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.
Pi14 Here lyes great George the Glory of our state
Notes. Contemporary readers may have recognized that they could change this epitaph’s meaning by altering its punctuation. This sole known extant version is punctuated to read as a libel, yet a reader could easily turn the verse into a commendation. For example, the opening four lines could be repunctuated (and thus rewritten): “Here lyes great George the Glory of our state, / Noe way Our Kingdome did him hate. / Wrong did he non, he writed ever, / Disloyall was he counted never”. In this manuscript, the first six lines are on one page, and the final couplet at the top of a later page. The poem is discussed by McRae (Literature 49).
“Upon the Duke of Buckingham”
Here lyes great George the Glory of our state
Noe way, Our Kingdome did him hate,
Wrong did he, non he writed,1 even2
Disloyall was he counted, never
Faithfull he was, in any thing
5Unto his countrie, and to his Noble King
He did deceave, both Rome, & spayne3
Then wish him Now alive againe.
Source. Huntington MS HM 116, pp. 47-50
Pi14
1 writed: i.e. righted. <back>
2 even: probable scribal error; read “ever”. <back>
3 Rome, & spayne: the charge here is that Buckingham was an agent for the Roman Catholic interest, led spiritually by the Pope in Rome and geo-politically by the King of Spain. <back>
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