His brains fell entirely whole into the next seat behind him

The schoolmaster, chronicler of Parliamentary victories, and poet-translator John Vicars was a very militant protestant, an associate of William Prynne, and a much-published writer who had great success in getting his works illustrated with woodcuts.

His Prodigies & apparitions, or, England’s warning piece being a seasonable description by lively figures & apt illustration of many remarkable & prodigious fore-runners & apparent predictions of Gods wrath against England (1643) is an unflinching celebration of the anger God justly manifested against Christians who didn’t worship in the way they should, which was exactly like John Vicars.

He especially details cases when “sumptuous and superfluously huge built Churches and Cathedral Minsters, indeed far more like Heathen Temples then Christian Churches” were hit by lightning, which, as the tallest buildings in every parish, they often were (with lightning rods still to be invented in the mid 18^th century: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_rod and prayer still thought the best preventative)

On Sunday 21^st October, 1638, the parish church of Withcomb in Devon (present day Widecombe-in-the-Moor - thanks to Chris Hale!) was hit by lightning during Evensong. The parishioners had brought this on themselves, as the church had just been ‘newly trimmed’.

The effects were catastrophic, as these extracts show:

“in the midst of the performance of which duties, I say, on a sudden there was heard most fearful & heart-damping claps of thunder … upon which, presently followed a most fearful Fog, and almost palpable darkness all over the Church, and a most strong and almost stifling Stygian stink and loathsome smell of brimstone, together with a most boisterous and blustering blast of wind and clap of thunder, which struck in at the North side of the steeple or tower, and tearing through a strong wall came into the Church through the highest window … passing on toward the Pulpit, and in the way took with it the lime and sand from off the wall, grating the wall much and mightily defacing it, it having been but lately new whited and trimmed, as aforesaid. It tore away also most fiercely the side Desk from the Pulpit, colouring the pulpit it self of a black hew, and leaving it as moist as if it had been newly washed over with ink.”

This ‘brimstone’ smell was of course ozone, the lightning strike puts so much power into the church wall that the stone explodes. The human casualties follow, victims of flashover fires and shrapnel:

“In which time there was also a most terrible and heart-astonishing lightning, which did both mightily affright the people, and even scald their skin with the extreme heat thereof; insomuch as the greatest part of them fell prostrate, some on their faces, and some on their knees, and some one upon another, shrieking and crying out in a most pitiful and pathetical manner.

The Ministers wife, there present, had her Ruff and Linen next her body, burnt off, and her body it self grievously scorched. One Mistress Ditford, sitting in the seat with her, had her Gown, two Waist-coats, and her linen next her body also grievously scorched. Another woman frighted with this fearful spectacle, running out of the Church, had her clothes set on fire, her body scorched, her flesh torn on her back in a most grievous manner. One Master Hill, a Gentleman had his head smitten against the wall, and died the very next day of it. Sir Richard Reynolds his Warriner had his head cloven, his skull rent in three pieces, whereof two fell in the next seat, the other fell down in the seat where he sate: his brains fell entirely whole into the next seat behind him, his blood dashed against the wall; some of the skin of his head, flesh and hair, to the quantity of an handful, was carried into the Chancel, his body left in the seat, as though he had been alive, sitting asleep, and leaning on his elbow resting on the desk of his Pew, with the fore-part of his head and face whole.

O most terrible and fearful power of the Lord! A man that sate before him, in the same seat, was scalded and burnt all over on that side next the said Warriner. In the second seat behind the Warriner, a man was in a most grievous manner burnt and scalded all over his body, so as he was all over like raw flesh, and lived in great misery about a week after, and then died.

A Dog near the Chancel door, was fiercely whirled up three times, and the last time fell down dead.

About the number of eight boys sitting about the rails of the Communion Table (here we may observe what a superstitious Church it was, like, almost all the rest of our Churches in these miserable days) were all of them taken up by the violence of this so terrible a storm, and thrown on heaps within the rails, but had no hurt at all.”

In case the presence of altar rails doesn’t prejudice you enough against this congregation, Vicars goes on to give further subversive details about this purportedly Christian building (as he sees it):

“One of the Pinnacles of the Tower was tumbled down into the Church.

A great stone was thrown about an hundred yards from the Church, and sunk into the ground so deep and so fast, that it could hardly be seen afterward. A Bowling-alley also near the Church-yard, was strangely turned into deep pits; and a Wine-Tavern near the Church, had the side thereof next the Church torn up, and the top or covering broken and carried off, and one of the rafters broken into the said house.

… And was not here a most terrible and almost an incredible print and impression of Gods threatened wrath and indignation against both the internal and external vanity and impiety of such profuse and superfluous Church-buildings…?”

I suspect that Vicars would be a little sorry that God inexplicably failed to kill the Minister and his clerk in this building full of vanity in its prophane surroundings, but they escaped with a warning: “A beam was broken in the midst, and fell down between the Minister and his Clerk, but neither of them hurt thereby…”

To say that JohnVicars does not have much time for vicars hardly does justice to his ferocity. He also gleefully compiled two pamphlets expounding the various depravities of the church ministers expelled from their parishes by the puritans for ‘malignancy’. Extracts from A just correction and inlargement of a scandalous bill of the mortality of the malignant clergie of London, and other parts of the kingdome, which have been justly sequestred from their pastorall-charges (1647) give the effect:

Mr. Wilson, of Arlington, in Sussex, sequestered for being a most odious committer of Buggery with many men, upon his own confession; yea, attempted to commit this odious sin with a Mare, blasphemously said, that Christ after the flesh, was a bastard, and for being a notorious Popish Ceremony-monger, a mighty drinker, and desperate malig.

Mr. Westrop, of Much-Totham, in Essex, sequestered for most familiar filthy and profane abusing of the holy ordinance of preaching, by most obscene meddling and dilating on the secrets of women in the Pulpit; abusively and familiarly comparing women to sows, to make the people laugh; calling such women Whores, who refused to hear him thus speak in the Pulpit, together with abundance of such-like most filthy trash, constantly thus delivered by him, and for being a desperate malignant against the Parliament.

Mr. Booth of Buttolphs Aldersgate, London, sequestered for being a most lazy Levite, a Ceremony-monger, an enemy to Gods people, and a desperate Malignant.

My thanks to Chris for this prompt: it is present day Widecombe, and look, they have a tower appeal even now. The 1638 disaster is mentioned on this web page -

http://www.widecombe-in-the-moor.com/church/tower_appeal.php

The awful plot against Curate Trat, Somerset, 1623

I have been reading Thomas Gataker’s horrified complaint that the astrologer William Lilly actively fomented the mass murder of clergymen. This made me think of putting ‘minister NEAR murder’ into the EEBO title search box.

Among the pamphlets revealed, I would really like to write about the exactly 400 year old A true relation of the most inhumane and bloody murther, of Master Iames Minister and preacher of the word of God at Rockland in Norfolke Committed by one Lowe his curate, and consented vnto by his wife, who both were executed for this fact this last assises: he being drawne and hanged, and shee burned, who at his death confessed the murther of his owne child, vnlawfully begotten, and buried it him selfe. This seems to have been written by a pamphleteer who had spent plenty of time watching the plays of Shakespeare and Heywood. However, either over-inking of the black letter type, or too much oak gall in the ink burning the paper, has made the EEBO copy so largely illegible, that I could not give any coherent account of it.

