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.
Pii12 You auntient Lawes of Right; Can you, for shame
Notes. Formal legal proceedings against Felton were delayed while authorities endeavoured in vain to track down the conspirators they were convinced had helped the assassin plan his crime. Eventually, the authorities abandoned the search and on 27 November 1628 Felton was tried for murder in the court of King’s Bench, convicted and sentenced to death. The poet—who is identified in at least one source as James Smith (Bodleian MS Ashmole 36-37)—challenges the justice of this verdict and subverts the meaning of Felton’s execution. On Smith, see Raylor 55-56. On the poem, see discussions by McRae, who examines its use of legal and political discourse (Literature 133-34), and Norbrook, who notes how the poet took “the instruments of [Felton’s] punishment and sublimated them into spiritual ornaments” (57).
“On Feltons Arraignement”1
You auntient Lawes of Right; Can you, for shame,
You, the late Bondmen2 of great Buckingham,
That at his beck3 hurl’d Justice round the Orbe
Of Indirection, and could afford
Noe pleasing Plea to the afflicted sence,
5Noe remedy to Wrong, but Patience.
Can you (I say) speake death in your decrees,
To one whose life procur’d your Liberties?
Or you, late tongue-ty’d Judges of the land,
Passe sentence on his Act, whose valient hand
10Wrencht off your Muzzells, and enfranchiz’d all
Your shackl’d Consciences from one Mans thrall?4
But O! his Countrie! What can you verdict on?
If guiltie? ’Tis of your Redemption.
And if there can bee honour in a sinne,
15His well Complotting starrs have wrought him in,
Thy fetters (ransom’d England) and thy Feares,
Triumphant, Trophie-like, stout5 Felton wears
On him like seemely Ornaments, They deck
His Armes and Wrists, and hang about his Neck
20Like gingling6 Braceletts, And as rich they bee;
So much the cause can alter Miserie.
But wherefore liv’st thou in thy doomes suspence?
The Tyrant Law has double violence:
For all thy fellow Saints have waited long,
25And wearied time with expectation.
It is thy End that must begin thy Glorie,
No finis shalbee period to thy Storie.
Dye bravely then: For, till thy death be writt,
Thy honour wants a Seale to perfect it.
30With peacefull praiers to heaven wee’l waft thy soule,
While every Bell thy Funerall shall toll,
Then each choice spirit ring thee to thy grave,
And with their shouts fright Eccho7 from her cave.
Next, write thyne Epitaph. Now, from your Spring
35Post, Post yee Sisters, and help Mee to sing,8
Lest my unskillfull muse should faile in painting
The worth of one whom Jove9 was proud in sainting.
Epitaph
Loe, heere he lies, that with one Arm could more
Than all the Nerves of Parliament before.10
40A Kingdome drunke, and death around it hover’d,
Hee pluckt the sicklie Plume,11 and it recover’d.
Then England turn Idolatrix12 at his shrine,
That lost his owne life for restoring thine.
Source. BL MS Sloane 826, fols. 194r-195r
Other known sources. Bodleian MS Ashmole 36-37, fol. 31r; Bodleian MS Malone 23, p. 208
Pii12
1 Arraignement: an arraignment is a formal preliminary stage in a criminal trial, but the word was often used to refer generally to the trial itself. <back>
2 Bondmen: servants, slaves. <back>
4 thrall: bondage, captivity. <back>
6 gingling: i.e. jingling. <back>
7 Eccho: in classical mythology, the nymph Echo lost physical form to become only an echo. <back>
8 Now, from your Spring...to sing: the poet here calls upon the nine Muses (“yee Sisters”) to come from their home near the Castalian spring on Mount Parnassus, to help him write Felton’s epitaph. <back>
9 Jove: king of the gods; here meaning God. <back>
10 that with one Arm...Parliament before: i.e. Felton alone was able to achieve what parliament had attempted but failed to achieve in 1626 and 1628—Buckingham’s removal. <back>
11 Plume: literally a feather, and here figuratively presenting Buckingham as a kind of poisonous adornment that had to be plucked off if the nation was to revive. <back>
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