Dublin: Renaissance city of literature 9781526113252

Table of contents :
Front matter
Contents
List of illustrations
Notes on contributors
Introduction
Centre or periphery? The role of Dublin in James Yonge’s Memoriale (1412)
Books, politics and society in Renaissance Dublin
Edmund Spenser’s Dublin
Complaint and reform in late Elizabethan Dublin, 1579–94
Renaissance Dublin and the construction of literary authorship: Richard Bellings, James Shirley and Henry Burnell
‘A real credit to Ireland, and to Dublin’: The scholarly achievements of Sir James Ware
Translation and collaboration in Renaissance Dublin
Omnia vincit amor: Gaelic poetry and English books
Latin oratory in seventeenth-century Dublin
Anglo-Irish drama? Writing for the stage in Restoration Dublin
Peripheral print cultures in Renaissance Europe
Index

Citation preview

This volume interrogates the notion of a literary ‘Renaissance’ in Dublin, arguing that the associated cultural pursuits were already well developed in late–medieval Ireland. It covers new ground through detailed case studies of print and literature, providing quantitative analysis of print production in Ireland, as well as unique insight into the city’s literary communities and considerations of literary genres that flourished there. The chapters address a wider range of topics than much of the existing scholarly literature, including English and European influences, the construction of Dublin literary identities, early modern reading habits and non-Anglophone contexts. The Renaissance in Dublin was marked by people, places and discourses that emerged and re-emerged with unexpected frequency, resulting in the cohesive view of the re-birth of literary activity in Dublin that is captured in this volume. Featuring contributions from leading scholars of early modern Ireland, including Raymond Gillespie, Alexander S. Wilkinson, Marie-Louise Coolahan and Andrew Hadfield, Dublin: Renaissance city of literature is an invaluable resource for understanding the factors that contributed to the complex literary character of the city.

Dublin: Renaissance city of literature

Spenser

Spenser Spenser Spenser Spenser

Dublin: Renaissance city of literature

Kathleen Miller is a Visiting Research Fellow at Queen’s University Belfast

Spenser

MILLER GRIBBEN eds

Crawford Gribben is a Professor of History at Queen’s University Belfast

E DI T E D B Y

ISBN 978-1-5261-1324-5

9 781526 113245 www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

KAT H L E E N M I L L E R C R AW F OR D G R I B B E N

Dublin

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The Manchester Spenser is a monograph and text series devoted to historical and textual approaches to Edmund Spenser – to his life, times, places, works and contemporaries. A growing body of work in Spenser and Renaissance studies, fresh with confidence and curiosity and based on solid historical research, is being written in response to a general sense that our ability to interpret texts is becoming limited without the excavation of further knowledge. So the importance of research in nearby disciplines is quickly being recognised, and interest renewed: history, archaeology, religious or theological history, book history, translation, lexicography, commentary and glossary – these require treatment for and by students of Spenser. The Manchester Spenser, to feed, foster and build on these refreshed attitudes, aims to publish reference tools, critical, historical, biographical and archaeological monographs on or related to Spenser, from several disciplines, and to publish editions of primary sources and classroom texts of a more wide-ranging scope. The Manchester Spenser consists of work with stamina, high standards of scholarship and research, adroit handling of evidence, rigour of argument, exposition and documentation. The series will encourage and assist research into, and develop the readership of, one of the richest and most complex writers of the early modern period. General Editor  J.B. Lethbridge Associate General Editor  Joshua Reid Editorial Board  Helen Cooper, Thomas Herron, James C. Nohrnberg & Brian Vickers Also available Literary Ralegh and visual Ralegh  Christopher M. Armitage (ed.) A Concordance to the Rhymes of The Faerie Queene  Richard Danson Brown & J.B. Lethbridge A Supplement of the Faery Queene: By Ralph Knevet  Christopher Burlinson & Andrew Zurcher (eds) Pastoral poetry of the English Renaissance: An anthology  Sukanta Chaudhuri (ed.) Spenserian allegory and Elizabethan biblical exegesis: A context for The Faerie Queene  Margaret Christian Monsters and the poetic imagination in Edmund Spenser’s ‘The Faerie Queene’:  Most ugly shapes and horrible aspects’  Maik Goth Celebrating Mutabilitie: Essays on Edmund Spenser’s Mutabilitie Cantos  Jane Grogan (ed.) Castles and Colonists: An archaeology of Elizabethan Ireland  Eric Klingelhofer Shakespeare and Spenser: Attractive opposites  J.B. Lethbridge (ed.) A Fig for Fortune: By Anthony Copley  Susannah Brietz Monta Spenser and Virgil: The pastoral poems  Syrithe Pugh The Burley manuscript  Peter Redford (ed.) Renaissance psychologies: Spenser and Shakespeare  Robert Reid (ed.) Renaissance erotic romance: Philhellene Protestantism, renaissance translation and English literary politics  Victor Skretkowicz God’s only daughter: Spenser’s Una as the invisible Church  Kathryn Walls

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Dublin Renaissance city of literature

• EDITED BY KATHLEEN MILLER AND CRAWFORD GRIBBEN

Manchester University Press

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Copyright © Manchester University Press 2017 While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press, copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors, and no chapter may be reproduced wholly or in part without the express permission in writing of both author and publisher. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 5261 1324 5 hardback First published 2017 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Typeset in Minion Pro by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire

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Contents



List of illustrations Notes on contributors

page  vii viii

Introduction Kathleen Miller   1 Centre or periphery? The role of Dublin in James Yonge’s Memoriale (1412) Theresa O’Byrne

1

16

  2 Books, politics and society in Renaissance Dublin Raymond Gillespie

38

  3 Edmund Spenser’s Dublin Andrew Hadfield

55

  4 Complaint and reform in late Elizabethan Dublin, 1579–94 David Heffernan

73

  5 Renaissance Dublin and the construction of literary authorship: Richard Bellings, James Shirley and Henry Burnell 99 Marie-Louise Coolahan   6 ‘A real credit to Ireland, and to Dublin’: The scholarly achievements of Sir James Ware Mark Empey

119

  7 Translation and collaboration in Renaissance Dublin Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

139

 8 Omnia vincit amor: Gaelic poetry and English books Mícheál Mac Craith

158

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vi

Contents

  9 Latin oratory in seventeenth-century Dublin Jason Harris

185

10 Anglo-Irish drama? Writing for the stage in Restoration Dublin206 Stephen Austin Kelly 11 Peripheral print cultures in Renaissance Europe Alexander S. Wilkinson

228

Index

250

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List of illustrations

Figures 1  O  utput of the Barcelonan presses, 1473–1600 (Source: Alexander S. Wilkinson (ed.), Iberian books. Libros Ibéricos. Books published in Spanish or Portuguese or on the Iberian Peninsula before 1601. Libros publicados en español o portugués (Leiden, 2010))

233

2  O  utput of the Valencian presses, 1473–1600 (Source: Alexander S. Wilkinson (ed.), Iberian books. Libros Ibéricos. Books published in Spanish or Portuguese or on the Iberian Peninsula before 1601. Libros publicados en español o portugués (Leiden, 2010))

234

3  C  lassification of the output of the Barcelonan and Valencian presses before 1601

236

4  P  ortuguese production before 1601 (Source: Alexander S. Wilkinson (ed.), Iberian books. Libros Ibéricos. Books published in Spanish or Portuguese or on the Iberian Peninsula before 1601. Libros publicados en español o portugués (Leiden, 2010))

238

5  Types of works published in Portugal before 1601

239

6  Th  e development of Scottish printing before 1601 (Source: English Short Title Catalogue)241 7  O  utput of the Scottish presses (Source: English Short Title Catalogue) 

242

Tables 1  Levels of vernacular production in Europe before 1601

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Notes on contributors

Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin is Professor (Emeritus) in the School of English at Trinity College Dublin. Marie-Louise Coolahan is Professor of English at NUI Galway. Mark Empey is Lecturer in Early Modern British and Irish history at NUI Galway. Raymond Gillespie is Professor of History at Maynooth University. Crawford Gribben is Professor of Early Modern British History at Queen’s University Belfast. Andrew Hadfield is Professor of English at the University of Sussex. Jason Harris is Lecturer in History and Director of the Centre for NeoLatin Studies at University College Cork. David Heffernan holds an R.J. Hunter Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Royal Irish Academy hosted at Queen’s University Belfast. Stephen Austin Kelly is an Independent Scholar. Mícheál Mac Craith is Professor Emeritus of Modern Irish at NUI Galway and Guardian of St Isidore’s College, Rome. Kathleen Miller is a Visiting Research Fellow at Queen’s University Belfast. Theresa O’Byrne is a Part-Time Lecturer at Rutgers University. Alexander S. Wilkinson is Professor of Early-Modern History at University College Dublin.

