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.
Nv7 A Phillipp once to england came
Notes. This verse anxiously compares the plan to marry prince Charles to Maria, the Infanta of Spain, to the last Anglo-Spanish royal match, the marriage between the Catholic Queen of England Mary Tudor and King Philip II of Spain in 1554. We have chosen to present the poem the way the original transcriber set it down on the page, with the two stanzas headed “Phillipp & Mary” and “Charles & Mary” copied down side by side. The scribe’s intention is to highlight the rather frightening comparisons between the two matches, but the poem only makes complete sense if the two stanzas are read sequentially.
“Phillipp & Mary” “Charles & Mary.”
A Phillipp once to england came | That Mary was a fiery starre
Now Charles is gone to Spayne. | To all the fountaynes pure1
A Mary did that Journey frame | God grant this mary prove not far
A Mary mov’d againe. | The more Estrema dure.2
Source. Beinecke MS Osborn b.197, p. 217
Nv7
1 That Mary...fountaynes pure: this couplet alludes to the persecution and burning of English Protestants during Mary’s reign. <back>
2 Estrema dure: “extremely harsh”; probably also a pun on the name of a region of south-west Spain, “Estremadura”. <back>
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