RICHARD BRATHWAIT THE FIRST LAKELAND POET
JOHN BOWES
First published in 2007
Hugill Publications Ltd
Ings, Cumbria
Smashwords Edition 2010
Copyright © John Bowes 2007
ISBN 978-0-9551174-1-1
Cover: Portrait of Richard ‘Dapper Dick’ Braithwaite of Burneside (1588-1673) reproduced by courtesy of Abbott Hall Art Gallery, Kendal, Cumbria, England.
FOREWORD
After retiring from full time employment at the end of 2004 I looked around for something positive to do in order to keep my brain busy. I began by engaging in some research on the history of my sixteenth century home. I soon discovered that my house had been occupied for most of the seventeenth century by members of the Brathwait family and that Richard Brathwait, a writer of the Jacobean and Caroline period, may have lived there at some point.
This naturally aroused my curiosity and I set out to discover as much as I could about this poet who may, albeit at a different time, have shared my home.
The obvious first stage was to read his work but, at the outset, I had absolutely no conception of how difficult this was going to be. A visit to the library in Kendal yielded not a single volume of his work. I acquired copies of Barnabee’s Journal, A Strappado For the Divell, Two Lancashire Lovers, and The Penitent Pilgrim via the internet at considerable expense but his other writings proved either completely elusive or well beyond my pocket.
Not to be daunted I paid a second visit to the Kendal library and put in a formal request to obtain The English Gentleman and The English Gentlewoman via the inter library loan scheme. On this occasion I was rather taken aback when the intelligent and obviously well educated young lady at the desk queried the date of the publication and the spelling of the author’s name. Clearly, she had never heard of Richard Brathwait although this most prolific of seventeenth century writers had almost certainly been born only about two miles from where she stood.
The Kendal library proved as helpful as they could but in order to greatly further my enquiries I began to pursue educational establishments across the globe for direct access to his work. This exercise proved largely futile. The problem was that most of Richard Brathwait’s work had been out of print for three hundred years or more. In addition his practice of publishing many of his works anonymously or under pseudonym meant that just identifying the parameters of the task was strewn with pitfalls. I discovered that most of his work was available on the internet but access was limited to academics and students registered at universities and other higher education centres. Fortunately, ProQuest Information and Learning, a global provider of access to online repositories, kindly listened to my special pleading and, as a result, I have now been able to read most of Richard Brathwait’s work.
This modest volume makes no pretensions to being serious literary biography. The merits of Richard Brathwait’s work, and his place in our literary history, can be assessed by others far more expert than me. My interest is in understanding something about the man and his times. Unfortunately, relatively little has been recorded about Richard Brathwait’s life. Even the date and place of his birth has been the subject of some speculation. He left no great mark on public life or any quantity of letters and papers to offer belated revelations about his private dealings. But what we do have are his writings. Often these are openly biographical whilst, at other times, they offer hints and clues about his thinking and behaviour. However, using this material to flesh Richard out is a potentially hazardous undertaking. Judgement is called for and I have no illusions about my own fallibility or any claim to special expertise. At the end of the day the reader will have to judge whether or not I have exercised good judgement.
From my own perspective I have enjoyed following my seventeenth century friend. I can’t claim to know him yet. I probably never will. Like all of us he is capable of showing different faces and changing over time. Human beings are the most complex of creatures and biography is perhaps ultimately the most futile of pursuits. Nevertheless I trust that I have captured at least the odd fleeting glimpse of him even if I have inevitably failed to catch the complete man. In this endeavour I have, as far as possible, used Richard’s own words, and often those of his contemporaries, in order to convey, as accurately as possible, his thinking in the context of his times.
Richard Brathwait was a man of great character and achievement. Although a miscellaneous writer of some repute during his own times his works have had little or no exposure, beyond the academic environment, for several generations. His life and work spanned arguably the most interesting period of our national history but his waspish and satirical contemporary insights have remained largely hidden between the covers of numerous dusty volumes stored in the vaults of our most ancient libraries. Once a famous son of Kendal he now goes unrecognised in the main library of his home town.
This strikes me as a great shame and if this small volume can stir sufficient interest to ensure that Richard Brathwait ceases to be a stranger to his own then my small efforts will have proved worthwhile. In this endeavour I have had much help and support from numerous sources. Special mention should be made of three or four people. Dan Burnstone from ProQuest without whose much needed assistance this task could not have been completed. Wendy Wrigley, a colleague from a former life, who provided
invaluable help with some Latin translation. David Seaman, another former colleague and now an academic, who helped me source some of the more obscure papers for my research. Finally, the librarians at the Kendal library who sometimes looked at me rather oddly when I requested some rather esoteric sounding titles but always did their best to find them for me.
