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.
G3 The worst is tould the best is hide
Notes. This six-line extract from “Mee thought I walked in a dreame” was so widely circulated that it deserves to be considered as a separate poem in its own right.
The worst is tould the best is hide
Kyngs know not all I would they did
What if my husband once have erdd,
Men more to blame are more preferrd.1
He that offends not doth not lyve
5Hee erde but once, once Kynge forgive.
Source. CCRO MS CR 63/2/19, fol. 3r
Other known sources. Bodleian MS Ashmole 781, p. 131; Bodleian MS CCC 327, fol. 23v; Bodleian MS Eng. Poet. e.14, fol. 88v; Bodleian MS Malone 16, fol. 20r; Bodleian MS Sancroft 53, p. 52; BL MS Egerton 923, fol. 11r
G3
1 Men more to blame...preferrd: in transcribing the poem, William Davenport inserts here the marginal note: “Lord Howard chamb: / Lord Somersett et multis aliis” (i.e. Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk, Lord Chamberlain (until July 1614), and Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset, the royal favourite). <back>
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