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Introduction Kathleen Miller

From its Nobel laureates to its literary festivals, modern-day Dublin lives up to its role as a literary capital. But Dublin’s firmly established literary identity raises questions for scholars engaged in the study of another Dublin – that of the medieval and early modern periods. When, in 2010, Dublin was designated a UNESCO City of Literature, a groundbreaking symposium was organised to address the question of whether Dublin was a city of literature during the Renaissance. In September 2012, scholars met, fittingly, in one of the city’s oldest literary venues, Marsh’s Library, for a conference entitled ‘Dublin: Renaissance City of Literature?’ Contributors travelled from universities in the USA, England and across Ireland, representing disciplines including classics, literature and history, to debate the character of the literary culture of early modern Dublin. This volume emerges from that event. The question of whether Ireland experienced a cultural and literary Renaissance has received increasing scholarly attention in recent years, and this volume extends the discussion by engaging with the specific literary culture of its capital city. The chapters in this volume gather together established and emerging literary critics and historians to interrogate the notion of a literary ‘Renaissance’ in Dublin. This volume adds clarity to the existing scholarly discussion by adopting two new approaches. Firstly, while many existing studies approach the question of an Irish Renaissance within early modernity, this volume extends the period under investigation by beginning its discussion in the early fifteenth century, tracing the emergence of Dublin’s Renaissance literary identity in the late medieval period. Secondly, this volume addresses a wider range of topics and themes than much of the existing scholarly literature, and includes reflections on the emergence and evolution of print culture, the impact of English and European influences, the construction and negotiation of Dublin literary identities, the habits of reading in

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early modern Dublin, contributions from non-anglophone contexts and the impact of Anglo-Irish political relations. This broader focus creates a more cohesive understanding of the features of the Renaissance that appeared in Ireland than might at first have been anticipated. Within the following chapters, language, ethnicity, religion, as well as political and cultural identity emerge as dependent upon one another. Dublin: Renaissance city of literature provides a new map of this literary culture, in which people, places and discourses appear and reappear with surprising frequency. This volume suggests that our fragmented view of the Renaissance in Ireland, which has been lamented in previous scholarly work, may finally be dissipating, as scholars pay increasing attention to how a rebirth of literary activity might actually have appeared.1 The intellectual elements we associate with ‘Renaissance’ in Europe existed and evolved throughout late medieval and early modern Ireland; this volume illuminates their contribution to the literary cultures of Dublin. Existing contexts and current views Recent scholarship has demonstrated the growing interest in identifying an Irish Renaissance, even as it has called attention to the difficulties of doing so. This work has been developed as our understanding of early modern Ireland has improved. In recent years, scholars have made a number of innovative contributions to the historiography. Some of this work has contributed to an increasing appreciation of the cityscape of early modern Dublin. Colm Lennon and Howard B. Clarke provide accounts of thousands of sites, as well as numerous maps, aerial views and reconstructions of medieval and early modern Dublin, as part of the Irish historic towns atlas project.2 Corresponding with this extensive project is Lennon’s ‘From Speed to Rocque: The development of early modern Dublin’, which describes the transition of Dublin from that depicted in John Speed’s work of cartography in 1610 to that depicted by John   1 Thomas Herron notes: ‘It is paradoxical and surprising that, despite a late-twentiethcentury surge in literary, historical and cultural studies of Ireland in the period (including imperial, colonial and British studies), as well as new administrative developments . . . our understanding of the term “Renaissance” in relation to Ireland in scholarly circles is still highly fragmented and hard to find’: Thomas Herron, ‘Introduction: A fragmented Renaissance’, in Michael Potterton and Thomas Herron (eds), Ireland in the Renaissance, c.1540–1660 (Dublin, 2007), pp. 19–39, at p. 31.   2 Howard B. Clarke, Irish historic towns atlas no. 11, Dublin, Part I, to 1610, ed. Anngret Simms et al. (Dublin, 2002); Colm Lennon, Irish historic towns atlas no. 19, Dublin, Part II, 1610–1756, ed. Anngret Simms et al. (Dublin, 2008).

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Rocque in 1756, and the corresponding transformation of the ‘medieval fabric’ of the city into the expansive metropolis of the eighteenth century.3 Further clarifying our understanding of Ireland’s landscape in the past is work by the Irish Post-Medieval Archaeology Group, which shares essential information on archaeological excavations in Ireland and literature relating to post-medieval archaeology, also publishing volumes that correspond with the Group’s conference proceedings.4 Never before have scholars had such a lively and complete impression of how early modern Ireland may have looked. Cultural and literary historians are increasingly considering the culturally contingent and linguistically polyvalent character of early modern Irish life, and are moving away from paradigms that draw on the wellknown religious and cultural disjunctions of the period.5 Alan Ford’s ‘Apocalyptic Ireland: 1580–1641’ (2013), for example, improves our understanding of the connection between religion and violence in early modern Ireland. Ford addresses the link between ‘presentist’ apocalyptic interpretations of events in early modern Ireland between 1579 and 1641 by Protestants and the justification of violence toward Catholics.6 The same scholar’s contributions to the volumes Constructing the past: Writing Irish history, 1600–1800 (2010)7 and Reshaping Ireland, 1550–1700 (2011)8 engage with questions of how the writing of history has shaped popular perceptions of the past. In each volume, Ford considers, in part, James Ussher’s shifting reputation after his death in 1656, as Ussher’s views and writings were revisited and re-imagined with considerable interpretive  3 Colm Lennon, ‘From Speed to Rocque: The development of early modern Dublin’, Dublin Historical Record 62:1 (2009), pp. 2–15, at p. 2.   4 The two most recent publications listed on the Group’s website, http://ipmag.ie/, are James Lyttleton and Colin Rynne (eds), Plantation Ireland: Settlement and material culture, c.1550–c.1700 (Dublin, 2009); and Audrey Horning and Nick Brannon (eds), Ireland and Britain in the Atlantic world: Irish post-medieval archaeology group proceedings 2 (Dublin, 2010).   5 For example, the ‘Nobility and Newcomers in Renaissance Ireland’ exhibition at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC. For the corresponding catalogue, see Thomas Herron and Brendan Kane, Nobility and newcomers in Renaissance Ireland (Washington DC, 2013).   6 Alan Ford, ‘Apocalyptic Ireland: 1580–1641’, Irish Theological Quarterly 78:2 (2013), pp. 123–48.   7 Alan Ford, ‘“Making dead men speak”: Manipulating the memory of James Ussher’, in Mark Williams and Stephen Paul Forrest (eds), Constructing the past: Writing Irish history, 1600–1800 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2010), pp. 49–69.   8 Alan Ford, ‘Past but still present: Edmund Borlase, Richard Parr and the reshaping of Irish history for English audiences in the 1680s’, in Brian MacCuarta SJ (ed.), Reshaping Ireland, 1550–1700 (Dublin, 2011), pp. 281–99.

