least of ‘three score years and ten’, liable to be seen these disrespectful times as being a ‘coffin-dodger’. When the elegy suggests, by way of excuse for delay, that they had all half-expected the dead Chaderton to open his eyes again, get up and resume shuffling about, a mental picture forms of the ageless college fellow, sometimes very still, resting a while, but liable to switch back on to full alertness, not having actually missed anything at all.

Cleveland’s imitator ( or Cleveland himself) then allows truth to stretch into hyperbole, though with provocation in this case, for Chaderton was remarkably old. Reasonably enough, the poem observes that there’s nobody around remaining to testify to his youth, if he ever had one. The witticism follows: maybe the Bible patriarchs would have heard Chaderton preach when they were boys. After this faint guying (for Chaderton was “a man famous for Gravity, Learning and Religion”, and would not have treated Old Testament figures so lightly), the poem turns to its final, rather graceful compliment: the young Abraham and Lot might have thought “an Angel did them teach”: if they could return and incise Chaderton’s tomb with the virtues they had witnessed, they would be more wonderful and numerous than his years.

Chaderton’s preaching had been (Fuller says) “plain but effectual ”. Thomas Fuller includes a relatively well known anecdote about those pious times: “It happened that he visiting his friends, preached in this his Native Countrey, where the Word of God (as in the days of Samuel) was very precious. And concluded his Sermon, which was of two hours continuance at least, with words to this effect That he would no longer trespass upon their Patience. Whereupon all the Auditory cried out, (wonder not if hungry people craved more meat) For God’s sake Sir, Go on Go on. Hereat Mr. Chaderton was surprised into a longer Discourse, beyond his expectation, in Satisfaction of their importunity, and (though on a sudden) performed it to their contentment and his commendation.”

Laurence Chaderton’s ‘native country’ was Lancashire, where he had been born at Chatterton ‘about the year 1546’. The county that clung to Catholicism, and his parents were Catholics. Sent to the Inns of Court to learn law (something always useful for any Catholic family under recurrent state-backed legal assault), the young Chaderton switched faiths, began to study divinity, and had then been disinherited: “his Father disliking his change of place and studies, but especially of Religion, sent him a Poke with a groat in it, to go a begging withall; further signifying to him, that he was resolved to disinherit him, which he also did.” Despite the groat, Chaderton did well. He represented non-conformity at the Hampton Court conference in 1604 (though in dignified silence rather than in any outspoken engagement for his cause), and was one of the 1611 AV Bible translators. As the first Master of Emmanuel, he used a network of sympathetic contacts to build up the thinly-endowed foundation. His methods of assessing his college’s students were far more sensible and rigorous than anything that ever happened to me: “After he was Master of Emanuel, his manner was not to suffer any young Scholars to go into the Country to Preach, till he had heard them first in the College Chapel”.

I have blogged before about Thomas Sheafe’s Vindiciae senectutis, or, A plea for old-age. It was most appropriately dedicated to “THE WORTHY AND LIVELY Pattern of a good OLD-AGE, M^r. Doctor CHADERTON, all the blessed comforts of it: and after it, everlasting happiness.”

Among the poems attributed to Cleveland in the 17^th century are many elegies, in Latin or English. Some are about other heads of Cambridge colleges, others are highly political and very angry (Archbishop Laud, and of course, those about the King). Mid-17^th century England was a great time of elegy-writing, as the studies by Dennis Kay and Gary Pigman testify, and Cleveland was for a while the master to follow. Cleveland himself had the dubious pleasure of having elegies written on him during his own healthy lifetime, by elegists who jumped the gun and tried to be witty on the topic of the passing of the reigning ‘monarch of wit’. One ‘J Parry’ wrote verses about ‘The Elegy made upon Mr. John Clevelands Death cry’d i’th’Streets, he being then in good Disposition of Health’ (in the 1687 Works of Cleveland): “He whom the Muses have forbid to die / Durst Ignorance (Arts Enemy) belie, / To rhyme him dead? …” So there’s the faint chance that the lines about everyone expecting Laurence Chaderton to carry on as he always had as long as anyone could remember were suggested by Cleveland having himself been reported dead, and found to be alive.

The elegy was rejected by Brian Morris and Eleanor Withington from the 1967 Clarendon Press edition of Cleveland, on the grounds that it didn’t get reprinted (after its appearance in 1651) in the 1677 text of ‘Cleveland’s genuine poems’. Nor is it ascribed to the satirist in any manuscript, say the editors, but the poem only seems to have been transcribed in one manuscript anyway. I’d like to think Cleveland could turn off the satire and acknowledge some virtue in a puritan. Mainly, I’d like the poem to have an author, so it can be a 17^th century pairing to John Betjeman’s ‘I.M. Walter Ramsden’, another ever-so faintly satirical poem about a revered old college fellow (Betjeman talks about his poem with some anxiety to assert that he meant it sincerely: his metrical innovation of long lines mixed with lines consisting of a single metrical foot (a superb mime of truncation) just sound a bit bouncy, perhaps.

‘I.M. Walter Ramsden ob. March 26, 1947, Pembroke College, Oxford’

Dr Ramsden cannot read The Times obituary to-day,
He’s dead.
Let monographs on silk worms by other people be
Thrown away
Unread
For he who best could understand and criticize them, he
Lies clay
In bed.

The body waits in Pembroke College where the ivy taps the panes
All night;
That old head so full of knowledge, that good heart that kept the brains
All right,
Those old cheeks that faintly flushed as the port suffused the veins,
Drain’d white.

Crocus in the Fellows’ Garden, winter jasmine up the wall
Gleam gold.
Shadows of Victorian chimneys on the sunny grassplot fall
Long, cold.
Master, Bursar, Senior Tutor, these, his three survivors, all
Feel old.

They remember, as the coffin to its final obsequations
Leaves the gates,
Buzz of bees in window boxes on their summer ministrations,
Kitchen din,
Cups and plates,
And the getting of bump suppers for the long-dead generations
Coming in,
From Eights.

My images are from Simon Goulart, The wise old man or A treatise touching the miseries incident both to the bodies and mindes of old men, 1621, and, as Walter Ramsden liked to read them, his own obituary from The Times Thursday, Mar 27, 1947.

“Don’t forget the good old way” … “Nappy Ale both brown and stale”. The ideal Christmas, 1688.

2011-12-22T22:25:00.006Z

My festive text is an anonymous late 17^th century book of carols A Cabinet of choice jewels, or, The Christians joy and gladness set forth in sundry pleasant new Christmas-carrols, 1688.

That’s the title page woodcut: a nativity scene. The oxen in the byre aren’t bad, but as for the rest of it, well, the artist has hardly risen to the subject, with a very large Mary, and a micro cephalic Christ-child. Perhaps one should not expect much, as this is only the cheapest end of the popular market, and our anonymous author most probably spent the rest of his year turning out ballads. Even so, it’s a dire woodcut: one feels that the Dutch wood block cutters of this era would have been astonished and derisive.

We are in the reign of James II, and there’s a precarious insistence on everyone being loyal, with a kind of rallying cry implied, that England can, despite everything, still be like it was in the old days. That nostalgia for Christmas past is typographically rendered: when he remembers to do so, the compositor puts words like ‘Christmas’ or ‘wassail’ into black letter (along with refrains and Bible names).

The author gets the religious material over quite quickly, with two carols for Christmas Day. They say this kind of thing:

Let Christians now with joyful mirth

Both young and old, yes great and small,

Still think upon our Saviours Birth

Who brought Salvation to us all…

Upon this day let none be found

To practice any idle game,

And though thy mirth do much abound

Yet let it not be so prophane …

He can then turn to his real subject, copious Christmas food and strong drink. The two are often taken together, in that distinctive early modern way of loading foodstuffs into their drink. If you drank small ale all the time as your main liquid intake, the festive versions would be tend to end up as ale spiced, strengthened, and thickened. Noticeable about the carols is that way of demanding ‘wassail’ with mild menaces: loyal addresses to the gentry, and effusive good wishes are extended to them, but apparently on the understanding that now’s the time for the rich folk to divvy up, and let the plain folk in to feast mightily and meatily, and drink ‘bumpers’ (vessels full to the very brim) of strong (‘nappy’) beer, or ‘lamb’s wool’ (“A drink consisting of hot ale mixed with the pulp of roasted apples, and sugared and spiced”). At least that’s what the gentry should do if they want to keep things sweet. That metaphorical turn about laying siege to the roast goose allows talk about ‘fury’ if there’s any resistance or grudging.

We complain annually these days about the Christmas season starting around October in our shops. The early modern Christmas season may have not had the long commercial lead-in, but they did sustain the festive season. My author bids farewell to Christmas at Candlemas day (usually February 2nd).

So, after the religious carols, here’s the author getting down to the important matter for his target readership of songs to elicit seasonal food and drink:

A Carrol for Christmas Day at Night

My Master your Servants

and Neighbours this Night,

Are come to be merry,

with love and delight.

Now therefore be Noble,

and let it appear,

That Christmas is still

the best time of the Year:

To sit by the fire,

rehearse an old tale,

And taste of a bumper

of nappy old Ale.

It flows from the Barley,

that fruit of the Earth,

Which quickens the fancy,

for pastime and mirth;

And therefore be jolly,

now each bonny Lad,

For we have no reason

at all to be sad:

remember the season,

and then you’l ne’er fail,

To bring in a bumper

of nappy brown Ale.

Now some of your dainties,

let us freely taste,

My stomach is ready,

I am now in haste;

And therefore sweet Mistress,

I hope you’ll be brief,

To bring out the Sirloin

or Ribs of Roast Beef;

With other choice dainties,

I hope you’ll not fail,

At this happy season,

with nappy brown Ale.

And now let me tell you

what dainties I prize,

I long to be doing

with curious minc’d pies;

Where plumbs in abundance,

lies crowding for room,

But if I come near it,

I’le tell you its doom;

I’d soon part the quarrel,

But hold, let’s not fail,

To think of a bumper

of nappy brown Ale.

The Pig, Goose and Capon,

I’de like to forgot,

But yet I do hope they’ll

come all to my lot;

We’ll lay a close siege

to the walls of the Goose,

And storm her strong Castle,

there is no excuse

Shall hinder our fury,

therefore let’s not fail,

To have a full bumper

of nappy brown Ale.

All those that are willing

to honour this day,

I hope that they never

will fall to decay;

But always be able,

their Neighbours to give,

And keep a good Table,

as long as they live;

That love, peace and plenty,

with them may ne’er fail,

And we may ne’er miss

of good nappy Ale.

It is rather stridently demanding: detailed and specific about what is wanted, drifting from a collective and festive ‘we’ into the voice of the individual and greedy-sounding food-fantasist. Only ‘We wish you a merry Christmas’, supposedly 16^th century, preserves into our present repertoire of carols that note (‘we won’t go until we’ve got some’).

A clutch of brief carols then carries the revellers towards the main gift-giving day at the New Year. All these saints remind us that a Catholic king was on the throne:

A Carrol for St Stephens Day (December 26^th)

A carrol for St John’s Day (December 27^th)

A Carrol for Innocents Day (‘Tune of, Bloody fate’) (December 28^th)

Then a fuller length ‘A Carrol for New-Years-day’ (‘Tune of, Caper and Jerk it’), full of this kind of sentiment about gift-giving:

“The young men and maids on New Years day,

Their loves they will present,

With many a gift both fine and gay,

Which gives them true content,

And though the gift be great or small,

Yet this is the custom still,

Expressing their loves in Ribbons and Gloves,

It being their kind good will …

Young Batchelors will not spare their coins,

But thus their love is shown,

Yoing Richard will buy a Bodkin fine,

And give it honest Jone…”

Twelfth Night returns us to hectoring the gentry for more supplies of drink: ‘What the House doth now afford / Should be plac’d upon the board’, etc.:

A Carrol for twelfth-Day

(‘Tune of, O mother, Roger’)

Sweet Master of this Habitation,

with my Mistress, be so kind,

As to grant an Invitation,

if we may this favour find:

To be invited in,

Then in mirth we will begin

Many a sweet and pleasant Song,

Which doth to this time belong,

Let every Loyal honest Soul,

Contribute to the Wassail Bowl.

So may you still enjoy the Blessing,

of a loving virtuous Wife,

Riches, honour still possessing,

with a long and happy life;

Living in Prosperity,

Then let Generosity,

Always be maintained I pray,

Don’t forget the good old way,

Let every Loyal honest Soul,

Contribute to the Wassail-bowl.

Before this season is departed,

in your presence we appear,

Therefore be so noble-hearted,

to afford some dainty cheer;

Freely let us have it now,

Since the season doth allow,

What the House doth now afford,

Should be plac’d upon the board,

Whether it be Roast Beef or Fowl,

And liquor well the Wassel-bowl.

For now it is a time of leisure,

then to those that kindness show,

May they have Wealth, peace and pleasure,

and the spring of bounty flow,

To enrich them while they live,

That they may afford to give,

To maintain the good old way,

Many a long and happy day;

Let every Loyal honest soul,

Contribute to the Wassail Bowl.

You worthy are to be commended,

if in this you will not fail,

Now our song is almost ended,

fill our bowl with nappy Ale;

Then we’ll drink a full carouse,

To the Master of the House,

Aye, and to our Mistress dear,

Wishing both a happy Year,

In peace and love without control,

Who brought joy to our wassel-bowl.

By February 2^nd, our author is finally ready to say farewell to Christmas. That’s quite a spell on the lash. ‘Nappy Ale both brown and stale’ does rather capture this fag-end of the revels, a dogged effort by faded celebrants to down every drop.

A Carrol for Candlemas-Day

Now Candlemas is come at last,

therefore my dearest friend,

Since Christmas time is almost past,

I mean to an end

Of this our mirth and merriment,

and now the truth to tell,

He must be m our presence sent,

O Christmas now farewell.

Now Christmas will no longer stay,

my very heart doth grieve,

Before from us he take his way,

of him I’ll take my leave:

It is a time none of the least,

as I the truth may tell,

For him we’ll make a worthy Feast,

Then Christmas now farewell.

I do declare as I am true,

I’ll love him while I die,

I’ll call my Friends and Neighbours too,

to keep him company:

With nappy Ale and dainty Cheer,

our grief we will expel;

And Christmas while another year,

We’ll bid thee now farewell.

To make our joys the more complete,

we court the charming bowl,

In Merriment and music sweet,

let e’ry loyal soul

Drink off his glass, and let it pass,

in mirth we will excel,

In sweet delight we’ll spend the night,

Then Christmas now farewell.

With nappy Ale both brown and stale,

we’ll fill our Bumpers full;

And pippins too, as I am true.

they make the best Lambs wool:

So fast and smooth it will go down,

They sorrow to expel,

And then as last, when all is past,

Christmas we’ll bid farewell.

Earlier in the century, Robert Herrick was the verse-anthropologist or sociologist of all these customs: the bad luck of keeping up Christmas trimmings after Candlemas, the Christmas brand burned again, and then extinguished to be used to kindle the fire next Christmas.

Ceremonies for Candlemas Eve.

Down with the Rosemary and Bays,
Down with the Mistletoe;
In stead of Holly, now up-raise
The greener Box (for show.)

The Holly hitherto did sway;
Let Box now domineer;
Until the dancing Easter-day,
Or Easters Eve appear.

Then youthful Box which now hath grace,
Your houses to renew;
Grown old, surrender must his place,
Unto the crisped Yew.

When Yew is out, then Birch comes in,
And many Flowers beside;
Both of a fresh, and fragrant kin
To honour Whitsontide.

Green Rushes then, and sweetest Bents,
With cooler Oaken boughs;
Come in for comely ornaments,
To re-adorn the house.
Thus times do shift; each thing his turn does hold;
New things succeed, as former things grow old.

The Ceremonies for Candlemas day.

Kindle the Christmas Brand and then
Till Sun-set, let it burn;
Which quenched, then lay it up agen,
Till Christmas next return.

Part must be kept wherewith to tend
The Christmas Log next year;
And where 'tis safely 'kept, the Fiend,
Can do no mischief (there.)

Upon Candlemas day.

End now the White-loaf, & the Pie,
And let all sports with Christmas dye.

Herrick’s two wassail poems are far more alive to the grateful tour of all the food-production sites of the parish, with libations to secure another year of the same, and less anxious than the anonymous writer to bully a good welcome for the wassailers. In his poem, they take offence at not having been given the expected drink, and leave with an expression of certainty that the inhospitable household shall come to know dearth:

The Wassail.

1. Give way, give way ye Gates, and win
An easy blessing to your Bin,
And Basket, by our entering in.

2. May both with manchet stand replete;
Your Larders too so hung with meat,
That though a thousand, thousand eat;

3.Yet, ere twelve Moons shall whirl about
Their silv'rie Spheres, ther’s none may doubt,
But more’s sent in, then was serv’d out.

4. Next, may your Dairies Prosper so,
As that your pans no Ebb may know;
But if they do, the more to flow.

5. Like to a solemn sober Stream
Banked all with Lillies, and the Cream
Of sweetest Cow-slips filling Them.

6. Then, may your Plants be pressed with Fruit,
Nor Bee, or Hive you have be mute;
But sweetly sounding like a Lute.

7. Next may your Duck and teeming Hen
Both to the Cocks-tread say Amen;
And for their two eggs render ten.

8. Last, may your Harrows, Shares and Ploughs,
Your Stacks, your Stocks, your sweetest Mows,
All prosper by your Virgin-vows.

9. Alas! we bless, but see none here,
That brings us either Ale or Beer;
In a dry-house all things are near.

10. Let's leave a longer time to wait,
Where Rust and Cobwebs bind the gate;
And all live here with needy Fate.

11. Where Chimneys do for ever weep,
For want of warmth, and Stomachs keep
With noise, the servants eyes from sleep.

12. It is in vain to sing, or stay
Our free-feet here; but we'll away:
Yet to the Lares this we'll say,

13. The time will come, when you’ll be sad,
And reckon this for fortune bad,
T’have lost the good ye might have had.

A monumental henosis

2011-12-17T09:25:00.004Z

This is the attractive wall monument in Romsey Abbey, Hampshire, to John St Barbe and his wife Grissell. (‘Griselda’, for here’s a 17^th century Englishwoman whose name testifies that the martyrdom in matrimony suffered by ‘Patient Griselda’ was still considered a suitable reference and example). Everyone looks somewhat alike on the monument: John is Grissell with a wispy Cavalier moustache and tuft, the boys below look like two pairs of twins – which they may have been, of course.

But the monument does so much with symmetry that whoever penned the epitaph attempted, with some success, a symmetrical poem for this symmetrical couple.

I have been puzzling over how best to read the interlaced verses on the monument. Read strictly left to right and then downwards, in the normal fashion of eye movement across a text, it is mainly a jumble that strongly suggests that you have to do something else:

Earth’s Rich in Mines of Precious Dust

Whom Nature Wedlock Grace did tie

And faithfull ones

Since in her Bowels rest these Just

In one fast Chain of unity

Whose silent bones

Dead here do Rest yet Left not Earth

Because such Righteous & theire seed

In fame & state

But brought fower sonns to Perfect Birth

Shall Florish here and shall in Deed

Tryumph o’re fate

It goes a bit better if, after a long line on the left, you dip to the short central line beneath, and then rise to the long line on the right:

Earth’s Rich in Mines of Precious Dust

And faithfull ones

Whom Nature Wedlock Grace did tie

Since in her Bowels rest these Just

Whose silent bones

In one fast Chain of unity

Dead here do Rest yet Left not Earth

In fame & state

Because such Righteous & theire seed

But brought fower sonns to Perfect Birth

Tryumph o’re fate

Shall Florish here and shall in Deed

If you think of the verses as corresponding to his left side of the monument, and her right side, then you can read just down the left and centre to produce the verses for John St Barbe (I editorialise a little):

Earth’s Rich in Mines of Precious Dust

And faithful ones

Since in her Bowels rest these Just

Whose silent bones

Dead here do Rest yet Left not Earth

In fame & state

But brought four sons to Perfect Birth:

Triumph o’re Fate!

It doesn’t work at all for a composite of centre lines and Grissell’s right hand side. One might say that is as you’d expect: that it makes sense from the man’s side, no sense at all from the woman’s.

I tried to produce an optimum text in which the reading eye jiggles up and down. I am now editing the verses more heavily still, and introducing a repetition for effect:

Earth’s rich in mines of precious dust

and faithful ones

Since in her bowels rest these Just

whom Nature, Wedlock, Grace did tie

in one fast chain of unity.

Whose silent bones

Dead here do rest, yet left not Earth

but brought four sons to perfect birth

shall flourish here and shall indeed

in fame & state

Triumph o’re Fate:

Because such righteous & their seed

Triumph o’re Fate!

I suppose that the poet wanted you to do something like this, and the point of the poem wasn’t so much sequential sense as an interlacing that paid tribute to two lives lived as one flesh, so we have two poems as one poem.

