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.
F2 Letchery did consult with witcherye
Notes. This scathing attack on the Essex nullity brands Robert Carr and Frances Howard as sexual transgressors, suggests Frances Howard might have used witchcraft to render the Earl of Essex impotent, and charges that the commissioners who voted to grant the nullity collaborated in an act of “impietye” in order to win office and favour. Lindley (118) prints and very briefly discusses this poem.
Letchery did consult with witcherye1
how to procure frygiditye2
upon this ground a course was found
to frame unto a nullatye
And gravitye3 assuming lenytye
5gave strength to this impietye
hoping thereby a way to spye
to rise to further dignitye
But whats the end both foe and frend
cry shame on such austerytye
10And booke and bell4 do dam to Hell
the Lord and Ladyes lecherye
Source. Bodleian MS Rawl. D. 1048, fol. 64r
Other known sources. Folger MS V.a.339, fol. 187v
F2
1 witcherye: libellers in both 1613 and 1615 alleged that Frances Howard had caused her husband’s sexual impotence with spells or sorcery. During the first phase of the nullity hearings, the Countess’s supporters had suggested that Essex’s curiously selective impotence—he was supposedly unafflicted in the arms of other women—was the result of a witch’s curse. <back>
2 frygiditye: Essex’s impotence. <back>
3 gravitye: the lawyers and bishops who voted to grant the nullity. <back>
4 booke and bell: here means something like “the Church” or “the Christian religion”. The phrase derives from the traditional ritual of ceremonial excommunication involving the closing of a book, the ringing of a bell and the quenching of a candle (thus the usual phrase “bell, book and candle”). <back>
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