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leeway over the next four decades. In tandem with a growing understanding of how religion was interpreted and applied is work on the contexts and cultures influencing the political landscape of early modern Ireland. Mark Hutchinson’s study of the emergence of a modern understanding of state in Ireland, ahead of Britain and Europe, describes the Irish government acting autonomously due to its physical distance from Queen Elizabeth and cultural distance from the polity, and the corresponding shift in usage of the term ‘state’, which went from referring to Ireland’s condition to describing the ‘authority possessed by the lord deputy and council in Ireland’.9 Simultaneously, literary critics have continued to recontextualise well-known authors, such as Edmund Spenser, to generate more historically nuanced readings of canonical texts. Anthologies such as Andrew Carpenter’s groundbreaking Verse in English from Tudor and Stuart Ireland (2003)10 and larger editorial projects such as the Four Courts ‘Early Irish Fiction’ series and Elizabethanne Boran’s The correspondence of James Ussher, 1600–1656 (2015)11 have recovered important texts from early modern Ireland. By unpacking Ireland’s history – religious, cultural and literary – the unique pressures and contexts that shaped perceptions in early modern Ireland are being viewed with unprecedented clarity. Three texts, in particular, have provided valuable insight into the literary cultures of early modern Ireland: The Oxford history of the Irish book (2006), volume three, edited by two of the contributors to this volume, Raymond Gillespie and Andrew Hadfield, and two volumes edited by Michael Potterton and Thomas Herron, Ireland in the Renaissance, c.1540–1660 (2007) and Dublin and the Pale in the Renaissance, c.1540– 1660 (2011). In the latter texts, the study of the Renaissance in Ireland is accompanied by frequent caveats, such as Herron’s claim that this cultural movement was necessarily ‘fragmented’.12 Reviewers of Ireland in the Renaissance repeatedly noted the challenges faced by scholars locating this subject, which requires a ‘slight effort of focus’.13 While noting   9 Mark A. Hutchinson, ‘The emergence of the state in Elizabethan Ireland and England, ca. 1575–99’, Sixteenth Century Journal 45:3 (2014), pp. 659–82, at p. 661. 10 Andrew Carpenter, Verse in English from Tudor and Stuart Ireland (Cork, 2003). 11 The correspondence of James Ussher, 1600–1656, 3 vols, ed. Elizabethanne Boran (Dublin, 2015). 12 Herron, ‘Introduction: A fragmented Renaissance’, pp. 19–39. 13 Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Óenach: Journal of the Forum for Medieval and Renaissance Studies in Ireland: Reviews, 1:1 (2009), pp. 1–9, http://oenach.files.wordpress. com/2008/09/herron12.pdf, accessed 20 March 2011; cited in Michael Potterton, ‘Introduction: The Fitzgeralds, Florence, St Fiachra and a few fragments’, in Michael Potterton and Thomas Herron (eds), Dublin and the Pale in the Renaissance, c.1540– 1660 (Dublin, 2011), pp. 19–47, at p. 40.

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the discomfort and misgivings that seem to accompany this search for a subject, these volumes establish key aspects of its contexts through historical, architectural, musical and literary studies. Yet some of the conclusions seem paradoxical. Potterton explains that Dublin and the Pale in the Renaissance and Ireland in the Renaissance do not ‘suggest that the Renaissance played a very major role in Ireland, or vice versa’.14 Instead, these collections seek to examine the changes seen in Ireland in the early modern period within the context of the broader Renaissance. Of greatest consequence to this volume are the sections in these earlier studies on textuality and literature. In the ‘Music, language & letters’ section of Dublin and the Pale in the Renaissance, Eva Griffith offers a lively examination of the process behind establishing the Werburgh Street playhouse and its connection to James Shirley.15 In the same collection, Herron describes the allegorical value of Richard Stanihurst’s partial translation of Virgil’s Aeneid, which becomes a ‘window into the cultural struggles surrounding its author’.16 Brendan Kane discusses the political implications of language choice in early modern Ireland, as he establishes that the Irish language was of greater influence in Jacobean Ireland than is typically acknowledged.17 Kane describes the language’s ‘symbolic importance’ in establishing and maintaining status, providing an account of the fourth earl of Thomond, Donough O’Brien, and his connection to the Contention of the bards, a debate between poets that circulated in manuscript in the early seventeenth century and addressed the competing ‘merits’ of northern and southern Ireland.18 In Ireland in the Renaissance, Willy Maley critically examines the rhetoric, inclusions and exclusions of Sir Henry Sidney’s Memoir (1583), considering how what is remembered and forgotten is central to the ‘colonial discourse of the New English colonists’.19 A 14 Potterton, ‘Introduction: The Fitzgeralds, Florence, St Fiachra and a few fragments’, p. 40. 15 Eva Griffith, ‘James Shirley and the earl of Kildare: Speculating playhouses and dwarves à la mode’, in Michael Potterton and Thomas Herron (eds), Dublin and the Pale in the Renaissance, c.1540–1660 (Dublin, 2011), pp. 352–71. 16 Thomas Herron, ‘Pale martyr: Politicizing Richard Stanihurst’s Aenis’, in Michael Potterton and Thomas Herron (eds), Dublin and the Pale in the Renaissance, c.1540– 1660 (Dublin, 2011), pp. 291–317, at p. 292. 17 Brendan Kane, ‘Languages of legitimacy? An Ghaeilge, the earl of Thomond and British politics in the Renaissance Pale, 1600–24’, in Michael Potterton and Thomas Herron (eds), Dublin and the Pale in the Renaissance c.1540–1660 (Dublin, 2011), pp. 267–79. 18 Kane, ‘Languages of legitimacy?’, pp. 269, 274. 19 Willy Malley, ‘‘‘The name of the country I have forgotten”: Remembering and dismembering in Sir Henry Sidney’s Irish Memoir (1583)’, in Michael Potterton and Thomas Herron (eds), Ireland in the Renaissance, c.1540–1660 (Dublin, 2007), pp. 52–73, at p. 53.

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later chapter by Valerie McGowan-Doyle returns to Sidney in its analysis of the influence of John Lydgate’s Fall of princes on the Old English Book of Howth, which provides a scathing critique of Sidney’s reforms in Ireland.20 The interdisciplinary approach featured in these studies, in which literary works are analysed alongside architecture and archaeology, leaves room for the sustained study of the literary culture of Dublin provided by this volume. Dublin: Renaissance city of literature constructs an image of what an Irish Renaissance might have looked like through studies of literature, language, translation and theatre-going in the capital city. This volume is also indebted to the meticulous scholarship collected in The Oxford history of the Irish book, which provides a sustained and thorough consideration of the history of its subject from 1550 to 1800. Considering print culture in relation to different areas of textual production, The Oxford history of the Irish book discusses areas of print and literature which are further developed in this volume through case studies that provide, for example, quantitative analysis of how print production in Ireland compared to other peripheral print cultures, insight into how literary communities functioned and considerations of the genres that flourished in the distinct literary culture of the city. Together these three earlier works – The Oxford history of the Irish book, Ireland in the Renaissance and Dublin and the Pale in the Renaissance – go far toward describing the features of Renaissance in Ireland while leaving room for further scholarship to identify more specifically those elements that accounted for the rebirth of literary activity in Dublin. This volume considers the emergence, development and impact of ‘Renaissance’ on literature and literary production in the capital, beginning in the fifteenth century and continuing into the late seventeenth century. This extension of the period under investigation, in contrast to these earlier volumes, allows for a longer chronological space to fully investigate how the literary culture of the Renaissance in Ireland developed over time. Such an approach is supported by Gillespie’s assertion that ‘the language of the Renaissance can be detected in Dublin long before its buildings can’.21 While grand architectural projects based on the concepts of classical design that are associated with Renaissance were primarily erected in Dublin in the late seventeenth century, Gillespie demonstrates that the language of civic humanism and the notion of commonwealth 20 Valerie McGowan-Doyle, ‘Fall of Princes: Lydgate, Sir Henry Sidney and Tudor conquest in The Book of Howth’, in Michael Potterton and Thomas Herron (eds), Ireland in the Renaissance, c.1540–1660 (Dublin, 2007), pp. 74–87. 21 See Gillespie’s chapter in this volume.

