“Once Nurse, sev’n year the worse” – the married life of 'The Cotswold Muse'

To the Cotswolds this last weekend to see my sister and her family, and so my posting will be on Clement Barksdale (1609–1687), he of ‘The Cotswold Muse’ (“When I am weary of prose, and Grotius / His Gravity is to my stomach nauseous / Then call I up my Cotswold Muse…”).

Not that Barksdale wrote anything about the Cotswolds as a landscape. As chaplain, preacher or schoolmaster (according to Royalist and Anglican fortunes), he lived his life through books; much of his time was dedicated to translating and promoting the teachings of Grotius.

Antony à Wood half disdainfully described him as ‘a good Disputant, a great admirer of Hugo Grotius, a frequent Preacher, but very conceited and vain, a great pretender to Poetry, and a Writer and Translator of several little Tracts, most of which are mere Scribbles’.

Barksdale may have had his officious side, and he can produce strange things in verse. A Grateful MENTION of Deceased BISHOPS consists of a series of eulogistic couplets on high-ranking clergymen whose works he approved of (“May Primate Bramhall, with prime Authors go; / His Divine Works we have in Folio”), and only Barksdale could write a rhyming set of book recommendations (‘An English Library’: I might transcribe it in a future post!). But from some of the poems there emerges a devoted father, and a poet who writes best on his own itch to write.

Here he is writing about his wife’s determination to manage to breast feed, finally, one of their children, the seventh:

To his Wife at last a Nurse

After six nours’d by others, youl’d ne’r rest

Untill the seventh Child drew out your own Brest.

The seventh some secret virtue has, they say:

Tis then, I hope will prove a fortunat Boy.

And as in this (your Brest being often sore)

Your labours were; so will your Joyes be more.

Children would all be obedient sure

Knew they what pains their Mothers did endure.

The Proverbs false: Once Nurse, sev’n year the worse

Best Nurse is Mother; and best Mother’s Nurse.

I don’t recall seeing elsewhere that harsh proverbial lore against breast-feeding Barksdale cites here. He records their almost inevitably mixed fortunes with all these babies in poems like ‘Upon the Decease of my Infant-Lady’, or

Upon his seven Children: two Girls dead, one alive, and four Boyes

The divine Goodnesse! Which I have often try’d!

A pair to seven is quickly multiply’d.

Two that were wisest, quickly made return,

(Pardon me this one tear, faln on their urn:)

The female remanent, with observant eye,

I’d have to learn her Mothers huswifry.

To the four boyes, I’d leave this legacy

(God giving) my Arts and Theologie….

Because he likes children, Barksdale often ends up writing some kind of consolation after any local or family case of an infant dying. One of his lady cousins actually seems to have given birth during the funeral of her first child. This was exactly the kind of thing that would attract him, showing offspring as source of sorrow and joy. Barksdale’s poem would seem to us rather abrupt, not really very sensitive in expressing its Christian convictions, but I suppose it was accepted in his day (children are always going off to assume their thrones in heaven in his infant elegies)

To Mris Jane Commelin, upon the birth of her second Daughter, at the burial of the first

Cosin, See what reward from Heav’n you have!

So soon as your lov’d Daughter was in the Grave

Whom God took from you, for Correction

Of your excessive love; a resurrection,

To recompense your patience, from the Tombe

Is granted her, thorough your fruitfull wombe.

You may conceive, that as she languisht here,

She, by degree, did take a new growth there.

Nor need you call this child another name;

But fancy it to be the very same…

As I say, the other topic that seems humanly alive to me is verse about his own writing of poetry. In this poem, he combines small children and his writing (there may be a misprint here; the third couplet doesn’t make sense to me):

As I in bed, fore day, did verses make,

My Bedfellow, my little Boy, did wake.

Father, you write on everything, said He,

Let me intreat you, make one Verse for me.

I presently reply’d (He cannot say black:)

Thou’rt my white boy, although thy eyes be clack.

Thou bringst my Book; my Candle thou dost light;

I love thee next unto thy Sister bright.

If thou wilt learn thy Book, I’ll leave to thee,

Not one verse, but all my Poetry.

We also see his children learning to flatter the interests of their book loving father. One poem celebrates a better typeface that’s been found for his latest publication, and we glimpse in passing his children humouring him as best they can:

This Print’s so fair and bright, in th’others stead,

The Letter now invites and crys, Come, read.