But I then remembered this pamphlet, The crying murther Contayning the cruell and most horrible bu[tchery] of Mr. Trat, curate of old Cleaue; who was first mu[rthered] as he trauailed vpon the high way, then was brought home to hi[s house] and there was quartered and imboweld: his quarters and bowels b[eing af]terwards perboyled and salted vp, in a most strange and fearefull manner. For thi[s] the iudgement of my Lord chiefe Baron Tanfield, young Peter Smethwi[cke, An]drew Baker, Cyrill Austen, and Alice Walker, were executed this last sum[mer] Assizes, the 24. of July, at Stone Gallowes, neere Taunton in Summerset-shire (1624).

This really is an extraordinary case. In general, 16^th and 17^th century murderers come across as poor planners: impulsive, and liable to self-incrimination by word, deed, or failure to dispose of material evidence.

The man who in all likelihood plotted this murder came up with a very elaborate scheme, one which failed because it had too many people in on the secret (and two of them chronically loquacious).

The quarrel between Smethwicke and the curate Trat was started by a third man, one Brigandine, who was the parish’s incumbent, and who has let Trat hold the curacy for him in return for a fee. He finally decided to resign the incumbency completely to his curate. This offended Peter Smethwicke and his son: Brigandine was the senior Smethwicke’s step-father, and they considered him to have promised the gift of the parish to them.

Battle was joined, with real venom: Trat had been unfortunate enough to lose his wife in an accident: ‘His wife (being a feeble, sickly and weak woman) went to gather Limpets, (a kind of shell-fish which sticks upon the Rockes in that Sevearne or midland sea, deviding England from Wales’. She had fallen in and drowned while he fished from the beach some distance away. The Smethwickes accused him of her murder, but he was cleared of this charge, and they were disgraced locally for their accusation.

They had then tried another way to discredit the curate: he was lured out to supper, and while he was from home, someone broke into his house, stole his clerical gown, and went out and did some injury to a country woman: this in the dark, she was meant to accuse Trat, but he again escaped with his reputation intact. Meanwhile, Trat, reported in the pamphlet to have been not the greatest of clerks, but good at thundering out against the vices of his parish, made what response he could with a particular address to the sins of young Peter Smethwicke.

So the Smethwickes decided to murder him. Their plot was baroque in its complexity. First, he was ambushed and killed. His body was then taken back to his own house, and there it was dismembered. I suspect that Alice Walker had been induced to join the conspiracy for known skills at preparing ham. Poor Trat’s head and genitals were removed and burned. His arms and legs were disjointed, and placed, with his viscera, in large earthernware jars, salted. His cadaver was similarly placed in a large tub upstairs.

The plan here was to make the body unidentifiable, and conceal the date of the death.

With the curate vanished, local gossip tended to accuse his chief antagonist of having something to do with it. But the elder Smethwicke had another aspect to his plan, sending his ‘innocent’ and wrongly accused boy off to London, where Peter junior rather overdid the determination to establish an alibi for him (for a certain date), by very specifically asking an acquaintance to note that they were together in London on a particular day.

During this time, another accomplice set off on another impersonation of the missing (and now dead) curate. This accomplice, never named, ‘came to John Foards house of Taunton the Bowyer, a man who had seen Trat, but did scarce know him, or now remember him, and told him that he was M. Trat, the Curate of Old Cleeve.’ From there this accomplice-imposter journeyed to Ilminster, and told the same tale, and at Blanford in Dorset, told the most audacious part of this story. Somehow Smethwicke knew that the incumbent there, Parson Sacheverell, had been at Oxford years before with Trat. The accomplice identified himself as Trat, but refused to get off his horse, saying ‘I have stabd a man in my house where I live, of whose life I am doubtful’. Sacheverell was of course shocked, and urged him to return to Old Cleeve. The impersonator of Trat told the story of having met a man in Dunster who had recently come from Ireland, and this man had begged money from him. This fictitious person had then been given lodgings in Trat’s house, but at breakfast, had crossed himself superstitiously before eating. ‘Trat’ had admonished him for this, they had quarreled, the quarrel had descended to blows, ‘Trat’ had struck the Irishman with a knife, and was now fleeing the scene.

So, what Smethwicke was aiming for was an unidentifiable corpse in Trat’s house, which would be taken to be the victim of a killing carried out by Trat! So detailed was the plan that a suit of green clothes had been left, bloodied, in Trat’s house (no owner was ever found for this suit, which was merely placed there to substantiate this figmentary Irishman). The plot would have to have maintained that Trat had done far more than he had so strangely confessed to down in Blanford, but had both killed and butchered his victim, and made his head disappear completely, before running aimlessly away blabbing to old college acquaintance en route. Smethwicke junior would be in the clear, for the confessions of the imposter would narrow down the date of the murder to a time when he was up in London.

It must have taken a deal of resolution to carry out the processing of the body, and this is where things began to go wrong. Alice Walker was clearly aware that they had made rather hasty work of the preserving job on the body parts. During the fortnight in which the curate had vanished, she had unwisely quipped that ‘if the Parson did not come home the sooner, his powdered Beef would stinke before his coming’.

So it proved. Neighbours could smell putrefaction emanating from the house, the parish officers broke in, and discovered the source of the stench.

Meanwhile, another of the murder party had left the scene to work twelve miles away. When news of the murder reached that parish, he could not resist giving a far better account of the circumstances of the murder than the informant had just given, apparently only pausing in his tale to wipe his face with a bloody napkin. He fled this scene, but was finally apprehended in Wiltshire, where he unwisely bragged of having friends who would pay to help him out of prison, or they would ‘smoke for it’.

Meanwhile the justices were unraveling the story back in Somerset. A particular known mark on one of the fingers had more or less been identified as showing the victim to have been Trat. Justice Cuffe had raked about in the ashes in the hearth at Smethwicke’s house, and found residual bits of skull, neck vertebrae, and teeth. Out in the garden, positioned behind some strong smelling herbs, a pot of stinking blood was found. Andrew Baker, one of the murder party, was ordered to lift the pot out very carefully, but spilt it, with a deliberate intent obvious to those who witnessed it.

The panicky Andrew Baker had anyway been traumatized by what they had so meticulously done to Trat, as he was by this stage reportedly given to crying out in his sleep ‘let us fly Mr Peter, let us away or else we shall be all undone and hanged’.

Smethwicke senior clearly had many strong local connections, and to save his son, arranged a packed jury to sit on the case that was brought. But now Lord Tanfield stepped in, and initially postponed the trial, but with new evidence coming forward, pushed ahead with it, having completely changed the composition of the jury.

The pamphlet ends with all four of the murder party dead, hanged in Taunton, but without any confession. Alice Walker almost confessed, but then failed to do so, though the usual ministers pumped her to clear her conscience. The elder Smethwicke, who had gambled so much for the money remains in prison. Some consider him guilty; others consider none of the accused to have been guilty. The pamphleteer feebly ends with an admonishment that we should all learn to hold our tempers in check.

But what a plot! And its mastermind still alive, if not at large.

