Notes. This couplet makes a sardonic comment on the extent to which the royal favourite Robert Carr benefited from the fall of Ralegh. Late in 1608, James I granted Carr the manor at Sherborne, Dorset, worth about £1000 per annum in rents, that had been confiscated from Ralegh by the Crown upon his 1603 treason conviction.

As Cats over houses do go a catter-walting

So C is over house. he goes a walter-rauling.

Source. “Poems from a Seventeenth-Century Manuscript” 28

B9