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.
Oi8 Yee Spanyards, come away, come away
Notes. Composed in the aftermath of the failed Cadiz expedition and in an atmosphere of growing suspicion of the favourite Buckingham, this song-like libel returns to the theme, so widely articulated in the polemical literature of 1618-1623, that internal enemies had rendered England vulnerable to Spanish power. Given the poem’s allusions to the ineffectiveness of England’s ports and naval defences, one might plausibly deduce the chief internal enemy to be Buckingham, Lord Admiral and, since the autumn of 1624, Warden of the Cinque ports.
“Vox Britanniae Ad Hispaniam.1 1626”
Yee Spanyards, come away, come away!
For now you may undoe us,
Since heer at home do staye, worse enemyes unto us,
Thus they saye.
You may not want a guyde, to leade you unto evyll,
5Nor to supporte your pryde, since that you have a Devyll,
On your side.
All our poartes are open, if that you please to venter,
There is as wide a scope, as into Hell to enter,
That’s the Hope.
10On the fominge floods, our shipinge doth attende us,
But ’tis not understoode, to hender or defende us;
This is goode.
But it doth well appeare, they have noe good effected,
And some in England heere, ar pockely suspected,
15For this geare.2
Yet wee make noe foorce, if any ill intended,
Lett eache man take his course, and this will soone be mended,
With a woorce.
For wee that should disdayne, all poore and base condicion,
20Can hardely now refrayne, to sende our good munition,
Into Spayne.3
Was there ever knowen, so fyne a trycke to stripe us;
Spayne lett your roodes4 alone, wee have enoughe to whip us,
Of our one.5
25Though yet for speakeinge ill, you barre us in our drinkinge,
Yett grante us if you will, our privelidge of thinkeinge,
Mischcheife still.
Source. Trevelyan Papers 3.171-72
Other known sources. NLW MS 5390D, p. 449.
Oi8
1 Vox Britanniae Ad Hispaniam: “The Voice of Britain to Spain”. <back>
3 sende our...Into Spayne: presumably an allusion to the failed expedition to Cadiz in 1625. <back>
4 roodes: “rods” might make better sense. “Roodes” are crosses or crucifixes. <back>
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