My little Boys are so tane with’t, that They

Printers will be and Stationers, they say…

Barksdale is rather good, I think, on trying hard, but one way or other missing good poems (as I’m afraid he did):

Upon Verses made in his sleep

Me thought, I said, They are very well, and so!

They shall continue. Then I wak’t, and O!

I cry’d They vanish! Where d’ye take your flight?

Stay! Now I have them. Now they are out of sight.

A while they doe thus on my Fancy wave:

A piece or two, but now; now, none I have.

Waking, I never shall recover them. Once more

I’ll sleep: They’ll come, as they did come before.

In his ‘Upon the losse of some Copies’, he admonishes himself for being anxious about misplacing some papers: “Unless the Reader take all to the Best, / You may complain, you did not lose the Rest”. He worries about writing poems after the age of 40, about how it could be that Fletcher, Davenant and the rest can so obsess him. But the ‘great pretender to poetry’ was modest about what he actually did manage to write:

To the Printer

I pray, take care; Th’Erratas are enow

I’th’Book it self, although you Print it true.

My photograph shows one glimpse of what Barksdale didn't write about, the landscapes of the Cotswolds.

1000000000000000000000000000000

"How long shall God and his Saints reigne? How long shall the damned burn in Hell? For ever. How long is that? Imagine an hundred thousand yeares. Alas! That is nothing in respect of Eternitie. Imagine ten hundred thousand yeares, yea so many ages? Yet that is nothing: Eternitie is still as long as it was. Imagine a thousand millions of yeares. And yet that is nothing. Eternitie is not a whit shortened. Imagine yet more, 1000000000000000000000000000000, a thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand Millions of yeares. Imagine, I say, the damned should burn in Hell so many yeares, and yet thou hast not found the very beginning of Eternitie. Imagine once more so many millions of millions of yeares as there are drops in the sea, and yet thou art not come to the beginning of Eternitie."

After my last post, I have been reading a few 17^th century writers on hell. This present post is about one of the good guys, Samuel Richardson (no, another one of the same name), who denied the existence of hell, and I have read about others of his persuasion in D. P. Walker. But, as a trial of a technology unavailable to the learned Walker, I put ‘millions of years’ into the EEBO keyword search, and out tumbled all the grisly enthusiasts for eternal torment inflicted by a just and angry God. My two images here are a page from The considerations of Drexelius upon eternitie translated by Ralph Winterton (1636), one of many attempts to frighten and dismay with a diatribe on the length of eternity, and the handsome title page of Robert Bolton’s treatise affirming hell’s existence. Highly decorative for teachings so rebarbative, I liked Bolton’s portrait too: bluff, apparently kindly, but everlasting fire and brimstone all round, ye sinners!

I have read Steve Jay Gould’s Time’s Arrow/Time’s Cycle, but till one looks at these primary texts, you don’t realize how odd a view of time they had: One day in Eden, 6,000 years, after that, the millennium adding another thousand, then eternity. We have since almost turned time round imaginatively: something like eternity first in geological time, homo sapiens sapiens with 7,000 years of civilization, and no confidence in the future.

But before I start on Richardson, here’s the awful idea put into poetry, by the Wesley’s in the 18^th century. It's a cheery ditty indeed:

‘The smoke of their torment ascendeth up, &c’. Revelations xiv. 11.

The smoke alas, must still ascend,

And never will their torment end,

No respite can the damn'd obtain,

No interval of rest from pain:

Millions of years shall pass away,

Nor shorten the eternal day,

While still in blasphemies they own

Their punishment but just begun.

~~~

Vain, wretched man, whose fond desire

Would quench the everlasting fire,

Or teach it will not always last

After a course of æons past;

O mayst thou never, never know

The dark abyss of endless woe,

Or in its literal strictness feel

The truth of an eternal hell.

I was recently reading a set of student essays on Milton, many of them about Hell and Pandemonium. Though one or two had succumbed (creditably enough) to the interest of the intellectual background, but everyone treated Milton’s hell with the same serene composure, merely as a literary idea, no more perturbing than (say) ‘Comus’ being set near Ludlow. But presumably some of Milton’s contemporary readers might have thought that, unless they could experience grace, they would finally get to compare the poet’s version with the real thing.

But hell as in Milton’s poem was under open attack (rather than discreet Socinian denial) in England even before Paradise Lost (and blogging last week about Mount Etna also reminded me of this book): Samuel Richardson’s A discourse of the torments of hell The foundation and pillars thereof discovered, searched, shaken and removed. With many infallible proofs, that there is not to be a punishment after this life for any to endure that shall never end. This was printed anonymously in 1658, but over his own name in the 1660 text.

Richardson has a brief ODNB entry to his name, and gets three brief mentions in D. P. Walker’s The Decline of Hell. I think he deserves a bit more attention than Walker gave him. Anyone who wrote and published both a denial of hell and a plea for religious tolerance (as Richardson also did) was mustering a humanity and tolerance unusual in his time. Richardson was not an atheist, but to explain his position, writes simply: “Must we suffer the torments of Hell? I believe Christ hath born the whole punishment of sinne; in it I am satisfied, and desire no more.”

Richardson was up against a difficult problem. Central texts in the New Testament relating to hell rather dismayingly indicate that the redeeming Christ, the God of Love, was actually quite keen on the idea. Richardson scatters allusions to bits of the texts in Matthew’s Gospel rather than engage in a direct contradiction of Christ’s words. Unable to attack here, Richardson puts a general emphasis on the unreliable nature of Bible translations: “The testimony of the learned, of the proper signification of shheol, Hades and Gehenna caused a further search, and my descent herein; I alledge not the sayings of men for proof, but for a witnesse against themselves…” Walker expounds how normal this angle of approach was for critics of the idea of eternal damnation (was that word really ‘eternal’ in the Hebrew?).

Richardson was quite prepared to be direct: he says he ‘detests’ the notion of hell (“as M. Beza did detest the Papists Limbus and purgatory, so do I their dreams of hell, it being a device of man without scripture, with all their uncertain brain-sick fancies, for the imaginations of men have no end”).

Regular attacks on the credibility of the witnesses for hell serve Richardson well – where do they get their evidence from? “When you write again, I pray tell us how you know that in Hell they do so, for the word of God saith not so, nor have you been there to hear it, nor they that told you so; to affirm things in Religion not revealed in the word of God, is to presume above that which is written, and contrary to 2 Cor. 4. 8. Rom. 15. 4. Socrates an Heathen, was more wise and modest in not affirming things he knew not, being asked what was done in Hell, said, he never went thither, nor communed with any that came from thence: yet you and others affirm with great boldness and confidence things you know not; some say in Hell the eye is afflicted with darkness, whereas darkness is no affliction to the eye; also they say their eares are afflicted with horrible and hideous outcries, their noses with poysonous and stinking smells, (of what I pray?) their tongues with gally bitternesse, the whole body with intollerable fire; the damned shall prize a drop of water worth ten thousand worlds; cursing shall be their tunes, blasphemies their ditties, lamentation their songs, and shrieking their straines, they shall lye shrieking and screaming continually. Ye see how men set their braines awork to invent lyes; for all they say is without warrant from the word of God."

Richardson at least writes without fear for his own personal safety, but he does expect the persecution of his book. In his pertinacious way, if the book must suffer, he puts it in the best possible company: “some have burned the Bible; and Doctor Crisps book of salvation by Christ alone, Mr. Archers, late of All-hallowes London, his Treatise of comfort to believers, against their sinnes and sorrow, was burnt by the Hang-man; the same spirit is alive to burn this also; I expect no better from such as are not taught of God.”

