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.
Pii4 The heavens approve brave Feltons resolution
Notes. This poem defends Felton’s actions as “noe murther but an Execution”, the exercise of justice on a poisoner who had murdered “right, religion, pyetye”. Like a number of anti-Buckingham poets who had to wrestle with Charles I’s responsibility for his favourite’s misrule, the author of this verse is pulled toward some fairly critical remarks about the King in his concluding couplet.
“In Obitum Ducis”1
The heavens approve brave Feltons resolution
that breath’d noe murther but an Execution
in stabbinge him that stab’d a world of wightes2
with poyson not with poyniards;3 which were lightes
to th’Cloudy state of our eclipsed nation
5late tortured by an upstart generation
of snakeish vypers with their spawny broode
which had no sence of Ill noe touch of good.
Thus hath the will of justice murthered thee
that murthred right, religion, pyetye:
10The lawes in force agayne for hees in hell
that broake those spyders webs composde soe well
Oh that our prince those lawes would foster more
then should we flourish as we did before.
Source. Bodleian MS Eng. Poet. c.50, fol. 13v
Pii4
1 In Obitum Ducis: “On the Death of the Duke”. <back>
3 stab’d a world...with poyniards: allusion to the charge, first levelled in George Eglisham’s 1626 Forerunner of Revenge, that Buckingham had poisoned King James I and several other prominent courtiers. A “poniard” is a type of dagger. <back>
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