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Poore Pilote thou hast lost thy Pinke1

And by her leake2 downe to the bottome sinke,

Thy lands bee gone, alass they weare not thyne

Thy house likewise, another sayes is myne

Then wheare’s thy witt, alas tis 2 yeares dead3

5

And wher’s thy wife, another did her wedd.4

Art thou a man or butt the simple part

Nothing thyne owne butt thy aspyring hart.

Rawley thy howse,5 Westmerland thy lands6

Overburye thy witt, Essex thy wife demands,

10

Like Æsops gey,7 each bird will pluck a feather

And thou strip’t nak’t exposed to winds an weather

Butt yet thy freinds to keepe thee from the coulde

Have mud’e8 the upp in London’s stronghest houlde.9

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Source. BL MS Egerton 2230, fol. 72r

Other known sources. “Poems from a Seventeenth-Century Manuscript” 64; Bodleian MS Don. c.54, fol. 22v; Bodleian MS Malone 23, p. 6; Bodleian MS Rawl. D. 1048, fol. 64r; Bodleian MS Rawl. Poet. 26, fol. 17v; BL MS Sloane 2023, fol. 58v; CCRO MS CR 63/2/19, fol. 11r; V&A MS D25.F.39, fol. 98v

H10

Quick links to other poems within this section

Select page here H0. Introduction H1. There was an ould H2. In England there lives H3. From Roberts coach H4. Robbin of Essex H5. A page, a knight H6. Heere lyes hee H7. When Carr in Court H8. The Sommers sun H9. I.C.U.R H10. Poore Pilote thou hast H11. The wealth he gott H12. Why how now Robine H13. From Car a Carter H14. Dazal’d thus with hight H15. If ever woe possest H16. A bird ill hatchd H17. She with whom troops H18. from Cathernes docke H19. Me thinks I see H20. Looke, and lament H21. Libellous Anagram H22. Anagram on H23. Sir you are one H24. Once dead and twice H25. Hadst thou lik other H26. Hesperides, within whose H27. The house of the Howards H28. Here under lyes

¹   Pilote...Pinke: the pilot is Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset; the pink, or boat, is Frances Howard, Countess of Somerset. <back>

²   leake: the pun here depends on the association of “leakiness” with female sexual incontinence. <back>

³   witt...dead: Carr’s “wit” is Sir Thomas Overbury, murdered in the Tower in 1613. <back>

⁴   wife...wedd: refers to Frances Howard’s first marriage to Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex. <back>

⁵   Rawley thy howse: Carr had received the house and estate at Sherborne—which had been confiscated from Sir Walter Ralegh after his conviction for treason in 1603—as a royal gift in 1608. Carr sold the estate back to the Crown when James I decided to grant it to his eldest son, Henry. After Henry’s death in 1612, Carr purchased Sherborne back from the Crown. <back>

⁶   Westmerland thy lands: late in 1613, James I granted Carr substantial lands in the north-east of England that had been taken by the Crown from the Earls of Westmoreland in 1569. <back>

⁷   Æsops gey: an allusion to Aesop’s fable of the jackdaw dressed in borrowed feathers. <back>

⁸   mud’e: mewed, confined. <back>

⁹   London’s stronghest houlde: the Tower of London. <back>