The Lady Macbeth of the Chilterns

A lengthy ride with my cycle club yesterday, up and down the Chilterns till we reached Wendover. Traversing this landscape made me think of someone who haunted it for far, far less innocent reasons back in the 17^th century, the intrepid Susan Higges. That’s her, dressed as a man, murdering a woman who has seen through her disguise (well, notionally her, it could just be a generic man-stabbing a woman woodcut, as could the scene of her hanging also be from stock).

I suppose Susan Higges might be well known to those scholars who have been interested in cross-dressed women, amazons, women murderesses: the ballad here has the lot.

As you will see, Higges ran a honey trap at home. She must have been a very, very forceful personality, and we get a good insight into contemporary sexual attitudes in the willingness of the young men she ‘surprised’ with her maids to buy her off from denouncing them to the Church courts.

But away from this domestic scam, Higges was a highwayman/woman, and part of what makes this a particularly good ballad is its lurking assent to her own pride in her audacity in the role, as she showed herself a good woman ‘of her hands’.

By slipping back into her gender and its roles when pursuit was hot, Higges had a long career on the road, until her fatal encounter with a woman sharp enough to see through her disguise, and foolish enough to tell her as much. Rather than admit that the game is up, or open herself to blackmail, Higges stabs her victim, who coughs or spits out three drops of blood onto Higges’ face.

We have two interpretative possibilities. I can very well imagine that there have been cases where a murderer becomes hysterically convinced along the lines of ‘what, will these hands ne’er be clean?’ Or the ballad writer, to spice up the confession brought on by Higges’ conscience, started thinking of Macbeth himself, with reminiscences of Lady Macbeth and her husband’s conviction that ‘maggot-pies and choughs and rooks’ will bring forth ‘the secrest’st man of blood’: “Each hour I thought that beasts and birds / this murder would reveale / Or that the ayre so vile a deed, / no longer would conceale.” Something in the air would betray the crime … Now, these convictions that Providence would intervene are not solely Shakespearean. The murderers in Arden of Faversham cannot scrub up his blood, which seems to spread as they try to expunge it, in A Warning for Fair Women there’s the solemn swapping of anecdotes:

Barnes
I have heard it told, that once a traveler,
Being in the hands of him that murdered him,
Told him, the fern that then grew in the place,
If nothing else, yet that would sure reveal him:
And seven years after, being safe in London,
There came a sprig of fern borne by the wind,
Into the room where as the murtherer was,
At sight whereof he sodainely start up,
And then revealed the murder.

But blood, and conscience, and a woman of masculine courage: if not Macbeth, what else would you remember, if you were a ballad writer cranking out a piece on the latest murder? Just as the woodcut artist added in the necessary devil to the picture of a murder, the balladeer was inclined to think along supernatural lines, and chose the best guide of all.

Here’s my transcript:

A true relation of one Susan Higges dwelling in Risborrow a towne in Buckinghamshire, and how shee lived 20. yeeres, by robbing on the high-wayes, yet unsuspected of all that knew her; till at last, comming to Messeldon, there robbing a woman; which woman knew her and called her by her name: now when she saw she was betrayed, she killed her, and standing by her while she gave three groanes, she spat three drops of blood in her face, which never could be washt out; by which whee was knowne and executed for the aforesaid murder at the assises in Lent at Brickhill. To the tune of, The worthy London prentice. , Printed at London : for F. C[oles] dwelling in the Old-Baily, [ca. 1640?]

To murne for my offences

and former passed sinnes

This sad and doleful story

my heavie heart begins:

Most wickedly I spent my time

devoid of godly grace

A lewder woman never liv’d

I think in any place.

~

Neere Buckingham I dwelled

and Susan Higges my name,

Well thought of by good Gentlemen

and farmers of good fame:

Where thus, for twentie yeeres at least

I liv’d in gallant sort:

Which made the Countrey marvell

to heare of my report.

~

My state was not maintained

(as you shall understand)

By good and honest dealings

nor labour of my hand

But by deceit and cozening shifts,

the end whereof we see

Hath ever beene repaid with shame,

and ever like to be.

~

My servants were yong country girles,

brought up unto my mind,

By nature falce and beautifull,

and of a gentle kinde:

Who with their sweet enticing eyes,

did many youngsters move

To come by night unto my house,

in hope of further love.

~

But still at their close meetings,

(as I the plot had laid)

I stept in still at unawares,

While they the wantons plaid,

And would in question bring their names

except they did agree

To give me mony for this wrong

done to my house and me.