A Puritan oboed to death, 1660

I came across Henry Jessey, THE LORDS LOUD CALL TO ENGLAND: Being a True Relation of some Late, Various, and Wonderful Judgments, or Handy-works of God, by Earthquake, Lightening, Whirlewind, great multitudes of Toads and Flyes; and also the striking of divers persons with Sudden Death, in several places; for what Causes let the man of wisdome judge, upon his serious perusal of the Book it self (1660)

This is a fairly brief, structurally scrappy work in which the author publishes whatever evidence he can muster for the Lord’s disapproval of the restoration of the monarchy and suppression of that ‘Sion’ (as he terms the lost Puritan ‘Eden’ - he uses that precise term of Puritan-ruled Oxford) which England had been during the interregnum.

Any accident which occurred either during, or during preparation for, public rejoicings at the King’s return, serves Jessey as an example. The effect can be petty and heartless:

“An Ancient poor Woman went from Wapping to London, to buy flowers about the sixth or seventh of May, 1660 to make Garlands for the day of the Kings Proclamation, (that is May 8) to gather the youths together, to dance for the Garland. And when she had bought the flowers, and was going homeward, a Cart went over part of her body and bruised her very sore. Yet she made up her Garland, and gathered youths together, that danced for it, just before the doors of such as she might vex thereby. But since she remains in a great deal of misery, by the bruise she had gotten; and cried out of the Devil, saying; ‘The Devil had owed her a shame, and now thus he had paid her.”

Among the intelligentsia, there was (as ever) a lot of ‘outing’ in Oxford: the expulsion of ‘godly Fellows’ from the colleges. This duly gets reported: “Here is also a great rout in Oxford of the godly people; 19 Heads of Houses and Canons of Christs Church are put out, and this day we think will be outing many godly Fellows.”

But we also learn that dramatic performance was instantly revived at the University: the sad consequences for the misguided performers gratify Jessey:

“Also there was a Play acted by Schollars, wherein one acted the Old Puritan, he that acted that part, came in with a narrow band, short hair, and a broad hat; a Boisterous fellow comes after him, and trips up his heels, calling him Puritan Rogue; at which words, the Old Puritan shook off the dirt of his feet against him. Two of these Actors are also cut off; and he that acted the Old Puritan broke a vein, and vomited so much blood in the place, that they thought he would have died in the room, but he now lieth desperately sick. This is all very true. Also a Woman that joined with them in their Play is also dead.” (Was that a female performer?)

Jessey gets a lot of his evidence for the Lord’s displeasure with what is happening in England from the Cotswolds. At Bourton-on-the-Water, a Puritan sermon on the text, Behold the Lord commeth with ten thousand of his Saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly amongst them, of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed was interrupted by the former parish incumbent’s wife and daughter, who entered the gathering to revile the congregation. But then, “the hand of the LORD of HOSTS went out against that Daughter as it appeared, for she gave a sudden great Screech, and fell down dead before them all.” The pious congregation made an attempt to revive her with prayer, but the efficacy of these prayers was (Jessey reports) hindered by the daughter’s mother, who was ‘much out of patience’. There was some talk of charging the puritans with having caused her death, but everyone seems to have been too shaken to make much of it.

In Fairford, a gathered church meeting was “much abused by some of that Town, in a rude manner. The Lord of the Manor there stood looking on, and did not in the least suppress the rude multitude, but appeared rather to countenance them.” This cat-calling and jeering seems to have been the work of local boys, who can always be counted on to exploit any chance to behave badly.

The Lord duly sent a quasi-biblical plague:

“In the Evening of that same 24 day, there was seen coming up from the Mill-lane great multitudes of small Toads, they that saw them said, that there might have been taken up many Cowls full of them. And as they were going they divided themselves into two bodies. First, one Body, or Division of them, went to the Lord of the Manor’s house, (which was about one Acers Length, from the place where they were first seen) They come up through his Orchard, and went under his Gate into the inward court, and some did endeavour to prevent their coming into his house, but could not, though they killed many of them. They came into his Kitchen, and Cellar: and the next morning there went an honest man to the house, about business, and did see the servants looking on them, and took notice of them, that they lay thick on the ground, and being small, judged they were many thousands of them.

The Lord of the Manor had barely had time to get over the plague of small toads, when further provocation of the Lord’s displeasure punished him with something like locusts:

“About a Fortnight after in the same Town, these Christians were again sorely abused, and the next Friday fortnight after, there appeared in the Lord of the Manors Orchard, a great swarme of Flyes, about the bigness of Caddus Flies, with long wings; they that saw them said they might have taken up baskets of them, and the same day also, an honest Christian man saw the Lord of the Mannors Garden covered with these Flies, in heaps like unto swarms of Bees.”

Amid the nation-wide bullying and abuse, Jessey has more serious disturbances to report: “The most eminent Cavaliers embittered persecutors in the County, ride about armed with sword and Pistols, pretending to be of a Troop”. Health-drinking became the shibboleth and test of loyalty to the new order: “They Drink the Kings health stoutly, and rage against any that have the face of Godliness … some drank a health to the confusion of Zion …They are so rude, that they compel men violently, to drink the Kings Health.”

But drunken armed men are dangerous, and ejections from parsonages could be brutal:

“And not only soldiers, but the people who had long obscured their malice to the people of God, are now confident, and act barbarously. Take two late examples. One was of Mr. Warren a minister in the County, who upon the ejection of a Malignant (as then that Denomination was given men) was put into the Parsonage of Rencome: Upon this new encouragement the said ejected Minister (one Mr. Broade) brake in with a Company of rude companions into the Parsonage house; Penned up Mr. Warren and his wife and family into an Upper room; so distressing and afflicting the poor man, night and Day, making a noise with Hoboyes, so that he Died in the place; His blood will cry.”

Poor godly Mr Warren, his own house turned into a detention centre, tortured night and day by oboe music, like some wretched inhabitant of Abu Ghraib. One can imagine that he became very agitated at Cavaliers playing salacious tunes downstairs, and could not go down to rebuke them, Malvolio-style, for their uncivil rule, and he had a heart attack.

Persecution can always (as the contemporary example showed) rebound on itself, though, as Jessey can report from Carmarthen:

“Some of our Brethren were for a month’s space imprisoned in Carmarthen, merely because they would not forgo their Meetings, and join with them again in their Traditional Worship, from whom the Lord had separated them.

They bore their Testimony so full, and their sufferings so patiently and cheerfully, that we have much cause to bless the Lord for his gracious and tender dealings towards them.

Their conversation was such; that made those that threw stones at them, and shouted when they were brought thither, part with them with tears, confessing, they suffered for well doing, and judged them happy therein.”

How curious people are! The old lady getting flowers to weave into garlands for joy, and then deciding her accident stemmed from her having done the devil’s work. The Carmarthen mob bursting into tears...

My image is of woodwind and brass players, taken off the fascinating site

http://www.dulcians.org/iconography.htm#DenBosch

Early Modern English Groundhog Day

The elderly and pious Thomas Gataker (who had changed his name from ‘Gatacre’ to minimize his opponent, the astrologer William Lilly, squibbing on his name and ‘Wiseacre’) unbends a little in his lengthy attack on Judicial Astrology, Thomas Gataker B.D. his vindication of the annotations by him published upon these words, Thus saith the Lord, learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signes of heaven (1653):

“And here, I hope I shall not much displease my Reader, unless he be over austere, if I shall fall sometime into a fit of that infirmity, that is so incident to men of my years, to entertain him with a tale. They say Herodotus made his History somewhat the more delightful, by stepping aside to tell a tale or two now and then.

