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.
Nii2 Whiles thy sonnes rash unluckye armes attempt
Notes. This poem is a translation of a Latin poem written by Robert Ayton, and published in Delitiae Poetarum Scotorum 70. Cogswell (Blessed Revolution 24) discusses Ayton’s poem and places it in the broader context of discontent at Jacobean foreign policy.
Whiles thy sonnes rash unluckye armes attempt,
From the Austrian yoake Bohemian necke t’exempt,1
Thow dost condemne this plott2 K. James; & that
The world may thinke thee no confederate,
Thow leavst thy sonne to fates, & wilt not ayd,
5Though but with prayers alone his case decayd.
Nay with unwatered, undew’d cheeks canst see,
Throwne out of house & home thy progenye.3
Rare proofe of justice! yet lett me but utter,
With thy good leave what all the world doth mutter.
10This way perhapps a just Kinge thou mayst seeme,
But men a cruell Father will thee deeme.
Source. Bodleian MS Malone 19, p. 20
Other known sources. Houghton MS Eng. 686, fol. 17r
Nii2
1 Whiles thy sonnes...t’exempt: James I’s son-in-law, Frederick V, Elector Palatine, was elected King of Bohemia in August 1619 after Bohemian rebels had deposed the soon-to-be Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand. Having accepted the Bohemian crown in September 1619, Frederick was driven from Bohemia after the victory of Imperial forces at the Battle of White Mountain in Novemeber 1620. <back>
2 condemne this plott: James disapproved of Frederick accepting the Bohemian crown from rebels, against legitimate royal authority. <back>
3 Throwne out...thy progenye: Frederick, his wife, James’s daughter Elizabeth, and their children, were forced to seek refuge in the United Provinces after the loss of Bohemia and the occupation of the Palatinate by Spanish and Bavarian forces. <back>
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