He (or she) then produced an interlacing of two into one in an anagram that is fairly strict by the generally loose 17^th century standards. Again, as a product from their two names, the poet produces an idea of unity, them both partaking equally of glory. I think there’s an A left over from the names, an E from the anagram.

All this reminded me of George Herbert’s poem, ‘The Watercourse’, in that it’s a poem you can’t actually read out loud, but which exists for the eye, as we take in visually those alternatives which can’t be simultaneously pronounced, but which are the rhyme, ‘life’ and ‘strife’, ‘salvation’ and ‘damnation’.

The St Barbe family were Hampshire gentry, perhaps originally from Somerset, but living at Broadlands. How the married couple came to be buried on the same day (2^nd Sept 1658) is a minor mystery. Smallpox might have done for them both.

'O, Mr Carter, what shall I do?' The worthy life of John Carter 1554-1635

2011-12-15T13:19:00.002Z

After another term in which work made it impossible for me to add to my blog here, I finally return to ‘Early Modern Whale’.

Here’s a work of filial and religious piety to start off again with, THE TOMB-STONE, OR, A broken and imperfect Monument, of that Worthy Man (who was just and perfect in his Generations;) M^r. JOHN CARTER, Pastor first of Bramford, and last of Belsted in SUFFOLK.BY His unworthy Son JOHN CARTER, Preacher of the Gospell, and as yet sojourning in the City of NORWICH.

When I came across this one, I was actually thinking about a post on the centenarian puritan divine Laurence Chaderton (which will follow one day), an associate of Carter. But this memoir by the younger Carter struck me as so unusually intimate, giving us a real sense of what it might have been like to live with one who was genuinely ‘godly’. John Carter senior was a credit to his faith, egalitarian and charitable. His son’s effort to memorialize his father has such sense of godly community that at the end of his account he had this printed: “I leave these ensuing Pages vacant, that so as thou remembrest any of his holy sayings, and doings, not mentioned before, thou mayst write them down, for thine own benefit, and the good of others.” It would be fascinating to come across a copy with reader annotations, like a pious version of the descriptions Sterne invites of the reader’s ideal Widow Wadman.

Carter was born “about the year of our Lord 1554”, near Canterbury (one notices that even his son isn’t sure of the exact date – how often we partly confirm our identities to banks and the like with recital of a date of birth, and how little they cared!). A wealthy citizen funded his education in Cambridge, where he was a member of a very elite seminar (we’d call it): “all that while he continued a gremial in the bosom, and Lap of his Mother the University, he had constant meetings with divers of his famous contemporaries, and that weekly: Doctor Chaderton, Doctor Andrews (afterwards a Prelate) Master Culverwell, Master Knewstubs, &c. and divers others, whom God raised up, and fitted to send forth into his Harvest, to gather his Corn, then ripe for the Sickle, into his Barne. At their meetings they had constant exercises. They prayed together: they bent themselves to the study of the Scriptures: one was for the original Tongues, another’s task was the Grammatical interpretations; another for the Logical Analysis: another for the true sense, and meaning: another to gather Doctrines. Thus led they their several employments”.

A ‘gremial’ is a ‘resident member’. That’s quite clearly a hostile note about Lancelot Andrewes becoming a bishop. Carter’s son, preacher himself, evidently takes some pride that his father “was always a Nonconformist, one of the good old Puritans of England. He never swallowed any of the Praelatical Ceremonies against his Conscience. He was often in trouble by the Bishops; but God ever raised him up friends that brought him off.”

As pastor of Bramford, “Every Lord’s day [Carter] preached twice very powerfully, and catechised the younger sort. He preached a Lecture every Thursday; to which multitudes from Ipswich and other adjacent places did resort.” When obliged to shift parish to Belsted, Carter carried on as though he was still serving the larger parish: “His Church at Belsted stood in a very solitary place: He always kept a Key of it, and would often resort thither all alone. A Gentleman once espying him going to the Church-ward on a private day, hid himself till my Father was past, and in the Church; then he came close up to the Church wall, desirous to peep in at some Window to see what he did, and to listen him, if he said any thing. And the Gentleman told me … that he prayed, then read a Chapter, and after that prayed largely, and very heavenly, as if he had been in his Family, or in the public Congregation.”

It is what the son tells us about his father’s daily life that is more striking. It was of course a very devout household: “his house was a Church. Twice a day he had Scripture read, and after the Psalm or Chapter were ended, he would ask of all his Children and Servants, what they remembered; and whatsoever sentences they rehearsed, he would speak something to them that tended to edification.”

Carter starts his account with a remark that his father’s “lively voice … cannot be recalled”. It was clearly a voice that dominated his upbringing. His father’s private prayers were deliberately loud, pour encourager les autres:

“Besides his Family prayers, and duties, he prayed constantly in his Closet, whensoever he went into his study, and before he came out to Dinner or Supper. He prayed very loud, and mostly very long. For the extension of his voice (I conjecture) he had a double reason; one, that by his earnest speech he might quicken up his own heart and devotion: the other, that he might be a pattern of secret prayer to his Children and Servants.”

John Carter senior gradually comes to life for us as we learn the little things: his clothes he wore, the even tenor of his married life, how he ate:

“For his habit, and my dear Mother’s apparrelling, it was very plain, and homely; of the old fashion, yet very cleanly and decent; insomuch that all that came to the house would say, they had seen Adam and Eve, or some of the old Patriarchs.

“He and my Mother were married together well-nigh sixty years; and I am confident in all that time, there never was a distasteful word between them. And indeed, how could there be? He lived with her as a man of knowledge; he was a wise, faithful, and tender guide; and she was humble and meek, did reverence, and highly esteem him: Every word he spake was an Oracle to her, and her will ever closed with his Judgment.”

“In all his House there was nothing but honest plainness … He never used Plate in his house, but Vessels of Wood, and Earth: Pewter and Brass were the highest Metals for his utensils. All the days of his housekeeping he used constantly at his Table a little wooden Salt, which with age was grown to be of a duskish black, which was much taken notice of by all comers.”

“He never feasted, but always had wholesome, full, and liberal diet in the house. And all fared alike: He, and my Mother, never thought his Children, and Servants, and poor folks, did eat enough.” (Carter adds later that his father in fact fasted regularly, just taking on those days toast and beer ‘to sustain nature.’)

Old Carter treated his servants as friends, and his son almost finds a fault in just how egalitarian his father was: “if he failed in any thing, it was in his carriage to his Servants; for truly he did not carry himself as a Master to Servants, but as a familiar friend to his friends. He would make them to sit down with him, and drink to them at meat … On the Sabbath day he never had any thing roast to Dinner, because he would have none detained at home from the public Ordinances. The Pot was hung on, and a piece of Beef and a Pudding in it; that was their constant Lords-day Dinner for well-nigh sixty years.”

Carter senior was charitable in ways that puritans are sometimes supposed not to be: “He never went to the house of a poor creature, but he left a Purse-Alms, as well as a spiritual Alms of good Heavenly advice, and Prayer.” Nor did he exercise a lordly dominion over the rest of creation: “The righteous man is merciful to his Beast: he was careful even for the brute Creatures, that they should be fed to the full. All his Cattle were like the first Kine that Pharoah saw feeding in the Meadow, they were fat-fleshed, and well-favoured; in so much that I have heard some godly people say merrily, If they would be a Cow, or a Horse, or a Hog, or a Dog, they would choose Mr. Carters house.”

The local people (besides their jocular wishes to be as well-treated as Old Carter’s livestock) knew that their pastor was a life-long specialist on the Book of Revelations (“His pains in the study of the Revelation were indefatigable”, says his son), and, assuming - as 17^th century protestants would do - that the book foretold their times, consulted him about what his studies led him to deduce:

“When others came to him, and pressed him with importunity, to tell them his judgement concerning the future state of the Church; saying to him, That he had traveled much in the Revelation, and they were persuaded, God had revealed something more then ordinary to him: What do you think? Shall we have Popery once again, or no? He answered, You shall not need to fear fire and faggot any more, but such dreadful divisions will be amongst Gods people, and professors, as will equalize the greatest persecutions.”

Carter junior gives other examples of the distressed coming to him for advice (“O Mr. Carter! what shall I do?”): it usually came down to him urging them to pray, and of course joining them in prayers.

The habit of prayer became obsessive with the old man. In his last days, as he became mentally confused at last, he would ask his daughter, who was by then his housekeeper, “shall we not go to Prayer? and when she should answer him, you have been at Prayer already, and you are weary; he would answer, I fear we have not done what we should do.” He had invested so much in prayer: there’s a tremor of anxiety there that his account nevertheless needed topping up. Old John Carter died on a Sunday morning, February 22^nd, 1635 (new style). He was unable to eat his usual frugal Sunday breakfast, an egg. He had written his sermon for the day, but realized that he could not manage to get to church. His daughter helped him into bed: laid his head down, then lifted one leg in, but discovered when she went to lift up the other leg up and into the bed, that her father had that instant passed away.

His son describes his own experiences after being summoned (it’s a very moving account):

“He had given order before he died, that his body should not be put in the Coffin till his Son John came. God carried me through the journey in hard weather: and through his good providence, I arrived at Belsted early on the Tuesday. And going to the house of mourning, I found the body of my deceased Father still lying upon the Bed. They uncovered his face: Sweetly he lay, and with a smiling countenance, and no difference to the eye between his countenance alive and dead, save only that he was wont to rejoice and bless me at my approach, now he was silent. I fell upon his face, I confess, and kissed him, and lift up my voice and wept, and so took my last leave of him, till we meet in a better World.”

The funeral was an occasion restrained by the dead man’s own scrupulousness: “Old Mr. Samuel Ward, that famous Divine, and the glory of Ipswich, came to the Funeral, brought a mourning Gown with him, and offered very respectively to Preach his funeral Sermon, now that such a Congregation were gathered together, and upon such an occasion. But my Sister and I durst not give way to it: For so our Father had often charged us in his life time, and upon his blessing, that no Sermon should be at his burial. ‘For’, said he, ‘it will give occasion to speak some good of me that I deserve not, and so false things will be uttered in the Pulpit’.

My image is a page from John Carter senior’s Winter-evenings communication with young novices in religion. Or Questions and answers about certaine chiefe grounds of Christian religion wherein every answer, rightly understood, hath the force of an oracle of God (1628). The title one imagines quite typical: when he cannot himself get out to talk to his younger parishioners, they can look at his little book. There's maybe a touch of the old man’s humour too: none of the answers are ‘his’ answers at all, every answer is in fact a bible text. My image is the section he gives to ‘Good Works’: he was clearly quite certain that they had to be performed. And, as we hear, his put his theory (supposedly uncharacteristic of a Puritan) continually into practice.

Adam's rib

2011-10-08T13:48:00.004+01:00

Not much time in my weekly routine for blogging these days, now that teaching term has started. But I found this woodcut on EEBO, which says only this about it: “Illustration of the creation of Eve from Adam’s rib Date: 1600-1699. Reel position: Tract Supplement E3:1[183]”.

I found it a quite remarkable version of the creation of Eve. It isn’t the usual unnatural obstetrics, where a full sized Eve rises upright from Adam’s side. God has extracted the rib, and is at work upon it, blessing it. Eve’s head has already taken shape, but has yet to fill out to full size, so it looks like a shrunken head, the rest of her is still rib. It’s a disconcerting image: even the elephant seems to be looking uneasy at these strange goings-on. No wonder this version of the moment is not the usual iconographic type.

But I have possibly found a passage in Sylvester’s du Bartas that it just might have been cut to illustrate. Below is the creation of Eve as given in the sixth day of creation. That du Bartas says that God works with Adam under anesthetic, like a surgeon performing an amputation, is the first surprise. One tended to think that they just sawed away with the poor patient strapped or held down. But then again, they did know about opiates – and strong liquor. Once the rib has been extracted, God refines and carves ‘on the living bone’:

Even as a Surgeon, minding off-to-cut
Some cure-less limb; before in ure he put
His violent Engins on the vicious member,
Bringeth his Patient in a sense-less slumber,
And grief-less then (guided by use and Art)
To save the whole, sawes off th' infected part:
So, God empal'd our Grandsires lively look,
Through all his bones a deadly chilness strook,
Seal'd-up his sparkling Eyes with Iron bands,
Led down his feet (almost) to Lethè Sands;
In brief, so numb'd his Soul's and Body's sense,
That (without pain) opening his side; from thence
He took a rib, which rarely he refin'd,
And thereof made the Mother of Mankinde:
Graving so lively on the living Bone
All Adams beauties; that, but hardly, one
Could have the Lover from his Love descry'd,
Or known the Bridegroom from his gentle Bride:
Saving that she had a more smiling Eye,
A smoother Chin, a Cheek of purer Dye

A fainter voice, a more enticing Face,
A Deeper Tress, a more delighting Grace,
And in her bosom (more then Lillie-white)
Two swelling Mounts of Ivory, panting light.

Du Bartas’ narration of life in Eden is obsessed with Adam, whose small activities the narrative follows around. Adam even seems to sleep alone (though the narrative may at that point have drifted back imaginatively to the time before Eve’s creation). Here, all Eve’s beauty is secondary to Adam’s, which primary male beauty God merely reproduces in softer form as he carves.

Continuing with Eve, I was looking with my students at the moment when Eve’s pregnancy is announced. Adam has just mastered fire: he was trying to bring down an animal by throwing:

A knobbie flint that hummeth as it goes;
Hence flies the beast, th' ill-aimed flint-shaft grounding
Against the Rock, and on it oft rebounding,
Shivers to cinders, whence there issued
Small sparks of fire no sooner born then dead.

Adam instantly knows what he has:

This happy chance made Adam leap for glee,
And quickly calling his cold company…

His ‘cold company’ is of course Eve, and it falls to her to tend the spark to a flame. The narrative then passes swiftly to the birth of her first offspring:

Eve, kneeling down, with hand her head sustaining,
And on the low ground with her elbow leaning,
Blows with her mouth: and with her gentle blowing
Stirs up the heat, that from the dry leaves glowing,
Kindles the Reed, and then that hollow kix
First fires the small, and they the greater sticks.

[Note: Beginning of Families. ]
And now, Mankind with fruitful Race began
A little corner of the World to man:
First Cain is born, to tillage all addicted …

It’s a very telling transition: Adam supplies the spark; she tends the fire. Adam has supplied the seed (imagined then as being, in small, the complete child-to-be, which Eve’s role is merely to nurture).

Interesting work, du Bartas, and at least I may be the first person to try teaching extracts from it to undergraduates – this is in my ‘Paradise in Early Modern Literature’ course …

The witch at Newbury, 1643

2011-09-19T19:42:00.002+01:00

On or about this day 368 years ago, the woman purportedly depicted in this woodcut was summarily shot by parliamentary forces near Newbury. The picture gets reproduced in museum displays, etc: it was the title page of A most certain, strange, and true discovery of a witch being taken by some of the Parliament forces as she was standing on a small planck board and sayling on it over the river of Newbury: together with the strange and true manner of her death, with the propheticall words and speeches she used at the same time. Printed by John Hammond, 1643. George Thomason dated the publication more precisely to September 28^th, which was the day the Earl of Essex led his undefeated army back into London after getting rather the better of the first battle of Newbury (Sept 20^th). The image of course attempts no likeness, but makes the unknown, unnamed victim of the soldiers conform to a witch stereotype.

My main project here was to set off the pamphlet’s account against other references to this incident in the periodical press of the day. Having transcribed those accounts and passing mentions I have found made the newsletters, I then discovered that EEBO has not yet done a full text transcript of the 28^th September pamphlet. So I did one, and here it is; but between the two long paragraphs (and after them) I will insert some comments of my own.

A most certain, strange, and true discovery of a witch, etc, 1643

“Many are in a belief, that this silly sex of women by no means attaine to that so vile and damned a practice of sorcery and Witch-craft, in regard of their illiteratenesse and want of learning, which many men have by great learning done, Adam by temptation toucht and tasted the deceiving apple, so some high learnd & read by the same temptation that deceived him hath bin so insnared to contract with the Divel; as for example, in the instancing a few, as English Bacon of Oxford, Vandermast of Holland, Bungay of Germany, Fostus of the same, Franciscus the English Monke of Bury, Doctor Slackleach, and divers others which were too tedious to relate of, but how weake women should attain unto it many are incredible of the same, and many too are opposite in opinion against the same, that giving a possibility to their doubtings, that the malice, and inveterate malice of a woman entirely devoted to her revengefull wrath frequenting desolate and desart places, and giving way unto their wished temptation, may have converse with that world roaring lion, and covenant and contract upon condition, the like hath in sundry place, and divers times been tried at the Assises of Lancaster, Carlisle, Buckingham, and elsewhere, but to come to the intended relation of this Witch or Sorceresse, as is manifest and credibly related by the Gentlemen, Commanders, and Captains, of the Earl of Essex his Army.

(RB: like many of these pamphlets, the recital of the incidents is offered as a proof that witchcraft exists, and in this case that sorcery can be practised by women, even if illiteracy prevents them from making a written contract. A female civilian had been executed without trial. Newbury was town which generally favoured the parliamentarian cause, so there needed to be a good reason for this atrocity. At the start of the following paragraph, we will see confusion as to exactly where this fatal encounter took place. If the army really was marching through Newbury, then it happened after the battle. But at the end, the ‘witch’ finally breaks down into speech, and makes prophecy of Essex’s forthcoming victory. The straggling march with troops foraging in the hedgerows sounds like conditions in Essex’s half-starved force as it moved east from Hungerford towards Newbury on Sept. 19^th. Royalist forces moving from Wantage got to Newbury before Essex’s advance party, and were withdrawn towards Oxford after the battle, leaving Essex free to march through Newbury and on towards London.)

“A part of the Army marching through Newbury some of the Souldiers being scattered by the reason of their loitering by the way, in gathering Nuts, Apples, Plummes, Blackberries, and the like, one of them by chance in clambering up a tree, being pursued by his fellow or Comrade in waggish merriment, jesting one with another, espied on the river being there adjacent, a tall, lean, slender woman, as he supposed, to his amazement, and great terreur treading of the water with her feet, with as much ease and firmnesses as if one could walk or trample on the earth, wherewith his softly calls, and beckened to his fellows to behold it, and with all possible speed that could be to obscure them from her sight, who as conveniently as they could they did observe, this could be no little amazement unto them you may think to see a woman dance upon the water, nor could all their sights be deluded, though perhaps one might but coming nearer to the shore, they could perceive there was a plank or deale overshadowed with a little shallow water that she stood upon, the which did beare her up, anon rode by some of the Commanders who were eye witnesses, as well as they, and were as much astonished as they could be, still too and fro she fleeted on the water, the boord standing firm bout upright, indeed I have both heard and read of many that in tempests and on rivers by casualty have been shipwracked, or cast over board, where catching empty barrels, rudders, boards, or planks have made good shift by the assisting providence of God to get on shore, but not in this womans kind to stand upon the board, turning and winding it which way she pleased, making it pastime to her, as little thinking who perceived her tricks, or that she did imagine that they were the last she ever should show, as we have heard the swan sing before her death, so did this divellish woman, as after plainly it appeared make sport before her death, at last having sufficiently been upon the water, he that deceived her always did so then, blinding her that she could not at her landing see the ambush that was laid for her, coming upon the shore she gave the board a push, which they plainly perceived, and crossed the river, they searched after her but could not find her she being landed the Commanders beholding her, gave order to lay hold on her and bring her to them straight, the which some were fearfull, but some being more venturous then other some, boldly went to her and seized on her by the arme, demanding what she was? But the woman no whit replying any words unto them, they brought her unto the Commanders, to whom though mightily she was urged she did reply as little: so consulting with themselves what should be done with her, being it so apparently appeared she was a Witch, being loth to let her goe, and as loth to carry her with them, they so resolved with themselves, to make a shot at her, and gave order to a couple of their Souldiers that were approved good marks-men, to charge and shoot her straight, which they prepared to doe: so setting her boult upright against a mud banke or wall; two of the Souldiers according to their command made themselves ready, where having taken aime gave fire and shot at her as thinking sure they had sped her, but with a deriding and loud laughter at them she caught the bullets in her hands and chew’d them, which was a stronger testimony then the water, that she was the same that their imagination thought her so to be, so resolving with themselves if either fire or sword or halter were sufficient for to make an end of her, one set his carbin close unto her brest: where discharging the bullet back rebounded like a ball, and narrowly he mist it in his face that was the shooter: this so enraged the Gentleman, that one drew out his sword & manfully run at her with all the force his strength had power to make, but it prevailed no more than did the shot, the woman still though speechlesse, yet in a most contemptible way of scorn, still laughing at them, which did the more exhaust their furie against her life, yet one amongst the rest had heard that piercing or drawing bloud from forth the veines that cross the temples of the head, it would prevail against the strongest sorcery, and quell the force of Witchcraft, which was allowed for triall: the woman hearing this, knew that the Devill had left her and her power was gone, whereupon she began alowd to cry, and roare, tearing her haire, and making piteous moan, which in these words expressed were; and is this come to passe, that I must dye indeed? Why then his Excellency the Earl of Essex shall be fortunate and win the field, after which no more words could be got from her; wherewith they immediately discharged a pistol underneath her eare, at which she straight sunk down and dyed, leaving her legacy of a detested carcase to the wormes, her soul were ought not to judge of, though the evils of her wicked life and death can scape no censure.

