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.
F3 Were itt nott a brutish crueltye
Notes. This is one of several attacks on Frances Howard, made both in 1613-14 and 1615, which depict the Countess as a wandering ship. The metaphor allowed the libeller not only to play with crude nautical innuendoes (the “straight and long” masts, etc.), but also to pun on the Countess’s sexual wanderings between titled men as voyages to different parts of the English country. Bellany (Politics 155) briefly analyzes the political implications of this poem’s depiction of female sexual insatiability.
Were itt nott a brutish crueltye
To barr a ladye of Anullitye
That can gett nothing of her man1
Yet craves as much as two men can
There is a ladye in this land
5Because shee was nott truely mand
Would over all the countryes range
To seeke her selfe a better change
When Essex2 could not give content
To Rochester3 her course was bent
10When shee lett no occasion slipp
To gett a mast4 unto her shipp
A mast she had both straight and long
Butt when itt prov’d not fully strong
To Sommersett5 she quicklye hide
15To trye what fortune would betyde.
Source. BL MS Egerton 2230, fol. 69v
F3
1 That can...man: allusion to the alleged sexual impotence of Frances Howard’s first husband, Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex. <back>
2 Essex: Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex; the pun alludes to the English county of Essex. <back>
3 Rochester: Robert Carr was made Viscount Rochester in 1611; the pun alludes to the town of Rochester in Kent. <back>
4 mast: clearly here and in the following line a bawdy pun—the question of erection had been central to the nullity commissioners’ discussion of Essex’s impotence. <back>
5 Sommersett: Robert Carr was elevated to the Earldom of Somerset the month before he married Frances Howard; the pun alludes to the English county of Somerset. <back>
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