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used by Dublin Corporation, as well as the print technology to share communications central to the commonwealth, arrived much earlier.22 Furthermore, the circulation of books in the city, most prominently those printed elsewhere, helped to establish the ideas of the Renaissance. The remit of this volume includes detecting the early textual fragments of Dublin’s Renaissance and uncovering these fragments in unexpected places. This volume’s broad chronological span allows its contributors to collectively grapple with the notion of an earlier and longer ‘Renaissance’ than that defined in these earlier three publications, in all its ambiguity and complexity. Building upon the important scholarship contained in these earlier publications, this volume attempts to describe Dublin and its literary cultures in the Renaissance. Production, consumption, dissemination: Dublin at the periphery of print? In the seventeenth century, the earl of Cork’s chaplain, Steven Jerome, described Ireland as ‘little bookish’, referring to the scarcity of printed texts.23 Alexander S. Wilkinson, a contributor to this volume, suggests that it is ‘something of an understatement’ to describe print as coming ‘late’ to Ireland, as only nine works were published in Ireland in vernacular languages before 1601.24 As an apt example, Gillespie cites Dublin’s inadequately capitalised print industry, that industry’s underdeveloped ‘marketing structure’ and low consumer demand as contributing to the dearth of sermons printed in Dublin, in striking contrast to the flourishing production and trade of printed sermons in England.25 Historians and literary critics describing Dublin as a Renaissance city of literature echo similar sentiments to that of Jerome four centuries earlier as they grapple with the relative lack of Irish printing ventures in contrast to those of other European nations.26 Despite this, Irish citizens were 22 See Gillespie’s chapter in this volume. 23 Stephen Jerome, Irelands Jubilee or Irelands Joyes lo-paen (Dublin, 1624), sig. A3; cited in Raymond Gillespie, ‘Irish printing in the early seventeenth century’, Irish Economic and Social History 15 (1988), pp. 81–8, at p. 86. 24 See Wilkinson’s chapter in this volume. 25 Raymond Gillespie, ‘Preaching the Reformation in early modern Ireland’, in Peter McCullough, Hugh Adlington and Emma Rhatigan (eds), The Oxford handbook of the early modern sermon (Oxford, 2011), pp. 287–302, at p. 288. 26 Herron notes in his introduction to Ireland in the Renaissance that Ireland is entirely absent from a map of Europe included in Elizabeth Eisenstein’s The printing revolution in early modern Europe (1983; repr. 1992), as the first book printed in Ireland – the Book of common prayer (1551) – was too late to make Eisenstein’s cut-off point of 1500: Herron,

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engaged in a print culture prior to 1551, when that first book, the Book of common prayer, was published in Dublin by royal printer Humphrey Powell.27 Uniting the issues of print and ‘Renaissance’ in Dublin in this volume, Gillespie suggests that the entrance of the Renaissance in Ireland can be traced to the mid-sixteenth century, when Dublin Corporation harnessed printing to disseminate ‘standardized documents’ and government communications.28 This volume builds upon previous understanding of Dublin’s print culture in the early modern period by focusing on Ireland as joining the ‘third tier of publishing nations’ and regions, which also included Portugal, Scotland, Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, in what Wilkinson describes as a ‘peripheral print culture’.29 While Dublin existed at the periphery of European print culture, and few printed works originated in the city, its inhabitants’ considerable appetite for texts published elsewhere was not thwarted. The networks of print and manuscript transmission in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries provided citizens with access to printed texts, manuscripts and ideas from across the Continent. Elizabethanne Boran’s contributions to Making Ireland Roman: Irish neo-Latin writers and the Republic of Letters (2009) and The Oxford history of the Irish book illustrate the extent to which printed books and manuscripts were shared in scholarly networks. Boran describes Ussher’s participation in a network of European scholars involved in collecting manuscripts, working within the productive context of Renaissance Europe: The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries witnessed an explosion in the market for manuscript collecting, not only in the British Isles (especially ‘Introduction: A fragmented Renaissance’, p. 26. Colm Lennon proposes a number of possible reasons for this relative silence, ranging from ‘the paucity of relatively large centres of population in the country before the seventeenth century’ to the limited wealth available to establish such an industry to restrictions placed on what publishing occurred: Colm Lennon, ‘The print trade, 1550–1700’, in Raymond Gillespie and Andrew Hadfield (eds), The Oxford history of the Irish book: The Irish book in English, 1550 to 1800 (Oxford, 2006), vol. iii, pp. 61–73, at p. 61. 27 Raymond Gillespie notes that: ‘The emergence of this widespread ability to deal with the written word in Ireland by 1600 was the essential prerequisite for the development of a print culture. Indeed this world of print, marked by standardization, reorganization, and preservation of written texts as well as new ways of interacting with those texts in comparison with earlier manuscript publication, may be said to have been firmly established in Ireland by 1551 when Humphrey Powell printed the Book of common prayer in Dublin using moveable type for the first time’; Gillespie, ‘Print culture, 1550–1700’, in Raymond Gillespie and Andrew Hadfield (eds), The Oxford history of the Irish book: The Irish book in English, 1550 to 1800 (Oxford, 2006), vol. iii, pp. 17–33, at p. 18. 28 See Gillespie’s chapter in this volume. 29 See Wilkinson’s chapter in this volume.

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England) with the dissolution of the monasteries and the subsequent dissemination of their manuscript hoards, but also on the European mainland where war-torn countries offered opportunities to the wily collector.30

The inhabitants of Dublin were connected to discourses emerging elsewhere, in England and on the Continent, by the work of individuals and groups within these networks. Libraries were used by ‘scholarly friendship networks’, which fostered the dissemination of ideas through information sharing in an international context.31 Ussher’s friendship network, with its numerous contacts in the British Isles and across Europe and its confessional divisions, could bring news of manuscripts of interest, newly printed books and newly accessible collections.32 Book and manuscript collections, such as Ussher’s, could be augmented by more calculated methods, with agents hired to gather relevant texts or through collectors consulting bibliographical lists.33 The importation of books allowed Renaissance habits and ideas to gain traction in Dublin before a native printing trade was fully established, and the number of books being imported increased considerably after that first publishing venture in Dublin.34 The Renaissance on the Continent was interpreted and translated locally through access to these imported texts. Mark Empey’s case study of Sir James Ware and his books, included in this volume, describes the habits of an avid consumer of the written word; Ware’s book collection indicates he was keenly aware of works circulating in Europe and often gained access to newly published texts.35 Ware’s records of works he loaned to others, both printed books and manuscripts, suggest something of his tastes as well as the varied intellectual pursuits of those who borrowed material from him.36 Interested Dubliners could access aspects of the vibrant print culture emerging from other publishing centres through the relatively large numbers of books which were imported into the city or 30 Elizabethanne Boran, ‘Ussher and the collection of manuscripts in early modern Europe’, in Jason Harris and Keith Sidwell (eds), Making Ireland Roman: Irish neo-Latin writers and the Republic of Letters (Cork, 2009), pp. 176–94, at p. 178. 31 Elizabethanne Boran, ‘Libraries and collectors, 1550–1700’, in Raymond Gillespie and Andrew Hadfield (eds), The Oxford history of the Irish book: The Irish book in English, 1550 to 1800 (Oxford, 2006), vol. iii, pp. 91–110, at p. 100. 32 Boran, ‘Libraries and collectors, 1550–1700’, p. 104. 33 Boran, ‘Libraries and collectors, 1550–1700’, p. 105. 34 Raymond Gillespie, ‘Reading print, 1550–1770’, in Raymond Gillespie and Andrew Hadfield (eds), The Oxford history of the Irish book: The Irish book in English, 1550 to 1800 (Oxford, 2006), vol. iii, pp. 135–45, at p. 135. 35 See Empey’s chapter in this volume. 36 See Empey’s chapter in this volume.

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through print and manuscript networks. It was this willingness to engage with imported texts, even those composed in other vernaculars, which established the international complexion of print culture in ‘Renaissance’ Dublin. Dublin’s literary culture was not emerging in isolation. Dublin’s cultural landscape, in fact, bore many connections to that of nearby London. Hadfield outlines similarities in the concerns of the cities’ merchant classes with encouraging trade and protecting their families, and the affliction of plague epidemics that could attack each capital’s population. In addition, Dublin boasted the first professional theatre in the British Isles after London. These connections extended into each city’s literary culture, with many of the Dublin authors addressed in this volume identifying equally with England, including Shirley, Richard Bellings and Spenser (whose A view of the present state of Ireland was set in England), as well as Richard Nugent and Stanihurst, who each had connections to Oxford. The often permeable boundaries between these cities demonstrate the extent to which Dublin’s literary culture was connected to and influenced by that of England, and particularly London, a connection which will be further explored in the chapters that follow. While previous studies such as The Oxford history of the Irish book thoroughly map the print culture that emerged from Ireland, this volume clarifies local aspects of that print culture and illustrates some of the means by which that print culture related to a national and international ‘Renaissance’. Yet constructing this print culture tells only one story of Dublin as a Renaissance city of literature. Dublin literary identities Authors used the literary identities they constructed to fashion themselves and their city, reflecting the literary societies present in Dublin in their writing. They idealised the capital city as a geographical location that could foster the fervent intellectual and textual activity associated with ‘Renaissance’. In her contribution to this volume, Theresa O’Byrne describes the composition of Memoriale by James Yonge, a legal clerk in late medieval Dublin. While describing a pilgrimage to the Purgatory of St Patrick, the Memoriale offers a striking description of Dublin as a vibrant, urban centre, a place where citizens asked that the work be composed in Latin, ‘the language of government and of the Church, as well as an international lingua franca’.37 Such constructions of Dublin, which 37 See O’Byrne’s chapter in this volume.