~

This was but petty cozenage

to things that I have done:

My weapon by the high way side

hath me much money won:

In mens attire I oft have rode,

upon a Gelding stout,

And done great robberies valiantly

the Countries round about.

~

I had my Scarves and Vizards,

my face for to disguise:

Sometimes a beard upon my chin,

to blind the peoples eyes:

My Turky Blade, and Pistols good

my courage to maintain :

Thus tooke I many a farmers purse

well cram’d with golden gaine.

~

Great store of London Mercahnts

I boldly have bid stand,

And shewed myself most bravely,

a Woman of my hand:

You ruffling Roysters every one,

in my defence say then

Wee women still for gallant minds

may well compare with men.

The second part, to the same tune.

But if so be it chanced,

the Countries were beset,

With hue, and cryes, and warrants,

into my house I get:

And I so being with my Maids,

would cloake the matter so,

That no man could by any meanes,

the right offender know.

~

Yet God that still most justly,

doth punish every vice

Did bring unto confusion

my fortunes in a trice:

For by a murder all my sinnes

Were strangely brought to light,

And such desert I had by Law

as Justice claim by right.

~

Upon the Heath of Misselden,

I met a woman there,

And rob’d her, as from market,

homewards she did repaire,

Which woman cal’d me by my name,

and said that she me knew:

For which even with her lives deare blood,

my hands I did imbrew.

~

But after I had wounded,

this woman unto death,

And that her bleeding body,

was almost reft of breath,

She gave a groane, and therewithal,

did spit upon my face,

Three drops of blood that never could

be wiped from that place.

~

For after I returned

unto my house againe,

The more that I it wash’d

it more appeared plaine

Each hour I thought that beasts and birds

this murder would reveale

Or that the ayre so vile a deed,

no longer would conceale.

~

So heavie at my conscience,

this wofull murther lay,

That I was soone enforced,

the same for to bewray,

And to my servants made it knowne,

as God appointed me:

For blood can never secret rest,

nor long unpunisht be.

~

My servants to the Justices,

declar’d what I had said;

For which I was attached,

and to the Jayle convey’d,

And at the Sizes was condemn’d,

and had my just desert:

Even such a death let all them have

that beare so false a heart.

~

So farewell earthly pleasure,

my quaintance all adue,

With whom I spent the treasure,

which causeth me to rue.

Leave off your wanton pastimes

lascivious and ill,

Which without Gods great mercy,

doth soule and body kill.

~

Be warned by this story,

you ruffling Roysters all:

The higher that you climbe in sinne,

the greater is your fall:

And since the world so wicked s,

let all desire grace,

Grant Lord that I the last may be

that runneth such a race

The folly of Thomas Appletree, 1579

On the 17^th July 1579 the queen was in her ‘privie barge’ on the river between Greenwich and Deptford, and with her the French Ambassador, Jean de Simier (rather splendidly misreported here as ‘Mounsier Schemere’), the Earl of Lincoln, and her Vice Chamberlain, Christopher Hatton.

Drama followed that would put present day 24 hour news in meltdown:

“it chaunced that one Thomas Appeltree a yong man and servant to M. Henrie Carie, with ii or iii children of her Majesties Chappel, & one other named Barnard Acton, being in a boate on the Thames, rowing up & down betwixt the places aforenamed, the aforesaid Thomas Appeltree had a Caliver or Harquebush, which he had three or foure times discharged with bullet, shooting at random verie rashly, who by great misfortune shot one of the watermen (being the second man next unto the bales of the said Barge, labouring with his Oare, which sate within six foot of hir highnesse) cleane through both of his armes: the blow was so great and grievous, that it moved him out of his place, and forced him to crie and scritche out piteously, supposing himself to be slaine, and saying he was shot through the body. The man bleedin abundantly, as though he had had a hundred daggers thrust into him, the Queenes Majesty shewed such noble courage as is most wonderfull to be hearde and spoken of, for beholding hym so maimed, and bleeding in suche sorte, she never bashed thereat, but shewed effectually a prudent and magnanimous heart, & most courteously comforting the poore man, she bad him be of good cheare, and sayd he should want nothing that might be for his ease, commanding him to be covered till such time as he came to the shore, til which time he lay bathing in his own bloud, which might have bene an occasion to have terrified the eies of the beholders. But such and so great was the courage and magnanimitie of our dread and soveraigne Ladie, that it never quailed.”

Unsurprisingly, the culpably careless Appeltree and his companions were apprehended, he was brought before the Privy Counsel, which found the case ‘most haynous and wicked’, and pronounced a death sentence. Appeltree was put in the Southwark Marshalsea, and the next Tuesday paraded through the city, out to Black Wall, and then to a gibbet beside the river.