(The writer makes the desperate foraging sound like schoolboy fun, exactly like the boy Robinson looking for ‘bullaces’ at the start of The Late Lancashire Witches. In the imputed mood of levity, the ‘witch’ is sighted. I imagine that people who lived by lakes and rivers got very good at balancing on the slightest of craft: the woman’s apparent enjoyment of her skill brought to the mind of her assailants the kind of images of sorcerers floating on mere planks that we see in Olaus Magnus' Historia de gentibus Septentrionalibus, and hear about in tales of witches sailing in eggshells, sieves, etc.

It seems possible that the woman did scoff at or ridicule the soldiers. The Parliamentary cause had not gone well up to this point of the war, the Royalists were winning. Rather than larking about up trees, the soldiers were more likely to be very much on edge. A confused passage in the narrative seems to indicate that the woman thought she could cross the river to safety, but they seem to have gone to the trouble of rounding her up. She had said too much, they decided to finish her off. The initial impression that she was walking on the water itself, rejected by the very baptismal element itself, remains more potent in their jumpy response than any rational attention to her body board. Notice that they ask ‘what’, not ‘who’ she was: they seem at no point to have been interested in her name; her personal individuality was simply swallowed up in this new one, ‘witch’. Their attempts to shoot her are in effect her trial: that she is seemingly impervious to shot proves that she actually is what she is being shot for being, a pacted witch (and it says nothing about their potentially worrisome inability to shoot straight). After ‘scratching’, her power of ‘charmed life’ is broken, like Macbeth’s finally was, and she succumbs to a pistol shot beneath her ear. Had she been reported to have died after the first shots, this might have looked more like the murder it was, but she was by then safely incriminated to men who had no inclination to take her with them for trial (they all faced a battle, after all).

Here’s the account of the incident in Certaine Informations from Severall Parts of the Kingdome, September 25, 1643 - October 2, 1643; Issue 37.

“The general vote of the souldiers that are returned from the fight at Newbery is, that a Witch was sent by the Cavaliers into their Army to do mischiefe, who being shot at, was so impenetrable, that no bullets would pierce her, whereupon a Captaine bid shoot her with a button, and one of the souldiers pulled a brasse button from his doublet, and therewith charging his pistoll, fired it upon her head, and slew her. If it be true that she were a witch, and sent by the Cavaliers, as the common voice it, [illeg.] will verify the old verse, viz. Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo

But it will be thought ridiculous that any man should be shot free. Whereunto we answer, that we have heard some English Commanders that have been in the Swedes wars, credibly affirme, that it is an ordinary thing in those parts.”

In this other parliamentary account, the witch was a royalist agent. The forces of hell are deployed against the trained bands. The 1645 pamphlet, Signs and wonders from heaven shows the persistence of this belief that eliminating witches would nullify Prince Rupert’s preternatural invulnerability: “It is likewise certified by many of good quality and worth that at the last Assises in Norfolke there were 40 witches araigned for their lives, and 20. executed: and that they have done very much harme in that Countrey, and have prophesied of the downfall of the King and his Army, and that Prince Robert (sic) shall be no longer shot-free: with many strange and unheard of things that shall come to passe.” Curious, then, that the September 28^th pamphleteer made so little of the ‘witch’ as a spell-casting antagonist, or as an associate of Prince Rupert: she is surprised (in his account) while intent on her own recreations, like Acrasia being caught unawares in her Bower of Bliss. I had not come across buttons as efficacious against supernatural things – a silver coat button would have been more familiar. But a brass one worked (as it would).

For the royalist side Mercurius Britanicus Communicating the Affaires of Great Britaine, October 10, 1643 - October 17, 1643; Issue 8, offered this derisive account of what was claimed. It in turn shows no compassion for the dead woman, but does insinuate something of the injustice: the witch was killed ‘before she was born’ (where I think the intended sense is, before she became one):

“And that the Citie may have plenty of strange things together, the Faction made a fine new Witch, borne and brought forth at Newbury, which (you must know) was the true cause why so many trained bands lost their lives, and this Witch (for certaine) they saw walke upon the water, being as light-heeld as any of the She-Committee, and had an impenetrable skin till a faithful Shoomaker scratched her on the arme, by which meanes they put a Pistoll to her eare, and so discovered her to be a Malignant woman, that is (said master Peard) a Witch or Sorceresse. So this Witch being killed (before she was borne) their victory went on bravely.

And for the Witch, since you have so much faith in her as we heare, we will sell ye her grissels and bones, you may make spels and charmes of them to keep you Shot-free and Scot-free: I am persuaded you are so superstitious, you thinke one tooth of such a grave, old woman may be the preservation of Prince Rupert himselfe, and His majesties whole Army.”

Mercurius Aulicus (1643: Oxford) (Oxford, England), Sunday, October 15, 1643 reports on the contents of some intercepted letters. The incident appears (for this writer) among the other follies the parliamentarian forces entertained: prejudices, lies, hopeful rumours, and absurdities, the wild words of a defeated rabble:

“Though their forces are not many their lyes are, which since they prosper so ill in print, they convey them confidently in writing (though sometimes they expresse a sensible sigh for the unluckinesse of their cause) many of which were this weeke were intercepted. One writes to his sister Mistresse Mary Greene, that he saw the French Ambassador come into London, but Oh sister (said he) his very horses head had all Crosses on. (sure they were not horses) Another, one Broughton, writes to Alderman Basnet at Coventree, that his unkle George Gresley saw an old Witch at Newbury with his very eyes (nay with his very eares). Another writes to his friend at Coventry that he received a wound at Auburne by one of my Lord Jermyn’s Souldiers nine inches deepe. Another writes that, Prince Rupert is mortally wounded…”

Whoever she was, perhaps an eel-catcher, trout fisher or reed-bed cutter on the Kennet, she was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and had the folly to laugh at tired, hungry and nervous soldiers, men who were capable of believing anything of their enemy. She was, after a bit of shooting and missing, killed, and then posthumously incriminated according to that dictates of that convenient excuse, witchcraft.

Losing hope on the Hope-well: two more supernatural sea stories

2011-09-08T12:08:00.002+01:00

I have a lecture to give during the coming term on ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’. After the witch on the ship ‘Recovery’, this inclined me to find more supernatural goings-on at sea. Two more follow: immediately below, I have transcribed a full text of a brief pamphlet from the very end of the 17^th century. Then follows the EEBO transcript (slightly edited) of another. I make brief comment on both.

First, Strange and wonderful news being a true, tho' sad relation of six sea-men (Belonging to the Margaret of Boston,) who sold themselves to the devil, and were invisibly carry’d away. Like the 1691 story of Elizabeth Masters, we are looking at ready-made substance for coffee house chat: the pamphlet is really aimed at getting the curious to go and see the fuller evidence on display in Lloyd’s coffee house.

The pamphlet has a brief preamble:

“Though this following Relation contains matter of very great Wonder and Amazement; nevertheless it comes to our Hands, confirm’d by that sufficient testimony, that we offer it to the Reader as a Narrative of unquestion’d Truth and Reputation.

By a Letter from Barbadoes, of the 23 of July last, written by a Person of Worth and Credit, in that island, we have this relation, viz., That the Margaret from Boston, the [illeg.], of December 95 bound to Berbadoes, in their Passage one of the saylers at the Helm call’d to the Master of the Vessel, and told him, That he could steer no longer. The Master asking the reason, he replyed, That he was not well; and for that cause quitted his Post; the Master taking the Helm, the said sailor further declared, That there stood a Spirit by the Binnacle, that accus’d him of killing a Woman; a fault which the Spirit had falsly charg’d him with; for he had never committed any such unmanly Crime in his Life. The Spirit, he said, further told him, that all the Ships Company had sign’d an Agreement with the Divel, which was us’d as an argument for him to do the same.

The next day the Fellow fell into strange Deleriums, and talk’d of wonderful Accidents that would befall the Ship; which were look’d upon as nothing but the wild Notions of his craz’d senses, the Chimera’s of Frenzy. Particularly he said, That the Spirit had brought a boat to fetch him away; with other ridiculous idle discourse of the same Nature.

Upon the 17^th of January in the Latitude of 19 about 9 at Night, a small white Cloud arose, without any rain, or extraordinary Wind, which presently falling upon the ship pressed her down with that strange and supernatural Weight and force that the hatches flew out, and the whole Ship was under Water, by which unhappy Accident, the Boy was wash’d off and drowned.

But to begin the more miraculous part of my Narrative, the Ship continued under water for eleven Weeks; a thing that struck (as may be well imagin’d) an extraordinary Consternation and Confusion through the Marriners, from several strange Arguments of their Astonishment. First, that the ship should be wholly immerged under water, and yet not sunk downright to the bottom. Secondly, that tho’ they were apparently thus intirely under water, yet the Ship was not wholly filled with Water, but that they had Air enough to breath in, by which means they continued alive; feeding all this while, upon raw meat, and fresh Fish which came swimming over the Vessel, and several of which they Caught and Eat. Their lodging was on Boards placed athwart the Rail near the Taffrel covered with a Sail. The Men were always wet which, in so long a time, made an impression upon them that their flesh on their bodies was galled and raw.

But what was the most dismal part of all, Six of the Ship’s Crew upon the sinking of the Vessel under water, were frighted with Infernal Spirits; and about 12 the first Night were carried away invisibly, leaving no more then 4 persons alive behind them; which indeed gave some little Credit to what the afore mentioned Sailor at the helm had declared in his Deleriums.

After this 11 weeks Immurement these wondrous watry Walls, for so I may justly call it, the Ship recovered itself above the Water again, and the first Land they could discover was the Island Dissiado, which, with so few hands left, they could not fetch up, by reason of a strong Northern Current that bore against’em. The next was Grand-Terra, where they met with the same Disapointment: but on the 5^th of April they run themselves on Shore upon Guardelupo; where the French treated them very kindly, not as prisoners, but as Men in Distress.

The names of the three Seamen left alive are William Davis Master (a Man very well known in London among the Berbadoes Merchants), William Cadner, and William Bywater. Not only the Original Letter, and the whole Relation, at large; is to be seen at Mr Lloyd’s coffee-house in Lumbard-Street, but likewise several Persons are to be heard of, and spoken withal upon the Exchange, in Attestation of the whole Truth herein declared.

The reverend Mr Baxter, in his Treatise of Spirits, says, That tho’ Hurricanes and tempests have natural causes, yet there is great reason to think they are managed by Spirits. In confirmation whereof, he relates some notable instances of his own particular Deliverances from the Fury of most boisterous Whirlewinds; namely, when the Reapers in Evesham Vale were Hurt, Writhen, and One killed, some friendly Power (for so he expresses it) restrain’d the course of Gravelly Sand, rais’d by a whirlwind, as it met him in a narrow lane.”

We will never know what happened on the Margaret (of Boston). That some men might survive for a while below decks on a semi-submerged vessel is not impossible (though the narrative does also seem to say that they were lodged on boards placed across the taffrail, apparently sheltered under a sail). But trapped below decks for eleven weeks? Living off raw meat and fish that swam past? What did they drink? And finally the vessel just pumped itself out and re-surfaced? Some terrible story is concealed under these events, and the supernatural story is just a ruse, to distract attention away from normal likelihoods, and what they did to survive.

Like the case of the witch on the ‘Recovery’, we have a story that starts with a seaman losing his nerve, making wild accusations against both himself and others, and feeling the diabolic temptation of a Satanic delivery from the sea: “Particularly he said, That the Spirit had brought a boat to fetch him away.”

The concluding reference to Richard Baxter is interesting. The agèd Baxter, writing earlier in the same decade, still believed in a spirit-haunted, witch-and-devil-filled world. When the anonymous writer thought of this parallel, he connects the mariners’ yarn of six seamen having made a pact with the devil (and disappearing invisibly, quickly and totally at midnight, rather than disappearing piecemeal) with a mindset in which it can be believed that the devil directs hurricanes and whirlwinds, that these somehow only strike churches, while the just enjoy ‘particular Deliverances’ (though Baxter has to concede that the personal linen of the just doesn’t enjoy quite such protection from that ‘friendly power’).

Baxter had said this: “Though Hurricanes and Whirlwinds have Natural Causes, yet I have great cause to think, that they are managed by some Spirits (as I said before of Storms). Gunpowder worketh in Guns according to its nature; but if some Rational Agent did not invent, make, and manage it, all its Power, would be of little use. I have marvelled to see my own small Linnen spred out by Servants to dry, to be suddenly catcht up, and carried over the Town and Steeple away, and never more heard of. Near the time when some Reapers in the Vale of Evesham were hurt, writhen, and one killed with a Whirlwind, I was walking in a Gravelly Way in a Corn-field, there being a Lane besides me, between two Hedges; suddenly a Whirlwind came up the Cart-way, casting up the Gravelly Sand directly to meet me; when it came within Ten or Twelve Yards of me, I was about stepping out of the way into the Corn, to escape it, but it suddenly turned out of the way to the Right-hand, into the Lane from me, so as perswaded me, that it was a voluntary Motion, directed by a friendly Power; for it went straight on up the Lane, and tore the Hedges and Branches of the Trees on the side of the Lane. But these are small effects to what other see, especially of the great Hurricanes at Sea in the West-Indies. The Spirits that Rule in the Air have great Power of the Airy Motions.

Many and many Churches have been thus torn, proportionably so much beyond all other Buildings, especially of Stone, that I cannot but think there is some knowing Agent that maketh the Choice, though I know not who, nor why. Except a few Hay-Ricks, I remember not that till this Seventy sixth Year of my Age, I have known Lightenings to have had Hurting Power on any Buildings but Churches, save very rarely, and small, as this last Year, at Islington, it entred a House, and kil’'d a Woman and Child:) Nor to have torn any Wood but Oak, (which in Trees and Buildings I have seen torn where I dwelt.) But divers persons have been killed and scorch’d by it. An Eminent Knight, that I knew, is commonly said to have been struck dead by it in his Garden.”

[Extracts from: The certainty of the worlds of spirits … Richard Baxter (1691).]

EEBO also offers this cleverly self-exculpatory supernatural narrative (for such I take it to be) attested to by a ship’s master. Having lost his collier off Spurn Head on its way back from Newcastle, he has concocted a stirring tale of the evil spirit on board that sank the ship. It manifested to him (and only him) frequently, but he shapes his story so that we can see that he reacted with professional skill and courage. But all to no avail: on board his ship, nothing would work properly, candles burned blue, the ship’s boat launched itself, the explosive departure of the spirit as the ship went down burned his face...

A True and Perfect Relation of the Strange and Dreadful Apparition which lately Infested and Sunk a Ship bound for New-castle, called, The Hope-well of London.

The 22. of February, 1672 we sailed from Gravesend; and the 26. by Gods Providence we sailed over the Bar of Newcastle, and there Loaded the 2. of March. About Nine or Ten of the Clock in the Night following, we having made all clear and ready for the furtherance of our Voyage, some time after Supper I went to rest, when about Twelve of the Clock in the Night, to the best of my remembrance, I was awaked out of my sleep by a great noise, (but saw nothing) which to the best of my capacity, bid me Be gone, and that I had nothing to do there. But being so hastily disturbed, and not certain what might be the cause, I gave it over for a Dream, and past that accident as uncertain of the truth. Now after the first Day was past, about Eight or Nine of the Clock at Night I went to rest; and about twelve, my Mate was striking a Light to take a Pipe of Tobacco, (as I suppose) and expecting the Wherry to go up to the Town, being the Tide fell out about Two in the Morning, I desired the Candle might not be put out; and being as well awake as now I am, to the best of my judgement, I was then pulled by the Hair of my Head off from my Pillow, and the same words declared to me as before; and then I saw the perfect face and proportion of a Man, in a black Hat, stuff Coat, and striped Neck-cloth, with hanging down Hair, and a sower-down-looking Countenance, and his Teeth being set in his Head, I had then time to say, Lord have mercy upon me· What art? at which he vanished: Yet the Candle burned very blew, and almost went out: Hereupon being much discontented, I did by the following Post give my Owners a just account of what had befallen me.

The Fifth of that instant, we set sail: about four of the Clock in the day, the Wind at W. S. W. fair Weather, and a brave Gale off the shore, which continued until half an hour after a Eleven on Wednesday Night; at which time the man at the Helm called out that he could not stir the Helm: but after I had pulled off the Whip-staff, the Ship steered as before, being still fair Weather, the Wind then coming to the N. W. and Snowing Weather, but very fair and clear. I was yet doubtful of more Wind, and therefore caused the Men to furl the fore Top-sail, and lower down the main Top-sail upon the back of the main Sail, but could not with all the strength we had hale in; the Weather brake off the fore Top-sail, when this was still in my judgement, that our Ship did hale as much, as when our Sails were out. Then we haled up our main Sail, and still the Ship had the same list as with a large Wind, which to my judgment might be half a streak or thereabout.

By this time it was Two of the Clock, then our Men tried the Pump, and found little or no water in her: the Man at the Helm called out, That the Candle burned so blew in the Lanthorn, That it gave little or no light, and three several times went out, so that I held the Candle to the Look-out, which Candle did burn very well, and showed a good light; but of a sudden our Ship would not feel her Helm so kindly as before, and brought all our Sails aback. Then our Ship heeled as much to Windward as before to Leeward: the Glass being out, we went to the Pump, and found no water in the Ship, but she did not steer well, neither could I find the reason, being still so fair weather: This unkind steerage, made me urgent to try the Pump yet more, but I could not get the upper box to work, nor stir; but having taken that up, and trying with the Pump-hook, we could not come near the lower box by a foot and a half, which to my judgement was hindered by something like a Bull-fish, or Woolsack, that as we forced down, gave up again with the hook: Whereupon Mistrusting that all was not well, I caused our men to keep the Coat of our pump up, and my self loosened the tack; in the mean time I ordered two men to loose the Boat, which they did, being lashed in three places: Yet they do not remember to this hour, that they loosened any of them but the middlemost; and with three men in her, the Boat went over the top of the Fore-sheet, which lay above the stem, without touching it, with such violence, as even amazed us that saw it: And they that were in the Boat gave such loud cries, as frighted him at the Helm who came running out unknown to me. But then finding the ship coming nearer the wind then formerly, I ran to the stair-case, to bid him put the Helm over, but could not: And hearing one jump down at the hatch, which was open at the half Deck, did suppose that the Helms man came down again; and calling him by his name to come and help me, the word was no sooner out of my mouth, but I perceived the same person that I had formerly seen before we came out of the Harbour; who came violently to me, saying, Be gone, you have no more to do here; throwing me in at the Cabin door, clear upon the top of the table; when I crying out, In the name of God what art, he vanished away in a flash of fire: thinking withal, that the ship had split in a thousand pieces, it giving such a crack. The men thereupon calling out, Master if ye be a man come away, did something revive me; and striving to have got to my chest, being I had some money in it, I found that something hindered me, but what it was I could not tell. Then perceiving the main Sea coming in so fast, that I was up to the waste, before I could get out of the Cabin; and finding all our men in the Boat but only one, I desired him to get a compass; which he did, yet could never after know what became of it. We were no sooner in the Boat, but the Ship sank down, and yet having a great Sea Fur Gown, which lay upon the dicker upon the ships going down, the very upset of the water brought it to the Boats side, and one of our men took it in. We reckoned our selves to be ten or twelve Leagues E. S. E. from the Spurn, I perceived the Fane at the Main-top-mast head, when the ship was sunk: We continued in the Boat from three in the morning, till ten or eleven that day, when we were taken up by a Whitby Ketch, who used us very kindly, and towed our Boat at his stern with two ends of a hawser, till she brake away: She being bound for Newcastle, and the wind being contrary, did on the Saturday following, set us a shore at Grimsby in Hull River, where the Mayor gave us a Pass for London.

This is a true and perfect relation to the best of my knowledge in every respect,

John Pye Master. And attested by nine men more, all belonging to my Ship.

Postscript. I had forgot to express, that one side of my face is burnt and blasted sorely, which I felt within half an hour after I was gone out of the Ship; but how it came upon me in the Ship I could not tell, being then in a great horror and amazement. John Pye.

The little pamphlet was published in both Edinburgh and London.

The slimy burgers of this earthly ball: Edward Browne and his troubles.

