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.
Oiii15 A thinge gott by candle light
Notes. This riddling verse is probably a libel on Sir Richard Weston, Chancellor of the Exchequer since November 1621, who was appointed Lord Treasurer in July 1628. The riddle suggests that the target was a financial servant of the Crown—thus the references to “budgett”, “dispurser”, “every purser”, and “Packhorse to the state”—and perhaps uses “Westerne” as a pun on Weston.
A thinge gott by candle light
Noe gentleman & yett a knight
Vertue and vice mixt both together
Noe starke knave nor honest neither
Great Georges budgett the kinges disburser
5A Westerne plague to every purser
Packhorse to the state, a needlesse evill
The landmans plague the seamans devill
Resolve me this & all in one
And then my riddle is undone
10Source. Rosenbach MS 239/27, p. 47
Oiii15
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