Very penitent, on his knees, poor Appeltree spoke of his trust in Jesus, and ‘discoursed very godly’. He also asserted that “GOD is my judge, I never in my lyfe intended hurt to the Queenes most excellent Majesty … I am penitent and sory for my good mayster, M Henrie Carie, who hath bene so grieved for my fault, suffering rebuke for the same.” Carey was a fairly new member of the Privy Council (from 1577), Appeltree may have been connected to his company of players (which would later do him much more credit as ‘The Lord Chamberlain’s Men).

“The teares gusht out of his eyes very fast …And as the executioner as one greedy of his pray, had put the roape about his necke, the people cried, stay, stay, stay, and with that came the right honorable Sir Christopher Hatton Viz-chamberlayne to hir highnesse, who enquired what he had confessed, and being certified as is before expressed, he vailed his bonnet, and declared that the Queenes Majestie had sent him thither both to make the cause open to them how haynous and grievous the offence of the saide Thomas Appeltree was, and further to signifie to him hir gratious pleasure: & so continued his message, as ye may read it printed by it self, and annexed to this discourse…”

[The promised message announcing royal clemency is not in fact in the pamphlet]

“Whether that Appeltree had cause to be joyful or no, I leave to your judgements, who being come downe from the ladder, received his pardon and gave GOD and the Prince praise.”

Everyone present then prayed for the Queen, using the same form of words as in Church. I suppose that the stupidly silly Appeltree was saved by his youth (he is in the company of youthful performers from the Queen’s Chapel), and the interventions of the embarrassed Henry Carey as a character witness. Appeltree was found only ‘traytorlike’, but, it seems, too young to be a plausible assassin in the pay of Rome or Spain. If they were only going to hang him for nearly shooting the Queen, they must even in that have conceded that it had been an accident: a traitor would have had the full savagery of being hanged, drawn, and quartered. The pamphlet’s hostility turns against the executioner, greedy for his prey and his perquisites, and so, on the shoreline near Blackwall, a party of Londoners out to see a hanging get instead a drama of royal clemency. The Queen does indeed seem to have behaved very well through all this.

Afterwards, the lucky Thomas Appeltree, “Justly condemned for his trespasse to die the death …Most gratiously by the singular mercy and bountie of our dread and soveraigne Ladie Queene ELIZABETH preserved” disappears from history, with a story to tell for the rest of his life.

A briefe discourse of the most haynous and traytorlike fact of Thomas Appeltree for which hee shoulde haue suffred death on Tuisday the one and twentith of Iulie last: wherin is set downe his confession. Whereunto is annexed, the report of the message sent to the place of execution from hir most excellent Maiestie, by the right honourable Sir Christopher Hatton Knight, vizchaberlain to hir highnesse (1579)

(I hunted for a suitable image of a royal barge, and only found the unprovenanced and undated woodcut.)

'And wantonly with th'under-Fishes strives': naughty early modern swimming

I’m being encouraged to find out about early modern swimming (no, seriously, I am), not I think much considered since Michael West plunged in with his ‘Spenser, Everard Digby, and the Renaissance Art of Swimming’, Renaissance Quarterly (Spring, 1973). This led me to think about bathing scenes, and so on to David and Bathsheba, and I’ve been looking at the Web Gallery of Art’s collection of images. In most, Bathsheba is being ‘bathed’ by her lady attendants sponging her from a basin or ewer, but I did choose a health-spa like scene as my image; it is by Jacopo Zucchi (1573-ish). I think the lady in the middle of the pool may be working on a round-arm stroke; the lady emerging from the water does seem neither to have read the ‘No Petting’ notice nor its small print addendum ‘not even yourself’. They are perhaps all meant to be episodes of Bathsheba doing what her name seems to foretell she would do.

I arrived at a text: Sylvester’s version of Du Bartas, ‘Fourth Day of the Second Week’, where the story of David is told, including a killingly funny version of David and Goliath, and a eulogy on David as poet, with Sylvester’s own quirky testimonial:

“And I my Self in my pied Plaid a-slope, / With Tune-skilled foot after his Harp do hop.”

(There’s a side-note on ‘plaid’: ‘A kind of light mantle made of a thin checkered Cloth, worn by the Hill-men in Scotland : and now much used with us for Saddle clothes’.)