2011-08-23T19:57:00.004+01:00

This image is of Edward Browne, a compulsive self-publisher and brooder upon his own wrongs, who busily published his recantations for ever publishing, and generally repeated offence he had already given in the course of his many denials of ever having meant to cause offence. He rushed into print with manic frequency between 1640 and 1642, and, in his self-absorption, was unable to see that 1641 was probably not the best time to put out a long prose meditation on the Virgin Mary. His magnum opus, conceived as a product of his own experience of that ‘soul ravishing and heavenly Muse’, du Bartas’s Urania, was A description of an annuall world, or, Briefe meditiations upon all the holy-daies in the yeere. But it was ‘not approved but greatly disliked contrary to my expectation’. He had based his work on the Church Liturgy and its holy days, but woke up late to how some would anyway term the Book of Common Prayer ‘The English Masse-booke’. His ‘Pharisaicall’ detractors said ‘It is papisticall and to be cast away as an Idoll’.

The woodcut Browne had made of himself is him creating his own image: a scholarly young gentleman, well dressed, at ease with his two pious children. He’s just writing ‘Finis’ to one of his works. Some of his problems, though, are exposed in the accompanying poem about himself, ‘A Phantastick Lover’. For writing was, in Browne’s case, Renaissance Un-self-fashioning, advised against by his employers, destructive to his fortunes, catastrophic to the marriage he had wanted to make, and putting him at odds with his time.

His story is told throughout his publications and re-publications. Sent out into the world to make his own fortunes, he became clerk to Sir James Cambel, who was senior alderman of London, had oversight of the French merchants in London, and was in charge at the ‘Staple’ in the wool and cloth trade. Browne was not able to go to university. He read widely in the Bible, largely for purposes of self-identification, and saw Sylvester’s translation of du Bartas as the best thing in poetry.

Now, clearly, Browne was at times difficult employee. He seems to have left and then resumed his service, he occupied himself with writing his books, against his employer’s advice, and he seems (this is me reading between the lines) to have attempted a socially ambitious marriage to one Rachel Bright. He never names her but broadly hints at her identity. This marriage may have been prevented; Browne blames his own writings: “I confesse it was not wisely done in me, to seeke the favour and good will of a young Damsell to be my wife, by making good Books.”

In February 1641 Sir James died aged 72, and he left a most spectacular will, one which fissured Browne entirely: for it was extraordinarily pious, but it did nothing substantial for his servant of sixteen or eighteen years. Despite his very mixed feelings, Browne launched into A rare paterne of iustice and mercy; exemplified in the many notable, and charitable legacies of Sr. Iames Cambel, Knight, and alderman of London, deceased: worthy imitation.

The details of the will are worth repeating: Cambel left 1,000 marks to start a free school in Barking, £2,000 to the Bridewell prison ‘for a stock to keep such at labour and work in Bridewell’, £1,300 to poor freemen of the Ironmongers company, £500 to Christ’s Hospital, £1,500 to St Thomas’s Hospital, £300 to the ‘poor, blind, lame, diseased and lunatic’ in three London hospitals, £1,000 to redeem captives from the Turks, £1,000 to redeem hopeless debtors from debtors’ prisons, £500 to poor ministers, £250 for a new bridge at the ford in Wanstead, £500 worth of coals to warm the poor, £1,000 towards the repair of St Paul’s Cathedral, and, rather revealingly, £200 to beggars ‘to avoid trouble on the day of his Funeral dinner’. The estimated £10,00 more of ‘overplus’ Cambel which thought might be realised in the winding up of his estate (bad debts allowing) were to go to other charitable works as his executors thought fit.

Oh, and he left £20 to Edward Browne his clerk, among £300 to be given out among his former servants.

The executors must have drawn a deep breath when they saw this will, which conspicuously fails to make provision for his wife of 24 years, Dame Rachel, who was his ‘relict executrix’ (with two others). Then they must also have been taken aback when Browne, torn between admiration and being aggrieved, rushed all this into print as a rare example of charity. I imagine there might have been some thought about challenging the will: Browne had publicised it in all its munificence, alerting all kinds of interested parties.

Browne, making the best of his own situation, makes it far worse:

If Sir James ‘had given me a large portion of wealth, I should have been proud and idle, but being due so small a portion for my long service, it hath made me humble and industrious to publish his charitable Legacies’.

He describes, with apparent enthusiasm, Sir James’s monument for St Olaves Church in Old Jewry (in my other composite image, with the portrait): Sir James to ‘lie there is stately sort / Clad all in armour like a Martiall man’ (with his aldermanic robes over the armour), Justice at his feet, Mercy at his head, ‘Close by him kneels his lady’, pleurans, while an angel descends from heaven.

But Browne seeks through the Bible for a precedent for his situation, and meditates obsessively on himself as Jacob, Sir James as Laban: that account in Genesis of long service and being cheated. ‘I will write of Laban, as a Serpent. I will divide him into three parts: first his head, secondly his skinne, and last of all his Sting’. In an autobiographical poem, he says he was ‘still employed to rub, to scrape, and sweepe’. We keep getting a subversive image of his posthumously munificent employer as tight fisted in his lifetime. After eighteen years of service, ‘eleven pounds is paid my due’. His sexual disappointment is mixed in with all this, of course: ‘Leah was tender-eyed, but Rachel was beautiful’ says the Bible, but Browne felt himself defrauded of Rachel Bright, and that Laban in his case ‘cheated him with blear-ey’d Leah’. This unwanted other partner must have borne the two children in the woodcut of the poet: Browne does not mention her, and maybe she died early, for he continues to say ‘I only want a wife’.

This double-edged tribute to his late master caused Browne no end of trouble. In his Potent Vindication for Book-making, prequel to his A compendious and patheticall retractation for book-making very usefull for these distracted times (1642, 1643), he has gathered nineteen signatories to a testimonial that ‘he did not these Bookes with any intent to dishonour his said Master’, and bitterly declaims against those who ‘say [now] as they did to my late Master, that I seeke his and their dishonour by bookmaking, and therefore not worthy to be harboured in an obscure chamber upon my owne bedding, as I have been this eight yeares, and upwards’. You see, even as he denies, he confirms his real feelings.

Browne’s untroubled capacity for being in utrumque partem about himself is also apparent in his long self-conflict over his publishing. In writing his works, he ‘lost Pretious time … I lost my Love who is lately married to another’, and, what grieves him most, he lost money. It cost him £20 to put his Annual World, his Sacred Poems, his Star, Meteor and the pattern of Justice and Mercy into print, and ‘I believe if I had surceased from printing books my Master would have bequeathed me £200’ (this is from his Sir James Cambels Clarks Disaster by Making Books, Nov 15^th 1642).

Browne couldn’t help loving his own works. He planned a complete edition: ‘I did lately joyne all my labours of love together in the volume with marginall note and annotations, and offered them to the press. But no executioner, I mean a Stationer or Printer had the heart to undertake the work’. If he had got his legacy, he’d probably have blown it all on vanity printing.

I will end with some of his verse, in his manner after du Bartas. He’s writing about the creation of the fish in Genesis I 20-22:

“Th’Almighty Father, as of watery matter

It pleased him make the people of the water,

So of an earthly substance made he all

The slimy Burgers of this earthly ball.”

As poor Browne says in self-vindication, Francis Quarles, George Wither and John Taylor the Water Poet encouraged him in his writing. Yes, that makes sense.

A witch detected en route for America, aboard the ‘Recovery’, 1674.

2011-07-27T09:45:00.003+01:00

“We shall here according to our promise … give a full and true relation of a strange account which, as a supplement to our papers of Apparitions and Witches, we offer to the impartial Considerations of our Modern Saducees; who deny the existence of Witches, Spirits, & c. The whole relation and affidavits hereafter are originals, and we have also had a more particular Account from the captain of the Ship, Viva Voce, because we would neither be impos’d upon ourselves, or be accessory to the imposing upon others…”

The writer is either Samuel Wesley (the father of John Wesley the Methodist), or John Dunton the bookseller and writer (soon to be the London publisher of Cotton Mather’s braying account of the Salem witch trials). The source is the periodical they produced, the Athenian Gazette or Casuistical Mercury, in the issue for Sunday, November 29, 1691. This publication was a twice-weekly print stimulus for coffee house chat, popular for “resolving weekly all the most nice and curious questions propos’d by the ingenious”. The ‘full and true relation’ was supplied as part of a continued campaign of propaganda for the validity of witchcraft beliefs: Wesley (or Dunton) was writing as one of the late 17^th century die-hard believers in witchcraft.

After the brief polemical introduction follows a quite fascinating account of a witchcraft accusation made in a nautical context, on a ship full of emigrants heading to Virginia. I have not seen it referred to before. The late 17^th century editor-writers of the Athenian Gazette claim that this account was original material, and that they had also interviewed the ship’s captain. John Dunton might have picked up the material and the personal contact during his own trip to America in 1685-6. It could also be a dishonest re-hash of a news pamphlet published closer to the date of the events, but I cannot find any sign of such publication on EEBO.

It is interesting in the way all witchcraft accounts are, but particularly striking is the setting, an accursed voyage in which the crew look around for the Jonah on board, and find a candidate whose culpability is endorsed by fellow passengers. The account lets us see the contagious idea of witchcraft on its way to America, with, indeed, an emigrant ‘witch’.

The difficult voyage from Plymouth

Here’s the voyage, with all its setbacks and accidents. This must be from the Captain’s ‘Viva voce’ account:

“On the twenty first of October, 1674, putting forth from Plymouth into the Sea, with the Ship Recovery of London: John Wood Commander bound to Virginia, we had very bad Winds as West South West, and at South, with very bad weather, that all our Fore Shrouds broke at times, being good Ropes, our Topmast broke twice, our Mizzen yard broak, our Spritsle yard washt from the Boultspreet, one Main and two Foretops split, most of our running rigging shatter’d, the Ship’s planks working from the Stern-post, our Men tyred with working: Fair weather or foul, it was all one, what was mended one day, would the next day be in pieces: In this condition we put into the Road of Fiall, in hopes of mending our gear: But being bad weather for six or seven days, that we were like to lose the ship, scarce able to get up our anchors, though all atground, our best bower cable broak, the Buoy under water, at a high water, which at half Ebb bearing, and good weather, our Boat went to the Buoy, and taking hold of the Rope, of seven Inches and a half, almost new, hal’d it up, having no hold of the Anchor which we lost; the Ship rolling excessively, Sea or no Sea: Upon this the Master ordered his Mate to get up the other two anchors, and stand off and on the road, until he went with the Pinnace to clear the Ship with the Councel, but proving clam, the Ship drove to Sea: The Master sending two Portagess Boats with Wines after her, could not reach the Ship, she drove so fast out. The mean times the Pinnace grabnels would not hold, that she drove ashore and sunk, breaking the hoodings to one Strake of her Keel upward from the Stem: The People on Shoar telling us we had a Witch aboard…”

There’s more material of this kind. Just possibly the Captain may have been covering up for an unseaworthy ship: he so continually stresses that these breakings and partings were all of new items of shipboard equipment that he may in fact have been covertly aware of actual deficiencies. He would then have backed the witch story which emerged as a fine distraction from his own failings.

The voyage must have been touch-and-go. The effort to ship wines from Portugal was a failure, with the ship ‘Recovery’ driven out to sea as if by supernatural forces. Those left ashore made a desperately risky attempt to catch back up with the departing ship, but once back on board, their only reward for their desperate risk-taking was a continued litany of disasters and deaths:

“Upon sight of the Ship, we put to sea with the Boat, making a Sail with three bisquet bags and one Oar for a gard, with which through Gods great mercy we reacht the Ship, the Wind fresh at North-East, the said ship accidentally tacking, fetch the Boat; which if the Ship had stood but one hour longer, and then tackt, she had weathered the Boat out of sight, that undoubtedly we had all perisht, being very leack, that we continuall hove the Water out with rundlets, and incapable to row; when we were well on Board, and the Boat in the Ship, bearing away our Course, we began to consider our Miserable Trouble and loss of Time, Anchor and Wine. One of our Passenger fell from the Ship, and was drowned. Thus being again at sea, we fell to our old trade of braking Shrouds, Chane, Boults and Plates, Rigging and Sails. Insomuch, that neither Iron, Wood, Ropes, or canvas would hold …

… Our Fore-yard broke with a little Wind, the Eye-boult of the Mizzen Sheet broke, the sheet was flown, the Sail split to Flitters …

… Every Night procured the Days work following, the Weather fair or foul, our men all sick, but the Master, Doctor and Steward, blessed be God, none of our seamen dying, but very weak and lame: Only one man with a rowl of the ship was flung from the head of the Maintopmast, making fast the Topgallon sail which blew loose, and was drowned under the ships stern; and another tumbled over the waist before day in a calm, and was drowned.”

The Identification of the Witch

Under this continued pressure, that old superstition of the sea (of there being someone on board who is causing all the misfortunes) meshes with the demonological aberration of their theology:

“The third of October 1674. at three or four a clock in the afternoon, our carpenters mate told our Master, our ship was bewitched by one Witch aboard, and two in England: and that we should not get to Virginia, but lye and spend our provision and liquor in the sea, and have no men left to help us, unless we bore away in time for some other Port…”

The opinion first voiced in Portugal is now openly voiced on ship. The carpenter’s mate is quizzed about where he has got this idea from – he is ready with a self-exonerative answer, it came to him as an answer to his prayers:

“Our Master questioning him how he understood this business, he answered, those often and continual accidents attending us, continually gave him Occasion fervently to call on God, begging of him to reveal to some body the Reason of our Miseries, and that accordingly in Prayers the particulars above mentioned, were revealed to him.”

The story is quickly believed, and acted on with astonishing speed. A candidate for the witch on board is identified then and there: Elizabeth Masters is seen alone, and she is either praying, or using the posture of prayer to sabotage the ship:

“Upon this Information, our Master observing Elizabeth Masters Posture, being on her knees on the forecastle, with her hands up, as if she were at Prayers, with her elbows between the kenels, where we were going to belay the Tack of our single small Foresail, which was now brought to our Main-yard, no female being upon Deck but her self, our said master calling down presently, said to several people, he feared that she was the witch, wishing she had no intent of mischief to the tack to which the sail was their belayed, at eleven aClock at night, the Master found the said Masters by her self upon the deck, all the rest of the passengers in their cabins, in the morning after day light, the said tack broak in little wind”.

This was a ship where things were always going wrong, and there were 130 people on board. So someone must always have been close to a piece of the equipment that soon afterwards fell apart. But Masters’ solitude and somehow suspicious display of piety (even though this was a ship where fervent solitary prayer might have been expected of anyone unfortunate enough to be aboard) have singled her out. There might even have been an invisible provocation in her surname: the ship’s ‘Master’ confronts, in Masters, a rival power on board, a woman with many masters. As she comes under scrutiny, in this next extract which tells of her actual arrest, ‘Master’ is actually set by the typographer as her surname. The ship’s master “Then rang the bell to prayers. Our gunner calling the passengers, sick and well up, the said Master as one startled at it, ‘What is the matter, Gunner’, who answered, ‘you must all to prayers’, she seeming blank, said no more, but was one of the first up, being observed to sit all the time in a very careless posture. At last the Foot Rope of the Mane or rather foresail broke in the clew, it being little wind as the others formerly did, and split, but we saved the canvas: Upon this suspicion, our Master Apprehended and clapt the said Masters in chain at a gun in the steerage …”

The testimonies against Elizabeth Masters

At this point, the Jonah-witch has been identified in this floating community. No petition of protest speaking of her good character follows, rather, a number of passengers come forward with their stories to confirm the justice of the detention.

Now, it tended to be taken as axiomatic that a witch under arrest could no longer command her spirits to do harm. The ship ‘Recovery’ was not going to recover so easily. Things continued to go wrong, and so a story rapidly emerges to account for Masters’ continued malign influence.

“after which apprehending of her: these particulars hereafter written, followed …We rummaged to know what Beer and water was in the said ship…” They find they have seven butts of water, and three of beer. Two of these butts of water are used, but two and a half butts of beer also are emptied, unaccountably. In the evening before they sighted land, only two full butts of water were left: and by the next morning “the water in both them was likewise out and lost, with the prints of the claws of some Creature, as cat or the like, left upon the Hoops of the said water-cask”. No one can see any sign of leakage, the water and beer supply is just being supernaturally drained. It turns into a close run thing: the ship arrives in Mari-Galante (an island off Guadeloupe) with “not above three gallons of water left”. Again, it’s hard not to suspect that Elizabeth Masters was a convenient scapegoat for some incompetent provisioning.

The captain’s account ends at this point, and there follows testimonies from passengers. They are all remarkable, and worth individual attention.

“William Rennols, Passenger

That in the month of October, 1674 in the night, Elizabeth Masters came to him as he lay in his Cabbin, between the decks of the said ship, and called this deponent by his name, who answered her the said Masters: This deponent further saith, that then the said Masters said to him, will you be of my gang? And if you will, you shall not want for Gold or Money: Saying, she was with this deponents mother, but the night before. This deponent farther saith, that he said to the said Masters, no truly, I will not have to do with you: This deponent farther saith, that the said Elizabeth Masters told him his Mother was a witch, and if he would be of her gang, he should go out of the said ship, and see his Mother when he pleased: This deponent farther saith, that his own Mother was a very lewd Liver, and kept a Brothel house in Dog and Bitch Yard, London, and would often in the night go abroad, and come home very bloudy, and that the said Elizabeth Masters lived with his said Mother.

The mark of William Rennols”

~ Rennols must have been a young adult who has turned godly, and rejected his previous life with his mother, the ‘lewd liver’. His internal conflict about his actions is obvious. He has heard the story about a ‘witch in England’ in league with the witch on board: he decides the witch back in England must be his own mother. This mother suddenly exerts a preternatural pull across the ocean, and even as he sails away from her, he is making no distance. Masters suddenly connects him closely to the lewd life in Dog and Bitch Yard which he had left, she embodies the temptation to go back to it, facilitating a return that would be quick and easy to do (but utterly evil).

The testimony of John Hall addresses the problem of Masters actually being under arrest, while the ship’s problems are continuing. She can also be a black cat. You will see that he automatically genders the cat he thinks he sees as female. Nor does that cat work its mischief alone:

“That on or about the twenty third of October, 74, He this deponent did see in the night, between the decks of the said ship, two things like black cats, which presently ran into a scupper hole, he this deponent catching at them, but mist them: this deponent further saith, that the next night he desired to watch with a Sword in his hand, to see if he could see any more Cats: This deponent farther saith, that accordingly he did watch, and that then, about Eight of the clock in the evening, he did see in the Great Cabbin of the said ship, something in the shape of a great black cat .. he did then and there with the said sword strike at the cat three blows, and, to his thinking, hit her every blow, and so it vanished. … there was not, to his knowledge, any Cat in the Ship.”

~ This is a classic story in witchcraft, that of the man who battles cats (in its full form, he actually injures the female witches who were in cat form. It’s in the Malleus Maleficarum, it’s in The Late Lancashire Witches.)

Matthew Lewis swore his corroborative account to Hall’s: “He did then on board the said ship, see a thing about the bigness of a cat, which looked him in the face, and that it came out of the Steerage of the said ship where Elizabeth Masters lay chain’d, and at his, this Deponents Cry, passed forward and vanished.”

Back across the Atlantic by coach and horses.

The deposition of Martha Jeffres is still more remarkable. We can sense the way she has listened avidly to both the initial deductions of the carpenter’s mate and to William Reynolds. She starts with a story which is directly based on the initial revelation:

“8^th October. … she, this deponent, went into the Steerage of the said ship, where Elizabeth Masters lay chained, and that the said Masters then, and there, asked her, this deponent, If the wind was fair for the ship? Who answered, she knew not: the said Masters voluntarily saying, That the said Ship should never get to Virginia, nor to any other place: but should lye tumbling in the sea until the people were almost famisht for want of victuals and water … the said ship never should get to England, unless some place of the ship was opened, and that the Master should have a worse passage home than he had out, saying, That she would drown him, the said Master, if she could, and be revenged of some other person in the said ship, if she lived.”