John Bowes
CONTENTS
Within that native place where I was born 3
I knewe what sinne it was to solicit a maid into lightnesse 10
Since the jarring strings of discord be reduced to so pleasant
harmony 20
Chast was my choice; so choice, as ne’re was bred 28
For as I would not have gentlemen libertines, so I would not
have them hermits 45
It will become her to tip her tongue with silence 64
I hold no eloquence so strong as when it falls from a calme
womans tongue 78
So choice and well-cultvated a soyle, soyled with perfidious
feet, and made a wilde forrest for rationall brutes 89
Nought but fire and fury: yet such was their folly, as none
knew well what they fought for 100
The only way to live peaceably, is to suffer patiently: and
with a pleasing smile 115
Our seas grown calme; our ayre refin’d, and clear 130
Thou are a shadow, God the substance is 145
Those curiously shaded, beauteously tufted, naturally
fortifide, and impregnably seated islands in every part of
the mere interveined 158
Within that native place where I was borne
Richard Brathwait was almost certainly born at Burneside, just two miles from Kendal, sometime during 1588. He broke his first cry onto the world as the Spanish armada threatened English shores and literary genius flooded the London stage. The defeat of the armada settled the fate of English catholicism for a century and the first performances of Richard III and Doctor Faustus announced the great epoch of English Literature. (1) Richard had been born into an era of profound religious and political disunity and a period of literary creative achievement unmatched either before or since. It was to be a suitable backdrop to a fascinating life.
The uncertainty surrounding his place and date of birth is as a result of the absence of any entries in the Kendal parish records for a three year period between 1588 and 1590 possibly due to an outbreak to the plague. (2) The resultant uncertainty about Richard’s precise geographical origin was subsequently compounded by a reference to Northumberland in the Oriel College register. (3) His father owned a substantial estate at Warcop, as well as land and property in Yorkshire, and it is quite conceivable that Richard’s birth took place away from the established family home at Burneside. However, it was Richard who confirmed himself as a Kendal man in a poem addressed ‘to the truly worthy, the Alderman of Kendall and his brethren’ in which he laments the ‘swinish use of drunkennesse’:
‘A vice in great request (for all receive it)
And being once train’d in’t there’s few can leave it;
How happie should I in my wishes be,
If I this vice out of request could see,
Within that native place where I was borne,
It lies in you, deere Townes-men to reforme’. (4)
It was Richard’s good fortune to be born into a prominent Westmorland family whose wealth and reputation had been growing for at least three generations. The family had ‘risen on the great wave of the woollen trade, and its members were intermarrying with other rich trading families, and acquiring freeholds and coats of arms’. (5)
Richard was a direct descendant of Richard Brathwait of Ambleside whose son Robert purchased the manor of Burneshead from the Machell family during the sixteenth century. (6) When Robert died James, his second son, inherited Ambleside which was ‘called a Hall only from the goodness of it, exceeding the common form of building but never was a manor house’. (7) Thomas Brathwait, the elder son, inherited Burneshead.
Thomas was the Recorder of Kendal from 1576 until his death in 1610. (8) In this highly influential position he would have overseen the Court of Records, which dealt with civil actions, and advised the council in the execution of its duties. (9) Sir Thomas, who was granted arms in 1591, acquired the manor of Warcop and also owned the manors of Staveley and Winderwath. (10) He married Dorothy, the daughter of Robert Byndlose of Helsington, by whom he had two sons and five daughters. Richard Brathwait was his second son. (11)
Relatively little is known about Richard’s childhood. Relationships between wealthy parents and their offspring in the sixteenth century were probably remote by twenty-first century standards. The high rate of infant mortality acted as a deterrent to the investment of too much emotional capital in the very young. In the late Elizabethan period in excess of 25% of children died before reaching the age of fifteen. In addition, the babies were often fostered out to wet nurses and, as a result, their parents saw relatively little of them during the first eighteen months of their lives. (12) Richard refers to being ‘weaned from my Nurses milk’ and therefore it is reasonable to suppose he spent considerable time away from his mother during the earliest part of his life.(13)
Thomas and Dorothy certainly suffered the distress of seeing some of their offspring die young. Their son Robert, born in 1577, lived for only eighteen months and James, born in 1582, fared even worse and expired after only three months. Whether these experiences contributed to any emotional distancing from their youngest son it is impossible to say. Paradoxically they may have had the opposite effect. Richard’s survival into a robust childhood may have unleashed their stifled affections. Certainly Richard only ever spoke well of his father and subsequent developments suggest that he occupied the status of a favoured child.
