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.
Pii15 Heere uninterr’d suspends (though not to save
Notes. After Felton’s execution on 29 November 1628, the King ordered the assassin’s body to be hung in chains outside Portsmouth. This is the first, the most widely circulated, and the best of three poems inspired by the King’s decision. Crum (1.357) and Holstun (184 n.219) document a contemporary attribution to “H: Ch:”—Henry Cholmley—but the evidence for this (which appears to depend solely on BL Add. MS 15226) is dubious. The attribution to Cholmley appears not at the end of this poem, but at the end of the following poem in that manuscript, “Here uninterd suspends, (doubtles to save”, which was written in response to this one (McRae, Literature 72 n.97). Holstun also notes that Bodleian MS Ashmole 38 attributes the poem John Donne, “an indentification”, he insists “we should not reject out of hand”. A number of copies (e.g. Bodleian MS Malone 23) end with a Latin quotation from Lucan’s Pharsalia, “Coelo tegitur qui non habet urnam”, which Holstun renders as, “The Heavens Cover the Graveless”. Several scholars have written on this poem: G. Hammond (65-66) offers a brilliant reading of a “formidable piece of writing”; Holstun (184-86) explores its complex political resonances and literary techniques; Norbrook (55) analyzes the republican energies generated by the poem’s allusion to Lucan; Bellany (“Libels in Action” 109-110) focuses (like Hammond) on the poem’s subversion of the state’s punitive rituals, and elsewhere sketches the dynamics of the three-poem debate on the meaning of Felton’s hanging in chains (“Raylinge Rymes” 306-07); and McRae (Literature 72-75) notes how the libel’s “provocative challenge to authorized meanings prompts a more searching analysis of the institutions and ideologies which set those meanings in place”. For a modern edition, see Penguin Book of Renaissance Verse (148-49).
“Feltons Epitaph”
Heere uninterr’d suspends (though not to save
Surviving frends th’expences of a grave)
Feltons dead Earth; which to the world must bee
Its owne sadd Monument. His Elegie
As large as Fame; but whether badd or good
5I say not: by himself ’twas writt in blood:
For which his bodie is entombd in Ayre,
Archt o’re with heaven, sett with a thousand faire
And glorious diamond Starrs. A Sepulchre
That time can never ruinate, and where
10Th’impartiall Worme (which is not brib’d to spare
Princes Corrupt in Marble) cannot share
His Flesh; which oft the charitable skies
Embalme with teares; doeing those Obsequies1
Belong to Men shall last; and pittying Fowle2
15Contend to beare his bodie to his soule.
Source. BL MS Sloane 826, fol. 197r
Other known sources. Wit Restor’d 56; Bodleian MS Ashmole 38, p. 20; Bodleian MS CCC 328, fols. 11v and 62r; Bodleian MS Eng. Poet. c.53, fol. 9r; Bodleian MS Eng. Poet. e.14, fol. 12v; Bodleian MS Malone 21, fol. 4v; Bodleian MS Malone 23, p. 210; Bodleian MS Rawl. Poet. 84, fol. 114r; Bodleian MS Rawl. Poet. 147, p. 40; Bodleian MS Rawl. Poet. 160, fol. 53r; Bodleian MS Rawl. Poet. 199, p. 56; Bodleian MS Tanner 465, fol. 71v; BL Add. MS 15226, fol. 28r; BL Add. MS 47111, fol. 4v; BL MS Egerton 923, fol. 26v; BL MS Egerton 1160, fol. 241v; BL MS Harley 3511, fol. 18v; BL MS Harley 6057, fol. 6v; LCRO MS DG 9/2796, p. 10; St. John’s MS S.32, fol. 28r; Folger MS V.a.97, p. 8; Folger MS V.a.125, fol. 12r; Folger MS V.a.319, fol. 1r; Folger MS V.a.322, p. 27; Folger MS V.b.43, fol. 34r; Beinecke MS Osborn b.197 , p. 27; Rosenbach MS 239/27, p. 319; Rosenbach MS 240/7, p. 82
Pii15
1 Obsequies: funeral rites. <back>
2 Belong to Men...pittying Fowle: in our chosen source this line is almost certainly corrupt; read “Belong to men. Which last’s, till pittying foule” (Bodleian MS Tanner 465), or “Belong to Men shall last; till pittying Fowle” (Penguin Book of Renaissance Verse). <back>
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