Jeffres then picks up on that tension between desire to carry virtuously onwards, or return sinfully back which was expressed in William Reynolds’ story, as she invents an extraordinary mechanism whereby the speedy return to London Reynolds had hinted at as being within the power of Masters and her ‘gang’ might be carried out: you would travel in a coach pulled by four black horses across the ocean! Moreover, her fantasy of speedy return from this voyage full of high level dread back to familiar scenes is so strong that she cannot stop herself from saying that she actually made the trip. It’s like a supercharged version of Robin’s nocturnal ride on a black horse all the way from Lancashire to London and back (on a black horse) in The Late Lancashire Witches:

“The said Elizabeth Masters came to her to her cabin, between the decks of the said ship, at Midnight, about the middle of the month of October 74 and desired her to go to London in a coach, which she would provide for her, with four black horses, to fetch on board the ship, Mary, living in Dog and Bitch yard, London: She, this deponent, farther saith, she accordingly to this Elizabeth Masters second request, went into a coach, with four black horses the same night, and was conveyed out of one of the upper decks gun ports of the said ship, into a dark room, which, after a little time, was light, with a fire in the chimney: She, this deponent, farther saith, she stayed there a small time, speaking to the said Mary, to whom she was sent, telling her, that Elizabeth Masters would speak with her; the which said Mary answered that she knew where she was and would come that night, in a Coach, to the said Masters: This deponent farther saith, That the time she stayed in the aforesaid room, shee did see many black shagged Dogs, and at her return to the said Ship again, she, this deponent brought with her aboard the said Ship in the said Coach, several men and women. This deponent farther saith, That the said Elizabeth Masters sent a woman with her, who turned like a bullock when she talked with the aforesaid Mary; and that ending her discourse with Mary, she, the said woman which turned like a bullock, turning again like a woman, said to this deponent, Will you be as I am, and you shall want for nothing, you shall live as if you were in heaven, and keep a Maid … This Deponent farther saith, That on or about the 21th of October 1674 at Midnight, a Cat carried her on her back, from her Cabbin, up the Steeridg scuttle, so through into the forecastle to ease her self and from thence into the steerage again; where a woman, a stranger, tempted her, this deponent, to turn; who still refusing, the said woman vanish’d …”

After telling this extraordinary and not entirely innocent story, Martha tried to cover for her own silence about what had been going on, and for the inevitable denial of Elizabeth Masters herself:

“Masters told her, That if she should tell either the Captain, or any other body in the Ship of what had past, she, the said Masters, would torment her night and day: This deponent farther saith, That the said Elizabeth Masters saith, she will dye before she will confess any thing. The mark of Martha Jeffres.”

Frederick Johnson, the Quarter-master, confirmed that he too had seen the enchained Elizabeth on the loose in feline form. He also had a vision of spirit sailors up in the rigging, apt to his profession:

(6^th December, 11 o clock at night), “sitting in the steerage, on board the Ship, Smoaking Tobacco, see a thing, in the shape of a Black cat, come from the place where Elizabeth Masters was chained.”

(Middle of January at Mari-galant) he saw “the Larboard yard-arm of the said Main yard, full of men, as if they were furling the sayls; this deponent declaring, he stood upon the Quarter deck near, and viewing them, for the space of half a quarter of an hour; at last all vanished.”

William Goodfellow, the ship’s cooper, was actually wounded by the cat:
(22^nd December, near midnight) “something passed over him very hard, that it left the print of a Cat’s Foot, or the like, in the flesh of his Thigh, through his Cloaths”. A night or two later, he saw the great black cat in the ship’s great cabin which John Hall assailed with his sword - and “to this deponent’s thinking, hit her the said cat two or three blows, and then it vanished”.

You can imagine that a lot of the passengers on the ship Recovery would have been in a bad physical shape, or ill. “Mary Leare, passing.” may simply have been infested with fleas, but the identification of a witch on board offers a more dramatic explanation and a traditional anti-charm solution – scratching the witch and drawing blood, to break the charm. Masters was chained to a gun, and could not escape:

(Mary Leare was) “Dreadfully pinched at the small of her back, hips, and Buttocks: This deponent farther saith, That she was very desirous to get blood of Elizabeth Masters, believing it was she that pinched and Bewitched her: the which blood, the said deponent saith, She did fetch blood of the said Masters, and from that to this time hath gained her health.”

Others took the same course against their maladies. John Westrow testified that on 23^rd December ,“standing behind Elizabeth Masters, where she lay in chains … it being after a Sick man had pricked her, to get her blood; which said sick man often declared, he see her, the said Masters pinch him in his cabin … which said Man is now dead: he, the said deponent, farther saith, he did then and there hear the said Elizabeth Masters say, You prick and punish me, but you do not punish Martha, who went the other night to London.”

Comment by the late 17^th century editors

You can see by this last remark quoted that the inventive Martha Jefferies had talked herself into trouble. Frustratingly, the account ends there, and the fate of Elizabeth Masters is not mentioned. Wesley (or Dunton) finally make some remarks on the depositions:

“Remarks upon the first Deposition” (i.e., William Reynolds, ‘join our gang and you won’t be short of money’):

“'Tis an egregious cheat the Devill puts on 'em, making 'em believe, they enjoy such and such Treasures, Entertainments, &c which is evidently false, by their being always Lean and Poor.”

“Remarks upon the second Deposition” (i.e. John Hall, black cats):

“These apparitions are not the real parties chang’d into such Creatures, for the Witches are always exanimated at such times, and their bodies at home appearing to be dead…”

3^rd (Matthew Lewis, black cats again): “ 'Twas no cheat, and seen by many: the Captain himself says, he saw it.”

5^th (William Goodfellow, wounded by the cat): “this strengthens the Credit of the foremention’d depositions … we will allow Fancy may do much to the representing of the things, but it cannot pain a man to make him cry, nor wound him with shapes of Cat’s feet, &c … all saw the Impression upon his Thigh.”

The editorial comment on 7^th and 8^th depositions seems actually to begin with comment on Martha Jeffres’ dangerous testimony, the third given: “ 'Tis a great Question, Whether the Devill can use any Art to save a Person from expiring, in so swift a motions as this must be, we believe not; but rather that this Martha was her self deceiv’d, and was really a W---ch: (For the Captain told me, he heard that she was afterwards burnt for a W---ch. Tis probable, all that she thought, said, and did, was Delusion, and Suggested to her fancy by the Devil.”

King James in his Demonologie thinks that witches can fly for only so long as they can hold their breath, otherwise their velocity through the air would kill them. The editor seems to refer to this ‘great Question’. Martha’s fate sounds like hearsay. I do not know why ‘witch’ is here softened to ‘w---ch’, there had been no previous compunction about using the word. The editor goes on to condemn the practice of scratching: “Fetching Blood … 'tis unlawful, and a breach of the Sixth Commandment .. 'tis an unaccountable wickedness, and a running to the Devil, to be cur’d of the Distemper.”

So that’s the story, not quite complete. I suppose these people all eventually arrived at Virginia. They had endured a nightmare voyage, and, in a way very traditional to the sea, had identified the cause of their troubles, and tried to do something about it. That witches could raise tempests and sink ships was common lore. Transformation and transvection stories accrued to the collective narrative they shaped. A yearning to be back with their families, however disreputable, or simply safe by a London fireside was evident and understandable. Most victimised Elizabeth Masters without compunction; Martha Jefferies produced her dangerous narrative of complicity. What happened to the accused woman isn’t recorded, which is odd. It is easy to imagine that the Recovery sailed on, and that Guadeloupe inherited the problem of what to do with her. Indentured labour on a sugar plantation, I suppose.

My image is from A monumental memorial of marine mercy (1684). This will be my final post for a couple of weeks. I am off boating on the Norfolk Broads. Preferably without a witch.

Richard Dugdale, the Surey Demoniac, 1695

2011-07-15T14:53:00.001+01:00

This young man was one Richard Dugdale. He’s in his preferred costume as ‘the Surey demoniack’. ‘Surey’ in this case has nothing to do with the county of Surrey. ‘The Surey’ was in Lancashire, near Whalley (and present day Stonyhurst College). It was a large barn that seems to have been a kind of early modern village hall: ‘the Surey was a common Receptacle for all the young ladies in the Neighbour-hood to come on Spinning at; a custom used in the North’, a building the landlord allowed to be used for communal work and the festivities associated with local ‘rushbearings’.

We are in very late 17^th century Lancashire, my informant about this is the trenchant Zachary Taylor, the Samuel Harsnett of his day, who gave a full account (in The Surey imposter being an answer to a late fanatical pamphlet, entituled The Surey demoniack, 1697) of what went on. This he did initially with what might reasonably be taken for a good humour born of confidence that his insights and documentary evidence would explode these follies. In his subsequent work on this matter, the obstinacy of his opponents leaves him exasperated and angry (this is in his Popery, superstition, ignorance, and knavery, very unjustly by a letter in the general pretended but as far as was charg’d, very fully proved upon the dissenters that were concerned in the Surey imposture, 1698).

I am not aware of any comparable 17^th century English depiction of a demoniac. Taylor must have had the woodcut made because, to his mind, Dugdale’s use of costume is amongst the evidence which shows that the ‘demoniac’ was perfectly aware of himself and the effect he was making:

“Another argument that R. was sometimes sensible in his pretended Fits, and only play’d the Knave, is the odd Dresses that he affected to habit himself in: I will give you an account of one, which is thus. R. takes a large coarse Blanket, and Mantles himself in it; one of the Corners he so orders, that as occasion is, with a nod he may drop it over his Face, or with a toss back fling it like a Monks Cowl upon his Shoulders; the opposite Corner he reserves for a long Train to trail after him as he frisk’d it about. In this fantastick Garb, he traverseth the Barn, and comes pretty close up to whom he thought it would more powerfully affect, and gives a nod with his Head, and flap goes a Corner of the Blanket on his Face; then he gives another toss of it back again, stands upon his Tip toes, and stares and heaves, as he would fly away. Whisk about then he turns to another, so to a third, &c. Thus he keeps the People in Fears, and expectation of what’s to be done…”

Taylor’s faintly indulgent amusement at Dugdale and his antics does not extend to the demoniac’s major dupes, a group of ‘fanatic’ dissenting ministers who, like John Darrel before them, were determined to show that the Protestant church can exorcise the possessed effectively, that they can carry out by godly prayer and fasting what the Catholic church claimed exclusively for itself, and attempted (as they saw it) via superstitious ritual. In Taylor’s persuasive analysis of what was really going at stake, the six errant ministers were not just the dupes of Dugdale and his family, but, more dangerously, the Dugdales were actually being run by two Catholic priests. The elaborate set-up in this late contest between the two churches, ritual against prayer, involved Dugdale as a fake demoniac, who would fail to respond to Protestant exorcists: the Catholic exorcists would then sweep in and show that their rite of exorcism was effective where Protestants had failed. There’s a rather guileless moment in the pamphlet written by one of the deceived ministers, Thomas Jollie, when the clerics, fatigued by their recurrent fasts and the physical and mental rigours of their attempted exorcisms, and seeing no improvement, round on Richard and his family:

“On Jan. the 9th, Was a Fast-day for him at the Surey, the Ministers dealt plainly, and particularly with Richard, and them, where he lived, suspecting that the success of their endeavours was hinder’d by their little sense or improvem[en]t of this sad Judgment…”

The family were (the frustrated ministers said) not sorrowful enough about the judgment visited on them in Richard’s possession, and this was protracting the process of exorcism. They were also suspected of suppressing other material facts to the detriment of the rite: “by their slowness in confessing all they knew of a more full Contract with Satan, than what had been discover’d”. Worst of all, “there were reports of their Corresponding with P. and H. Popish Priests, which however they denied”. After this showdown, Richard complied, with a show of improvement. The ingenious Dugdale family were in a position to exploit both sets of potential exorcists, and were probably ready, in the end, to sell the moment of dispossession to the highest bidder.

The Richard Dugdale show, while it ran, was a sensation: the local landlord complained about the gathering crowds trampling his crops, and Thomas Jollie (one of the credulous ministers) reports of one occasion “there being that Night about or above a Thousand People, labouring to throng into the Barn”.

This large gathering of people seems to have created its own air of licence: the extreme disinhibition of Dugdale’s performance was apparently contagious. In the 1634 play of The Late Lancashire Witches, a ‘satanical sisterhood’ meets at a barn, in a sabbath of jollity and feasting, rather than anything orgiastic. The Surey barn ‘Satanalia’ (to coin a word) turned more overtly sexual, if Zachary Taylor is to be believed: “the neighbourhood affirm, that there was never such Whoring heard of, as whilst the Ministers kept up these Meetings, they scarce being able to go into the Fields, but they found Men and Women Trading almost under every Hedge”. The exorcising Protestant ministers were themselves unimpressed with the moral character of the locals, who were “all professed Protestants, tho' they had been Popishly brought up, and lead profane lives in a place, where Iniquity did so abound, as some Judgment might justly be expected upon, or among them”.

The other members of the Dugdale family were all mobilized to assist Richard in his physical antics and his moments of oracular prescience: “His Sisters, as I am well inform’d, were constantly plying about to bring in Informations”, says Taylor. He also remarks that Dugdale’s performance area in the barn had hiding places where objects could be left for him to pick up, convey to his mouth (this would have been most easily done when he was hidden by his blanket), and then disgorge.

As for Richard himself, he was in his element. Taylor produces remarkably relevant testimonies from men who had been at school with Richard – for they had seen it all before, or things even more extreme, from a young man they vividly remembered as (in modern terms) a hyperactive attention-seeker. At school, the young Richard often “Turned in the Sight of his Eyes, and nothing but the Whites appear’d; he would have stirred the Skin upon his Skull to and fro, without any motion of the Head; the hair on his Head seeming thereby to stand on an end: By the management of his Tongue, he would have made many and several kinds of hideous and unusual Noises, like Dogs, Cats &c to me often seeming as if it were quite below the throat. I have seen him in several of his Fits, but then saw nothing done by him, but what he much exceeded when a School-boy.” I suppose every schoolteacher is bound to meet with this type of pupil, given to freakish behaviour.

Taylor’s unnamed correspondent also recollects that Dugdale used to claim to have had regular encounters with a witch who taught him these various alarming tricks: “He often said, he met an old Witch in his coming and going betwixt his Fathers House and the School, which he called Sadler’s Wife; and that she had Tew’d him (as he calls it) in his coming or going, as made him sweat extreamly”. ]I think ‘Tew’d’ must mean ‘tutored’.]

Richard Dugdale could imitate the sounds and movements of animals (his act as horse even extended to eating equine provender), he could dance with tireless energy while on his knees, ventriloquise, and do contortions: “he oft stretch’d out his Neck to a prodigious length towards the Ministers that prayed”. One thing that very much impressed those who testified to the truth of the possession (as cited by Jollie), was his ability to seem either very light or very heavy (he probably had family assistants working among the witnesses who experienced this supernatural effect, and either covertly lifting or weighing him down). His sisters, gossiping purposefully with their female friends, could pick up all kinds of news from across the region, which he could produce, as if it were Satan’s knowledge of all that pertained to him.

One major performance type Richard would have seen was the clergyman in the pulpit, and so Dickie had Satan, residing within him, deliver long homilies. Jollie guilelessly reports that “here Satan described much of the nature and sorts of Hell Torments, at a more lively and terrible rate than ever the By-standers knew done by Mens Books or Sermons, insomuch that many things then spoken by the Devil about Hell, being afterwards collected, and so far as clear Scripture proof for them was found, formed into a Discourse.” Dugdale would also impersonate gentlemen playing bowls or cards, and like demoniacs before him act out their sins, making a moral commentary, while disclaiming all conscious knowledge of how to play.

Dugdale, a born performer, dancer, and physical clown, had a large audience at last, and seems most of all to have wanted to display his dancing. The exorcists went along with this, in that they were eager (as puritan-minded dissenting ministers) to push a story that Satan had entered into Richard after an unusual version of the Faustian pact, in which Richard had given himself to the devil in return for becoming a good dancer: “Said the Minister, What Wish and Vow was that? Satan answered, Dicky wisht he might be a good Dancer, saying, He’de give himself to the Devil, might he but excel others in Dancing; upon which many of the By-standers struck with wonder, declared how they heard Richard speak those words, when he having a mind to dance with a Young Woman, because he could not dance well, another that could dance better, was prefer’d before him; Dancing then being much labour’d after, and prided in their way as a rare Accomplishment.” Obviously men like Jollie would view dancing as part of the immorality of the region, and seek to make Dugdale a moral example of what became of you if you went in for clog-dancing. Zachary Taylor says that Dugdale told him that he never said any such thing as the words reported, though it seems to me quite likely that Dugdale knew he was a very athletic dancer, and wanted to make dancing central to his fits via this convenient lead-in.

Despite the grueling schedule of his one man show, Richard was thriving. Thomas Jollie finds it miraculous that “Richard being tossed so by Satan, and dasht against the ground, had not his Head split in pieces, his Bones broken, his Spirits spent, or Body more disorder’d, but seem’d rather bigger and more plump, and in far better liking, when out of his Fits, then ever he was before”. Pleased with himself, and enjoying enormous amounts of attention, not in the slightest bit ill (no hysteria, no epilepsy, no lockjaw), and perfectly in control of the situation, Richard could not stop himself manifesting some contempt for his clerical dupes.

He made a speciality of spitting with extraordinary accuracy at the minister John Carrington. A spitting demoniac was not a new thing, of course, and there were local Lancashire examples which might have helped prompt him. But Dickie Dugdale was (unsurprisingly in the light of his other physical accomplishments), extraordinarily good at it:

“at last the Daemoniack threw his head so among the People that were betwixt him and one of the Ministers, as that a Ball of Flegm strangely glanted among them without weting any, till it slap’d on his Shoulder, and thence flash’d o’re his Face, and all down his Cloaths, Richard’s Tongue and Eyes being inactive herein, as abovesaid; whilst this flowed from his Breast, What amazing hideous sounds were heard in or from him all along! Sometimes as of Swine, or Water-mills, or as if a Bear and other Wild Beasts had joyned their several Notes to mix up a dreadful peal of Noises.”

These were scenes that did little for the dignity of the cloth. The clerical participants report it all with undiminished good faith: they believe that ‘Richard’ (as Jollie persists in calling him even at this point) cannot see them, with his eyes rolled back in his head, but although everyone struggles to protect the leading minister, he is still bespattered with diabolic accuracy:

“Upon which the Demoniack most furiously raged, threatened to tear him in pieces, struggled most vehemently to get at him, being Six or Seven Yards distant from him, hurled Rolls of Foam still on his Face; and tho' Hats and Aprons were held up betwixt them, to hinder his annoying of him, yet he was hurled so high, or so low, or sideways, that the Balls of Foam which came from him still hit him on or about the Face; notwithstanding the uselessness of Richard’s seeing or speaking Organs herein.”

It’s hard not to think that, locally, there was enough knowledge of the type of tricks Dugdale had played at school (in which he would take a subversive delight in involving a schoolteacher mystified at his freakish antics) for some observers to have been half in on the joke. There is also that barely concealed Lancashire Catholicism: how many were taking great pleasure in watching Richard insult Protestant clerics, and getting away with it splendidly? Meanwhile, after scenes like this, the local population, gathered together in unusual numbers, swived merrily away in the hedge-bottoms.

The Surey demoniac is not mentioned in Marion Gibson, or Dijkhuizen, the pamphlets are not in Philip Almond’s anthology of such texts. It’s very late 17^th century, but Zachary Taylor is aware of exorcism cases in Lancashire running through the entire century, as Catholic priests and Jesuits sought to make conversions in a county that was only superficially Protestant. I have noted before very late witchcraft pamphlets as unduly neglected, here’s a case of possession which was very fully investigated by the astute Zachary Taylor, it’s amusing – and it’s illustrated.

Little Charles and Big Charles, 1679

2011-07-01T16:05:00.002+01:00

Just to keep the blog going (for I am soon slipping away from the computer on a week’s break), I expeditiously lift from EEBO Strange and wonderful news, or, The Full and true relation of the miraculous inspiration of Charles Bennet, born at Manchester in Lancashire (1679)

“Who being but THREE Years of Age, Speaks without the Least Instruction: English, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew; so Perfect and Authentickly, the like thereof hath not been heard of in any Age.”

The inspired little Charles is described in a pamphlet which is partly a description of a portent or prodigy, but mainly an advert, for he was “now to be Seen & Discoursed withal at the Bear-Inn in West-Smithfield.”

He was the son of a Lancashire linen weaver, “a Man of mean Education and Fortune”, and was born “on or near the 17th. of June, in the year of Mans Redemption, 1676”. Charles was when very young “often observed by his Parents to be more serious and considerate then appertained to one of his age, many times musing, and seeming to deliberate with himself; the which at first they did not so fully regard, but after he could go alone, and began to speak, (the which he exercised sooner then usual) many grave Sentences were observed to proceed from him…”

Here’s the early modern gifted child then: not rattling through calculations in his head, but solemnly emulating his only likely intellectual role-model, by reproducing the ‘grave sentences’ of a preacher.

The moment when his parents realised what their son was capable of was also religious in nature: “the first Discovery of the profound Knowledge that for a long time had absconded in his Microcosnick structure, was about a month or Six Weeks since: his Father after Divine Service taking a Bible, and reading a certain Chapter in one of the Evangelists, by accident, or through ignorance omitted, or preposterously read a certain Verse or Sentence: the Child aforesaid being present, reproved him of his error, and told him there was no such sentence in the Scripture, or Word of God: at which his Father being in a consternation, casting his eyes upon the Text where he had read, found himself mistaken, whereupon he examined him how he knew, having never seen nor known the Scriptures as to the Practick part: to whom the aforesaid Charles most discreetly replied; That he could, and in his conceit had often conversed therein, and if occasion required, could Read them in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.