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position it as an intellectual centre with a suitably urban identity, may also be found in later texts. Into the early modern period, Dublin was described by authors as a space that fostered the types of activities associated with a literary Renaissance, such as literary communities and networks for print and manuscript transmission. Focusing on literature in print, Andrew Carpenter suggests that the second half of the sixteenth century saw a limited audience for what he describes as ‘polite literature’, and notes that ‘[w]e have little concrete evidence of literary activity in or around Dublin during the first half of the seventeenth century’.38 Such noted limits, however, did not thwart the creation of vibrant literary communities in writings that emerged from this geographical and intellectual space. Literary pursuits formed an essential aspect of the activities of certain citizens, with authors meticulously grafting these experiences of a literary life onto some of the writings produced in the city. MarieLouise Coolahan, in her chapter, describes the self-fashioning of authors who constructed real and imagined literary communities in their writing. Citing Lodowick Bryskett’s A discourse of civill life (1606), a text that carefully narrates vibrant literary coteries and a gathering of minds that fostered intellectual friendships, Coolahan explains: ‘Most likely, the gathering itself was a fiction. Its value lay precisely in its projection of Renaissance ideals.’39 Dublin, therefore, could also be a fertile location for the birth of Renaissance ideals within literary constructions, taking on an essential role, or identity, in these texts. Without overstating the impact of literary activity in Dublin, this volume seeks to engage with evidence of literary activity and the production of literatures that emerged from Dublin – even if these activities were pursued by a relatively small number of authors. Through the study of Dublin’s ‘textual communities’, either real or only imagined, this volume illuminates the ways in which readers composed and consumed literature in Dublin.40 In turn, this volume traces Dublin’s transformation into a centre for literary thought. Literary identities could also be conveyed, developed and fostered through language choice. These choices carried with them complex meanings, and contributions to this volume touch on translation, Gaelic writing, neo-Latin texts and Anglo-Irish drama. Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin reminds us that ‘Ireland (like many European countries) 38 Andrew Carpenter, ‘Literature in print, 1550–1800’, in Raymond Gillespie and Andrew Hadfield (eds), The Oxford history of the Irish book: The Irish book in English, 1550 to 1800 (Oxford, 2006), vol. iii, pp. 301–18, at pp. 301, 306. 39 See Coolahan’s chapter in this volume. 40 Gillespie, ‘Reading print, 1550–1770’, p. 142.

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is a place where the dominance of a single vernacular has been impossible for almost one thousand years’.41 The ‘cultural as well as linguistic encounters’ that emerged in Renaissance Dublin, as described by Ní Chuilleanáin, is a useful phrase to bear in mind when considering how literary identities in Dublin could be tied to linguistic-political concerns.42 Through translation, a writer could graft topical concerns onto a text, a process in which literary identity was articulated through language and the nuance of the translation. Mícheál Mac Craith notes the liberal approach toward translation taken by Gaelic translators in the medieval and early modern periods, revealing a process of revision so thorough that the final translation was ‘so completely transposed into a Gaelic setting that it appeared much more like an original composition than an accurate translation’.43 A number of Gaelic translations of classical texts are more likely to have been based on English translations rather than the Latin originals and are provided with a very local character – Riocard do Búrc’s Fir na Fódla ar ndul d’éag adapts Sir John Harington’s translation of Amores II.iv, suggesting do Búrc consulted books printed in English.44 Thus, translation gestures to what different linguistic groups were reading and writing, and which books were available to them. Of course, decisions to communicate in a particular language could make specific statements, as with the Latin orations that emerged from Trinity College Dublin. These works were not only intended to convey the university’s philosophy and broader Renaissance ideals, but they carried in their Latin medium the appropriate tenor for their messages. Jason Harris notes that ‘to speak Latin in a creative and eloquent fashion implied mastery of ancient learning, such saturation in the language and literature of antiquity as only the finest scholars could manage’.45 Language and translation, authorial self-representation and descriptions both of literary communities and of Dublin as a suitable space for intellectual activity – these elements coalesced in a literary identity for the city and for individuals responding to that city that corresponded with the spirit of ‘Renaissance’.

41 Quotation from Ní Chuilleanáin’s chapter in this volume; see also Michael Cronin and Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin (eds), The languages of Ireland (Dublin, 2003). 42 See Ní Chuilleanáin’s chapter in this volume. See also Kane, ‘Languages of legitimacy?’ 43 See Mac Craith’s chapter in this volume. 44 See Mac Craith’s chapter in this volume. 45 See Harris’s chapter in this volume.

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Charting Dublin as a Renaissance city of literature The chapters in this volume are chronologically arranged and chart both Dublin’s emergence as a Renaissance city of literature and the processes of cultural production in early modern Ireland. O’Byrne begins the volume by arguing for the internationalised literary culture of late medieval Dublin in her analysis of Yonge’s Memoriale, justifying the earlier chronology adopted in this volume. Moving forward to the sixteenth century, Gillespie considers books, politics and society, noting that though Dublin’s printing was limited, its citizens engaged with and actively read texts imported from London, adapting and applying their content to the problems they encountered in the capital. Two case studies follow these early chapters, establishing Dublin as an emerging city of Renaissance literature. Hadfield examines the intellectual culture of Dublin in the late sixteenth century. Focusing on Spenser’s time in the city as secretary to Arthur, Lord Grey de Wilton, the Lord Deputy, the chapter explores Spenser’s political and social connections. Following on from Hadfield’s study of Spenser, David Heffernan examines the literature of complaint emanating from late Elizabethan Dublin. Authors composing this literature of complaint lamented the rampant corruption and abuses present in the country, noting the necessity for significant reform of the government of Ireland. Heffernan outlines the place of this distinctly politicised literary genre within Renaissance Dublin, the success of which depended entirely upon political tensions. The chapters that follow examine the writings and intellectual communities that contributed to Dublin’s identity as a ‘Renaissance’ space. Coolahan examines the constructed authorial personae of authors residing in Dublin from the late sixteenth century through to the early seventeenth century and their presentation of Dublin as a fitting location for a literary community. Through a consideration of three printed works by Stanihurst, Bellings and Henry Burnell, Coolahan’s chapter opens up concepts of literary friendship in a study that emphasises the geographical dimension of literary work. Empey follows on Coolahan’s study with an appraisal of Sir James Ware’s career constructed through detailed archival research. Empey examines the seventeenth-century historian’s scholarly achievements through an analysis of De praesulibus lageniae sive provinciae Dubliniensis (1628) and then investigates Ware’s extensive intellectual community, revealing an open-minded Dublin community. Together, these chapters suggest an emerging understanding of Dublin as

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a Renaissance space. Such an understanding was supported by texts produced within and outside of the city, as well as through the intellectual communities that can be traced through archival studies. The final chapters in this volume consider issues of language and translation that emerged in Dublin and Ireland, with a concluding chapter that examines the intersection between geography and print culture. Ní Chuilleanáin addresses Irish writers’ responses to the international culture of the European Renaissance, examining translation in relation to Bryskett’s A discourse of civill life, as well as the complexities associated with translating the Bible into Irish. Ní Chuilleanáin makes the argument that in addition to being a representative Renaissance activity, translation was harnessed in the country as an ‘instrument of state’ and was believed to have the potential to transform Ireland and its culture. In a second look at translation as a Renaissance activity, Mac Craith describes Irishlanguage courtly love poems shaped by Ovidian motifs. Looking beyond the literary and anglophone cultures of the Pale, Mac Craith suggests that not only did the classical sources of these poems likely derive from English translations but their Gaelic translators/authors took great liberties with the interpretation of these ‘source’ texts. Mac Craith’s chapter highlights the complexity of literary production and consumption in a politicised multilingual environment. The next chapter, by Harris, offers a ‘stylistic analysis’ of orations from Trinity College Dublin and adds to the previous chapters by emphasising the multi-linguistic character of Renaissance literary production in Dublin. Belonging to the small corpus of surviving works of this nature that emerged in early modern Dublin, these Latin orations carried with them complex connotations of control and harmony; their authors identified themselves as being part of a ‘community that valued civility’.46 Stephen Austin Kelly rounds off an interrogation of language in Renaissance Dublin by addressing the question of whether the English-language drama composed and staged in Restoration Dublin is most accurately described as Anglo-Irish drama or ‘English drama written in Ireland’.47 Finally, Wilkinson describes Ireland’s place as one of a number of peripheral print cultures, providing context for understanding how Dublin’s literary culture developed from the late medieval period and during the Renaissance. Dublin: Renaissance city of literature conveys the relationships between different areas of literary production emerging from Renaissance Dublin, 46 See Harris’s chapter in this volume. 47 See Kelly’s chapter in this volume.