He does that characteristic scrutiny of what the originatory text doesn’t say: “We doe not finde the place of Hell mentioned in any of the Six dayes work of God; if it be a place, it is a created place, and so a part of the Creation of God; the Whale is mentioned in Scripture; if there be a place of Hell, it is a greater thing, and in that it is not found in the Creation of God, it is a ground to judge that it is of the creation of man, a vain imagination of man; for their reasons prove it not, nor do they agree amongst themselves of the proof of it, neither where it is nor what it is.” Milton has quite a bit about God separating off a bit of chaos to make room for hell (and Chaos and old Night being miffed about the encroachment). Chaos has (I suppose) the potential to be briefly pleasant, God doesn’t want any of that.

I was also reminded of Milton and that famous passage on Mulciber’s long fall from heaven when Richardson repeats some unnamed astronomers’ mathematics for the duration of falling from the fixed stars of the firmament to earth: “Astronomers say that there are three Heavens above the Firmament, where the fixed stars are is a hundred and sixteen millions of miles above the earth, which is so high, that if a stone or weight should fall from thence, and continue falling an hundred and fifty miles an houre, it would be eighty eight yeares, two weeks four dayes five houres and twenty minutes a falling down to the earth. "

Richardson mentions Robert Bolton and, of course, deplores his doctrine:

“After man had sinned, God expounded the punishment of the breach of his Law, Gen. 3. 14. to verse 20. it is evident that the punishment of the old Serpent the Devill, and of the woman and of the man for their sin, are onely punishments of this life; there is not the least word of any punishment after this life, much lesse of a punishment never to end; so that by that which is said we may judge of that Mr. Bolton and others say, of being everlastingly in a red hot scorching fire, depriv’d of al possibility of dying, or of being ever consumed in torment eternally; they say the fire of hell burneth far hotter then ten thousand rivers of brimstone; how know they it, seeing they never felt it, nor they that told you so? three drops of brimstone will make one so full of torment that one cannot forbear roaring out for pain, yet it must be born so long as God is God.”

Mount Etna moralised, 1670

My illustrations are from Heneage Finch, Earl of Winchilsea’s A true and exact relation of the late prodigious earthquake & eruption of Mount AEtna, or, Monte-Gibello (1669) and from a ballad, Mount AEtna's flames, or, The Sicilian wonder (also 1669) written to tell the same marvels to a less polite audience, where I believe that we can see the woodcut engraver doing a down-market version of the Earl’s woodcut (just as the ballad itself is entirely indebted to the illustrated pamphlet). Finch had gone to some trouble to get the original drawing done, as his pamphlet explains: “As Your Majesty will see by the draught that I take the boldness to send herewith; it was the best I could get, but hath nothing of the Progress into the Sea [he means, the sight of the lava flowing into the sea itself]; the confusion was so great in the City, which is almost surrounded with Mountains of Fire, that I could not get any to draw one…”

Heneage Finch was Ambassador to Constantinople (where he got on terrifically well), his poor wife bore him 27 children, and, as the ODNB life says, “his correspondence breathes trenchant common sense”. About the eruption Finch, who was actually in Catania, gathered all the information he could, and his account sticks to the facts. Altogether he writes to Charles II in the spirit of the Royal Society.

I was therefore interested to find Thomas Vincent’s Fire and brimstone from heaven, from earth, in hell, or, Three discourses I. Concerning the burning of Sodom and Gomorrah formerly, II. Concerning the burning of AEetna, or Mount Gibel more lately, III. Concerning the burning of the wicked eternally, with fire and brimstone (1670). Vincent was a compulsive publisher of his own sermons and moral discourses (here’s a pot calling the kettle black, eh?). He takes Finch’s pamphlet, with its forward-looking discourse, and exploits it for hell-fire and brimstone. He says he was actually prompted by what Finch didn’t say: “The occasion of my Writting these few Sheets concerning these three great Burnings, was the breaking forth of such Flames and Streams of Fire the last Year at the Mouth and sides of Aetna, or Mount Gibel; being willing to take hold of any occasion, especially so sutable as this, to awaken Sinners, that they might endeavour their escape from the future and everlasting burnings of Hell; and this I thought the rather to do, because in the Relation given us of those stupendous burnings of Aetna, the hand of the Lord was not in the least minded, his Name not once mentioned, and no improvement thereof at all attempted by him, or them that drew up the Narrative; which to me seemed a shame, and quickned me (when others who might have done it better were silent) in my endeavours to make some advantage of this Providence for the good of Souls.”