Not long before my leaving of Lincolns Inn…

(~ which Gataker did in 1611, so he is reminiscing back more than forty years to this little triumph)

… in the reading time, one that had brought Mr. Reader venison, being an ancient man and one of some fashion, was entertained with some other at Mr. Reader’s board; where some table talk falling in about Candlemas day, & a word or 2 cast out by occasion thereof concerning the vanity of such observations, their old guest very sagely told them, that he was a Keeper himself, as also had his Father been before him, and he had constantly observed so far as he was able to remember ought, that on Candlemas day, if the Sun shone out, and it were a faire day, the Deer (contrary to their ordinary usage) would keep close in the covert; whereas if it were a close and gloomy day, they would come abroad and be frisking upon the lawn; as presaging that winter was in a manner gone, and little hard weather behind, and that this had also been observed by his Father before him, as also by other Keepers as well as himself.”

~ So here’s a local, English, variant on the reverse predictions made by Punxatawny Phil and all the other groundhogs: if the animal involved sees the sun on the designated day, then this sign, which might casually be thought a hopeful one, actually indicates that the winter will last much longer (normally, six weeks more, right up till the vernal equinox).

Gataker, though, is not prepared to let this harmless yarn pass unchallenged, which he does indirectly by questioning with mock erudition whether observing the behaviour of the deer on Candlemas day according to the Julian calendar (the English February 2^nd), or 10 days later, at what would be Candlemas according to the Catholic Gregorian calendar, and then correlating the two predictions with the actual meteorological conditions that followed, might not be a way of inferring the right timing for Candlemas (and hence, the Spring equinox, Easter, etc):

“Now when I perceived this his relation to take with some of the company, and one among the rest had past his verdict, that there might be somewhat in it: conceiving it no fit course to debate any further by way of argumentation in the business, I thought better as Socrates sometime dealing with the Sophisters of his time, to move a question only to the Keeper (though Mr. Lilly tax me for that course, and would have puzzling questions debarred from these disputes.) I demanded therefore of him, which Candlemas it was, the Popish or ours which are ten days asunder, on which the Deer were so disposed. and he answering ours; for he knew no other; I inferred thereupon, that that would then afford a good argument, to prove not theirs, but ours, to be the right Candlemas day: for that the Deer went not by any Calendar, but by instinct. It was soon perceived what the Demand and Inference aimed at; and the business was instantly at an end…”

~ They can all see that Gataker has knocked a hole in the Candlemas day observation of animals by referring to the Gregorian reforms of the calendar in 1582: how can animals know that Candlemas day shifted ten days anyway?

http://www.hermetic.ch/cal_stud/cal_art.html

Gataker has a bit of a weakness for these moments when his common sense triumphed, as when he tells those apprehensive about an eclipse that a far longer eclipse will follow it, which he then explains as nighttime, with the earth interposing between them and the sun’s light, in the same unmysterious way that the moon had done in the eclipse (as normally understood).

From what I learn elsewhere, it seems as though the February 2^nd traditions of observing animals – bears or badgers, originally – on Candlemas Day is largely German in origin, and traveled to America with German colonists in Pennsylvania, where the local groundhog was co-opted.

Sir Thomas Browne, in his Pseudodoxia epidemica, refers to the general tradition of a weather forecasting by tradition, without any animals: if the sun shines on the feast of the purification of the Virgin, wintry cold will last as long after the festival as it had before:

“There are also certain popular prognostics drawn from festivals in the Calendar, and conceived opinions of certain days in months, so is there a general tradition in most parts of Europe, that inferreth the coldness of succeeding winter from the shining of the Sun upon Candlemas day, according to the proverbial distich.---

Si Sol splendescat Maria purificante,
Major erit glacies post festum quam fuit ante.

So is it usual amongst us to qualify and conditionate the twelve months of the year, answerably unto the temper of the twelve days in Christmas, and to ascribe unto March certain borrowed days from April; all which men seem to believe upon annual experience of their own, and the received traditions of their forefathers.”

http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/customs/year/february.htm

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

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

(My vernal image is some daffodils photographed today with a kaleidoscope held up in front of the camera lens.)

From daglocks to deadlock: the married life of the Rev Butler

The clergyman John Butler met his future wife in sometime around 1651 in circumstances which he later described in ungallant detail:

‘she was her self no better but a mere Maid-Servant in the house of his Grand-mother in Law, who was then called Martha or Mat, and being sent out by her Mistress to wash Daglocks, or the befouled locks of the sheep’s tails, at a brook running by an open high-way side, at which time this Respondent out of tender love griev’d at her disparagement, gave a groat to a poor woman to wash in her stead, that she might be excused and she was so.’

Martha and John went on to have a long married life of over thirty years, and of the flotilla of little humans they launched on the world, a hardy or lucky five survived, two boys and three girls.

There was probably a background tension from the number of children and the Reverend Butler’s libido, but the marriage collapsed when he quarreled violently with his oldest son, who had become a Catholic. Both sons and their mother sided against the father. He spent time in debtor’s prison, unvisited by his estranged wife, and she declined to share his bed after his release, he says, for more than a year.

In his ill-advised account of all this, Butler says that he did not possess the gift of continency. After struggling to keep his marriage going, he went to live in Holland with a family maidservant, Mary Tomkins. She bore him one child when abroad, and when they returned to live in Hammersmith, several more. Then, for some reason, probably money, trouble descended on this resolved scene: Martha had him charged with fornication.

Waking up to his situation, discovering how readily charges of bigamy would stick to him, John then wrote and published The true case of John Butler, B.D., a minister of the true Church of England in answer to the libel of Martha his sometimes wife : treating of a marriage dissolved and made null by desertion and of a lawful concubinage in a case of necessity, wherein lawful marriage conveniently or possibly cannot be obtained (1697).

This deliciously injudicious pamphlet tells the truth as he saw it, oblivious to the possibility other people might see it otherwise. In page after page, John Butler plunges on, heated, intemperate, mean-spirited, incapable of placing himself in the mind of his readers. Time and again, the only reaction possible is a delighted disbelief at what he has just volunteered about himself, leading up to his jaw-droppingly self-righteous defence of concubinage, from biblical and historical precedents, and on (in his case) moral grounds.

No doubt he had some harsh treatment: even less doubt that he was impossible. Here he is on the marriage breakdown: “his mother thereupon deserted my bed, joining issue with this rebellious and schismatical son of her delight, to divorce her self most obstinately, maliciously, and absolutely from our marriage bed …God is my witness how unapt I always was to harbour an ill opinion of this woman my sometimes, (as I verily thought) loving wife. For though there was just suspicion of her overmuch familiarity with other men, and of her want of love to my self; because of a purloining knack she had of private selling my goods, over and above her allowance, and by keeping up a private purse; and by a coldness of affection”.

On his sons: “Are these children ill born Bastards? God knows! And if so, the fault is elsewhere, rather than with this Respondent. However they are plainly the Devils Brats, and none of God's Children according to the sense of the Apostle.”

His wife is a “malitious Desertrice”

On his own moral character: “this Respondent humbly conceives that his first marriage with the Complainant being by her default absolutely dissolved, and it being utterly unlawful for him to go in unto a whore, that necessity required him who could not contain, and conveniently could not marry with safety, to take another woman as he did, after the manner of the faithful, and Holy Abraham, for issue’s sake, and to marry her, as well as reasonably could be done.”