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going further than existing scholarship to understand and interpret these connections. Though Ireland is correctly described as a peripheral print culture by Wilkinson, early modern authors and intellectuals, writing about and contributing to the intellectual life of the city, enthusiastically positioned Dublin as a vibrant Renaissance city of literature. The chapters in this volume provide a cohesive picture of the city as a real literary space that existed and flourished and as a textually constructed space that supported and furthered Renaissance ideas. In these ways, this volume sets about the task of expanding upon our understanding of Dublin as a Renaissance city of literature.

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Centre or periphery? The role of Dublin in James Yonge’s Memoriale (1412) Theresa O’Byrne In the late summer of 1411, the Hungarian knight Laurence Rathold of Pászthó and Tar arrived in Dublin with his retinue. Setting foot on Dublin’s busy quayside, Rathold reached a significant milestone on a journey that had begun for him in the early months of 1409. The Hungarian was a pilgrim, one of many who sought out the shrine of St James at Compostela, and one of far fewer who visited a lesser-known pilgrimage site that was located on the edge of the known world – the Purgatory of St Patrick. A visit to St Patrick’s Purgatory required an arduous journey to Lough Derg, in the north-west of Ireland, where visitors desiring to have their time in purgatory commuted after death engaged in a long period of fasting; they were then enclosed in a tomb-like cave on a remote island in the lake for a period of twenty-four hours. Rathold stayed in Dublin for short periods prior to and following his pilgrimage to St Patrick’s Purgatory. While he was in Dublin, he met notary and legal clerk James Yonge, who wrote an account of Rathold’s pilgrimage with the assistance of the pilgrim. The resulting visionary narrative, the first of its kind written in Ireland, displays a keen awareness of earlier English and Continental works describing the visions of pilgrims in St Patrick’s Purgatory, yet it is unlike any other such work in its composition and use of multiple genres. Although most pilgrims who sought out the Purgatory probably passed through Dublin, Yonge’s account is the first such pilgrimage narrative to feature Dublin and its people in any significant way. Yonge’s history survives in a single manuscript and bears the descriptive title, Memoriale super visitatione domini Laurencii Ratholdi militis et baronis Ungarie factum de Purgatorio Sancti Patricii in Insula Hibernie (A record concerning the visit of the Lord Laurence Rathold, Knight and Baron of Hungary, to the Purgatory of Saint Patrick on the island of Ireland).1 Yonge’s   1 The quotations and translations are from the author’s new edition of Yonge’s Memoriale, which is not yet published. Page numbers cited for the Memoriale are from Delehaye’s 1908 edition.

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Memoriale serves as both a morally edifying pilgrimage tale and a promotion of Ireland, its saints and its principal city. James Yonge (fl. 1404–38) was born in Dublin in the 1370s. He was probably the son of Edmund Yonge (d. 1417), who owned a house, portico and garden in a prime location above what is now Merchants Quay.2 Surviving parish and family documents from the first decades of the fifteenth century preserve examples of James Yonge’s hand. Idiosyncrasies in Yonge’s script indicate that he was likely educated in Dublin and that he probably apprenticed with an anonymous scribe who worked for the city administration. There are distinct similarities in both hands, and Yonge appears to have inherited his master’s office as a designated user of the Seal of the Provostship of Dublin. Yonge began writing legal documents, mostly for property transactions, in 1404. By 1406, he had become a notary public and was producing the specialised notarial instruments which were used to create an official record of particular events. In 1411, at the time he met Laurence Rathold, Yonge was an up-and-coming notary, a bearer of the seal of the Provostship of Dublin, and a legal scribe whose client list included several Dublin churches and many prominent Dublin citizens. Although it represents a type of literary work new to Ireland – a history of a pilgrimage to St Patrick’s Purgatory – Yonge’s Memoriale joined a large body of literature produced and copied in Dublin that was primarily intended for the lay readers of the late medieval Anglo-Irish community. Manuscripts produced by Dublin legal clerks were read by an audience consisting largely of Anglo-Irish nobles, bureaucrats, churchmen and merchants. Prominent among these manuscripts are Bodleian Douce MS 104, a copy of the C-text of Piers Plowman that was produced by scribes employed at the Irish Exchequer, and Longleat MS 29, a manuscript containing works of Christian spiritual instruction produced by legal clerk Nicholas Bellewe, probably for Ismaia Perers, wife of prominent landowner William FitzWilliam.3 Many of the literary works circulating in the Dublin area focused on spiritual or moral edification. They include copies of the works of Richard FitzRalph, the Prick of conscience, Chaucer’s ‘Parson’s tale’, several Latin and English works of Richard Rolle, an English   2 Royal Irish Academy MS 12.S.22–31, no. 137, 141–2, 144, 150–1.   3 Kathryn Kerby-Fulton and Denise Despres, Iconography and the professional reader: The politics of book production in the Douce Piers Plowman (Minneapolis, 1999); Theresa O’Byrne, ‘Manuscript production in Dublin: The scribe of Bodleian E. Museo MS 232 and Longleat MS 29’, in Kathryn Kerby-Fulton and John J. Thompson (eds), New directions in medieval manuscript studies and reading practices (Notre Dame, IN, 2013).

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translation of Giraldus Cambrensis’s Expugnatio Hibernica and Latin copies of both his Expugnatio Hibernica and his Topographia Hibernica.4 In 1422, Yonge finished a translation of the Secreta secretorum, a popular mirror for princes, under the patronage of James Butler, fourth earl of Ormond, who was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland when he commissioned the work. Titled The gouernaunce of prynces, Yonge’s work presented to its Dublin audience advice on living a virtuous Christian and English life. Seeing the cultural ‘degeneracy’ of the Anglo-Irish people that Spenser would later describe (for example in A view of the present state of Ireland), Yonge added many interpolations to his exemplar; these encouraged Dubliners to reject the native Irish and their customs and to instead embrace English culture. Perhaps most notable among these is the notary’s admonition against employing native Irish poets, a fairly common practice among culturally ambidextrous marcher lords: And therfore he is an onwyse man that audyence or Yeftis yewyth to Rymoris othyr any Suche losyngeris, for thay Praysith hare yeueris be thay neuer So vicious. Who-so ham any good yewyth brekyth the statutis of kylkeny, and he is acursid by a xi bisschopis, as the same Statutes makyth mencion.5

While Yonge does not directly name native Irish poets, his reference to the Statutes of Kilkenny makes the association clear. The Statutes of Kilkenny sought, among other things, to shore up Anglo-Irish culture against the threat of acculturation and to regulate Anglo-Irish commerce and communication with the Gaelic-Irish population.6 Yonge’s Memoriale   4 Angus McIntosh and M. L. Samuels, ‘Prolegomena to a study of mediaeval Anglo-Irish’, Medium Ævum 37:1 (1968), pp. 1–11; O’Byrne, ‘Manuscript production in Dublin’; John J. Thompson, ‘Books beyond England’, in Alexandra Gillespie and Daniel Wakelin (eds), The production of books in England, 1350–1500 (Cambridge, 2011), pp. 259–75; John J. Thompson, ‘Mapping points west of West Midlands manuscripts and texts: Irishness(es) and Middle English literary culture’, in Wendy Scase (ed.), Essays in manuscript geography: Vernacular manuscripts of the English West Midlands from the Conquest to the sixteenth century (Turnhout, 2007), pp. 113–28.   5 James Yonge, ‘Secreta secretorum’, in Three prose versions of the Secreta secretorum, ed. Robert Steele, Early English Text Society Extra Series, vol. 74 (London, 1898), p. 157.  6 The particular statute Yonge refers to is statute XV: Accorde est et defendu que nuls ministres Irrois assavoires ffeidanes slelaghes Babblers Rymers sertes ne nulle autre ministre Irrois viennent entre les Englois et que nul Englois les receivent ou faire don a eux Et que le fera et sera atteint soit pris et emprisonne sibien les Irrois ministres come les Englois que les receivent . . . (it is agreed and forbidden that any Irish agents, that is to say, pipers, story-tellers, bablers, rimers, mowers, nor any other Irish agent shall come amongst the English, and that no English shall receive or make gift to such; and that shall do so, and be attainted, shall be taken, and imprisoned, as well the Irish agents as the English who receive or give them any thing . . .); James Hardiman (ed.), Tracts

