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.
Pii7 Why: is our Age turn’d coward, that no Penn
Notes. Felton is here represented as a patriot martyr, whose deeds had freed a subjugated nation from an enervating, emasculating humiliation.
“In commendacion of Feltons fowle murther of the D.”1
Why: is our Age turn’d coward, that no Penn
Dares weeping mourne thy glorie? Are all Men
Doom’d to dull Earth at once, that thy great Name
Must suffer in their silence, and thy Fame
Pant to flie higher then their endles hate,
5Who toyle to kill thy memory, and bate2
The glorie of thy Act? Shall Rome canonize
Him, that to save her did but sacrifice
A single hand, a Martire?3 Shall not wee,
(If Rome did soe for him) doe more for thee?
10That when Crown’d Victorie (growne almost white
On Albions4 loftie Cliffs) had tane her flight
Into some uncouth corner of the world,
And seated in her roome pale feare, and hurld
Distraction through the land; When every Man
15Seem’d his soules coffin, leane and wanne
With expectation of his End; When Wee
(Whom, for soe many yeares, proud France did see
Disposers of her borrowed Crowne) were made a prey
To her high scorne.5 Oh! who can name the day
20(And feeles not a salt deluge in his Eyes)
Wherein such clowdes of sighes and groanes did rise
As dimm’d the sunne; which then amazed stood
To see Alleagiance firmely writt in blood,
Sluc’d from our slaughter’d friends? A day wherein
25The heat (rash Duke) of thy ambitious sinne
Unmann’d such noble spiritts, that old time
Must lift his hoarie head aloft, and clime
The rockie Monuments of Kings, to finde
Their Equalls: yet thou must stay behinde,
30On purpose left, by the malitious Foe,
To doe more harme in peace than warrs could doe,
To trample on their Ruine, and create
Mischiefs, more killing Plagues, to ruinate
Us and our Children; When, unhearted, Wee
35Saw all this threatned; but yet could not free
Our vassall’d6 state: Then (Felton) did the Land
Receive a speedie cure by thy just hand:
Thou stabd’st our Desolation with a stroke,
And in one blowe didst free us from the yoake
40Of forraine bondage,7 That, to buy our Peace,
Unconduit’st all thy blood, and did’st not cease
Till thou hadst wrought thy unexampled deed
Of our Redemption, and hadst made him bleed
That grasp’d the Lives and Fortunes of us all,
45Which thou hast timely rescu’d by his Fall.
Source. BL MS Sloane 826, fols. 190r-191r
Other known sources. Bodleian MS Malone 23, p. 203; BL Add. MS 5832, fol. 197r
Pii7
2 bate: abate; diminish. <back>
3 Shall Rome canonize...a Martire?: allusion to the Roman republican patriot hero Mucius Scaevola who, having been captured while attempting to kill the leader of Rome’s enemies, thrust his right hand into a fire, so amazing his intended victim that he released him and eventually negotiated peace with the Romans. On the Felton-Scaevola comparison, see too “The Argument is cold and sencelesse clay”. <back>
5 When Wee...To her high scorne: reference to the humiliation of the English at the hands of French forces during Buckingham’s 1627 expedition to the Ile de Ré. The contrast is between the current national humiliation, and England’s military triumphs during the Hundred Years’ War, when the kings of England claimed—and for some years obtained—the French throne. The lines that follow continue to refer to the Ré disaster. <back>
6 vassall’d: enslaved, subordinated. <back>
7 the yoake / Of forraine bondage: by alluding to the Exodus story of the Jews’ liberation from Egyptian bondage, this phrase not only turns Felton into a latter-day Moses, but also suggests that Buckingham had worked to subject England to the power of her Catholic enemies, the Spanish and the French. <back>
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