Here, a fiercely maintained distinction between his position, and that of a whoremonger, a distinction that wavers grammatically into an identity (just who is it producing that all important ‘holy seed’?): “The Whoremonger is such a wretch, who though allowed to Marry, or to keep his Concubine, that is a Woman proper to himself, provided he do not multiply Concubines, nor keep any woman unlawfully compassed unto any man’s wrong, or to that woman’s wrong, and useth her not merely for his lust, in wantonness, or uncleanness, but out of a pure desire of an holy seed by her. Yet not contented with that lawful liberty of God allowed, chooseth rather to spend the holy seed of mankind upon common women, who sell their bodies to the use of every comer: And thus exposeth his seed to be murdered in the body, as whores use to do by their conceptions

Here, he recalls something that he now realizes he may live to regret having said, and wades into an explanation which makes things delightfully worse:

“ 'Tis true indeed, that it was alleged, as if this Respondent should say, that he had another woman with child by him, at that time, for-which cause his wife the Complainant pretended to have relinquished him: And she alleges she can prove such words uttered by him. Unto which he answer's, that true it is he was in a great passion, because of his son turned Papist, and his wife violently siding with him, to excuse and justify him against this Respondent: And what words in the heat of passion were uttered by him, he does not perfectly remember.”

Here he accounts for the episode with Mary in Holland:

“there was no such thing as living incontinently with any woman, much less with the said Mary Tomkins. And the said Mary Tomkins had no Bastard Child born there, neither can any such thing be proved, nor was there any fame of any such thing, or any repute of a Bastard Child born there. But true it is that the said Mary Tomkins living there in Delft in good Reputation was delivered of a Daughter who was Baptised, and Named Mary, born on the 26th Day of June 1688. about nine years since. And of this child, this Respondent does confess, he is (as he verily believes) the true Father. And he humbly conceives it is a lawful and a well born.”

For the joy of Butler’s account is his fiercely maintained conviction that what he did can be justified: he has precedents for it:

“And as for the said Mary Tomkins, this Respondent farther saith, That until utterly relinquished by his wife, and above one whole year after, she never had any child by him, nor was she with child by him: And after that time he was guilty of no other nor greater Fornication with her, than what our holy Father Abraham the Father of the faithful was guilty of, when purely for issue sake, and not of any lustful concupiscence, he went in to Hagar his Wives Maid, or unto Keturah his concubine in the life time of Sarah his Wife.”

To biblical precedent, he adds remarkable piece of biblical exegesis: to the honorable state of marriage, you can add, at need, another ‘bed undefiled’

“And though every one Man, was to marry but one woman, who was to be Lady or Dame

of the Family, yet God did plainly allow of a lawful Concubinage, or additonal wives for the bed, for Issue sake; the Issue whereof are nowhere termed Bastards, either in old or new Testament; but upon all occasions in case of heirs male wanting by the proper wife, the son of Concubinage, became heirs …Among other things I propose a lawful Concubinage, as in some cases it may be required: And to this purpose it is written in the New-Testament, Heb. 13. 4. that Marriage is honourable in all, and the Bed undefiled: But Whoremongers and Adulterers God will Judge. Hence it follows without dispute, That Marriage in its self is an honourable state, and that the Bed undefiled is so too, and that in all things as in the case of marriage: But then upon inquiry, whether in this Text, by the Bed undefiled, is to be understood the self same thing with the Married Bed, or some other Bed plainly different and distinct therefrom, is a mater disputable still.”

“This learned and holy Author does in this place clearly treat of a Bed undefiled, as a Bed plainly different and distinct from the Marriage Bed, or of some Bed out of Marriage, that may be truly styled a lawful and undefiled Bed.” What can you say? The publishers must have been delighted: it didn’t take long for responses to emerge, first in the anonymous:

Concubinage and poligamy disprov'd, or, The divine institution of marriage betwixt one man, and one woman only, asserted in answer to a book, writ by John Butler, B.D. for which he was presented as follows : We the grand jury, sworn to enquire for the body of the city of London, on Wednesday, the first day of December, 1697, present one John Butler, for writing and publishing a wicked pamphlet : wherein he maintains concubinage to be lawful, and which may prove very destructive to divers families, if not timely suppress'd. , London : Printed for R. Baldwin ..., 1698.

The author dedicates the work to Butler himself, pointing out in a not-unkindly fashion: “Let me tell you that your Defence will be far from healing your reputation.”

After the dedication, the author pitches in, employing a manner at once starchy and arch: “Had a Pamphlet of this Nature been writ by an avowed Debauchee, or a Play-house Beau, it had been no surprise: But to have anything printed in Defence of Concubinage by a Batchelor of Divinity, and a minister of the Church of England, may Justly astonish us…”

The opening here reminds us where we are, contemporary with Collier’s attack on the mores of Restoration theatre. All the author has to do is make the connection between clergyman and rake: “You have been at a great deal of Pains, to write an Apology for the Modish Practice of keeping a Miss.” The author enjoys putting the plain facts, and common likelihoods: “(you) went into your Maids Bed, after having Lived Forty Years with a Wife.” “If he owns his Incontinency now when Aged, It’s probable he was more so Twenty Years ago.”

Blood-letting or cold baths are recommended as a more Christian way for Butler to deal with the importunities of the rebel flesh. After all, “too much Venery consumes a Mans Bones and Flesh”. It will “in time enfeeble the whole Nation”.

The argument switches to polygamy, and the question of whether men can start to monopolise women. Centuries ahead of Lawrence Stone, the author turns to the ‘General Bill for the Year 1697’ (I think, births and deaths in London): “wherein we find 8062 males baptized, and but 7767 Females, so that the Majority on the side of the Males, is 255, to which we shall add 293 Women dead in Childbed, which is a Distemper Women are only obnoxious to, and being Natural and Constant, will go far towards a Balance for the Numbers of Men slain now and then by War … If Concubinage should be allow’d, it follows of Necessity that all Men could not be supplied.”

Butler must have seen that the game was up, but he nevertheless blustered back into print with Explanatory notes upon a mendacious libel called Concubinage and poligamy disproved; written by a nameless author, in answer to a book writ by J.B. as being a scurrilous libel, as not fit to be styled an answer. As may appear, by a catalogue of notorious and villainous lies, and Billingsgate raileries, and dunghil language, to be shewed therein. By J.B. B.D. , London : printed for the author (1698).

I think Butler is already spooked, but he produces what he asserts is a ‘centiloquy’ of lies from the anonymous author: he didn’t advocate polygamy, anything the author says that resembled what his ex-wife had said was just ‘old lies new-vamped’. Unable to attack the author (the last lines of the EEBO text seem to be blacked out, and butler did seem to be shaping up for an imputation that the writer was ‘epicene’), Butler rather acutely attacks the publisher, Baldwin, for producing smut like the ‘Secret History’ of Charles II’s court, and the General History of Whoring:

http://roy25booth.blogspot.com/2007/12/general-history-of-whoring-1697.html

But to have semi-pornographers firmly telling you to repent and make your peace with God could not have been comfortable.