He grew up at Burneside Hall which has a history which can be traced back to 1275. The Reverend Thomas Machell, chaplain to King Charles II, recorded his visit to Burneside during a horseback journey around the barony of Kendal in 1692. Machell’s description offers us an almost contemporary account of the home in which Richard spent his early years and much of his subsequent life:
‘Hence, over a bridge, we passed to Burneside Hall, a pleasant seat upon a plain at the foot of a hill .which rises with an east ascent, like a woman’s breast. And has…. (been) called Burnay from the Burne or Brooke that runs by it (called Sleddal or Spret) and the place Burneside from being situated at the side of it.
There is a court with a lodge and battlements, through which you ascend into the Hall, by a tower on your right, where I met some coats of arms and ….more in the dining room and parlour, but most in the gallery. Before the court is a large pond stored with tench, trout and eels, intercepted with a passage or causeway up to the gate and on either side is a little island with plane trees planted on it.’ (14)
With its 14th century pele tower and its ‘barmykyn’ Burneside Hall must have been a stimulating playground for a bright young boy. (15) Situated adjacent to the river, and on the fringes of the Lakeland fells, it cannot have failed to fire Richard’s imagination.
His own brief account of his childhood is characteristically candid. He ‘was seldom contented, by being seated in that place where I was: nor with that sport I last affected. When I was in my fathers house, my desire was to be in the field; when I was in the field I longed to be at home’. Like any other perfectly normal child his immediate ambitions were modest, his desires being ‘easie and narrow…they aspired no higher than to points, pins, or cherrystones’. (16) The affluence and status of his family shielded him from the more challenging environments faced by some of his immediate contemporaries:
‘I knew not what they meant by a deare summer, or an unseasonable harvest. These were the least and lightest of my cares: while I found plenty, I dreamed little of others scarcitie. Mine highest outrage was the breach of an orchard’. (17)
Perhaps his high status background proved an obstacle to making friends as he confessed an inclination to engage in behaviour designed to gain his playmates affections. This tendency to be so easily led by others might have sounded a warning shot about his future behaviour during adolescence:
‘But whatsoever I did in my selfe correct; others were as apt quickly to corrupt. If other children approved it, I gave way unto it. I shap’t my affection by their liking: my election by their loving. Thus I went on a proficient in nothing so much as folly’. (18)
Richard Brathwait was fifty when these words were first published and he was assessing his childhood from an adult perspective and with a critical inclination which reflected his serious and devout commitment to the Christian faith. His condemnation of childish conduct seems out of place from the more liberal perspective of our own times. It is difficult to see anything seriously amiss, or anything other than normal behaviour, in the young boy who Richard described:
‘What a brave youth held I my selfe with mine Eldern Gun, Hobbie-horse, and Rattle? A poore pride, and yet rich enough for that time. What was onely before mee, seemed deare unto mee. Yesterday was too long for mee to remember: and to morrow too long for mee to expect. I held the present day, the only date of my pleasure……..Thus went I on in my childish wayes; wise enough to be a Wag; too light, too bee truly wise. So as, I might be well compared to that Top, I so much used, which always ran round, & never went forward, unlesse it were whipt’. (19)
Affluent gentry families often employed a tutor to educate their sons at home (20) but it is clear from Richard’s writings that he went to school. The nascent Kendal grammar school had been established since 1524 and it subsequently acquired its own buildings when land adjacent to Abbott Hall was donated by Miles Philipson of Crook in 1582. The local Corporation actively supported this project which coincided with Thomas Brathwait’s period as Recorder of Kendal. Thomas would almost certainly have known Miles Philipson and Bernard Gilpin, another active supporter of the school, and he may, as a result of his office and these personal associations, have felt obliged to send his son through its doors. (21)
This is pure speculation. What we do know for certain is that Richard did not enjoy the schooling experience. He held ‘the condition of any creature more happie than that of a scholler’ and books he ‘loved onely for their cover’. There was little sign of the gifted man of letters in the child who claimed that ‘like a beare to the stake, was I haled to my booke’. School days were evidently dark days for the future poet:
‘No day was to mee ominous, but if any were, none so much, as after a long Breaking up, to returne to Schoole. I found in my selfe a naturall feare; but this proceeded rather from sight of the rod, than any propensitie to what was good. This feare taught me how to flatter; and this I began first to practise on my Master. What faire promises would I make him, in hope of one houres reprive from him! All things should be amended; meane time, nothing lesse intended’. (22)
Richard’s fear of the rod was probably well justified. More children were exposed to corporal punishment during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries than at any time before or since. Beatings were commonplace and often exercised with severe brutality. Nor was the emphasis on physical punishment confined to the home and school but became the established method of social control with every village supporting a whipping post. The use of flogging as a means of maintaining discipline and control even extended to the universities. (23)
Richard no doubt accommodated himself sufficiently with his master to achieve a grounding in classical grammar for in 1604, at the relatively tender age of sixteen, he left the family home and set off to study at Oxford. He enrolled as a commoner at Oriel college ‘at which time he was matriculated as a gentleman’s son and a native of the County of Northumberland’. (24) His father presumably despatched his youngest son south in the expectation that he might gain an education suitable as a foundation for a future career. However, despite its elite status Oxford was not everything that it might have seemed. With drunkenness and licentiousness apparently commonplace the university represented a potential minefield for a young and impressionable boy from the provincial north. (25)
This was inevitably a critical period in Richard’s life. Coinciding with the onset of manhood, and released from immediate parental control, he found the freedom to begin to follow his own course both through his studies and by indulging in less than worthy recreational pursuits. It was a period of critical creative development which would be subsequently reflected in the almost constant stream of classical references in his work as well as a tendency to dwell on some of the less salubrious experiences of his early years.