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also promotes anti-Irish views, but they are less well developed than those expressed in his later Gouernaunce of prynces. The Memoriale’s mixture of narrative history, letters from dignitaries, descriptions of the landscape surrounding the Purgatory and moral interpretations of some of the events described reflects elements of many of the works that were popular and current in early fifteenth-century Dublin. Yonge faced a dilemma when describing the city of Dublin. Earlier authorities on St Patrick’s Purgatory place the pilgrimage destination and the island of Ireland itself on the very edge of the world. On many medieval world maps, Ireland is little more than a fly-spot on the rim of the disc of the world, a rim that was also inhabited by monsters and half-humans on the eastern and southern edges.7 Part of the danger of travelling to the Purgatory, and part of the appeal of Purgatorial accounts to readers across Europe, lay in its remote location and in the possibility of encounters with monsters and barbarians. Yonge, however, knew of a far different Ireland. His legal career brought him into close contact with prominent citizens, Dublin civic authorities and officials of the English Crown. Like many city officials, Yonge imitated London practices when carrying out his official duties. Because his client, Rathold, had plans to return to the court of Sigismund I in Hungary, and because previous descriptions of Saint Patrick’s Purgatory were already circulating widely on the Continent, the author was aware that his text might have a panEuropean audience.8 Yonge was keen to show Dublin off to the world, not as a barely civilised frontier outpost, but as a cosmopolitan city, a smaller version of London. In describing Rathold’s visits to the city, Yonge portrays Dublin as a place of rest and a bastion of civilisation on the edge of an uncertain and sometimes frightening world. In Dublin, the knight finds saintly relics, rest from his journeys and the company of noble and learned men who urge him to participate in an act of literary creation. Yonge implies that Dublin, rather than being a dot on the barbaric edge of the known world, has much in common with the cities of England and relating to Ireland (Dublin, 1841), vol. ii, pp. 54–9; ‘A statute of the fortieth year of King Edward III, enacted in a Parliament held in Kilkenny, A.D. 1367, before Lionel Duke of Clarence, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland’, http://www.ucc.ie/celt/published/T300001-001/, accessed 6 April 2012.   7 For example, see the Hereford Mappa Mundi (c.1300), Hereford Cathedral.   8 For instance, H. of Saltrey’s Tractatus de Purgatorio Sancti Patricii (c.1180) was translated and adapted into several vernaculars. There are over 150 extant MSS from continental Europe containing Saltrey’s Latin treatise, along with approximately 150 more containing vernacular adaptations. Werner Paravicini, Fact and fiction: St Patrick’s Purgatory and European chivalry in the later Middle Ages (London, 2004), pp. 8–9.

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Europe. The barbarians are to be found beyond the area of Anglo-Irish control, among the native Irish. Sources for the Memoriale The Memoriale imitates its literary predecessors in its opening paragraphs, in which the creation of the Purgatory by St Patrick is discussed. The earliest and most imitated description of the Purgatory and the visions of a pilgrim within the Purgatory is the Tractatus de Purgatorio Sancti Patricii (c.1180), by a monk of Saltrey, who identifies himself only by the initial H. (Matthew Paris, in his Chronica majora, gave him the name Henri, which has been widely used by later scholars to identify the monk.)9 Yonge appears to have been aware of this work, and he, too, seeks to imitate it in part. Yonge, however, largely dispenses with the hagiographical narratives used by H. of Saltrey to describe the creation of the Purgatory. Instead, the legal scribe focuses on the reason for the creation of the Purgatory – propter Hibernicorum incredulitatis cecitatem (because of the blindness of the disbelieving Irish).10 God granted St Patrick the means to create the Purgatory so that the native Irish, quibus prius datum est sentire quam credere (to whom it was given to see before believing), would not be damned upon the Day of Judgment.11 The second chapter contains an exhortation to believe the scriptures and to believe the account of St Patrick’s Purgatory which follows. For those who, like the Irish, must see in order to believe, God has created the island of Ireland, freed from venomous animals by Patrick, and full of many marvels, the sight of which can strengthen faith. Those unable or unwilling to visit Europe plagam vltimam (the furthest region of Europe) should find reason for faith in the tales of those who have seen Ireland for themselves, including the current Memoriale, chronicling the visit of Rathold.12 The knight is introduced as well travelled and utterly trustworthy, a man who non solum locum ipsum verum eciam omnes mundi partes pro maiori nouiter visitauit (lately visited not only this place but also nearly every part of the world); he is also one of the few, Yonge claims, who has entered the Purgatory for pious reasons.13  9 Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, ed. Henry Richards Luard, Rerum Britannicarum Medii Aevi Scriptores 57 (London, 1874), vol. ii, pp. 192–203, at p. 192. 10 Delehaye, ‘Le Pèlerinage de Laurent de Pasztho au Purgatoire de S. Patrice’, p. 43. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid., p. 44. 13 Ibid.

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In visiting both Santiago de Compostela and St Patrick’s Purgatory, Rathold was consciously following in the footsteps of another Hungarian pilgrim, George Grissaphan. The Visiones Georgii, the account of Grissaphan’s 1353 pilgrimages, was read and discussed at the court of future Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund I of Hungary. Rathold was a high-ranking retainer of Sigismund, having grown up in the royal household. Highly skilled in warfare, Rathold fought alongside the Hungarian monarch in several campaigns, reputedly receiving a serious wound to the face early in his career.14 In quieter times, the knight was chief cupbearer to the king’s wife, Barbara of Cilli, and chief steward to the king. He may have been present for and involved in discussions of Grissaphan and his pilgrimages at Sigismund’s court. Grissaphan felt the need to go on pilgrimage to atone for killing around three hundred people in foreign wars on behalf of his king. Rathold, too, may have been goaded to embark on his journey by his conscience. It is likely that he was one of Sigismund’s commanders in the king’s massive military campaign to subjugate Bosnia in the summer of 1408. This campaign culminated in the capture of the fortress of Dobor. Sigismund, eager to quash any resistance, ordered the execution of most of the Bosnian nobility; he had their bodies thrown into the Bosna River.15 This blood-soaked incident, involving as it did the wholesale slaughter of men, women and children, may have been the catalyst for Rathold’s pilgrimage. If Sigismund objected to the departure of his steward, he did not betray his reservations in the letter of safe passage written for Rathold in January of 1409, just before he set out on his journey across Europe.16 Indeed, Sigismund probably used Rathold’s pilgrimage as an opportunity to communicate with King Henry IV of England and the Archbishop of Armagh, Nicholas Fleming, as he made arrangements for the Council of Constance (1414–18). Rathold arrives in Dublin Sigismund’s letter makes its first appearance in the third chapter of Yonge’s Memoriale with the advent of the knight in Dublin. Rathold arrives in the capital of Ireland with his herald and a retinue befitting his noble station. 14 Borbála Lovas, ‘Laurence Rathold’, personal correspondence [e-mail], 29 July 2010. 15 Jörg K. Hönsch, Kaiser Sigismund: Herrscher an der Schwelle zur Neuzeit, 1368–1437 (Munich, 1996), pp. 138–9. 16 As the letter was written prior to 25 March, the year on the letter is 1408. This and all similar dates have been adjusted for the modern calendar, with the year beginning on 1 January.