Leaving the pursuit of the plaid in early modern poetry to another idle hour, this is David’s moral ‘decay’, triggered by Bathsheba:

His Song’s sweet fervor slacks, his Soul’s pure Fire
Is damp’d and dimm’d with smoke of foul desire:
His Harp is laid a-side, he leaves his Lays,
And after his fair Neighbors Wife he neighs.

The Bible narrative is terse on David’s behaviour as stallion:

2. And it came to pass in an eveningtide, that David arose from off his bed, and walked upon the roof of the king's house: and from the roof he saw a woman washing herself; and the woman was very beautiful to look upon.

3. And David sent and enquired after the woman. And one said, Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?

4. And David sent messengers, and took her; and she came in unto him, and he lay with her; for she was purified from her uncleanness: and she returned unto her house.

5. And the woman conceived, and sent and told David, and said, I am with child.

6. And David sent to Joab, saying, Send me Uriah the Hittite …

Du Bartas and Sylvester go to work on this, and are busy to blame Bathsheba for her vanity and exhibitionism:

But, her proud Beauty now, and her Eyes’ force,
Began to draw the Bill of their [her and Uriah’s] Divorce:
Honor gives place to Love: and by degrees
Fear from her heart, Shame from her forehead flees.
The Presence-chamber, the High street, the Temple
These Theaters are not sufficient ample
To show her Beauties, if but Silk them hide:
She must have windows each-where open wide
About her Garden-Baths, the while therein
She basks and bathes her smooth Snow-whiter skin;
And one-while set in a black Jet-like Chair,
Perfumes, and combs, and curls her golden hair

What I found interesting is the mixture of aesthetic memories triggered in the Bartas-Sylvester combo when she actually gets into the water of the bathing pool:

Another-while under the Crystal brinks,
Her Alabastrine well-shap’t Limbs she shrinks
Like to a Lilly sunk into a glass:
Like soft loose Venus (as they paint the Lass)
Born in the Seas, when with her eyes sweet-flames,
Tunnies and Triton, she at-once inflames:
Or like an Ivory Image of a Grace ,
Neatly enclos’d in a thin Crystal Case:
Another-while, unto the bottom dives,
And wantonly with th’under-Fishes strives:
For, in the bottom of this liquid Ice,
Made of Musäick work, with quaint device
The cunning work-man had contrived trim
Carps, Pikes, and Dolphins seeming even to swim.

The lily in a glass and ivory image conceits are directly out of Ovid (Salmacis and Hermaphroditus, that memorable scene of the memorable hazards of swimming in cold water), Venus inflaming the tuna comes from paintings, and Bathsheba ducking under the water to strive wantonly with the ‘under-Fishes’ takes us back to the two blondes in the Jacuzzi who impede the progress of Guyon, champion of temperance, in Spenser’s ‘Bower of Bliss’ episode (the quaint phrasing is pure Sylvester). Could the mosaic tiles of the pool, with those Mediterranean dolphins, be from Roman baths?

David is of course captivated by what he sees (as in the Bible, he sees her by accident because he, well, just happens, to be up on a roof terrace, right, but her open-windowed bathhouse was made to invite prying eyes to the admiration of her beauty):

Ishai’s great son, too-idly, walking hie
Upon a Tarras, this bright star doth spy;
And sudden dazzled with the splendor bright,
Fares like a Prisoner, who new brought to light
From a Cymmerian , dark, deep dungeon,
Feels his sight smitten with a radiant Sun.
But too-too-soon re-clear’d, he sees (alas)
Th’admired Tracts of a bewitching Face.
Her sparkling Eye is like the Morning Star:
Her lips two snips of crimson Satin are:
Her Teeth as white as burnished silver seem
(Or Orient Pearls, the rarest in esteem):
Her Cheeks and Chin, and all her flesh like Snows
Sweet intermixed with Vermillion Rose,
And all her sundry Treasures selfly swell,
Proud, so to see their naked selves excel.

I love her lips as ‘two snips of crimson satin’ (you can always count on a pious author to let rip when the tale turns sexy). I cannot track her ‘sundry Treasures’ that ‘selfly swell’ back in the vast expanses of EEBO texts, but I assume that it is correct and not an error for ‘softly’: her plusher parts are actually swelling in pride at their own plushness.

David has a rapturous apostrophe about the tantalizing effects of this bathing beauty:

O peerless Beauty, merely Beautiful;
(Unknow'n) to me th’art most unmerciful:
Alas! I die, I die (O dismal lot!)
Both for I see thee, and I see thee not
But a-far-off and under water too:
O feeble Power, and O (what shall I do?)
Weak Kingly-State! sith that a silly Woman
Stooping my Crown, can my soul’s Homage summon
But, O Imperial power! Imperial State!
Could (happy) I give Beauty’s Check the Mate.

