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.
Miii3 Thy followers in hope to flatter thee
Notes. In the summer of 1621, James appointed the Dean of Westminster, John Williams, as the new Lord Keeper and Bishop of Lincoln. This poet’s low opinion of Williams’s qualifications for high office is captured in the anagram on Williams’s name that precedes this verse. The anagram also circulated separately (in Huntington MS HM 116, for instance, it is transcribed alongside a second anagram on Williams: see “Anagram on John Williams”); however, here it not only accompanies the libel but also becomes the basis for the final, mocking, verdict on Williams delivered in the last ten lines of the verse.
Anagram:
John Williams
Who I? silly man
Thy followers in hope to flatter thee
Will sweare thou dost deserve this dignity
5Of beeing keeper, and thy freinds in love,
Will say as much as may thy faults remove.
truth thou shalt never heare from them, and foes
With too much passions thy name expose,
to all untruth: and strangers of thy worth,
10Dare not for fear of punishment speak truth.
But that thou mayest thy owne life character
Discerne1 and know what thou art & what hereafter,
Time will speake of thee: know within thy name
Thy selfe doth question and resolve the same,
15Most just of all sides: let thy name speake then
John Williams, who I? a silly man
Thou well maiest wonder from the keyes of Peter2
That thou should’st rise into the place of keeper
And when in modesty thy name thus courts thee
20It speakes but truly what all men report thee.
Source. John Rylands MS Eng. 410, fol. 26v
Other known sources. Huntington MS HM 116, p. 137 (the anagram only)
Miii3
1 But that...Discerne: some contemporaries believed that a person’s true character could be hidden in the letters of his or her name; thus anagramming could stake a claim not only as an exercise in wit, but also as a form of revelation. <back>
2 keyes of Peter: Williams was Dean of Westminster Abbey, the church of St. Peter. <back>
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