Richard himself recognised the importance of the university in his development when he dedicated an early work to ‘his deare foster mother, the universitie of Oxford’ and then penned the following lines:
‘To thee (deare mother) in whose learned lap,
I once repos’d, and from whose batt’ning papp
I suckt the milke of knowledge, send I these
Which if they please, as I could wish then please
I’me honour’d by them, and will still renew
My love to them, because they’r lik’d by you.
But these are feeble, scarce penfeathered,
And like young lapwings run with shell on head:
Nor can I blame them: for belike they’ve heard,
How I was young when I to you repair’d:
Growing in some sort riper; and these doe
Expect the like, that they shall thrive so too.’ (26)
Whilst in the ‘heat of youth’ Richard would ‘hunt after pleasures of more height’ there is little doubt that he also engaged in serious study. He loved his time at Oxford and was clearly stimulated by the competitive intellectual environment:
‘I was sent to the universitie; where (still with an humble acknowledgement of others favours and reasonable endevours) I became proficient, as time call’d mee for a graduate. And in these studies I continued, till by universal voice and vote, I was put upon a task, whose style I have, and shall ever retaine, the sonne of Earth, Terrae Filius. From the performance of which exercise, whether it were the extraordinary favour which the universitie pleased to grace mee withal, or that shee found some tokens in mee of such future proficience as might answer the hopes of so tender a mother, I know not: but, sure I am, I received no small encouragement both in my studies and free tender of ample preferment’. (27)
The Terrae Filius was an anonymous speaker charged with delivering a satirical speech during the trinity term. Richard was presumably chosen for this task because of his inherent propensity to demonstrate a biting wit which in later years may have been responsible for his nickname of ‘Dagger Dick’. Clearly, Richard saw this ‘preferment’ as a reward for his academic endeavours and for an opportunity to shine.
As an undergraduate it is likely that he spent his first year studying rhetoric before moving on to logic in his second and third year. (28) However, his inclinations lay elsewhere:
‘He avoided as much as he could, the rough paths of logic and philosophy, and traced those smooth ones of poetry and roman history, in which at length he did excel.’ (29)
Poetry was highly valued at Oxford both for its potential to stimulate the learning process and for the pleasure to be derived from its study. However, in this latter context, it was sometimes feared that the subject might so captivate students that it could divert them from more onerous academic tasks. (30) Richard Brathwait certainly started to compose light verse during this period and it may have been his growing passion for literature that started to concern his father. This concern may have been fuelled by a recognition that Richard had styled himself as one of the ‘wits’ who, as a group, had a reputation for meeting in local taverns and keeping company of the less virtuous kind. Thomas Brathwait had mapped out his sons career path and he was not prepared to see his intentions frustrated by adolescent fancy. His resolution was recorded in February 1606 when he wrote his final will:
‘And also my Will and mynd is that my sonne Richard Brathwait shall contynue in the Univrsitie of Oxford, and there to applie and followe learning for and during such tyme as my Wife, with the advise of the more pt of the supervisors of this my last Will and Testament, then living, shall think meet: And afterwards goe and remayne at the Innes of Court, and there to applie and followe the studie of the lawes of this Realme, so long as he shall behave himself, and diligentlie followe and applie the said studie: as my trust is that he will do’. (31)
Perhaps Thomas envisaged his youngest son following in his own illustrious footsteps. Clearly he was intent upon him acquiring legal training. Whatever the thinking Richard’s academic idyll was to be interrupted and his life set upon a path far different from that of his own personal inclination:
‘Having for sundry yeares together thus remained in the bounteous bosom of this my nursing-mother; all which time, in the freedome of those studies, I reap’t no lesse private comfort, than I received from others incouragement; I resolved to set my rest upon this, to bestow the most of my time in that place, if it stood with my parents liking. But soone I was crossed by them in these resolves: being injoyned by them to turne the course of my studies from those sweet academick exercises, wherein I tasted such infinite content: and to betake my selfe to a profession, which I must confesse suited not well with my disposition’. (32)
Richard was distraught by this decision. The academic life suited him well and he had started to make the first tentative steps towards a literary career by composing some ‘light amorous poems’. (33) He had begun to set his own path but was now faced with an unwelcome, unexpected, and seemingly unassailable obstacle.