A section like this one following is mainly directly lifted from Finch, with a few biblical references (which might remind us of Milton’s conspicuously volcanic hell): “But that which was most notable in these eruptions, was the stream and flood of fire, which in liqued melted matter, gushed forth at the breaches. We read Isa. 30. 33. Of a stream of Brimstone kindled by the breath of God, which runneth in burning Tophet: Such was the stream of Fire and Brimstone which came forth of this burning Mountain, the flames of it were blew like burning brimstone, the coulour of it fiery red, like melted brasse, the motion of it like Quick-silver; this stream (wherein great stones were seem to swim of the bigness of an ordinary Table) coming forth at the sides of the Mountain, ran down like a mighty torrent, and meeting with a Hill devided it self into two currents, which spread themselves, one of them in some places at least six miles in breadth, and was judged to be fifteen yards in depth. In its progresse this stream ran in, upon a Lake of four fathem Water, and four miles in compass, which it both filled up, and raised a Hill of ragged Stones and Rocks upon it. The composition of this fiery stream was judged to be Sulphur, Nitre, Sal Armoniac, Lead, Iron, Brass, and other Metals, melted with the vehement heat of the fire.”

Where Heneage made no comment, Thomas makes propaganda: “Yea, the Image of the blessed Lady of the Annunciata, (so highly reverenced by the Superstitious Papists, unto which many resorted in Pilgrimage from remote parts) was not spared, whatever power the Intercession of that Virgin Lady hath with her Son in Heaven, for persons here upon the Earth, (as the Papists ridiculously fancy) yet nothing could now avail to secure her Image from being swallowed up by this devouring fiery stream; whereby all may see that there was no difference between the stones of that Image, and those of the other buildings in that place which equally felt the force of the fire.”

Despite making some allusions to the dismay and panic in London at the 1666 great fire, Thomas feels a Protestant population would have coped better: “Had the Christian religion taken place there in the purity and power thereof, it might have born up the spirits of the sincere, and established Christians against overwhelming fear and amazement in all those storms and danger; no wonder if the blind Superstitious Papists, whose worship is mingled with such vanity and Indolatry, be filled with such dread and horrour, especially the more notorious Sinners amongst them.”

Soon he is ranting away (I suspect a certain disappointment with God for making all this smoke without carbonizing a suitable number of sinners): “Sicily hath drunk deep of the Cup of Fornication, which is in the hand of the Romish Whore, and God made some of them drink something of the Cup of his Wrath and Indignation: yea, Sodomy it self is of frequent practice in those parts, and God brings ruine like unto that of Sodom upon their houses by Streams of Fire and Brimstone, though through infinite patience their persons were preserved.”

Thomas Vincent does half know that Athanasius Kirchner and Nicholas Steno are establishing what would become geology, but he is having none of it: “Some are of the opinion that there are Fountains of Fire under ground as well as of Water; and that in the bosom and bowels of the Earth, God hath layd up Treasures of this Element, enclosing it in vast Caverns, as in so many Store-houses; which Subterranean Fire they assign to be the cause of hot Bathes, and that Mount Aetna, as also Vesuvius with other flaming Mountains, which Geographers and Travellers tell us are to be seen in all the parts of the World, are the breathing holes of this Fire: but the Scripture is wholly silent of any such work of God there; we read of the Earth, and the gathering together of the waters, and the Fountains of the great deep, but nothing of any Fountains of Fire mingled with either of these Elements; and the laying up of this Element in store, in a place so low, when naturally it tendeth upwards, is not easie to conceive; besides who ever hath descended into the depths of the Earth, to search and find out these depths of Fire?”

Vincent’s main purpose was to expound the Christian message of the eruption. His whole book develops a religious pyromania. The Great Fire of London is strongly on his mind; and for him, the Western world seems to be going up in flames: “These late dreadful Eruptions of Fire and Brimstone from Mount Aetna, should carry our eyes upward unto God the Author hereof. The Lord hath been lately upon the Earth, he hath shown himself in great Majesty; a Fire hath devoured before him, and it hath been very tempestuous round about; a smoke hath gone out of his mouth and Coals have been under his feet; he hath clothed himself with flames, and of late appeared very terribly in these Europaean parts; he hath not only kindled fires in houses and Cities, turning them into ashes and ruinous heaps, but he hath also kindled a fire in a great Mountain, which hath broken forth with a great flame.”

His eagerness to seize on the eruption, and other parts of his book about whether the flames of hell are metaphorical or not, suggest that he is concerned by questioning or outright denial of the existence of hell. Samuel Richardson’s A discourse of the torments of hell: The foundation and pillars thereof discovered, searched, shaken and removed. With many infallible proofs, that there is not to be a punishment after this life for any to endure that shall never end (anonymous in 1658, over Richardson’s own name in 1660) may have come his way. Etna, thoroughly supernatural in Vincent’s account, helps him reinforce belief in the other supernatural flames: his 3rd chapter explains ‘That Hell is a place of Fire and Brimstone’, then follow the categorical pronouncements of chapter 4:

“Concerning the properties of Hell-fire.

There are seven properties of Hell-fire.

• First, It will be a great Fire.
• Secondly, It will be a dark fire.