The child’s words about the scriptures are enigmatic: “in his conceit had often conversed therein”, “and if occasion required, could Read them in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew”. The first part floats between young Charles being, in his fancy, conversant with the scriptures and a sense that he projected himself into the bible passages he heard, inventing his own replies to the words of biblical personages. The claim that he could read the scriptures in the learned tongues seems a firmer affirmation, but is still connected syntactically to Charles’ conceit, his fancy that he could do such reading.

But his unique selling point was not his precocious learning, but his very lack of instruction: that he could only say these things, and read these languages, through inspiration. His parents acted swiftly: “This raised the primal Character of the Child’s more then ordinary perfection, sent his fame abroad, so that many hundreds from Towns and Villages adjacent to the place of his Nativity, came flocking to take a view of him, and to discourse in all the Tongues premissed, who did as freely Answer, to the great astonishment of all that heard: for many Ministers and Learned Men were likewise curious to satisfy themselves in the certainty hereof, and when they had beheld and found it true, they went away with admiration.”

Those ‘Ministers and Learned Men’ who talked to Charles discoursed ‘in all the tongues premissed’. He either understood, and answered in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, or he convinced them that he had understood. Perhaps Charles already knew his New Testament closely enough to pick up the thread of a bible-based discourse when he heard names in the text.

When he is exhibited in London, we get more detail on what he could do, and there’s more suggestion here that the boy had an idetic memory, and could call up images of a bilingual dictionary (if any such had passed through his little hands):

“After some time his Fame was noised in the great Metropolis of London, to which by the advice and persuasion of some of their Friends, his Parents brought him about Five days since; and coming up by the Warwick-shire-Carrier, they Inned or took up their lodging at the Bear-Inn in West-smith-field: where no sooner was the rumour of their being there spread abroad, but numbers flock’d to see a wonder they had heard of some time since: he being accompanied with his Parents in a very spacious Room on the left hand going into the Inn aforesaid, where many Ministers and others discoursed and questioned with him on Saturday the 28th. of which this Deponent was one who did both reason with him in English, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew; to which he soon answered, and rightly expounded and Interpret each Word a Sentence; the truth of which, this Deponent is ready to Justify upon Oath if need requireth: Some of which Words I shall here (for the more perfect satisfaction of the Reader) Insert, Imprimis, he was asked Latin, Greek, and Hebrew for a Man, to which he as readily Replied, Vir, Inthropos, Addam; For a Woman, Mulier, Genue, Eveve; For Boy, Pueri, A Girl, Puella; his Fore-head, Fronte, A Hat, Gallerus. As likewise many other words and Propositions, too tedious here to Insert.”

Charles very carefully avoided cheapening himself. His parents gratefully accepted donations from visitors who were convinced that they had seen a prodigy, but Charles preserved his other-worldly mystique by spurning gifts:

“His Parents take no Money at the Door, but are willing to accept the free Benevolence of Gentlemen: The Child will not accept any Gift, be it Money or any other Present; but if it be forced upon him, he will absolutely refuse and throw it away, showing how little he regards such transitory Trash, the which is no ways permanent.”

For he had a mission in mind, a purpose for his inspiration. Somehow he had been led to seeing himself as oracular, and that the most impressive thing he could do would be to speak privately to the King – and then expire!

“The Child had, as his Parents report, an earnest desire many weeks before he came to London, to speak with his Majesty, and that he had some business of Importance to declare to his Sacred self: the which they much Noted by his earnest and often repeating the same desire, the which was, as some report, to speak Three Words, and after the deliverance of which, he Prophetically foretells his Dissolution as to this life.”

Whether the child got his meeting with his royal namesake is something the reporter avoids positively affirming. He is himself sure the meeting happened. Others affirm that little Charles repeated his usual display for the King. It doesn’t seem that Charles II gave the infant a private audience, but, if little Charles did get so quickly to Whitehall, took a passing amusement amidst his court. The phrasing lets the reader hope that the child delivered a message from heaven:

“In the space of Nine days, but this is not certainly known, but sure I am, that upon Notice of the said Child’s being in Smithfield, his Majesty was graciously pleased to send for him to his royal Palace of White-Hall, on Monday the 30th. of this instant June, 79; who in a Coach waits His Majesties good pleasure: and as it is credibly reported, most fluently answered to several Questions, to the great admiration of all that were present; but what was there said it not as yet precisely known.”

The title page was less cautious, for the pamphlet had to be made to sell. That Charles’ wish to speak with the king came true is asserted, with half a suggestion that the reader will get an account of the special message he had brought from heaven and Lancashire:

“As also the Account of his Earnest Desire to Speak with HIS MAJESTY: The which he Effected, and some Words he Spake, on Munday the 30th. of June 1679. Being brought into the ROYAL PRESENCE.”

If big Charles met little Charles, I am sure it would have been done more in the spirit of the Royal Society than from a sense of the boy as heaven-sent prodigy. If little Charles spoke to his King, I imagine it would have been to whisper a choice bible text. For Charles II, it must then have been as if the boy was a voice from the past, an earlier 17^th century England where inspired reading of the testament was everything. In my fancy, I picture the King dividing his attention between the solemn and tiny child and one of his spaniels: “All I observed there was the silliness of the King, playing with his dog all the while and not minding the business”, as Pepys once put about a meeting of the royal council.

My image is a portrait of a boy by Jan Van Bijlert.

‘So learned and Poly-daedalous a Narration’: Daniel Lakin and the Prussian Knife Swallower

2011-06-23T14:23:00.003+01:00

This chap, fortunate to be alive (and perhaps rather gentrified in his moment of celebrity) was the Prussian knife swallower, and that’s the sharp knife he accidentally swallowed shown down the right of the woodcut: it “was just in length ten fingers breadth”.

He was “a rusticke young man by name Andrew Grunheide” and on the morning of May 29^th 1635, having perhaps overdone the beer the night before, and apparently accustomed to doing this, he decided he’d be better off if he vomited. His clumsy efforts ended in the knife going down rather than his stomach contents coming up:

“as it was his wont, endeavouring to procure it himself, with the haft of his knife provoked the Gorge, and vomit not presently following did thrust in his knife a little deeper, which partly by the violence, and partly by its own weight so let down and comprehended within the jaws, escaped the extremities of his singers, and by little and little tends to the ventricle.”

Understandably alarmed at what he had just done to himself, he tried a few contortions to reverse the trick: “although the Swallow-knife being somewhat terrified, did by bowing his body downwards, assay the regress of the knife, yet was it all in vain”.

So off he went, and found himself referred on to “the renowned and famous Dan. Swaben, a Chyurgion Physitian, cutter of Ruptures, and an Oculist”. Swaben was among the retinue of “the most Soveraign King of Poland, Vladislaus the 4^th “because of an excellent and singular skill in his liberal Art”.

A numbers of doctors gathered to discuss this interesting case. Their decisions, and the operation they performed (successfully) on Grunheide were written up in a German pamphlet, which was translated into English by a sometime ship’s surgeon, Daniel Lakin (with some help from his brother, he says). Grunheide’s situation made him a case that the doctors could both perhaps treat, and learn from.

In the first place, good sense was shown: the lengthy pamphlet, which uses all occasions for medically informative digression, shows that the doctors were well aware of a ‘melancholy’ which might cause someone to claim to have ingested something preposterous. They know, also, about pica, compulsive ingestion of unusual things. Along with these medical cases, demoniacs who vomit up stones, rings, hair and the like transmitted into their body by witchcraft are discussed.

But the decision was that Grunheide had no signs of melancholy (beyond apprehension about the ordeal ahead of him), and that he had swallowed his knife as he claimed.

Grunheide is plied with oils to cleanse his stomach. They decide they must operate while he is still in his strength of health, but first assay the use of a magnetic plaster. This involves pulverizing a magnet, and mixing the filings up in an ointment. Gilbert’s opinion (a real scientific observation, of course) that this destroys all polarity and force in the magnet is known to them, but they are strongly possessed by the hope that such a preparation will attract the metal object towards the point of incision they have decided upon. So the magnetic plasters are applied, and even though after section they have to fish about with a bent needle through the incision to locate the knife, they believe that the usefulness of a magnetic dressing has been confirmed. They interpret the evidence according to their preconception, and what it comes down to in the end was, as ever, authority trumping observation: magnetic ‘emplasters’ work because people you trust say they work: “Ninthly, because in vain had the most famous and expert Physitians framed the Magnetical Emplasters, and from the Load-stone assigned them the denomination, if no faculty of Attraction were thence further to be expected”. I like that very 17^th century ‘ninthly’: a former colleague teaching Milton’s prose once suddenly perceived that his class had all since long fallen fainting by the wayside as he reached Milton’s ninth cogent argument for something.

Anyway, here’s how the pamphlet describes the big operation – the prayers beforehand, the patient strapped down, the spectators applauding. I especially like Grunheide confirming to the triumphant operating team that, yes, that’s the very knife he had swallowed - as though by some other means others items from the canteen might have found their way inside him. I rather doubt, on various evidence, that Grunheide was all that bright. Brave and robust, though:

“When all things therefore were ready at hand as well external and internal Cordials, as other Chyrurgicalls, the Divine Assistance and Benediction being first invoked, the Rustic who with an undaunted courage waited the Section, was bound to a wooden Table, and the place being marked out with a Coal, the incision was made towards the left side of the Hypochondrium some two fingers breadth under the short Ribs, according to the direction, and first the skin and that fleshy pannicle (there was no fat seen) and then the subjected Muscles, as also the Peritonaeum was cut and opened. And although the Ventricle did somewhat sink down, and evading our fingers ends did not so presently admit of apprehension, and a little staid the Operator and standers by, yet at length attracted and contracted with a small needle crooked, it showed that the knife was there, which being laid hold on, and the point brought upwards, the Ventricle above the same was a little incised, and the knife successfully extracted, which was viewed by all that were standing by, and greatly applauded both by them and the Patient himself, who professed that this was the very knife he some few days before had swallowed, but the wound it self when the knife was drawn forth was quickly allayed.”

The aftercare of the patient recalls Gloucester in King Lear: “The Knife being successfully brought forth, and the Patient eased of his bands, the wound was in that manner as was fitting cleansed, and the Abdomen that was incised, closed up with 5. Sutures, but by their interstices the Balsam was infused warm, and Tents impregnated with Balsam laid thereon, and then a Cataplasm of Bole, the white of an egg, and Alum to avert all inflammation laid upon that.” Egg whites seem bacterially hazardous, but the albumen would have had some coagulant effect.

Over the next days, Grunheide is carefully observed, with the usual emphasis on urine and stools. The original pamphlet is keen to report one of their important deductions:

“Position 8 … the excretion of clotted blood by Urine is to be reckoned for a benefit of a provident nature.” Most important of all, is the deduction that the operation - opening the body and then cutting into the stomach - is worth trying, rather than simply deciding that the patient is going to die: “wounds that pierce the substance of the Ventricle, the Chyrurgeon shall not let them alone as deplorable and remediless, yea nor spare labour nor industry in the sedulous Curation of them, for a doubtful hope is better then a certain desperation.”

“And so by the grace and clemency of the Omnipotent Jehovah, and supreme Director, and with the singular industry and dexterity of the Physitians and Chyrurgion, our Rustic Swallow-knife was restored to very good health, who now complains not any thing of any dolours of the Ventricle, but being returned to his accustomed diet and ordinary calling, with us gives thanks to the immortal God. To him therefore bee the glory, praise, and honour for ever and ever, Amen.”

The English translator of all this, Daniel Lakin, had an eventful life. In 1632 he was apparently a ship’s surgeon on a warship called the Hector, and he tells of his own cure of Richard Partridge, quartermaster on the ship, who was wounded by a dagger thrust through the stomach wall during a fight on board.

Partridge “lived about a year and a half after, till he perished under the burthen of a sorrowful Captivity, wherein I did partake with many other…” The ship and his crew were captured by Turks, and Lakin’s own survival was probably down to his useful skills as surgeon. He was in captivity in Constantinople, until the English ambassador there, Peter Witch, either ransomed him, or protected him once Lakin had fled to his embassy. Lakin had a spell he describes as his “time of my service to the Emperor of Morocco”. He was present at a defeat of the Emperor in the Atlas mountains “many Moors there dangerously hurt, and with myself by flight escaping visited me, at my house in the City of the Jews (where all Christians have residence) imploring Cure, I receiving some that I judged curable though not profitable, into my care.”

Lakin had all too much opportunity to study the effect of dangerous wounds, and his translation advertises this: “In my Travailes, by observation, experience, & conversation with both Jewish, Arabian, Italian, Spanish, and Greeke Physitians, I have attained unto many worthy secrets.” He condemns other less experienced practitioners such as “tooth-drawers, Mathematical Fortune-tellers, and that rabble of women, which strut up and down with their skill in their pockets, which they purchased from the Chirurgions boy for some Garment trifle.” He was sceptical about magnetic dressings, and many other aspects of the Prussian doctors. No doubt his translation won him some extra clients.

[From A miraculous cure of the Prusian swallow-knife being dissected out of his stomack by the physitians of Regimonto, the chief city in Prusia (1642).]

Wench and witch at Greenwich, 1650

2011-06-13T11:07:00.002+01:00

The strange witch at Greenwich by the pseudonymous Hieronymus Magomastix (1650) is one of those strange performances that only the mid 17^th century could produce. It was written by an elderly clergyman, who does reveal that he was incumbent at St Brides in Fleet Street. It ought to be possible to find out his identity, which would have scarcely been hidden when the pamphlet came out. He preferred, though, to appear in print veiled as a ‘Magomastix’, a scourge for the wizards.

The pamphlet is cast as a dialogue between ‘Scepticus’, and ‘Veridicus’, the author figure and, as his name implies, a veridical speaker of truth. ‘Scepticus’ is misnamed, he’s a sceptic as far as the 17^th century tolerated them: so eager to be instructed in matters of which he confesses ignorance that he kicks off the dialogue with effusive flattery of his interlocutor, confessing that “I was tossed and troubled in unsettled fluctuations” until he “lighted my darke torch at your bright flame” and asks for more, “knowing you are as willing to improve your able parts for publick and private good to the inlivening and inlightening of such weak tenuities as mine, as a full dugd Mother or Nurse to communicate her milke to a hungry childe…” In justice to the self-tickling author, this is all meant to be ‘jocoserious’, and the author uses the term twice so that we understand his tone throughout.

This ‘Scepticus’, so eager to be spiritually enlightened, has a question: ‘that you would be pleased to informe mee both in the quid, quale & quomodo, of the Reports in every mans tongue … of a strange witch or Ghost now at Greenwich haunting the house of one Meriday, and playing strange prankes by throwing stones at the glasse windowes, making the stooles, chaires, and other utensils daunce Sellengers round … throwing also Bookes, yea the Testament into the fire, as though it cared as little for it, as a new Enthusiast, Papist, or an Atheist, peerking the ladle out of the Wives boyling pot below, as high as into the Husbands bed above…” (This is a sample of the ‘jocoserious’ style employed.)

So, here’s our situation: poltergeist activity in a house in Greenwich in 1650. The full title of the pamphlet fills us in on what set it all off:

The strange vvitch at Greenvvich, (ghost, spirit, or hobgoblin) haunting a wench, late servant to a miser, suspected a murtherer of his late vvife: with curious discussions of walking spirits and spectars of dead men departed, for rare and mysticall knowledge and discourse, / by Hieronymus Magomastix. April 24. 1650.

After the death of her mistress, a 14 year old ‘wench’ (who I deduce was living back at the house of a relative by marriage named Meriday) embarked on confecting the ‘supernatural’ occurrences which would suggest that the recent death had not been natural, that her mistress’ unquiet spirit haunted the house, having something to impart. She did this with such success that numbers of people spent time in the house, to experience for themselves the phenomena (and, so suggestible are people in such matters, they inevitably did). The dead woman’s body was exhumed, probably because the girl’s clever and determined campaign suggested that something had to be amiss, and be worth investigation (though one rather doubts that 17^th century forensics would determine much). The girl’s motive may have been indignant loyalty to her deceased mistress, but money may also have played a part if the widower had been miserly in paying her off.

The clergyman writing the pamphlet had established the basic facts of what was going on. The girl had not proved easy to break down, but he finally elicited a confession (of sorts) from her:

(Scepticus) “Proceed in your plaine story of this house haunted by Witches: I have heard of most of these pageants you have related were onely done by the wily Wench, who was servant to the woman taken out of her grave, upon suspicion of her unnatural death: and that she hath troubled and blundered the Waters, and made all this poother, to call her late master in question about the death of his Wife.

(Veridicus) It’s very true, that a bold faced brazen brow’d wench hath had a great finger in the Pye, and hath been a great stickler [i.e., instigator] in these Pageants; for I have had her in serious examination, and have with much adoe wrested from her thus much…”

You’d think this was enough, but while ‘Magomastix’ may be keen to scourge spurious wizards, like the demonologists in Walter Stephens’ Demon Lovers, he cannot bring himself to rationalize away completely such gratifying local evidence of the supernatural. Magomastix’s whole pamphlet is a carefully Protestant picking-and-choosing of what you must, and must not believe.

The manifestations were too important to him (he had his own experiences of them while round at the ‘haunted’ house), and he has the testimonies of other “solid witnesses” as well, who were utterly convinced by aspects of what they had seen in the house. His own chief experience (naturally enough) had happened just when his back was turned. The girl obviously was willing to go to extremes with a clergyman whose investigations were proving awkward:

“I my selfe being one night with much company in the house, as wee went out a round stone was throwne at my daughters heeles; another time as I was in the house with the old Wife and two children, as I went into the garden a knife was throwne after me, which I tooke up, and with vehemency threw it back againe to the very place from whence it came, daring the Witch or Spirit to throw it at mee againe, and conjuring it in the name of that Jesus which is terrible to Divells to speake unto mee, and to reveale the reason why it haunted the house and to return to it own place; but I had no reply.”

The decision he has reached is that while the girl may have confessed to imposture, she cannot have perpetrated all the poltergeist activities. Did she have an accomplice?

Scepticus puts some of the local guesswork to his instructor: “Some have great jealousie of the old Wife her Mother in Law” (he means, they suspected that she had) “a great hand … in these witchly or spiritly postures, as though by some explicite or implicite compact with Sathan, shee should delude the world by these fascinations … What think you of her?” But Veridicus exonerates the older woman: “I have no windows into her heart, and for her outward carriage it is so candid, square and faire, that I see no cause either in reason or Religion to suspect her”. The older woman was, he found, “So strong in faith, so frequent and fervent in prayer, so zealous in her devotions.”

So Scepticus draws the obvious conclusion: “Its probable the Wench acts all her self.” But here Veridicus sticks: “Something shee doth, but not all”. His position is nicely poised (and maybe the ‘jocoserious’ nature of his pamphlet indicates a certain anxiety to manage the flow of more genuinely sceptical derision). He is nevertheless, like the Protestant thinkers in Greenblatt’s Hamlet and Purgatory, determined to refute the idea that ghosts can walk:

“I assure you, what ever the Pontificans [he means the Catholics] doate or faigne, or our Vulgars dreame of the Ghosts or Spirits of this man, or that man walking after their deaths in this or that shape, is a very lye, an assured lye; take this from me, yea, from Scripture, Fathers, Reason, and Experience assuredly…that these walking, or talking spectars in humane shapes, are such men and women really as have been dead and buried; this is not only a fixion unprobable, but impossible, for these reasons …”

He goes on to explain that the souls of the dead saints are in the hands of God, they departed in peace and so cannot be perturbed in such hauntings, they are in paradise with the good thief, while “the wicked are closed in Hell … out of which there is no jayle delivery”. His view can be summed up when he says that the departed godly would not return to earth, the wicked cannot.

Denying that ‘apparitions’ are the souls of the dead, Veridicus does not deny all visions, and a lengthy list of them follows, including mention of those that afflicted Richard III, “which instances doe not onely confute and confound the ancient Saduces” but they also “muzzle the mouth of Atheisticall Politicians” who “hold that there be no reall or substantial Divells, but onely the Furies and Erinnis of wicked consciences”.

Veridicus may have eliminated ghosts, but he is determined to preserve and evidence the ‘substantial’ devil. Though at one point of his pamphlet, in scoffing at Catholic exorcisms, Veridicus asserts that “Even Sathan himselfe, is chained as a Mastiffe, and grated as a Lyon, In all his powers subordinate unto God”, he is unable to resist the notion of a ‘reall’ Satan busily prompting people in this world. Here again, in those exorcisms, one senses another reassuring evidence for the existence of the spirit world that Protestants were having to do without, obliging them to adhere more stubbornly to a belief in witchcraft, the witches as Satan’s visible agents testifying to his existence. The ‘wench’ had admitted to this tale of how “Satan entered into her as into Judas and Ananias”:

“that being one day in her mothers garden, some three weeks after her Dames death, that a stone was throwne at her, and hit her on the back, none being near her, nor within her sight; at which she much marveling from whence it should come, she tooke up the stone, looked seriously upon it, carried it up and downe the garden, with as much pride and complacency, as admiration: upon which Satan vehemently tempted her to throw it against her mothers window, which this obedient vassal did accordingly. Upon which she setting the devil a worke, as he her, as she broke the ice, an ill spirit hath waded and thrown forty stones since (as forty can testify) at the same windows, no visible hand being since.

