Review and preview

Bad poetry, and things to come

A new post about the divorce of Eleanor of Aquitaine will be with you over the weekend, but in the meantime a quick note (so quick that I hope you’ll forgive the absence of an audio version).

I’ve been reading this week about Mary Tudor’s coronation in 1553, and came across a poem so terrible I couldn’t resist sharing the beginning of it with you. It’s by Thomas Watertoune, printed in a single sheet by Roger Madeley ‘to be solde in Paules Church yearde at the sygne of the Starre’.

It starts like this:

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A ninvectyve agaynst Treason

Remember well, o mortall man, to whom god geveth reason
How he truly most ryghtfully, doth alwayes punyshe treason.
Consyderyng oft the state of man, and of this mortall lyfe
Which is but short, and very ful of mutabylyte
I called to remembraunce, the hateful war and stryfe
Which hath ben don within this realme thrugh gret iniquite
In clymyng to achyve the crowne, & reyal dingnyte
Of this kyngdome now called England, but somtyme greate bretain
And howe by false and ranke traytours, the kynges they have ben slayne.

What moved the Duke of Glocester, Edwarde the fourthes brother
Of his two natural Nevewes, by lyneall dissent.
Sekyng of them distruction, and also of the queene their mother,
But that he the ryghtfull rayne of them, he falsely myght prevent
Styll workynge tyl he had brought to passe, his false and yll entent
by murtherynge the innocentes, that he him selfe myght raygne
Yet lyke a noughty false traytour, at Boseworth was he slayne.

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There’s a lot more, but I’ll spare you the rest; William McGonagall, eat your heart out.

Interesting, though, that in the fraught moment of 1553, with the attempted coup in favour of Jane Grey only just defeated, Watertoune found the natural beginning of his survey of treason – a beginning it’s clear he expects his readers to recognise – seventy years earlier, with Richard of Gloucester and his nephews in 1483.

And I might have to adopt the idea of ‘A ninvective’.

Eleanor of Aquitaine’s divorce still to come – and Eleanor will also make an appearance in another series of posts I have lined up, entirely thanks to my brilliant friend Dan Jones. Here’s a clue to be going on with.