Richard was already on the verge of manhood and the inclination to rebel must have been very strong but he lived in a deferential age when children were expected to subordinate their wishes to those of their parents. (34) He was also, at times, quite coldly pragmatic. Sir Thomas held all the purse strings. Financial necessity dictated compliance and a suitable display of filial loyalty could only strengthen the personal bond between an ageing father and his youngest son. It was a pivotal moment. Richard reluctantly obeyed his fathers command.
‘But judge now Shepheards, could I chuse to grieve,
When I must leave, what I was forced to leave,
Those sweet delightfull Arts, with which my youth
Was first inform’d, and now attain’d such growth,
As I did reape more happy comfort thence
In one short houre than many Twelve-months since?.....
…….Yet it was fit
I should respect his love imposed it.
For ne’re had Father showne unto his sonne
More tender love than he to me had done:
So as his will was still to me a law,
Which I observed more for love than awe….’ (35)
Notes and References
(1)Anthony Holden An Illustrated Biography of William Shakespeare Little, Brown and Company 2002
(2)M.W.Black Richard Brathwait: An Account of his Life and Works Philadelphia 1928
(3)Anthony A Wood, Ed. Bliss Athenae Oxonienses Oxford 1817
(4)Richard Brathwait A Strappado for the Divell London 1615
(5)Mary L Armitt Fullers and Freeholders in the Parish of Grasmere Trans. Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society 1908
(6)Joseph Nicolson and Richard Burn The History and Antiquities of the Counties of Westmorland and Cumberland Strachan and Cadell London 1777
(7)Jane M Ewbank Antiquary on Horseback Titus Wilson 1963
(8)G.E.Braithwaite The Braithwaite Clan 1974
(9)Roger Bingham Kendal: A Social History Cicerone 1996
(10)R.S.Boumphrey, C.D.Hudleston and J.Hughes An Armorial for Westmorland and Lonsdale Lake District Museum Trust and The Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society 1975
(11)Joseph Nicolson and Richard Burn The History and Antiquities of the Counties of Westmorland and Cumberland Strachan and Cadell London 1777
(12)Lawrence Stone The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800 Penguin 1979
(13)Richard Brathwait A Spiritual Spicerie London 1638 (Early English Books Online)
(14)Jane M Ewbank Antiquary on Horseback Titus Wilson 1963
(15)J.H.Palmer Historic Farmhouses in and around Westmorland Westmorland Gazette 1945
(16)Richard Brathwait A Spiritual Spicerie London 1638 (Early English Books Online) (17) Ditto.
(18)Ditto.
(19)Ditto.
(20)Stephen Porter University and Society Nicholas Tyacke ed. The History of the University of Oxford Vol IV. Seventeenth Century Clarendon Press Oxford 1997
(21)Roger Bingham Kendal: A Social History Cicerone 1996
(22)Richard Brathwait A Spiritual Spicerie London 1638 (Early English Books Online)
(23)Lawrence Stone The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800 Penguin 1979
(24)Anthony A Wood Athenae Oxonienses ed. Bliss Oxford 1817
(25)Godfrey Davies The Early Stuarts 1603-1660 second edition Oxford 1987
(26)Richard Brathwait Times Curtaine Drawne London 1621 (Early English Books Online)
(27)Richard Brathwait A Spiritual Spicerie London 1638 (Early English Books Online)
(28)Godfrey Davies The Early Stuarts 1603-1660 second edition Oxford 1987
(29)Anthony A Wood Athenae Oxonienses ed. Bliss Oxford 1817
(30)Mordecai Feingold The Humanites Nicholas Tyacke ed. The History of the University of Oxford Vol IV. Seventeenth Century Clarendon Press Oxford 1997
(31)Joseph Haslewood, ed. Barnabee’s Journal London 1876
(32)Richard Brathwait A Spiritual Spicerie London 1638 (Early English Books Online)
(33)Ditto.
