A web-based edition of early seventeenth-century political poetry from manuscript sources. It brings into the public domain over 350 poems, many of which have never before been published.
G1 The Court’s full of newes
Notes. This verse mocks four of the men imprisoned in the Tower of London in the aftermath of the 1614 Parliament: Lionel Sharpe, John Hoskyns and Sir Charles Cornwallis, arrested for their roles in devising and delivering Hoskyns’ 3 June speech in the Commons attacking Scottish courtiers; and Sir Walter Chute, a minor courtier and MP, who had offended the King in a speech of 1 June. In some sources, the final four lines of this poem are transcribed as a discrete text, and headed (in one) “Of 4. clapt up in the Tower” (Bodleian MS Rawl. Poet. 26). The newsmonger John Chamberlain enclosed a transcription of a variant version of the final six lines of the poem in an October letter to Isaac Wake, noting that “yt is not the least of theyre punishments” that they “are flouted by waggish witts with a rime” (Chamberlain 1.556-57).
The Court’s full of newes,
London’s full of rumours;
Fower men in the tower
Of eight severall humours:
Sharpe the divine1 is soberly mad
5Hoskings the lawyer2 is merrily sad
Cornewallis the Ledger,3 popishlie precise,
And Chuit the Carver4 is foolishlie wise.
Source. BL MS Sloane 2023, fol. 60v
Other known sources. Chamberlain 1.557; “Poems from a Seventeenth-Century Manuscript” 26; Bodleian MS Rawl. Poet. 26, fol. 2r
G1
1 Sharpe the divine: Lionel Sharpe, cleric and former chaplain to the late Prince Henry. <back>
2 Hoskings the lawyer: John Hoskyns, lawyer and MP. <back>
3 Cornewallis the Ledger: Sir Charles Cornwallis, former Ambassador to Spain and Treasurer to Prince Henry, and close ally of the suspected crypto-papist Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton. <back>
4 Chuit the Carver: Sir Walter Chute, Carver to the King, and MP for East Retford, Nottinghamshire. <back>
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