A Mr Turner followed up in his work A discourse on fornication shewing the greatness of that sin, and examining the excuses pleaded for it, from the examples of antient times : to which is added an appendix concerning concubinage : as also a remark on Mr. Butler's explication of Hebr. xiii, 4 in his late book on that subject / by J. Turner ... , London : Printed for John Wyat ..., 1698.

“there is one Argument I have lately met with, that indeed did at first surprise me, because it came, as I suppose from a Graduate in Divinity, and pretended the Authority of an Apostle, no less than St. Paul or St Barnabas, to Vindicate the lawfulness of such a Practise. But a little Reflection serves to discover that a disorderly Man of any Profession may easily pervert the meaning of Holy Scripture to excuse or extenuate the Guilt of his own Ill-Manners. And this I think is his Case. He would excuse his Adultery under the soft Name of Concubinage.”

Both authors have, of course, the more natural exposition of the Bible passage Butler had so capriciously wrenched to his own purpose: “The purport of the Text then as I take it is this. Marriage is honourable, and the Consummation of it without Uncleanness. The rest of all that fulsome Pamphlet may easily be answered from the foregoing Discourse.”

If Butler married in 1651, by 1698, he must have been 70 or older. I do not know what happened to him, I should imagine that, amidst much sniggering and pretended outrage, he was forced to recant and do penance, it’s also hard to believe that he could have clung on to any remaining shreds of his identity as cleric. He’s a fine example of that unwariness about putting your own case in print that marks this still relatively new print culture. Butler should have thought about Job in his afflictions, and reflected that a writer of a book can become his own adversary: ‘Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a book! … Oh that one would hear me! behold, my desire is, that the Almighty would answer me, and that mine adversary had written a book.’

[I couldn’t think what to illustrate with, so my image is a contemporary bit of pastoralism, Adriaen van der Werff’s ‘Shepherd and Shepherdess’(1689). Paintings of shepherdesses, unsurprisingly, tend to treat desire rather than ‘daglocks’ (‘Locks of wool clotted with dirt about the hinder parts of a sheep’, says the OED.]

The vanity of thoughts discovered, 1638

“Wee shall finde our minds, like the peggs of an Instrument, slip betweene our fingers, as we are a winding them up, and to fall downe suddenly againe, ere we are aware of it…”

I have been edified today by Thomas Goodwin’s The vanity of thoughts discovered with their danger and cure (1638): “by thoughts, I mean those talkings of our minds with the things we know, as the Scripture calls it, Prov. 6. 22. those same parleys, interviews, chattings, the mind hath with the things let into it, with the things we fear, with the things we love.”

Goodwin was, with John Owen, one of the leading Cromwellian divines, installed as president of Magdalen College by parliament, and advising Cromwell on a settlement for the church (one that steered cautiously between established church and the new independent congregations). I suppose that he was one of Milton’s famous hireling wolves, in that he defended tithes. This little treatise is well organized, succinct, and humane. He wants, of course, our thoughts to focus on God, and in a vivid figure, he expresses his certainty that this is not the case in fallen mankind:

“But I appeal to all your experiences, if your thoughts of him be not most unsteady, and are, (that I may so compare it) as when we look upon a Star through an Optic glass, held with a palsy shaking hand: It is long ere we can bring our minds to have ken of him, to place our eyes upon him, and when we have, how do our hands shake, and so lose sight ever and anon?… In Adam and Christ no thought was misplaced, but though they were as many as the Stars, yet they marched in their courses, and kept their ranks. But ours as Meteors, dance up and down in us. And this disorder is a vanity and sin…”

Goodwin has an acute sense of what our interior life really involves, and so he imagines what a transcript of our stream of consciousness or interior self-dialogue would really be like:

“as wanton Boys, when they take pens in their hands, scribble broken words that have no dependence. Thus doe our thoughts: and if you would but look over the copies thereof, which you write continually, you would find as much non-sense in your thoughts, as you find in mad men’s speeches. This madness and distemper is in the mind since the fall (though it appears not in our words, because we are wiser) that if notes were taken of our thoughts, we should find thoughts so vagrant, that we know not how they come in, nor whence they came, nor whither they would.”

He finally gets round to talking about our dreams and, worse, our day dreams, the indecent inner stagings and play-actings directed by the id:

“Fifthly, the fifth is the representing or acting over sins, in our thoughts and imaginations, personating those pleasures by imagination, which at present we enjoy not really, feigning and imagining ourselves to act those sinful practises we have not opportunity outwardly to perform: speculative wickedness Divines do call it, which to be in the power of imagination to doe; is evident to you by your dreams; when fancy plays its part most…

But corrupt and distempered affections doe cast men into such dreams in the day, and when they are awake, there are then (to borrow the Apostles expression) filthy dreams, Jude 8. that defile the flesh, even when awake: when, their lusts wanting work, their fancy erects to them a stage, and they set their imaginations and thoughts a work to entertain their filthy and impure desires, with shows and plays of their own making, and so reason and the intention of their minds, sit as spectators all the while to view with pleasure, till their thoughts inwardly act over their own unclean desires, ambitious projects, or what ever else they have a mind unto."

Pre-Freudian, and a man of his time, Goodwin does not give any particular priority to sexual fantasizing, which takes its place with other mental digressions. He does, however, compare, rather dramatically, this ‘speculative wickedness’, which we ought to be able to control with some mental self-discipline, with incest: “But this is Incest, when we defile our souls and spirits with these imaginations and likenesses which are begotten in our own fancies, being the children of our own hearts.”

Goodwin mentions scholars frequently in this context of culpable day-dreaming, for their vain speculations, and self-conceit: “Take an experiment of this in Scholars (whose chief work lies in this shop) how many precious thoughts are spent this way? … So an unclean person can study and view over every circumstance passed in such an act, with such a person committed; so a vainglorious Scholar doth repeat in his thoughts an eminent performance of his, and all such passages therein as were most elegant.” I like the way in which a lecher’s retrospective enjoyment of a carnal act is put in parallel here with a scholar stroking himself on a ‘past performance’ of an intellectual kind.

Here, Goodwin talks about the ways in which the literate stray from the word of God:

“Take another instance also in others, who have leisure and parts to read much, they should ballast their hearts with the Word, … but now what do their curious fancies carry them unto, to be versed in, but Play-books, jeering Pasquils, Romances, fained stayes (sic. – a misprint for ‘tayles’, or ‘storyes’?), which are the curious needle-work of idle brains, so as they load their heads with Apes and Peacocks feathers, in stead of pearls and precious stones.”

And here, very much a new phenomenon, the over-avid reader of news letters, especially the over-politicised preacher:

“How doe some men long all the week, till they hear events and issues, and make it a great part of the happiness of their lives, to study the state more than their own hearts, and affaires of their callings: who take actions of State as their text to study the meaning of, and to preach on wherever they come.”

Finally, Goodwin points out, again with a vivid figure of the mint continuously stamping out low denomination coins, that these small inner lapses mount up, and that God is counting up the whole heap of them:

“And if their heinousness will nothing move you, consider their number, for they are continually thus: which makes our sins to be in number more than the sands: the thoughts of Solomon’s heart were as the Sand, and so ours; not a minute, but as many thoughts pass from us, as in a minute sands doe in an Hour-glass. So that suppose, that taken severally, they be the smallest and least of your sins, yet their multitude makes them more and heavier than all your other. Nothing smaller than a grain of Sand, but if there be a heap of them, there is nothing heavier, Job 6. 3. My grief is heavier than the Sand. Suppose they be in themselves, but as Farthing-tokens, in comparison of gross defilements: yet because the Mint never lies still, sleeping nor waking, therefore they make up the greatest part of that treasure of wrath which we are a laying up: and know that God will reckon every Farthing, and in thy punishment bate thee not one vain thought.”