(34)Lawrence Stone The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800 Penguin 1979
(35)Richard Brathwait The Shepheards Tales London 1621
I knewe what sinne it was to solicit a maid into lightnesse
According to the Dictionary of National Biography Richard Brathwait, after leaving Oxford, was despatched to Cambridge university where, under the authority of Lancelot Andrewes the master of Pembroke college, he began his preparation for the legal profession. (1) However, there is some uncertainty about this as there is no entry for him in the Cambridge register. This may reflect the omission of regular formalities as a result of his period at Oxford or the engagement in a period of preparation under the guidance of specific individuals rather than under the formal auspices of the university itself. (2)
What is certain is that Richard was admitted to Gray’s Inn on the 11th May 1609. What followed was a period of profound disappointment as he entered into a profession which was ill suited to his skills and temperament and which, as a result of familiarity through study and employment, would, in due course, establish a contempt for the practise of law which would last for the whole of his life. ‘Here I long remained, but lightly profited: being there seated, where I studied more for acquaintance than knowledge. Nor was I the onely one (though a principall one) who run deeply in areeres with time; and gulled the eyes of opinion with a law-gowne’. (3)
Richard’s experience was not in any way unique. Many sons of the gentry were sent to the Inns of Court to finish off their education after a period at university. The Inns provided a gentlemanly education for those who wished to spend some time in London whilst gaining a rudimentary knowledge of the law. (4) It was Richard’s misfortune that he had no inclination to do either and yet his years in the London put an indelible stamp on the man which would subsequently shape his thinking and secure his destiny.
London was expanding rapidly. The population had quadrupled in the sixteenth century and the city was progressively being built and rebuilt to cope with its growth. Fifty per cent of the population were under twenty years of age and life expectancy was low underpinning an intense demand for the immediacy of experience. Poverty and disease were rife and violence commonplace. There were more than a hundred bawdy-houses and young women came from all over the country to feed the insatiable sexual needs of the capital. (5) It was into this maelstrom of energy that the young Richard Brathwait was pitched. It is hardly surprising that he should suffer its abuses and succumb to its temptations.
In A Trapanner he describes how a ‘spruce youth’ is given ‘his auspicious welcome to the south’ when visited by ‘a traine of roysting-rufflers’ he is entertained with ‘bottells of sack’ before ‘a gaudy-giddy-giglet is convei’d, a virgin pure, as any hackney maid, thick dawb’d with cerusse, stibium, & vermillion’ and to whose charms he is left ‘like a lambkin in a tigres arms’ before his new found companions rush in and variously claim he has dishonoured cousin, sister, and wife:
‘The Dwindling Shallop in this grand dispute
Sits silent all the while as any Mute,
Reft both of sense and accent: and must dy
Were no compass’onat Complice standing by
To soften their resolve: Compose this strife
By begging pardon for this Wigeons life.
The Motions made; and they incline unto’t,
So they may plunder Him from head to foot:
His substance hee’s contented to forgoe,
To save his life, and hold’t a curt’sy too’. (6)
We have no certain way of knowing whether this reflected Richard’s own experience in London. After all the poem was not published until 1658 although it was almost certainly composed many years earlier. However, like so much of what Richard wrote, the words seem to convey a sense of authenticity and the content is consistent with his self confessed associations with low life in the metropolis.
Although his legal training progressed, and would undoubtedly serve him to good effect in a later period of his life, he found it very difficult to engage with either the profession or its practitioners:
‘I went to John a Styles, and John an Okes
And many other law-baptized folks,
Whereby I set the practice of the law
At as light count as turning of a straw,
For straight I found how John a Styles did state it,
But I was over Style ere I came at it;
For having thought (so easie was the way)
That one might be a lawyer the first day:
I after found that the further that I went,
The further I was from my element:’ (7)
Although Richard Brathwait always had the greatest respect for the rule of law he rarely failed, throughout his long literary career, to take a swipe at the legal profession whenever a suitable occasion presented itself. Only a close experience of real abuses could justify such a constant stream of ridicule and abuse. A merciless lampooning which is evident even in his very earliest work:
‘… a magistrate that goes on stilts to save his footecloth, he overperes a whole multitude, but taking so greate paines upon his artificiall legges, he must be anointed; theres no remedy, hee will grow stiffe else: it is a golden potion must restore him his sence of hearing which was well-nigh perished: applie but this receipt to his pulse; and the virtue is admirable, it is better than earesalve it will restore him the faculty of hearing instantlie’. (8)