• Thirdly, It will be a feirce fire.
• Fourthly, It will be an irresistible fire.
• Fifthly, It will be a continual fire.
• Sixthly, It will be an unquenchable fire.
• Seventhly, It will be an everlasting fire.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Etna

This website has other contemporary engravings, at least as vivid as that in Finch, of the 1669 eruption:

http://boris.vulcanoetna.com/ETNA_1669.html

'Comus' in the West Country, 1642

These are fairly full excerpts from the little pamphlet, A blazing starre seen in the west at Totneis in Devonshire, on the foureteenth of this instant November, 1642. VVherin is manifested how master Ralph Ashley, a deboyst cavalier, attemted to ravish a young virgin, the daughter of Mr. Adam Fisher, inhabiting neare the said towne. Also how at that instant, a fearefull comet appeared, to the terrour and amazment of all the country thereabouts. Likewise declaring how he persisting in his damnable attemt, was struck with a flaming-sword, which issued from the comet, so that he dyed a fearefull example to al his fellow cavaliers.

Our Alice Egerton is a ‘young Virgine, Daughter to Master Adam Fisher’. Young Mistress Fisher lived a mile outside Totnes, and on Monday 14^th November 1642 she went into the town, ‘where being busied, partly about her occasions, and partly in visiting some Friends and Kinsfolkes, she was belated’.

But she was determined to head home, rather than be out without her Father’s leave, and ‘the times being so dangerous, and so many Cavaliers abroad’. The relatives try to dissuade her, saying the ‘deboyst Cavaliers’ make it dangerous enough trying to travel by day, still worse at night. But she says ‘God was above the Devill, and that she feared not, but that God which she trusted in, could, and would defend her from all her Enemies.’

So we enter on her scene of nocturnal trial: ‘before she could get the halfe of the way to her fathers house it grew very darke, so that she could scarce discerne her hand, thus she went on, sometimes listening whether she could heare any Body … on a sudden she heard the noyse of a Horse galloping towards her, at which she beganne to be afraid. But at last she plucked up a good heart…’

She has met Ralph Ashley, ‘a Gentleman which knew her well, and she knew him…’ Notice that the narrative shuffles a little here: the villain will be firmly cast as a Cavalier in our author’s polemic. He is actually a local gentleman, and not one of the Ralph Hopton’s cavalier soldiery in the West Country, but his status makes him a near enough match for propaganda purposes. They are in the dark, so he cannot recognize her outright, and has to call to mind rather than see her youthful prettiness: ‘he asked her whether she was going so late, she told him home to her fathers, he demanded who that was, she told him Master Adam Fisher, with that he called to mind her beauty, and the Devill strait furnished him with a device to obtain his wicked purpose.’

As in Comus, the wicked tempter at first pretends friendship and assistance: ‘Sweet heart quoth he I know thy father well, and for his sake I will see thee safe at thy fathers House, for the times are dangerous, and but a little before there are soldiers which I have cause to suspect, will do the some outrage.’

All is set for the central scene of the drama, and for heaven’s intervention: trusting him at first, she gets up behind him on the horse, but he then goes off the way, claiming it is to avoid the soldiers. Feigning an excuse, he then dismounts, and lays hands on her:

‘and began to woo her to grant his desire, but she denying him with unlimited resolution, he went about to ravish her, taking a grievous oath that no power in heaven or earth could save her from his lust, with that the poore virgin, with pittious shrikes and cries spake these words O lord God of Hosts, tis in thy power to deliver me, help Lord or I perish, in the meane time he continued cursing and swearing that her prayers were in vaine, for there was no power could redeeme her, these words were no sooner uttered, but immediately a fearefull Commet burst out in the ayre, so that it was as light as at high noone, this sudden apparition struck him and all the inhabitants into a great feare, and the poore virgin was intranced, the wretch casting his eye about and seeing her lye upon the ground as if he had meant to dare damnation tooke a great oath swearing God damme-him, alive or dead he would injoy her.

And as he was going about to lay hands of (sic) her intranced Body, A streame of fire strucke from the Comet, in the perfect shape and exact resemblance of a flaming Sword, so that he fell downe staggering, severall poore shepherds which were in the field, foulding their flockes, these being amazed, seeing the flame of the Comet strike at the Earth, as they conceived, made to the place as neere as they could, where they heard a man blaspheming, and belching forth many damnable imprecations, and coming to the place, demanded how he came so wounded, he voluntarily related his intention, and what had happened to him by the perverseness of that Round-headed-whore, so he died raving and blaspheming to the terrour and amazement of the beholders.

