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.
I4 Essex thy death’s reveng’d, Lo here I lie
Notes. Explicitly sceptical of the stated legal grounds for Ralegh’s execution, this poem nevertheless presents Ralegh’s death, like that of Robert Cecil in 1612, as just punishment for both men's factional pursuit and eventual destruction of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex.
“On Sir Walter Rawleigh”
Essex1 thy death’s reveng’d, Lo here I lie
Att whose blood shed thy innocence may cry,
Now Rawlegh quitts, I died not (as all see)
So much to satisfy the law, as thee.
Thou hadst an other foe,2 hee went before,
5The French undid us both,3 but him the whore.
My soules just greife is this; The world will please
To say wee two died of the same disease.
Source. Bodleian MS Eng. Poet. e.14, fol. 95v
Other known sources. Ralegh, Poems 20; Nottingham MS Portland PW V 37, p. 37; Folger MS V.a.103, fol. 20v
I4
1 Essex: Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, executed for treason in 1601. <back>
2 an other foe: Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, widely assumed to have engineered Essex’s fall and execution (see Sections A and D). <back>
3 The French undid us both: Ralegh was investigated in 1618 for supposed treasonous ties to the French; Cecil was alleged to have died of syphilis, colloquially known as the “French” or “French pox” (see Section D). The pun on “French” governs the last three lines of the poem. <back>
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