Apparently shackled to a career he did not relish, hundreds of miles away from home and family, separated from his friends and his ‘deare foster mother’ he inevitably sought release from his self-evident frustrations. His experiments with light amorous verse began to take on a new dimension. He began to revive the ‘long-languishing spirit of poetrie’ and was moved ‘to fit my buskin’s muse for the stage; with other occasional presentments or poems; which being free-borne, and not mercenarie, received graceful acceptance of all such who understood my ranke and qualitie’. (9)
According to Richard this first public exposure of his latent literary ability sat ‘so well with the temper and humour of the time, as nothing was either presented by me (at the instancie of the noblest and most generous wits and spirits of the time) to the stage; or committed by mee to the presse; which past not with good approvement in the estimate of the world’. He was duly encouraged to address his talents to ‘subjects of stronger digestion’ such as required ‘more maturitie of judgement, though lesse pregnancie of invention’. (10)
These more serious subjects may have involved him in the production of court masques. The life of Mariano Silesio contains a number of biographical elements which appear consistent with Richard’s life. Some credence, therefore, has to be given to Mariano’s being ‘much employed in his younger yeares, in the invention and setting forth of Court-Maskes and other Princely presentments’ to be a mirror of Richard’s own experience. (11)
Whilst masques have often been considered to be simple entertainments recent historical research has suggested that, during the Jacobean period, they may have had a more serious political role. They represented a medium by which the diverse interests of the court negotiated for influence and position. (12) They are usually associated with poets of the rank of Ben Jonson and Daniel Martin but the Inns of Court had a strong theatrical tradition and may have also been involved in court masques. (13) It is known, for instance, that gentleman from the Inns presented masques to celebrate the marriage of Princess Elizabeth and Frederick, the Elector Palatine, in 1613. Whilst this date may have been rather late for Richard Brathwait’s personal participation it reflects an involvement with court masques which may have started with James accession to the throne in 1603. (14)
Certainly Richard’s essentially hostile attitude to the court and courtiers, which was given full flow in later works, must have been formed at around this time. His strength of feeling and grasp of detail suggests that these subsequent and vituperative writing were more than flights of imagination or exercises in passive journalism. He must have gained his experience from somewhere and if he chose to imply that he had been involved with court masques there is no essential reason to disbelieve him.
Richard’s first known publication was The Golden Fleece which didn’t leave the press until 1611. Despite his references to writing for the stage nothing which might have been written at such an early period has survived. Nevertheless, it is clear that he was greatly encouraged by the public response to his fledgling work. With his literary career now underway his ego was duly flattered. He confesses to ‘a glowing heat and conceipt of my selfe’ and that he ‘held it in those dayes an incomparable grace to be styled one of the wits’. Touched by light fame he ‘had got an eye in the world; and a finger in the street. There goes an author! One of the wits! Which could not chuse, but make mee looke bigge ,as if I had been casten in a new mold’. (15)
Literary young men in London had a tendency to congregate together. The original ‘wits’ were Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe, and Robert Greene whose reputation for drunken and promiscuous behaviour was only surpassed by the their prodigious talent. (16) These wild young men cut their teeth a generation before Richard Brathwait came onto the scene but such was their literary standing that it is hardly be surprising that their younger followers sought to emulate both the best of their achievements and the worst of their behaviour. Richard did not tell us much about his fellow ‘wits’ although his personal acquaintances are thought to have included both George Wither and Thomas Heywood. (17)
George Wither was born in the same year as Richard and made his literary debut with Prince Henries Obsequies in 1612 and secured his reputation a year later with the publication of a series of satirical pieces under the title of Abuses Stript and Whipt. This highly successful publication subsequently resulted in Wither’s arrest and imprisonment for the libelling of a peer. (18)
By contrast Thomas Heywood was already a successful playwright when the young Richard was still playing with his ‘eldern gun’. His earliest surviving play King Edward IV was published in 1599 and as a member of the Queen’s Men he would achieved a level of affluence as well as some fame. (19)
If these two talented gentleman were amongst Richard’s companions in London it is perhaps not surprising that Richard’s sense of self-worth ran high. His naïve surrender to simple and misplaced vanity was something he would later regret but, whilst to the adult and devout Christian gentleman it was undoubtedly a sin, it would not sit so heavily on his conscience as his self confessed descent into unbridled licentiousness:
‘…when I saw a thief, I followed him; and with the adulterer I divided my portion. I bestowed the day in a variety of follies; and a great part of the night in a delightful remembrance of those follies. Let us prepare ourselves (said one) for the spoil: and I had an hand as ready to further it, as he was to demand it. Let us drink wine in bowls, and carouse till our eyes be red; let the day care for itself, while the day of our life admits no care. Let us take our full pleasure (said the wanton) let our delight be in dalliance: and I followed the steps of the whorish woman: though her ways led to death.’ (20)
