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.
Niii2 Adew deere Don & Priest for ever
Notes. Since this poem is immediately followed in the only known source by “Invectives on Count de Gondomar for brevities sake in Prose”, the “Don” of the poem may probably be identified as the Spanish ambassador, Gondomar, who left England in May 1622. The identity of the “Priest” is more problematic; the best candidate is perhaps Marco Antonio de Dominis, the former Catholic Archbishop of Spalato, who abandoned the Church of Rome and settled in England in 1616 to work for the reunion of the churches. James I shared de Dominis’s ecumenical aspirations and gave him office within the Church of England. In 1622, however, shortly before Gondomar’s departure, de Dominis left England, having repudiated the Church of England. Rome did not take kindly to the double apostate, and de Dominis died in 1624 a prisoner of the Inqusition.
Adew deere Don & Priest for ever
God grant againe we see you never
Unlesse at Tyburne1 for want of grace
We see you hanged face to face,
which being new was first appointed
5For one of yours, the Popes anointed,2
That came from Spaine without Commission
Came hither of the Inquisition,3
And within a little space
Gaind to himselfe & yee this place
10For store, amidst his cheifest cares
devisd to leave this to his heires:
Which was in time a deed of meritt
That all of you may well in heritt
And be reported all as martyrs
15When in troth yee are hangd for Traytors:4
Source. Rosenbach MS 1083/16, p. 296
Niii2
1 Tyburne: the chief site of public execution in London. <back>
2 the Popes anointed: a Catholic priest. Although the exact source of the allusion is difficult to pin down, the gist is that a Catholic priest was hanged at Tyburn when the execution site was still new, and thus obtained Tyburn for the Catholics who would follow him. <back>
3 the Inquisition: English Protestant polemicists portrayed the Spanish Inquisition as the quintessential tyrannical agent for the persecution of true believers. <back>
4 And be reported...hangd for Traytors: the missionary priests executed at Tyburn (and elsewhere) by the Elizabethan authorities in the 1580s and 1590s were charged with treason and hanged, drawn and quartered as traitors. Catholic polemicists ardently denied the priests were traitors, and insisted they died solely for their religious beliefs. Catholics venerated the executed missionaries as martyrs. <back>
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