My two images are the final page of the EEBO text, the ‘Imprimatur’ for the book, with its hand annotation, ‘the goodly groan to come to God’, which struck my eye after I finally got round to reading the blog ‘Wynken de Worde’, and Durer’s ‘Dream of the Doctor’. It’s not a quotation from the book, or from anything a full text search can find in the EEBO database, but shows a reader who understands the continuous self-discipline Goodwin has recommended.

On Jesus's failure to mention the printing press

A Collection of letters and poems: written by several persons of honour and learning, upon divers important subjects, to the late Duke and Dutchess of Newcastle (1678) is, by and large, an unedifying demonstration at length of Margaret Cavendish’s need for flattery. Buttering up the Duchess as assiduously as anyone was that late proponent of the reality of witchcraft, Joseph Granvill.

However, the vagaries of the Duchess’ writings set him some problems: here he compliments the works of ‘that incomparable princess’ (as she styled herself, appropriating the usual 17^th century honorific for Elizabeth I): “Since my receipt of your Grace’s ingenious Works, I have, as my occasions would permit, cast my Eyes again into them, and I am sorry they cannot dwell there, where I find so pleasing, and so instructive an entertainment.”

Isn’t that excellent? (‘I have opened the book here and there, blanched with horror, and looked quickly away’). And he goes on to indicate that she is regularly wrong and always ill-educated (but again, he does it in the nicest possible way): “And though I must crave your Pardon for dissenting from your Grace’s Opinion in some things, I admire the quickness, and vigor of your Conceptions, in all: In which your Grace hath this peculiar among Authors that they are, in the strictest sense, your own, your Grace being indebted to nothing for them, but your own happy Wit, and Genius.” In a later letter, perhaps wanting to spread the burden of readership a bit, he adroitly asks her to present a copy to a library in Bath: “There is in this Place a Library erected, chiefly for the diversion of Gentlemen that come hither upon the occasion of the Bath. There are in it several worthy Authors, but it wants the great Honour and Ornament of the Illustrious Dutchess of New-Castle’s Works.”

The Duchess and Glanvill, who was a clergyman, had discussed the origins of evil. Glanvill summarises: “there is no doubt but (as your Grace suggests) that much wickedness is caused by the meer impulse of Lower Nature; and I believe several Men are determined to Actions of Vice by the odness of their particular make and contexture.” The Duchess then cantered on to the reflection that only God could be perfect. Glanvill inserted a correction – all God’s works can be perfect in their kind, but the Duchess bolted off into Manichaeanism: asserting that “God made nothing” Glanvill says as mildly as he can that this is “a Proposition which methinks your Grace should not own; but some things that follow seem to look that way”. She then further severed the pure realm of God from the material world by denying that God could move from place to place to do material work of creation like a mere ‘mechanic’, and veered back to deny the idea of divine creation out of nothing (“To which I humbly say that if your Grace doubts the possibility of the Creation out of nothing…”).

You will get the picture of Glanvill anxiously trying to corral the Duchess’ freely galloping thoughts. Naturally, Glanvill being what he was, they discussed witchcraft, and here the Duchess emerges, interestingly, as a doubter. I will quote Glanvill, putting her (in his view) right about this, at length. Notice Glanvill’s usual insistence on researching what he sees as real evidence, and doing it ‘suspiciously’. The Duchess was also not satisfied that Jesus had said enough about witchcraft, so Glanvill wades into some of the many things Jesus unaccountably failed to discuss when ‘on the record’, despite their utility to spreading the gospel (and His inconceivable advantages in knowledge). Finally, forgetting that he is dealing with sensible doubts, he argues that if the wonders performed by old women surpass the wonders of virtuosi (the Royal Society and its members), there must be some great power behind them:

1. That whereas your Grace calls the Inducements to the belief of Witches, probable Arguments, I am apt, with submission, to think some of them to be as great demonstrations as matter of Fact can bear; being no less than the evidence of the Senses, and Oaths of sober Attestors, and the critical inquiries of Sagacious, and suspitious Persons; which Circumstances of Evidence, your grace knows, some of those Relations have to prove them. And there is a particular Story which is sufficiently famous, and of part of which I my self was a Witness, which I think is not subject to just Exception. 'Tis that of the Drum in the House of Mr. Mompesson of Tedworth in Wiltshire. Of this, Madam, I shall take an occasion to give your Grace a particular account, if you have not yet been acquainted with the circumstances of that unusual disturbance. But to confine my self now to your Grace's considerations on the subject; The second thing I observe, is,

The intimation of an Argument against the Existence of Witches, because they are not mentioned by Christ, and his Apostles, concerning which I humbly desire your Grace to consider.

1. That Negative Arguments from Scripture use not often to be of any great signification or validity. Our Saviour spake as he had occasion, and the thousandth part of what he said, or what he did, is not recorded, as one Evangelist intimates. He said nothing of those large unknown Tracts of America, gives no intimations of the Existence of that numerous People, much less any instructions about their Conversion. He gives no particular account of the affairs and state of the other World, but only that general one, of the happiness of some, and the misery of others. He makes no discovery of the Magnalia of Art, or Nature, no not of those whereby the propagation of the Gospel might have been much advanced; viz. The Mystery of Printing, and the Magnet. And yet no one useth his Silence in these Instances as an Argument against the being of things, which are the evident Objects of Sense. I confess the omission of some of these particulars is pretty strange and unaccountable, and an argument of our Ignorance of the Reasons and Menages of Providence, but I suppose of nothing else; or if it were, I crave leave to add,

2. That the Gospel is not without intimations of Sorcery, and contracts with evil Spirits. The malicious Jews said our Saviour did his Miracles by their assistance, He casts out Devils by Beelzebub. And he denys not the supposition or possibility of the thing in general, but clears himself by an appeal to the Actions of their own Children, whom they would not so severely criminate. And besides this,

3. The Apostles had intimations plain enough of the being of Sorcery and Witchcraft, as seems to me evident from Gal. 3. 1. Gal. 5. 20. Rev. 9. 21. Rev. 21. 8. Rev, 22. 15.

'Tis very true as your Grace suggests, that Superstition and Ignorance of Causes make Men many times to impute the Effects of Art, and Nature, to Witchcraft and Diabolick Contract. And the Common People think God, or the Devil to be in every thing extraordinary. But yet, Madam, your Grace may please to consider, That there are things done by mean and despicable persons, transcending all the Arts of the most knowing and improv'd Virtuosi, and above all the Essays of known and ordinary Nature. So that we either must suppose that a sottish silly old Woman hath more knowledge of the intrigues of Art, and Nature, than the most exercised Artists, and Philosophers, or confess that those strange things they performe, are done by confoederacy with evil Spirits, who, no doubt, act those things by the ways and applications of Nature, though such as are to us unknown. This, Madam, is, I conceive, as much as is necessary to be said to the Argumentative part of your Graces excellent Letter.

(Image from The World’s Olio, 1655, with the Duchess between Perseus and Apollo, the Medusa’s head held just at the level where Freud would have placed it.)

