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.
Pi34 I that my countrey did betray
Notes. In one source (Bodleian MS Ashmole 38), this popular poem, with its trenchant references to Buckingham’s suspected religious unorthodoxy, is attributed to John Heape (to whom the same collection also attributes “And art return’d againe with all thy Faults” and the sympathetic epitaph on the Duke, “Honor, worth, greatnes, and what part so ere”). Some versions begin with the final couplet, and follow with other lines from earlier in the poem (e.g. BL MS Egerton 923). At least one version also adds an extra couplet at the end: “He that in treason his delight doth take, / By treason likely his owne end doth make” (Bodleian MS Tanner 465).
I that my countrey did betray,
Undid that King that let mee sway
His sceptre as I pleas’d; brought downe
The Glorie of the English crowne;
The courtiers bane,3 the countries hate
5An agent for the Spanish state,
The Romists Frend, the Gospells Foe,
The Church and Kingdomes overthrowe,
Heere a damned Carcasse dwell,
Till my soule returne from hell:
10With Judas4 then I shall inherit
Such portion as all Traytors meritt.
If heaven admitt of Treason, Pride, and Lust,
Expect my spotted soul among the just.
Source. BL MS Sloane 826, fol. 185v
Other known sources. Rous 29; Trevelyan Papers 3.172; Bodleian MS Ashmole 38, p. 14; Bodleian MS Eng. Poet. e.14, fol. 13r; Bodleian MS Malone 23, p. 196; Bodleian MS Rawl. Poet. 26, fol. 78r; Bodleian MS Tanner 465, fol. 103r; BL Add. MS 22959, fol. 27r; BL Add. MS 44963, fol. 38r; BL MS Egerton 923, fol. 45v; BL MS Sloane 1199, fol. 70r; CUL MS Dd.11.73, fol. 67v; Folger MS V.a.345, p. 315; Rosenbach MS 239/27, p. 318
Pi34
1 Prosopopeia: i.e. prosopopoeia; “A rhetorical figure by which an imaginary or absent person is represented as speaking or acting” (OED). <back>
2 the D.: i.e. the Duke. <back>
3 The courtiers bane: contemporary meanings of bane include both “curse” and “murderer”. <back>
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