This confession in The Penitent Pilgrim is typical of the many references throughout his work to a perception of his being in a constant state of sin and the need for public redemption. This probably reflects a process of personal indulgence which may have run through the greater part of his life but, in his published work, finds a particular focus on the early London years. In his youth he ‘was not so well seasoned, as to use pleasure as it should be used’ being ‘too hot in the quest and pursuit of it, to show any discretion in the exercise of it’. Whilst he knows his Christian duty he nevertheless finds the call of sin over-powering. He is obsessed with the pleasures of the flesh. For the young Richard ‘the day seemed long, wherein I did not enjoy them: the night long, wherein I thought not of them. I knew what sinne it was to sollicit a maid unto lightnesse; or to be drunken with wine, wherein was excesse: or to suffer mine heart to be oppressed with surfetting and drunkennesse: yet, for all of this, run I on still in my evil wayes….’ (21)
In Barnabee’s Journal, Richard’s most famous work, this theme of drunkenness and bawdiness is played out in what perhaps amounts to the worlds most celebrated pub crawl. Although it is believed that this epic poem was the ‘accumulation of a space of nearly thirty years’ it is likely that the first two parts were completed sometime around 1615 (22) and may have represented the ‘three dayes taske’ completed, as he claimed, ‘in the first spring of my minoritie’. (23)
In this poem the morally reprehensible hero engages in a series of journeys across the country, taking routes which would have been familiar to our northern scholar, which in their totality amount to nothing more or less than a drunken romp. In Yorkshire the lusty Barnabee takes his pleasure and then makes a quick exit to avoid any possible consequences:
‘Hence to Mansfield, where I knew one,
That was comely, and a trew one,
With her nak’d compact made I,
Her long lov’d I, with her laid I,
Towne and her I left, being doubtfull
Lest my love had made her fruitfull.’ (24)
The high spirited and good humoured Barnabee turned his attention from the flesh to the bottle when he dropped in upon Dunstable:
‘Thence to Dunstable, all about me;
Mice within, and Thieves without me,
No feare affrights deep drinkers,
There I tost it with my Skinkers;
Not a drop of wit remained
Which the bottle had not drained.’ (25)
Towards the end of his second journey the drunken Barnabee, no doubt in a state of physical exhaustion and mental confusion, descends into the mire when confronted by two bears:
‘Thence to th’ Purse at Barnet known-a,
There the Beares were come to Town-a;
Two rude Hunks, ‘tis truth I tell ye,
Drawing neare them, they did smell me,
And like two mis-shapen wretches
Made me, ay me, wrong my bretches.’ (26)
Whether these incidents are based on fact or fiction, or, as in all probability, a combination of both, is perhaps less important than what they suggest about Richard’s life experience and his obvious comfort in being personally associated with vulgarity, intemperance and promiscuity. Elsewhere his descriptions of the low life appear more obviously autobiographical and are offered almost gratuitously and without that cloak of humour which somehow seems to sanitise the Barnabee experience. In a poem entitled The Civell Divell he describes visiting a prostitute:
‘It chanc’t one evening as I went abroad,
To cheere my cares, and take away my loade,
Of disagreeing passions, which were bred
By the distemper of a troubled head,
Midst of my walke, spying an Allye doore,
(Which I protest I never spied before)
I entred in, and being entred in,
I found the entry was to th’house of sinne.’ (27)
The young poet ‘enthralld by tempting sinne’ struggled with his uneasy conscience but quickly succumbed to temptation owning that ‘though vertue forc’t me out, vice kept me in’:
‘Well my brave Curtizan, since I am won,
To doe that act by which I am undone.
Since I am snared, and like a Bird that’s caught,
Fledged in bird-lime, am of wit distraught,
And senses too: I will runne headlong to it,
And doe it with force, since I perforce must do it.’ (28)
The authenticity of this experience, and the Richard’s familiarity with it, is demonstrated by the detail in its recollection and the use of vernacular language. This was not a period in our history when any great consideration was given to matters of person hygiene and the sexual act, particularly when performed with a back street professional, must have involved exposure, at least from a modern perspective, to an unpleasant combination of offensive sights and putrid odours. (29) It is likely that Jacobean brothels attempted to use fragrances to disguise the smell and hence the references to ‘rosie odours’ and ‘sheets of lust perfum’d deliciously’. Richard’s description of the prostitute ‘in grave attire, French hood, all Frenchefide, for she had some-thing more of French beside’ starts to bring her alive and with the line ‘Ile be thy Venus, pretty Ducke’ she appears almost breathing and ageless before us. (30)
The Civill Devill is an attack on the ‘fowle evill’ of prostitution which Richard believed to be exposing Albion’s ‘glory to the house of shame’. His open condemnation is no doubt fuelled by his sense of Christian guilt. However, in a poem entitled The Conyburrow, whilst continuing with this theme, he perhaps betrays a bitter personal experience which might explain the intensity of his hostility:
‘If lust that’s cal’d by th’ sensuall Epicure,
The best of moving pleasures, and the lure,