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.
Notes. The poem’s puns on “Carr” and “car” or “cart” can be found in a number of other libels on Robert Carr composed in 1613-14 and 1615-16. The pun functions in all these poems to mock the favourite’s supposed lowly social origins. Here, however, the pun is also used as a vehicle to imagine the much hoped-for execution of Robert Carr for Overbury’s murder.
From Car a Carter surely tooke his name
Or from a Carter surely Car first came
Sith Car & Carter then soe well agree
Let none them part till they at Tyburne1 bee
Where Car with Carter when you there doe find
5Take ter from Carter, but leave Car behind.2
Source. Rosenbach MS 1083/16, p. 13
Other known sources. Sanderson 60
H13
1 Tyburne: London’s main venue of public execution, to which the condemned would ride in a cart. <back>