Thus spake the King: and, like a sparkle small
That by mischance doth into powder fall,
Hee’s all a-fire; and pensive, studies nought,
But how t’accomplish his lascivious thought…

Well, our authors skip through the stirring piece of Bible-based nookie that follows, so as to get back on track with a moralist’s comment on all these goings-on

When Nathan (then bright Brand of Zeal and Faith).
Comes to the King, and modest-boldly sayth…

Nathan doesn’t get some prophetic glimpse of Solomon, loved of the Lord, but ‘modestly-boldly’ tells his King off for the future depravities his fall from grace will trigger. The Book of Samuel mentions in passing that David’s actions displeased the Lord; here, Nathan imagines the Lord’s reprisal will take the perhaps surprising form of an epidemic of incest (Nathan reinforces his point by pointedly observing to David that the latter’s wives will receive his seed or genetic heritage by proxy from his inflamed male offspring). Little or none of this is in 2 Samuel 12, where Nathan says that the Lord will content himself by having David’s wives lie with the neighbour, not in secret, but ‘in sight of this sun’.

Ah shameless beast! Sith thy brute Lust (forlorn)
Hath not the Wife of thy best Friend forborn,
Thy Sons (dis-natur’d) shall defile thy bed
Incestuously; thy fair Wives (ravished)
Shall doubly thy lust-full seed receive:
Thy Concubines (which thou behind shalt leave)
The wanton Rapes of thine own Race shall be:
It shall befall that in thy Family,

With an un-kins-mans kiss (un-loving Lover)
The Brother shall his Sister’s shame discover:
Thou shalt be both Father and Father-in-law
To thine own Blood.

Such are the over-heated consequences of bathing, look you.

Mere parroting! 52%!

Thanks to the assistance of our highly trained auxiliary staff, marking on this year's Renaissance Literature paper is moving rapidly towards its completion.

From weeping Cheese with Argus eyes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That such as do render the Plot for a Fable,

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

To enter Heaven Gates may they never be able

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

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

From a Popish black coat in a Protestant Cut

From going to bed with Gripes in my Gutt;

From rising next Morning with all our Throats cut …

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

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

From Monstrous Sucking, till both Tongues have Blisters,

From making our Boasts of giving three Glisters

By giving our Claps to three cheated Sisters

Libera nos

From Transposing Nature upon our Bon—Gers,

On Keniston Acting both Venus and Mars,

From owning twenty other men’s Farce

Libera nos

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two images

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

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

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

Utterly vanished lives, apart from these golden moments.

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

'Hurried hence...'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Walking Trees in an Early Modern Poem

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Knubby knuckles rusty rough' and early modern ring wearing

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

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

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

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

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

For wearing of rings

For that it is a proverbe olde,

the winners may best weare the gold

We knubby knuckles rusty rough

do see more fit to lead the plough,

Which fond to see their fingers shine,

in steede of fatt, with golden mine

~

But wisely wayed it is most vayne

and brings such thinges in great disdayne,

When ringes be knackes for every knave

for then no wiseman wil them crave

~

But were it trim to ring the nose

I thinke I might soone fynd out those

That would to please their dainty gyrles

rend that with ringe and pretious pearles

~

Disorder marreth every thinge

so doth miswearing of your ringe,

~

Cost is comly wher order is

good order therefore should not misse

And such as weare them as they ought

the worthier then shall they be thought

~

But some men thinke and so do I

that natures flesh when it is bare,

Without such pearles or paultery

if fayre, is fittest for the glare.

~

For when dame Venus plainly shows

her selfe in natures naked weed

Your eyes then flye not after crows,

but stayes to feede your wanton neede

~

To this the wisest men of all

as we see dayly they be thrall

~

But as for pearles, of precious stones

they passe not for they be but toyes

And gaudy geaugawes for the nones

which they accompt as childish joyes

~

But since they have bene greatly usd

though much perhappes by some abusd

It is not good to take awaye

such comly costly gold array

~

But who so useth it aright

reserves the thumbe as for the knight

And here in order as they lye

your finger rynges you may apply.

~

Miles, Marcator, Stultus, nuptie, & amator

~

To weare the ringe upon the thum is for the Knight

~

The forefinger for the Marchaunt.

~

The middle finger for the Foole

~

The third finger for the maried man

~

The little finger for the Lover

~~

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

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

Richard Lovelace, from Lucasta

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

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

Sir John Harington, ‘In Cornutum’ (1618)

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