'I'le believe my speckled friend' - falling in John Abbott.

J. A. Rivers, who wrote Devout rhapsodies and published it in 1647, was not an anomalous 17^th century man with two Christian names, but a Catholic priest and one time Jesuit, John Abbott, who had operated (among other aliases) as John Rivers.

As the ODNB entry on him says, “Abbot is best-known today for his poems about the war in heaven and the temptation and fall of Adam and Eve contained in his Devout Rhapsodies … poems which have been seen as significant contemporary English anticipations of Milton’s Paradise Lost.”

The biographer here refers to plural ‘poems’, as does Abbott’s title, but Abbott also writes about the 1647 publication as ‘this poeme’. ‘Rhapsodies’ points to the digressive and genre-blurring manner of the nine verse ‘sermons’ which make up the work, as Abbott switches between a double fall narrative (Lucifer and mankind), passages of dialogue, moral reflection, satire, and bitter personal experience.

The intermittent resemblances to Milton are indeed surprising. Here, Lucifer tells Eve that she just has to eat the forbidden fruit:

“Behold that goodly Apple, take and eat,
‘The choice of Paradise, delicious meat;
‘This will bestow an immortality,
‘And make you sharers in the Deity.
‘God knows this well, therefore least you should be,
‘Partners with him, he has forbid this Tree.”

The liquorish Woman eyes, and eyes again
The Apple; sees it lovely and would fain
Pluck it, but fears: at last demurreth so;

“If not for use, why did this apple grow?
‘What Aromatic smell? how smooth the skin,
‘And gay? Can any poison lurk within?
‘No sure: God in forbidding has some end,
‘That’s envious, I’le believe my speckled friend;
‘Who gives the world to roam in, and excludes
‘But the least corner, all his gifts deludes,
‘And pens you in a prison. All the trees
‘Of Eden are but toys; forbidding these
‘Choice fruits, what gave God when he gave command,
‘Ore fishes, fouls of th’air, beasts of the land?
‘And then forsooth to say, dare not once touch
‘This Apple; bounty is not valued much,
‘Hedg’d in with limits: I had rather have,
‘What he exempts, then all the rest he gave,

‘Had it not been forbid, it might have past,
‘Not car’d for, now I must needs, and will taste.
‘Be it what it will, I’ll by experience try,
‘If it bring death, or immortality.”

I love her comment about going along with the snake, “I’le believe my speckled friend” – and exactly like Milton is the ready supply of cogent reasons for eating the forbidden fruit that Eve produces, with her the fatal assertion that true liberty admits no restriction: “Who gives the world to roam in, and excludes / But the least corner, all his gifts deludes, / And pens you in a prison”.

Eden becoming a prison because it has just the one restriction touches on Abbott’s most heartfelt subject. Imprisoned in 1637, Abbott spent the last thirteen years of his life in Newgate, dying there in 1650. His poem was written in prison, as he explains in the address to the reader:

“Being for many yeares detained in a miserable and chargable Prison, to divert my minde from too serious thoughts of publick and private calamities, made me undertake this imployment.”

In prison, Abbott had books and any small comforts stolen from him by his captors, cruelties that remind him, in both this epistle and the poem, of the Biblical prohibition against boiling a lamb in its own mother’s milk: there have to be limits to outrage. In a passage which contains a certain amount of inherent tension, Lucifer being placed in Hell after his rebellion against God leads Abbott on to general reflections on prison always corrupting its miserable inhabitants, and how any prison is an image of hell:

But that grand Traitor, Lucifer, what’s done
With him? doe not the conquerors sit upon
The manner of his chastisement? who lead
The dance in this Rebellion, was the head
Plotter, and actor in the treason, shall
Be more severely punished then all
The minor Devils; and one clause they add
To th’rest of’s torments, that makes him stark mad:
Namely, that he who would so high have flown,
With wings of pride, even to Jehovah’s throne,
In a deep dungeon, shut eternally,
Shall a confined slave and prisoner lye.

A hole his goal furthest from Heaven to show,
That as transgressions so must penance go.
The other Fiends have the vast Air and Seas,
And land to range in whensoere they please:
But their great Monarch must in fetters tied,
In lowest Hell perpetually abide.
And this was the first prison made for sin,
A pattern to torment Delinquents in:
Yet no confinements, Fetters, Bolts, and Gives,
Can make the damned wretches mend their lives.
Sure the strange qualities of Alpheus streams,
Are idle Poets or Historians dreams.
How he though disemboguing in the Maine,
Yet midst the brine his sweetness can retain;
Debt, and transgression are conducent gins,
To Prisons, Prisons Colleges of sins.
The noble Sciences profest, and chief
Arts taught, are of the Drunkard, Whore and Thief,
Who were in knavery Freshmen, coming here,
Shall proceed learned Graduates in one year.
Behold the Galleys, and a Prison view,
And they shall fully represent to you
What’s done in Hell; blaspheming every where,
Continual torments, yet they curse and swear
Amidst those torments: Boat-swains, Goalers are,
The Furies that torment 'em and their fare,
Biscuit, Tobacco; trickling tears must serve
To make their meat go down: else let 'em sterve,
What then? too many care no more when half
Are starv’d then Butchers when they kill a Calf.
A Prison’s like the cruel Martichore,
Or Hell it self, still seeking to devour,
It’s always taking, the least favour must
Be dearly bought, nor can you go on trust.
Sweat, labour, for some Goalers, a good turn,
Is never thought of in the following morn.
Best courtesy’s done to them are but their due,
And what’s their Office must be sold to you

French imposts, Spanish taxes are not hard,
If to th’exactions of a Goal compar’d.
Yet heavens forbid all Keepers should be such,
I know some gently bred, who will not grutch
To doe a favour gratis, know the same
Fortune that oretakes others, is not lame,
But may oretake themselves, and they may be,
Their fellow-prisoners in Captivity:
Know what a sin it is, to boil the lamb,
Ith’ milk and sight of the afflicted dam…

Poor Abbott, having to pull himself up short, and put in a passage about the gentler prison keepers, who show some fellow feeling with their captives! Prison as a University where vice is learned was a moral or satiric topic before Abbott. The ever-insensitive John Taylor, writing a mock-encomium that appears to be serious about the benefits of prison alludes to the notion as a false one:

That Jails should be, there is Law, sense and reason,
To punish Bawdry, Cheating, Theft and Treason,

Though some against them have invective bin,
And cal’d a Jail a magazine of sin,
An University of Villainy,
An Academy of foul blasphemy,
A sink of drunkenness, a den of Thieves,
A Treasury for Sergeants and for Shreeves,
A Mint for Bailiffs, Marshall’s men and Jailors,
Who live by losses of captiv’d bewailers:
A Nurse of Roguery, and an earthly hell,
Where Devils or Jailers in men’s shapes doe dwell:
But I am quite contrary to all this…

(The praise and vertue of a iayle, and iaylers With the most excellent mysterie, and necessary vse of all sorts of hanging 1623)

I must check Milton editors on Alpheus, here a river not turned brackish when it flows into the sea, a miraculous resistance to losing purity. I wonder what poor Abbott wasn’t saying explicitly about himself?

The research assistant

(Ah well, it makes a change from writing crap on my computer.)
It is suggested that he looks like a webcam, connected (of course) by a USBeak cable.