The men presently tooke up the Maid supposing she had been dead, and carried her home to her fathers House, where they were entertained though with great sorrow for their daughters supposed death, the maid having continued intranced thus almost all that night, at length she began to draw her breath, and when she came to her selfe, the very first words that she spake were these, Lord thou art Just in thy Judgments and mercifull in the midst of they justice, wherefore beseech thee let not this sinne be imputed to his Charge, in the day of Judgment.’

Our author has no doubt what happened, and what it means: ‘Reader heare is a president for all those that are customary blasphemers, and live after the lusts of their flesh, especially all those Cavaliers which esteem murder & rapine the chiefe Principalls of their religion.’

But what did happen? “Let not this sin be imputed to his Charge”, says our heroine when she decides the time is right to come out of her trance. I think it is quite likely that there was a ‘comet’. The night of November 14^th is right for the Leonids, and the dark night offered perfect viewing conditions. There was a bright light in the sky, and a descending fireball. In that moment of consternation, Mistress Fisher manages to strike Master Ashley with something sharp. He had maybe taken off his sword ready for untrussing himself (as they used to say). She wounds him mortally (dying, he blames her), and is overcome, or resumes her faint. Her religious schooling provides her with the full alternate narrative, for it was a kind of sword from heaven, after all. By the time she emerged from her trance at home, a thrilling confrontation between a blasphemer and herself as virtuous and God-fearing maid was ready for consumption, and found a ready audience.

I do not mean to be cynical about this: he was about to rape her. It is just about conceivable that he was the one human casualty of a meteor strike ever recorded, but it is likelier that he died another way.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonids

Devon was not royalist. Ending the 1642 campaigning season, the battle of Turnham Green had been fought west of London on the day before Mistress Fisher fought off Master Ashley. Ralph Hopton’s men in the West Country would not have known it, but the King’s best chance to end the war with a speedy victory had just gone.

http://www.british-civil-wars.co.uk/military/1642-south-west.htm#cornwall

Image source:

http://www.earthsky.org/radioshows/51797/leonid-meteor-shower-november-17-19

How could a parrot NOT love the Baroness of Grosbeke?

My parrot, Barney, alongside the parrot from Jan Steen’s ‘The Effects of Intemperance’ (who is being given a sip of wine: a beaker full of the warm south, as Keats would say). Barney turned up at the local pet-shop, an exile from his first home, and in need of a new owner. He is reportedly six or seven, and, yes, he talks: a bird-brained tape of his first household ‘Get out the way!’ ‘Come on!’ and the like, and in his repertoire of noises, their telephone and the growling of their dog, his old enemy.

In early modern terms he appears to be:

“VII. Aldrovandus his ash-coloured or bluish Parrot.

This according to Aldrovandus is ten inches long: Of the bigness of a tame Pigeon, or the common green Parrot. The Bill is black: The Nosthrils near to one another, in the upper part of the Bill next to the Head; which part is covered with a naked white skin [we afterwards observed the same figure and situation of the Nosthrils in all other Parrots.] The whole body is of an uniform colour, viz. a dark cinereous: Yet the lower part of the Back and Belly and the Rump are paler than the rest of the body, and almost white. The Tail is red of a Vermilion colour, very short, and scarce reaching further than the ends of the Wings. The region of the Eyes [sides of the head round the Eyes] is white and bare of feathers. The feathers of the Head and Neck are shorter than the others. They say that all of this kind are brought from Mina, an Indian City of St. Georges. We have seen many of them at London.”

In my photograph he is eating his chief gustatory delight, a piece of a digestive biscuit. Here is John Ray’s edition of The ornithology of Francis Willughby of Middleton in the county of Warwick Esq, fellow of the Royal Society in three books (1678) discussing those clever parrot feet:

“The Feet are of a singular fashion, for they have not three Toes standing forward and one backward, but two each way, like Woodpeckers. Jo. Faber, in his Expositions of Nardi Antonio Recchi his Animals found in New Spain, hath noted and observed concerning the Toes of Parrots something not mentioned by any Author, viz. That when they walk, climb up, or descend down the sides of their Cages, they stretch two of their Toes forward, and two backward; but when they take their meat, and bring it to their mouths, they make use of three Toes to hold it till they have eaten it up. Yea, (which may seem wonderful) they do so dexterously and nimbly turn the greater hind-toe forward and backward, that on sight of it you would confess your self not to know, whether it were given them by Nature to be used as a fore-toe in feeding, or a back-toe in walking.”

It is the happiness of the parrot to be, like small children or drunks, the regular source of a fund of anecdote:

“They do not only imitate mans voice, but in wit excell all other birds, as Aldrovandus proves by many Histories and examples. I shall not think much to set down one very pleasant story, which Gesner saith was told him by a certain friend, of a Parrot, which fell out of King Henry VIII. his Palace at Westminster into the River of Thames that runs by, and then very seasonably remembring the words it had often heard some whether in danger or in jest use, cried out amain, A Boat, a Boat, for twenty pound. A certain experienced Boatman made thither presently, took up the Bird, and restored it to the King, to whom he knew it belonged, hoping for as great a reward as the Bird had promised. The King agreed with the Boatman that he should have as the Bird being asked anew should say: And the Bird answers, Give the Knave a Groat.

CHAP. V. * Clusius his Discourse and Account of Parrots.

The Noble Philip Marnixius of St. Aldegond had a Parrot, whom I have oft heard laugh like a man, when he was by the by-standers bidden so to do in the French Tongue, in these words: Riez, Perroquet, riez; that is, Laugh, Parrot, laugh. Yea, which was more wonderful, it would presently add in the French Tongue, as if it had been endued with reason, but doubtless so taught, O le grand sot, qui me faict rire; that is, O great fool, who makes me laugh: And was wont to repeat those words twice or thrice. But among others I saw one of those great ones in the house of the illustrious Lady, Mary of Bremeu, Dutchess of Croy and Areschot, of happy memory, before she went out of Holland, the like whereto for variety and elegancy of colours, I do not remember to have ever seen. For though almost all the feathers covering the body were red, yet the feathers of the Tail (which were very long) were partly red, and partly blue; but those on the Back and Wings particoloured of yellow, red, and green, with a mixture also of blue. Its Head about the Eyes was white and varied with waved black lines, like the Head of the Canida. I do not remember the like Parrot described in any Author. Moreover, this Bird was so in love with Anna the Dutchesses Neece, now Countess of Meghen, and Baroness of Grosbeke, that where ever she walked about the Room it would follow her, and if it saw any one touch her cloaths, would strike at him with its Bill; so that it seemed to be possessed with a spirit of jealousie.”

As we all like to tell a story (at least, we will do until the ubiquity of the video camera and YouTube makes the anecdote an obsolete form), parrots have always been prized and transacted across continents. Dutch painters loved them: Jan Breughel paints the garden of Eden with an orthnithological slant, as he loves those bright colours. Or parrots riot through still-lives, the exotic bird about to attack the exotic fruits the painter has piled up.

“But that the price of those birds there was very great; so that they were not rated at less than eight or ten German Dollars. Linscotius writes, that the Portugues had often made trial to bring over of them to Lisbon, but could never effect it, because they were too tender and delicate. But the Hollanders with a great deal of care and industry brought one alive as far as Amsterdam, which though it were not of the choicest, yet might have been sold for one hundred and seventy Florens or Gilders of that Province, that is somewhat more than seventy Dollars, as I find recorded in the Diary of that Voyage. That bird by the way had learned to pronounce many Holland words, which it had heard of the Mariners, and its Master had made it so tame, that it would put its Bill into his Mouth and Ears without doing him any harm, and would put in order the hairs of his beard if discomposed: And if any one else offered to touch him, it would presently snap or peck at him, as if it had been some Dog. "

Friendly, communicative and bright, the parrot was a kind of middle-class hawk. As Ray/Willoughby notes, it shares the same shape of beak as the ‘rapacious birds’, but it is domestic and funny. In portrait paintings of the period, young men often have their hawk (difficult, expensive both in itself and for your bets on its performance), but the parrot is the subversive companion of women. Here’s an early modern version of the celebrated Einstein the parrot:

“He (Clusius) adds further, that a certain Brasilian woman, living in a Village two miles distant from the Island, in which he with other Frenchmen dwelt, had a Parrot of this kind, which she made much of; which seemed to be endued with that understanding and reason, that it could discern and comprehend whatever she said who brought it up. For, saith he, walking forth sometimes to refresh our selves as far as that Village, when we passed by that womans house, she was wont to call upon us in these words, Will you give me a Comb, or a Looking-glass, and I will presently make my Parrot sing and dance before you? If we agreed to her request, as soon as she had pronounced some words to the Bird, it began not only to leap upon the Perch on which it stood, but also to talk and whistle, and imitate the shoutings and exclamations of the Brasilians, when they prepare themselves for the battel. In brief when it came into its Dames mind to bid it sing, it sang, to bid it leap, it leapt: But if taking it ill, that she had not obtained what she asked, she said to the bird Auge, that is, be still or silent: It stood still, and held its peace; neither could we by any means provoke it to move either foot or tongue.”

Here’s Einstein (Barney has some way to go):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSDFzg8_Wfg

and here’s Ruby, the swearing parrot (a likelier outcome):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xSn6vL2rLs