Without much wresting and sponging shee hath freely and penitentially acknowledged both to my selfe and others, that since that stone throwne in the Garden, shee her selfe in a paltry pride to aggravate the Report of spirit haunting behind peoples backs, when she thought shee was free from being seene, hath often in acting and counterfeiting the spirit, throwne stooles, cushions, candlesticks, dishes, and kept the like Revill Rush [?]; and indeed so long goes the Pitcher to the Well, that at last it comes home broake. Sathan catcht her in her owne snare, being by a yong man taken tripping in the very act, as shee cast a great chip out of a chamber downe the staires into the house where many people were.”

Here we see a danger beyond the ignominy of simple exposure in what the girl was doing: while the pamphlet can talk quite jovially a mixture of “ingenious folly and serpentine knavery” in her actions, Magomastix cannot quite let go of the devil, who was “Baiting his hooke with many delusive promises, that if shee would go on as shee had begun, what shee did should never bee knowne, and that hee would never forsake her. I see give the Divell an inch, and hee will take an ell, sup of his broth, and eate of his roast-meate.” Her situation was that of a witch, promised things by the devil, assisted in certain acts: even her involuntary self-exposure could be read as Satan betraying her!

Satan had to be involved: the manifestations in the house were beyond her powers, too well witnessed. ‘Magomastix’ produces this rather astonishing comment, in which a whole gamut of metaphysical experiences are linked as inexplicable but true perceptions: “Stooles, sticks in the fire, laundry irons … have moved of themselves … they looking on, and seeing nothing move them more than they see, a voice, a sound, a wind, a noise, a soule in man, or their owne hearts, which they perceive really, though they see nothing visibly.”

The conclusion both parties in the dialogue are drawn to is that witchcraft has to be involved, that there must be a witch, whose familiar spirit is invisibly assisting:

Scepticus: “I have strong jealousie that this Impe hath a laire-father or laire-mother (besides Sathan the father of all impostures) some hee or shee witch, who traines her (besides these legerdemains) even in Witchcraft it selfe.”

Veridicus shares this suspicion:
“Yea, I have dealt by all ways and meanes with the Wench both faire and foule, menaces, threatening, and promises to reveale her magicall Tutresse; but shee is a subtile as a yong serpent, I can get no more out of her then water out of a stone.”

The ‘wench’ might be getting the assistance of a witch, and then the next possibility, as mentioned, was that the ‘wench’ might herself be a witch. Some tricks she could pull off by her own dexterity, the other more confounding ones through a spirit she commanded. Veridicus first produces ominous Bible examples of “yong things” and their “strong soone budding corruptions” (citing Matthew 27 and Herodias). Then he jumps to the more recent past: “Many yong wily Wenches in our Times, some discovered by Doctour Harsnet, some by Deakon and Walker, in their printed Dialoguizings, and some by deepe and judicious King James, to have playd strange reakes [the word means pranks] by the tutoring and impostures of Fryars and Jesuits, and by the trainings of some old Witches and Wizzards both black and white; and indeed I thinke an English rack, or Spanish strappado would no more get it out of her… unlesse we could discover her, as now the Scotch Witches by water Ordeall.”

Torturing her to get at the truth isn’t exactly unthinkable to him, though he pushes the thought off into Scotland.

Towards the end of the pamphlet, Veridicus, who clearly thinks very well of himself, apparently forgets what he has argued earlier, when he boastfully suggests that most of the things reported of the great conjurers he could do himself, if he took on the art of ‘meer natural magick’. Indeed, he further boasts, he could do these things, and then impart the capacity to a six year old, whose innocence would be a testimony to just how undiabolical such magic was (while the common people would think he was a great conjurer). The man who was, just pages before, half willing to put the 14 year old ‘wench’ to the question about the sources of her witchcraft, asserts that he could produce all kinds of magical phenomena legitimately if he set his capacious mind to the art; the man who condemned Jesuits and Friars for tutoring ‘young wily wenches’ imagines doing just that himself:

“I perswade my self I could do such things my self … by this meer naturall magick , or in plain tearmes, the producing of Art and nature into practice; such rare and exquisite things have been done, or may be done, especially by such instruments … That the common people .. would take me for as great a conjurer as ever Cornelius Agrippa, or Doctor Faustus, or for as great a witch as Circes, or Medea; at least as great a Juggler as once my neighbour John a Ley, or Hocus Pocus, or some cunning wise man, such as Mr Lilly is divulged, as though he were a second Merlin; when for all this, I could make a child of six years old do the like things presently and give as good a reason of what I do (as I perswade my self Mr Booker, and Mr Lilly can give of their artificiall undiabolized Predictions) as I can give a Reason why I am hot or warm, when I am in the Sun, or at the fire without any more confederacy with any Witch, or spirit.”

The Strange Witch at Greenwich involves what is ultimately an uneasy consideration of things that look like something else. An apparition is not a dead person, but a devil (inevitably, the two discuss the case of the Bible’s Witch of Endor, Veridicus asserting that what she produced was “a deluding Malignant spirit in the shape of Samuel”). Supernatural soliciting may be misleading: Veridicus tells a story that “a counterfeit voice” told “the late Mr Crashaw of the Temple, or old Muncy Duncy of St Johns in Cambridge, that they should goe to Geneva to preach the Gospell”. He disapproves, of course, as they must have left the Church of England to become Calvinists. But after we have worked through a learned list of early modern celebrity look-alikes, we hear something else about the deluded Mr Crashaw: our writer was often mistaken for him: “I have been often in the streets tooke for Mr Crashaw, when he was preacher at the Temple, and I at Saint Brides in Fleet Street.”

When he had the knife thrown at him by the diabolic spirit operating at Meriday’s house, did Veridicus attempt no exorcism (asks Scepticus)? No, says Veridicus firmly, exorcism is one of the ‘disorderly Orders’ of the Catholic church. But he admits that he did ‘adjure’ the spirit when it threw a knife at him, but “my act was so far discrepant from the practice of the Popish Priests”.

As we have heard, if he chose to take up natural magic, “the common people ... would take me for as great a conjurer as ever Cornelius Agrippa, or Doctor Faustus”. In a way, the ‘strange witch at Greenwich’ was Hieronimus Magomastix. His inflated pseudonym anticipates his final boast of how he could become a conjurer: if you set aside its etymology, it’s a conjurer’s name. He is trying to rule what must and what can’t be believed in (devils but not at any price ghosts, who are all devils), but as he tries to impose his opinions, his own unsettled nature is revealed. He is jocose, he is serious. He produces a list of pretenders, including Martin Guerre “long admitted for a husband though a counterfeit knave”; he could, like a Jesuit exorcist, instruct a wily six year old; his own lookalike became a Calvinist; we see that while he is Veridicus, he is also latently Scepticus, the real sceptic for whom “a sound, a wind, a noise, a soule in man” are all the same, clinging on to the ‘substantial’ devil in the absence of exorcisms and ghosts, while asserting, like Balthasar Bekker would do, that the devil is imprisoned in hell.

Around him swirls a chaos of inappropriate beliefs: (that) “it is the Ghost or Spirit of the dead woman her late Dame which walkes, as I assure you many in the Towne, and most in the Countrey ere she was tooke out of her Grave, did believe as their Creed verily and assuredly” (and I do like the smart distinction of town and country there.) He invents people asking him what to believe, who are notably ready to believe in him, yet his pamphlet ends with what seems to be an elaborate trailer for a long and systematic account of Satan’s true powers, but while boasting that he could deliver it, he says it’s too large a burden for his “aged shoulders”. He will set Scepticus to rights in the afternoon, for now, his stomach is summoning him off to his midday meal. And off he shuffles, offering no useful final advice on what to do about the ‘wench’, his present ‘rare and mysticall’ discourse about Satan and witchcraft merely ‘jocoserious’, stretched to a fraction of the length that any self-respecting 17^th century clergyman writer would run to on such a subject (though promising more after lunch).

In the final assessment, he just blogged about it, didn’t he?

A reading edition of William Morrell's 'New England', 1625

2011-06-04T10:20:00.007+01:00

In September I will start teaching a new course I have devised called ‘Paradise in Early Modern English Literature’. So I will on this blog occasionally look at texts that use the Garden of Eden as an idea or point of reference.

I intended to set off with an informal essay on William Morrell’s New-England. Or A briefe enarration of the ayre, earth, water, fish and fowles of that country (1625) but repeatedly found that I was stumbling over the sense of the text. No doubt a scholarly edition will have been produced by someone, but I had no access to such, nor will my students have one, so I here present a reading edition of the poem.

I have modernized spelling, made amendments as best I could where the printed text makes no obvious sense, and added some notes.

Morrell’s English version is an expansive version of his original Latin. I did spend a deal of time trying to compare the two texts, especially when trying to make sense of his English version (which sometimes or often has the stilted manner of a translation). I found this hard to do; I would need a Latinist to help me.

Things to look out for in this work are Morrell’s close attention to the native Indians (though, in his interested sympathy, he projects a lot of incipiently Christian belief onto them). His ethnographical account culminates with his description of the appearance, art, agriculture and personal politics of the Indian women. Morrell reports the Indian men mocking the Europeans for letting their women lead such leisured lives. New England (Morrell’s use of the term is actually an OED antedating) really emerges as a potential Eden. He tries to stress its natural abundance, but is too truthful to conceal either its extremes of weather or the potential danger of the native population. He represents New England as a sound business opportunity with resources which will repay “their Merchants debt and interest”.

New-England. Or A briefe enarration of the ayre, earth, water, fish and fowles of that country.[i]

Feare not poore Muse, 'cause first to sing her fame,
That’s yet scarce known, unless by Map or name;
A Grand-childe to earth’s Paradise is borne,
Well limb’d, well nerv’d, faire, rich, sweet, yet forlorn.
Thou blest director so direct my Verse,
That it may win her people, friends commerce;
Whilst her sweet air, rich soil, blest Seas, my pen
Shall blaze, and tell the natures of her men.[ii]

New-England, happy in her new true stile,
Weary of her cause she’s to sad exile
Expos’d by heirs[iii] unworthy of her Land,
Entreats with tears Great Britain to command
Her Empire, and to make her know the time,
Whose act and knowledge only makes divine.
A Royal work well worthy England’s King,
These Natives to true truth and grace to bring.
A Noble work for all these Noble Peers
Which guide this State in their superior spheres.[iv]
You holy Aarons[v] let your Censers ne’er
Cease burning, till these men Jehovah fear.
Westward a thousand leagues a spacious land,
Is made unknown to them that it command.
Of fruitful mould, and no less fruitless main[vi]
Enrich’d with springs and prey, high land and plain.

The light, well temp’red, humid air, whose breath
Fills full all concaves betwixt heaven and earth,
So that the Region of the air is blest
With what Earths mortals wish to be possest.
Great Titan darts on her his heavenly rays,
Whereby extremes he quells, and oversways.
Blest is this air with what the air can bless;
Yet frequent gusts do much this place distress
Here unseen gusts do instant onset give,
As heaven and earth they would together drive.
An instant power doth surprise their rage,
In their vast prison, and their force assuage.[vii]
Thus in exchange a day or two is spent,
In smiles and frowns: in great yet no content.

The earth grand-parent to all things on earth,
Cold, dry, and heavy, and the next beneath
The air by Natures arm with low descents,
Is as it were entrencht; again ascents
Mount up to heaven by Jove’s omnipotence,
Whose looming greenness joys the Seaman’s sense.
Invites him to a land if he can see,
Worthy the Thrones of stately sovereignty.[viii]
The fruitful and well watered earth doth glad
All hearts; when Flora with her spangles clad,
And yields an hundred fold for one,
To feed the Bee and to invite the drone.[ix]

O happy Planter[x] if you knew the height
Of Planter’s honours where there’s such delight;
There Nature’s bounties though not planted are,[xi]
Great store and sorts of berries great and faire:
The Filbert, Cherry, and the fruitful Vine,
Which cheers the heart and makes it more divine.
Earths spangled beauties pleasing smell and sight;
Objects for gallant choice and chief delight.

A ground-Nut there runs on a grassy thread,
Along the shallow earth, as in a bed,
Yellow without, thin, film’d, sweet, lily white,
Of strength to feed and cheer the appetite. [xii]
From these our natures may have great content,
And good subsistence when our means is spent.
With these the Natives do their strength maintain
The Winter season, which time they retain
Their pleasant virtue, but if once the Spring
Return, they are not worth the gathering.[xiii]

All ore that Maine the Vernant[xiv] trees abound,
Where Cedar, Cypress, Spruce, and Beech are found.
Ash, Oak, and Walnut, Pines and Juniper;
The Hazel, Palm, and hundred more are there.
There’s grass and herbs contenting man and beast,
On which both Dear, and Bears, and Wolves do feast.
Foxes both gray and black, (though black I never
Beheld,[xv]) with Muscats[xvi], Lynxs, Otter, Beaver;
With many other which I here omit,
Fit for to warm us, and to feed us fit.

The Fowls that in those Bays and Harbours breed,
Though in their seasons they do else-where breed,
Are Swans and Geese, Herne, Pheasants, Duck & Crane,
Culvers and Divers all along the Maine:
The Turtle, Eagle, Partridge, and the Quail,
Knot, Plover, Pigeons, which do never fail,
Till Summer’s heat commands them to retire,
And Winter’s cold begets their old desire.[xvii]
With these sweet dainties man is sweetly fed,
With these rich feathers Ladies plume their head;
Here’s flesh and feathers both for use and ease,
To feed, adorn, and rest thee if thou please.[xviii]

The treasures got, on earth, by Titan’s beams,
They best may search that have best art and means.[xix]

The air and earth if good, are blessings rare,
But when with these the waters blessed are,
The place is complete, here each pleasant spring,
Is like those fountains where the Muses sing.
The easy channels gliding to the East,
Unless oreflowed, then post to be releas’d,
The Ponds and places where the waters stay,
Content the Fowler with all pleasant prey.
Thus air and earth and water give content,
And highly honour this rich Continent.

As Nature hath this Soil blest, so each port
Abounds with bliss, abounding all report.
The careful Naucleare[xx] may a-far descry
The land by smell, as’t looms below the sky.

The prudent Master there his Ship may moor,
Past wind and weather, then his God adore,
Man forth each Shallop with three men to Sea,
Which oft return with wondrous store of prey;
As Oysters, Crayfish, Crab, and Lobsters great,
In great abundance when the Seas retreat:
Tortoise[xxi], and Herring, Turbot, Hake and Bass,
With other small fish, and fresh bleeding Plaice;
The mighty Whale doth in these Harbours lye,
Whose Oil the careful Merchant dear will buy.
Besides all these and others in this Maine:
The costly Cod doth march with his rich train:
With which the Sea-man fraughts his merry Ship:
With which the Merchant doth much riches get:
With which Plantations richly may subsist,
And pay their Merchants debt and interest.

Thus air and earth, both land and Sea yields store
Of Nature’s dainties both to rich and poor;
To whom if heavens a holy Viceroy give,
The state and people may most richly live:[xxii]
And there erect a Pyramy of estate,
Which only sin and Heaven can ruinate.[xxiii]
Let deep discretion this great work attend,
What’s well begun for’th’most part well doth end:
So may our people peace and plenty find,
And kill the Dragon that would kill mankind.[xxiv]

Those well seen Natives in grave Nature’s hests,
All close designs conceal in their deep breasts:
What strange attempts so ere they do intend,
Are fairly usher’d in, till their last end.[xxv]
Their well advised talk evenly conveys
Their acts to their intents, and ne’er displays
Their secret projects, by high words or light,[xxvi]
Till they conclude their end by fraud or might.
No former friendship they in mind retain,
If you offend once, or your love detain:[xxvii]
They’re wondrous cruel, strangely base and vile,
Quickly displeas’d, and hardly reconcil’d;
Stately and great, as read in Rules of state:
Incens’d, not caring what they perpetrate.
Whose hair is cut with greeces[xxviii], yet a lock
Is left; the left side bound up in a knot:

Their males small labour but great pleasure know,
Who nimbly and expertly draw the bow;[xxix]
Train’d up to suffer cruel heat and cold,
Or what attempt so ere may make them bold;
Of body straight, tall, strong, mantled in skin
Of Deer or Beaver, with the hair-side in:
An Otter skin their right arms doth keep warm,
To keep them fit for use, and free from harm·
A Girdle set with forms of birds or beasts,
Begirts their waste, which gently gives them ease.
Each one doth modestly bind up his shame,
And Deer-skin Start-ups reach up to the same;[xxx]
A kind of Pinsen[xxxi] keeps their feet from cold,
Which after travels they put off, up-fold,
Themselves they warm, their ungirt limbs they rest
In straw, and houses, like to sties: distressed
With Winter’s cruel blasts, a hotter clime
They quickly march to, when that extreme time
Is over, then contented they retire
To their old homes, burning up all with fire.
Thus they their ground from all things quickly clear,
And make it apt great store of Corn to bear.

Each people[xxxii] hath his[xxxiii] orders, state, and head,
By which they’re rul’d, taught, ordered, and lead.
The first is by descent their Lord and King,
Pleas’d in his name likewise and governing:
The consort of his bed must be of blood
Coequal, when an off-spring comes as good,
And highly bred in all high parts of state,
As their Commanders of whom they’re prognate[xxxiv].
If they unequal loves at Hymen’s hand
Should take, that vulgar seed would ne’er command
In such high dread, great state and deep decrees
Their Kingdoms, as their Kings of high degrees:
Their Kings give laws, rewards to those they give,
That in good order, and high service live.
The aged Widow and the Orphans all,
Their Kings maintain, and strangers when they call,
They entertain with kind salute for which,
In homage, they have part of what's most rich.[xxxv]
These heads are guarded with their stoutest men,
By whose advice and skill, how, where, and when,
They enterprise all acts of consequence,
Whether offensive or for safe defence.
These Potents do invite all once a year,
To give a kind of tribute to their peer.[xxxvi]

And here observe thou how each childe[xxxvii] is train’d,
To make him fit for Arms he is constrain’d
To drink a potion made of herbs most bitter,
Till turn’d to blood with casting, whence he’s fitter,
Enduring that to undergo the worst
Of hard attempts, or what may hurt him most.[xxxviii]
The next in order are their well seen men
In herbs and roots, and plants, for medicine,
With which by touch, with clamors, tears, and sweat,
With their curst Magic, as themselves they beat,
They quickly ease: but when they cannot save,
But are by death surpris’d, then with the grave
The devil tells them he could not dispence;
For God hath kill’d them for some great offence.[xxxix]

The lowest people are as servants are,
Which do themselves for each command prepare:
They may not marry nor Tobacco use,
Till certain years, least they themselves abuse.
At which years to each one is granted leave,
A wife, or two, or more, for to receive; [xl]

By having many wives, two things they have,
First, children, which before all things to save
They covet, 'cause by them their Kingdoms fill’d,
When as by fate or Arms their lives are spill’d.
Whose death as all that die they sore lament,
And fill the skies with cries: impatient
Of nothing more then pale and fearful death,
Which old and young bereaves of vital breath;
Their dead wrapt up in Mats to th’grave they give,
Upright from th’knees, with goods whilst they did live,
Which they best lov’d: their eyes turn’d to the East,
To which after much time, to be releas’t
They all must March, where all shall all things have
That heart can wish, or they themselves can crave.[xli]
A second profit which by many wives
They have, is Corn, the staff of all their lives.
All are great eaters, he’s most rich whose bed
Affords him children, profit, pleasure, bread.
But if fierce Mars, begins his bow to bend,
Each King stands on his guard, seeks to defend
Himself, and his, and therefore hides his grain
In earth’s close concaves, to be fetch’d again
If he survives: thus saving of himself,
He acts much mischief, and retains his wealth.
By this deep wile, the Irish long withstood
The English power, whilst they kept their food,[xlii]
Their strength of life their Corn; that lost, they long
Could not withstand this Nation, wise, stout, strong.
By this one Art, these Natives oft survive
Their great’st opponents, and in honour thrive.

Besides, their women, which for th’most part are
Of comely forms, not black, nor very fair:
Whose beauty is a beauteous black laid on
Their paler cheek, which they most dote upon.[xliii]
For they by Nature are both fair and white,
Enricht with graceful presence, and delight;
Deriding laughter, and all prattling, and
Of sober aspect, graced with grave command:
Of man-like courage, stature tall and straight,
Well nerv’d, with hands and fingers small and right.
Their slender fingers of a grassie twine,
Make well form’d Baskets wrought with art and line;
A kind of Arras, or Straw-hangings, wrought
With divers forms, and colours, all about.
These gentle pleasures, their fine fingers fit,
Which Nature seem’d to frame rather to sit.
Rare Stories, Princes, people, Kingdoms, Towers,
In curious finger-work, or Parchment flowers:
Yet are these hands to labours all intent,
And what so ere without doors, give content.
These hands do dig the earth, and in it lay
Their faire choice Corn, and take the weeds away
As they do grow, raising with earth each hill,
As Ceres prospers to support it still.
Thus all work women do, whilst men in play,
In hunting, Arms, and pleasures, end the day.
The Indians whilst our Englishmen they see
In all things servile exercis’d to be:
And all our women freed, from labour all
Unless what’s easy: us much fools they call,
'Cause men do all things; but our women live
In that content which God to man did give:[xliv]
Each female likewise long retains deep wrath,
And’s ne’er appeas’d till wrongs reveng’d she hath:
For they when foreign Princes Arms up take
Against their Liege, quickly themselves betake
To th’adverse Army, where they’re entertain’d
With kind salutes, and presently are dain’d
Worthy faire Hymen’s favours: thus offence
Obtains by them an equal recompense.[xlv]

Lastly, though they no lines, nor Altars know,
Yet to an unknown God these people bow;[xlvi]
All fear some God, some God they worship all,
On whom in trouble and distress they call;
To whom of all things they give sacrifice,
Filling the air with their shrill shrieks and cries.
The knowledge of this God they say they have
From their forefathers, wondrous wise and grave;
Who told them of one God, which did create
All things at first, himself though increate:
He our first parents made, yet made but two,
One man one woman, from which stock did grow
Royal mankind,[xlvii] of whom they also came
And took beginning, being, form and frame:
Who gave them holy laws, for aye to last,
Which each must teach his childe till time be past:
Their gross fed bodies yet no Letters know,
No bonds nor bills they value, but their vow.
Thus without Art’s bright lamp, by Nature’s eye,
They keep just promise, and love equity.
But if once discord his fierce ensign wear,
Expect no promise unless’t be for fear:
And, though these men no Letters know, yet their
Pan’s harsher numbers we may somewhere hear:
And vocal odes which us affect with grief;
Though to their minds perchance they give relief.
Besides these rude insights in Nature’s breast,[xlviii]
Each man by some means is with sense possess’t
Of heaven’s great lights, bright stars and influence,
But chiefly those of great experience:
Yet they no feasts (that I can learn) observe,
Besides their Ceres, which doth them preserve.[xlix]
No days by them discern’d from other days,
For holy certain service kept always.[l]

Yet they when extreme heat doth kill their Corn,
Afflict themselves some days, as men forlorn.
Their times they count not by the year as we,
But by the Moon their times distinguish’t be.
Not by bright Phoebus, or his glorious light,
But by his Phoebe and her shadowed night.[li]
They now accustom’d are two Gods to serve,
One good, which gives all good, and doth preserve;
This they for love adore: the other bad,
Which hurts and wounds, yet they for fear are glad
To worship him:[lii] see here a people who
Are full of knowledge, yet do nothing know
Of God aright; yet say his Laws are good
All, except one, whereby their will’s withstood.
In having many wives, if they but one
Must have, what must they do when they have none.
O how far short comes Nature of true grace,[liii]
Grace sees God here; hereafter face to face:
But Nature quite enerv’d[liv] of all such right,
Retains not one poor sparkle of true light.
And now what soul dissolves not into tears,
That hell must have ten thousand thousand heirs,
Which have no true light of that truth divine,
Or sacred wisdome of th’Eternal Trine.[lv]

O blessed England far beyond all sense,
That knows and loves this Trine’s omnipotence.

In brief survey here water, earth, and air,
A people proud, and what their orders are.
The fragrant flowers, and the Vernant Groves,
The merry Shores, and Storm-affronting Coves.
In brief, a brief of what may make man blest,
If man’s content abroad can be possessed.[lvi]

If these poor lines may win this Country love,
Or kind compassion in the English move;
Persuade our mighty and renowned State,
This poor-blind people to commiserate;
Or painful men to this good Land invite,
Whose holy works these Natives may inlight:[lvii]
If Heavens grant these, to see here built I trust;
An English Kingdome from this Indian dust.

FINIS.

Excuse this Postscript, perchance more profitable than the Prescript. It may be a necessary Caveat for many who too familiarly do Serò sapere[lviii]. The discreet artificer is not only happy to understand what may fairly and infallibly further his duly considered designs and determinations: but to discover and remove what obstacle soever may oppose his well-advised purposes, and probable conclusions. I therefore, desiring that every man may be a Promethius, not an Epimethius, have here underwritten such impediments as I have observed wonderfully offensive to all Plantations[lix]; Quae prodesse quant & delectare legentem.[lx]

First therefore I conceive that far distance of plantations produce many inconveniences and disabilities of planters, when as several Colonies consist but of twenty, or thirty, or about that number, which in a vast uncommanded Continent, makes them liable to many and miserable exigents[lxi], which weakens all union, and leaves them difficultly to be assisted against a potent or daily enemy, and dangerously to be commanded; when as some one Bay well fortified would maintain and enrich some thousands of persons, if it be planted with men, able, ingenious, and laborious, being well furnished with all provisions and necessaries for plantations. Besides, if one Bay be well peopled, it’s easily defended, surveyed, disciplined, and commanded, be the seasons never so unseasonable, and all their Forces in few hours ready in Arms, either offensively to pursue, or defensively to subsist convenient numbers ever at sea, and sufficient ever at home for all service, intelligence and discovery.

Secondly, Ignorance of seasons, servants, situation, want of people, provisions, supplies, with resolution, courage and patience, in and against all opposition, distress, and affliction. Vincit patientia durum[lxii]. Fishermen, manual artificers, engineers, and good fowlers are excellent servants, and only fit for plantations. Let not Gentlemen or Citizens once imagine that I prejudize their reputations, for I speak no word beyond truth, for they are too high, or not patient of such service: though they may be very necessary for Martial discipline, or excellent, (if pious) for example to the seditious and inconsiderate multitude.[lxiii]

Boats with all their furniture, as sails, hooks, and lines, and other appendences, afford the paineful planter both variety of comfort, and a sufficient competent, and an happy estate. Good mastiffs are singular defences to plantations, in the terrifying or pursuing of the light-footed Natives.[lxiv] Hogs and Goats are easy, present, and abundant profit, living and feeding on the Islands almost without any care or cost.

Plantations cannot possibly, profitably subsist without chattels and boats, which are the only means for surveying and conveying both our persons and provisions to the well advised situation. Without these, plantations may with much patience, and well fortified resolution endure but difficultly, though with much time flourish and contentedly subsist. For when men are landed upon an unknown shore, per adventure weak in number and natural powers, for want of boats and carriages, are compelled to stay where they are first landed, having no means to remove themselves or their goods, be the place never so fruitless or inconvenient for planting, building houses, boats, or stages, or the harbours never so unfit for fishing, fowling, or mooring their boats[lxv]. Of all which, and many other things necessary for plantation, I purpose to inform thee hereafter.[lxvi] Wishing thee in the interim all furtherance, all fortunateness.

Farewell.

[i] This is 1625: OED does not record ‘New England’ before 1638. See line 2, which implies a wider circulation of the term. ‘Enarration’, used in English between 1570 and the early 19^th century meant ‘A description, detailed story or narrative’ (OED).

[ii] Morrell will praise the land first, then simply ‘tell’ ‘the natures of her men’.

[iii] ‘heirs’ - ‘her’s’ in the 1625 text may be a misprint. New England, personified, begs Great Britain to take charge of governing her empire because ‘heirs’ unworthy of her are making her exile sad (?). This would seem to apply to the native peoples, as King James is then asked to undertake the worthy royal work of bringing the ‘natives’ ‘to true truth and grace’ – Christianity.

[iv] The Privy Council

[v] Aarons: churchmen

[vi] Via a contorted double negative, Morrell says that the ‘maine’, the sea, is there as fruitful as the ‘mould’, the soil.

[vii] Morrell starts on the air of New England, a typical early modern priority about the healthiness of a place. The air is good, but prone to sudden violent gusts of wind. But these sudden tempests are just as quickly stilled by an ‘instant power’ (Morrell implies a heavenly providence), which re-imprisons the air in its heavenly vault, and so any bad weather is over in a day or two. An alternation between great ‘content’ and unsatisfactory absence of ‘content’ seems to be intended.

[viii] Morrell now turns to the earth which, by nature’s power lies beneath the air, low as if entrenched. But then again, hills, ‘ascents’ reach up towards heaven; and the sea-farer sees these first.

[ix] The fruitful soil has many ‘spangles’ (flowers), and yields 100 grains for one seed grain planted. Morrell is thinking about corn.

[x] ‘Planter’ meant one who cultivated the soil, and then from 1587 onwards, a colonist.

[xi] Morrell says that New England has the Edenic quality of displaying nature’s bounty without crops having to be sowed.

[xii] Morrell’s use of ‘ground nut’ antedates the OED’s first recorded usage, which is from 1636. His reference is not to the peanut, but Apios Americana:

http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/proceedings1990/V1-436.html

“When European explorers first visited the New World they found the naives eating the seeds and tubers of Apios Americana.”

[xiii] See prior footnote - “The succulent vine is killed by freezing temperatures and will deteriorate during the winter.”

[xiv] Morrell’s Latin uses the same word, meaning ‘flourishing’, but ‘vernant’ itself was used in English c1440-1660.

[xv] Morrell’s Latin does not seem to specify two types of foxes, nor include the reservation that he didn’t himself witness a black fox. They would probably have been the same animals viewed from different angles. A black fox is also called a ‘silver’ fox because of white-tipped hairs on the rump. See

http://www.thefoxwebsite.org/ecology/ecologyfacts.html

“in North America, black foxes are relatively common”.

[xvi] ‘muscat’ means the musk cat or civet (which secretes musk).

[xvii] Morrell notes seasonal changes in the bird population. ‘Hernes’ are herons, ‘culvers’ doves or pigeons.

[xviii] i.e., feathers for feather beds.

[xix] Morrell refers to veins of gold, which was believed to be produced by the influence of the sun. He lets one infer that none have been found, but that a search by experienced prospectors has yet to be made.

[xx] Not in the OED, the word may relate to an ancient Greek word meaning ‘shipowner’. The detail of it being possible to smell the land before it comes into view (from a ship) does not seem to be in the Latin version.

[xxi] A large and heavy-shelled shell fish. The OED cites R. Eden, 1555, Decades of New World, “In Cuba, are founde great Tortoyses (which are certeyne shell fysshes) of such byggenesse that tenne or fyfteene men are scarsely able to lyfte one of them owt of the water.”

[xxii] New England requires only an appointed Viceroy to govern it.

[xxiii] And with a viceroy set in charge, New England will become a state as long lasting as the pyramids. Aware of the fragility of the North American colonies, Morrell says that it can last unless brought to ruin by sin or heaven (i.e., the latter punishing the former).

[xxiv] i.e., may the settlers enjoy an Eden, but here destroy Satan.

[xxv] Morrell has just reflected that such a fair beginning promises a good outcome for the colony. He now turns to the native Americans, who also seem promising, ‘well seen’ as he puts it, in appearance. But they conceal motives that end in fraud or violence.

[xxvi] The natives will appear neither angry (with ‘high’ words spoken) or merry (speaking ‘light’ words)

[xxvii] The native people will turn on you if you detain your former love from them, or offend them.

[xxviii] Morrell seems to be saying that their hair is cut in steps, ‘greeces’, apart from the longer lock on the left side.

[xxix] Morrell will pointedly contrast the way that in native cultures, the women do all the hard work, with the ease enjoyed by European women, in which culture men do all the physical labour. Perhaps because hunting was seen as a sport, Morrell does not credit the hunting carried out by male natives as work.

[xxx] ‘start-ups’ here seems to mean gaiters, leg bindings.

[xxxi] A ‘pinsen’ was a shoe without a heel or pump: Morrell is of course describing moccasins.

[xxxii] Morrell recognises different tribes.

[xxxiii] We would say, each tribe has its upper ranks.

[xxxiv] The text reads ‘they’rs prognate’. ‘Prognate’ (cited from here in the OED) means offspring, descendents. The offspring of a marriage between two high status individuals are accepted as leaders in their turn.

[xxxv] The kings, in return for entertaining visitors from other nations, receive gifts from them.

[xxxvi] Morrell notes annual ceremonies of homage.

[xxxvii] I have not modernized to ‘child’: Morrell seems to mean, ‘youth approaching manhood’, so I have retained the spelling with a final e, latterly used to distinguish from ‘child’.

[xxxviii] An initiation rite at which emetic herbs are drunk. From this ordeal, the brave emerges better able to face the hardships of battle, etc.

[xxxix] Medicine: their doctors are ‘well seen’ in arts that blend from knowledge of herbs

into devil-inspired magic. When cures fail, the devil informs the patient

(via the shamanic doctor) that he or she must die for some sin they have

committed. There is possibly a faint memory here of Cornelius speaking to

Faustus at the start of Marlowe’s play: “The miracles that magic will perform

/ Will make thee vow to study nothing else. / He that is grounded in astrology,

Enrich'd with tongues, well seen in minerals, / Hath all the principles magic doth require.”

[xl] Morrell asserts the willingness of the lowest orders to be given their orders. He seems to say that such people (and only such) may not marry till they have reached a certain age, nor may they smoke tobacco. Morrell may be reporting facts, but he may also be thinking of truculent English lower classes, apprentices who could not marry till they were out of their apprenticeships, and King James’s attempts to restrict tobacco taking.

[xli] Burial rites, and belief in a paradisal afterlife located in the East. Again, Morrell’s report of the native peoples may be tinged by Christian beliefs in a heavenly Jerusalem, etc.

[xlii] Morrell jumps from native American to native Irish practices of hoarding grain underground in times of war.

[xliii] So Morrell comes to the native Eve’s of this Eden. He tries to express the beauty of darker eyebrows and eye lashes against a skin of pale brown coloration. He is impressed by the taciturnity they share with their menfolk, and by their ‘well nerved’ (muscular) bodies. Their artistic basketwork comes next. I read ‘of a grassy twine’, the 1625 text reads ‘on a grassie twyne’. The wall hangings are both decorative and draft-excluding, like the European ‘arras’ (tapestries). Finally, their agriculture, growing corn, and tending the crop as it grows. He observes again that they do all the work, while the men merely hunt and fight.

[xliv] An interesting passage: there were not many women in the first American colonies, and it is hard to imagine that they enjoyed much leisure. The native men mock the European men for doing so much work; European women are seen as still enjoying the paradise of leisure God first gave to Adam.

[xlv] The women as politically independent: a wrong done to them and (perhaps) not dealt with adequately by their king will cause women to switch sides when war comes.

[xlvi] ‘Lines’ (‘lynes’ in the 1625 text) perhaps means any written sacred text. “Yet to an unknown God these people bow” – Morrell’s Latin text does not correspond to this. He probably puts ‘an unknown God’ as object of their devotion to bring to his reader’s mind St Paul in Acts 17:23: ‘For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.’

[xlvii] Morrell (in his English text) insinuates a creation story of a male creator God (himself uncreated), who brought to life an Adam and an Eve, parents of all humankind; a God who gave laws that must be followed. In the case of the native Americans, these beliefs are orally transmitted. Like More’s Utopians, they are represented as incipient Christians, lacking a revealed gospel, but by the light of nature alone, deriving basic religious truths.

[xlviii] Their ‘insights’ in (‘into’) Nature’s secrets. They are aware of what a 17^th century astrologer would have called the ‘greater luminaries’, particularly their most experienced observers.

[xlix] They observe no regular feast days apart from a ‘Cerealia’ (as the Latin version has it), a feast in honour of the harvest, Ceres being the goddess of the harvest.

[l] They observe no Sabbath day.

[li] Their calendar is lunar, not solar.

[lii] Here, the native Americans are represented as dualists, with two Gods, one good, one evil: susceptible to the basic Christian heresy.

[liii] Morrell seems to imply that the native people are quite receptive to initial conversion attempts, but that they cannot contemplate an end to polygamy. Again, the native Americans may be accurately described, but there is also a hint of More’s Utopia, where the Utopians, acting by human reason alone, allow divorce and remarriage.

[liv] The text has either ‘encru’d’ or ‘eneru’d’. I have emended to ‘enerved’, to suggest ‘deprived of the strength of revelation’.

[lv] Morrell laments that all these people will go to hell, being unaware of such things as the knowledge of the Holy Trinity, a truth loved in England, though it is in itself ‘far beyond all sense’.

[lvi] Morrell starts his peroration with a summary.

[lvii] He hopes his verses may move ‘painful’ (painstaking) men to sail to America and enlighten the native people. Like Samuel Sewall would be after him (see Richard Francis’ excellent Judge Sewall’s Apology (2005), Morrell is an optimistic promoter of the possibility of mass conversion. Sewall was ready to believe that the Indians were descended from the lost tribes of Israel, that they ‘fear God, and are true believers’. Francis explains how the ‘praying Indians’ would be few in number, and be quite cynically neglected as the colony developed.

[lviii] ‘too late come to be wise’

[lix] Morrell will use his proscript to pass on what he observes colonies use, so that each colonist may be a ‘Prometheus’, a benign giver of fire to the benefit of mankind, rather than an ‘Epimetheus’, an opener of a Pandora’s box of evils.

[lx] ‘to profit and please the readers’

[lxi] exigencies, hardships, bad circumstances.

[lxii] ‘patience conquers adversities’

[lxiii] As ever with the English colonies, the need is for people accustomed to hard work, with useful skills, not people accustomed to leisure. Morrell specifies.

[lxiv] Morrell, so interested and indeed sympathetic to the native people in his poem suggests the utility of mastiffs to let loose upon them.

[lxv] Counter to ever suggestion made in his poem of what a Paradise New England (almost) is, Morrell here observes the utility to colonists of wagons and small boats for mobility, for shifting to better sites.

[lxvi] No such further work by Morrell has survived (if it was ever carried out).

Early Modern Whale

'With the sudors of thy industry shalt thou spend thy days'. Loredano's 'Life of Adam', 1659.

An elegy on a 17th century centenarian

‘An Elegy upon Dr. Chaderton, the first Master of Emanuel College in Cambridge being above an hundred years old when he died. Occasioned by his long deferred Funeral.’

I have blogged before about Thomas Sheafe’s Vindiciae senectutis, or, A plea for old-age. It was most appropriately dedicated to “THE WORTHY AND LIVELY Pattern of a good OLD-AGE, Mr. Doctor CHADERTON, all the blessed comforts of it: and after it, everlasting happiness.”

“Don’t forget the good old way” … “Nappy Ale both brown and stale”. The ideal Christmas, 1688.

Ceremonies for Candlemas Eve.

A monumental henosis

'O, Mr Carter, what shall I do?' The worthy life of John Carter 1554-1635

Adam's rib

The witch at Newbury, 1643

Losing hope on the Hope-well: two more supernatural sea stories

A True and Perfect Relation of the Strange and Dreadful Apparition which lately Infested and Sunk a Ship bound for New-castle, called, The Hope-well of London.

The slimy burgers of this earthly ball: Edward Browne and his troubles.

A witch detected en route for America, aboard the ‘Recovery’, 1674.

Richard Dugdale, the Surey Demoniac, 1695

Little Charles and Big Charles, 1679

‘So learned and Poly-daedalous a Narration’: Daniel Lakin and the Prussian Knife Swallower

But the decision was that Grunheide had no signs of melancholy (beyond apprehension about the ordeal ahead of him), and that he had swallowed his knife as he claimed.

Wench and witch at Greenwich, 1650

A reading edition of William Morrell's 'New England', 1625

In September I will start teaching a new course I have devised called ‘Paradise in Early Modern English Literature’. So I will on this blog occasionally look at texts that use the Garden of Eden as an idea or point of reference.

I have modernized spelling, made amendments as best I could where the printed text makes no obvious sense, and added some notes.

New-England. Or A briefe enarration of the ayre, earth, water, fish and fowles of that country.[i]

[i] This is 1625: OED does not record ‘New England’ before 1638. See line 2, which implies a wider circulation of the term. ‘Enarration’, used in English between 1570 and the early 19th century meant ‘A description, detailed story or narrative’ (OED).

I have blogged before about Thomas Sheafe’s Vindiciae senectutis, or, A plea for old-age. It was most appropriately dedicated to “THE WORTHY AND LIVELY Pattern of a good OLD-AGE, M^r. Doctor CHADERTON, all the blessed comforts of it: and after it, everlasting happiness.”

[i] This is 1625: OED does not record ‘New England’ before 1638. See line 2, which implies a wider circulation of the term. ‘Enarration’, used in English between 1570 and the early 19^th century meant ‘A description, detailed story or narrative’ (OED).