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There was a well-travelled sea route between La Coruña and Dublin, as well as a hospice near the quays in the eastern suburb of the Steine, on the southern side of the Liffey, which housed pilgrims going to and arriving from Santiago de Compostela.17 Rathold may have taken advantage of this route to reach Dublin in the summer of 1411. Being a man of means, he probably did not stay in the hospice, but some of his retinue may have done so. We get no description of how the knight was received or what arrangements might have been made to host the visitor and his entourage. At the time, Dublin was a small city with a population of 5,000 to 6,000, and it is likely that the arrival of this foreign nobleman and his servants caused quite a stir.18 In the Memoriale, however, the group is wordlessly absorbed into the city, as if Dublin was far more populous and the arrival of a foreign high-ranking guest was a common occurrence. The readers of the Memoriale are instead immediately presented with a scene that underscores the piety of the protagonist and the importance of Dublin as a pilgrimage destination. Upon disembarking, Rathold immediately goes to the Church of the Holy Trinity, where he devoutly adores the Baculus Iesu, a crosier given to St Patrick by Christ himself, which the saint used to banish the snakes from Ireland. This scene is an advertisement for Dublin. Even if the Purgatory of St Patrick is too distant and too dangerous to visit, Dublin is a reachable and safe pilgrimage destination where pilgrims may venerate a Patrician relic that, in some tales, such as the life of Patrick preserved in the Legenda Aurea, Patrick used to open the Purgatorial cave.19 After venerating the Baculus Iesu, Rathold presents his letter of safe passage from Sigismund to the citizens of Dublin. Yonge gives no further detail of this event, but this was probably a formal or semi-formal presentment to the mayor and bailiffs of Dublin or to an appointed representative of the city. Sadly, the documents that would corroborate and flesh out this scene, the memoranda and assembly rolls as well as assorted other records from the late medieval city, were among the casualties of the Four Courts fire in 1922. It is difficult to determine when Rathold and 17 Roger Stalley, ‘Sailing to Santiago: Medieval pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela and its artistic influence in Ireland’, in John Bradley (ed.), Settlement and society in Medieval Ireland: Studies presented to Francis Xavier Martin (Kilkenny, 1988), pp. 397–420, at p. 398. 18 Howard B. Clarke, The four parts of the city: High life and low life in the suburbs of medieval Dublin (Dublin, 2003), p. 9. 19 Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda Aurea, ed. Giovanni Paolo Maggioni (Florence, 1998), bk. III; St John Drelincourt Seymour, Saint Patrick’s Purgatory: A medieval pilgrimage in Ireland (Dundalk, 1918), p. 11.

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Yonge met, but this moment in the narrative, an event covered in a halfsentence, may be when scribe and pilgrim first encountered one another. At the time of Rathold’s visit, James Yonge was one of only two scribes who wrote documents bearing the Seal of the Provostship of the City of Dublin, a seal that was often used in lieu of the City’s seal on legal documents requiring corroboration or recognition by city authorities. With the seal, Yonge acted on behalf of the City of Dublin to authenticate documents. He may also have been one of the clerks in charge of keeping the city’s memoranda rolls. As a minor official, Yonge was probably present when Rathold brought his letter of safe passage ‘to the citizens of Dublin’ by presenting it to city officials. It is also quite possible that Yonge himself entered the letter into the city record. Almost immediately after presenting the letter, Rathold is off again, this time to bring the same document to Nicholas Fleming, Archbishop of Armagh. Yonge, ever the legal scribe and notary, inserts a complete copy of Sigismund’s letter into his narrative at this juncture. This letter also appears in the register of Nicholas Fleming.20 The Archbishop’s register also preserves a letter from the Archbishop himself, dated August 1411, granting a chaplain to Rathold for the purpose of hearing his confessions during his stay in Ireland.21 Yet another document provides a unique perspective on Rathold’s pilgrimage. What Yonge omits from his account of Rathold’s first visit to Dublin is the addition of a failed Italian banker, Antonio Mannini, to Rathold’s entourage. Mannini was a Florentine merchant and banker who spent three years in Ireland during the early fifteenth century. He was well educated and familiar enough with current Italian literature to quote Dante in a 1412 letter describing his journey to St Patrick’s Purgatory. The Mannini family owned a bank with close monetary ties to the government of King Richard II of England. When Richard was deposed in 1399, the bank suffered greatly, and Mannini must have already been of reduced means when he arrived in Ireland in 1410.22 His stay in Dublin was financially disastrous. The business climate in Ireland was difficult due to political issues. The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Thomas of Lancaster, left for England in 1409, leaving Thomas Butler in charge. The latter mismanaged his responsibilities to such an extent that the archbishops of Dublin and Cashel sent envoys to King 20 Brendan Smith (ed.), The register of Nicholas Fleming, Archbishop of Armagh, 1404–1416 (Dublin, 2003), no. 178, pp. 174–5. 21 Ibid., no. 92, p. 85. 22 Werner Paravicini, Fact and fiction: St Patrick’s Purgatory and European chivalry in the Later Middle Ages (London, 2004), p. 17.

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Henry IV in 1411 to complain.23 Mannini arrived in the midst of these upheavals, and by June of 1411 he was nearly ruined and ready to return to England. A letter dated 8 June 1411 and written to Mannini’s friend Corso di Giovanni Rustichi, who was at that time part of the community of Italian merchants in London, indicates that Mannini intended to be back in England by Michaelmas. His attempts to leave Ireland, however, were thwarted at every turn – by lack of transportation, inclement weather and lack of funds, all of which he complains of in his 1412 post-­pilgrimage letter to Rustichi.24 Mannini’s account of his and Rathold’s pilgrimage indicates that the party did not leave Dublin until late September 1411, three to four weeks after the Hungarian’s initial arrival. Yonge, however, provides a compressed version of events, moving quickly to the meat of his account, the knight’s experiences in the Purgatory. Station Island as a microcosm of Ireland After a stop in Downpatrick to venerate the relics of Patrick, Brigid and Columba, Rathold proceeded to Lough Derg, where he met with the prior of the community of Augustinian canons who guarded the Purgatory.25 After five days of fasting and prayer, Rathold was taken to Station Island, the site of the Purgatorial cave. Here, Yonge breaks into the narrative of Rathold’s pilgrimage to describe Station Island. Giraldus Cambrensis’s late twelfth-century Topographia Hibernica had described the island as being divided into holy and demonic halves: Est lacus in partibus Ultoniæ continens insualam bipartitam. Cujus pars altera, probatæ religionis ecclesiam habens, spectabilis valde est et amoena; angelorum visitatione, sanctorumque loci illius visibili frequentia, incomparabiliter illustrata. Pars altera, hispida nimis et horribilis, solis daemoniis dicitur assignata; quæ et visibilibus cacodaemonum turbis et pompis fere semper manet exposita. 23 Jean-Michel Picard, ‘The Italian pilgrims’, in Michael Haren and Yolande De Pontfarcy (eds), The medieval pilgrimage to St. Patrick’s Purgatory: Lough Derg and the European tradition (Enniskillen, 1988), pp. 169–89, at p. 181. 24 Luodovici Frati, ‘Il Purgatorio de S. Patrizio secondo Stefano di Bourbon e Uberto da Romans’, Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana 8 (1886), pp. 140–79, at p. 155; Seymour, Saint Patrick’s Purgatory: A medieval pilgrimage in Ireland, p. 55. 25 The scribe of the single manuscript exemplar of Yonge’s Memoriale has hypercorrected Dunum or Dunensis to Dublinensis. The textual description, however, suggests that Rathold visited Downpatrick rather than returning to Dublin prior to journeying to the Purgatory. Delehaye has preserved the reading of ‘Dublin’. I have corrected this in my forthcoming edition.

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(There is a lake in the region of Ulster containing an island divided into two parts. Of which, one part, having a church of the true religion, is very pleasant and worth seeing, incomparably illuminated by the visitation of angels and the visible crowd of the saints of that place. The other part is exceedingly rough and monstrous, consigned, it is said, only to demons, which nearly always remains abandoned to a visible throng and procession of demons.)26

Giraldus Cambrensis’s works regarding Ireland circulated widely in English-controlled areas of that country. The Expugnatio Hibernica was translated into Hiberno-English during Yonge’s lifetime; the translation appeared in manuscripts alongside Yonge’s Gouernaunce of prynces.27 Perhaps inspired by Giraldus’s description of the island, Yonge fashions Station Island into a miniature Ireland, voicing his own Anglo-Irish prejudices and preconceptions in his geographic description: Est ipsa quidem insula cxxx passuum longitudine mensuranda. xx vero passus latitudine non excedit. Diuiditur enim in duas partes, quarum maior inter occidentem et septemtrionem optinet locum suum; ‘Kernagh’ Hiberniali ydiomate nuncupata, Latino quidem sermone ‘Clamoris Insula’ dici potest. Estque ipsa pars nonnullis fructuum et arborum generibus sicut acrifoliis, dumis, rumicibus, sambucis ceterisque spinosis arboribus obumbrata necnon auibus rapacissimis et coruis, capis, coredulis, bubonibus aliisque volucribus rapacibus ibidem nidificantibus et horride garrientibus nimis plena. Est enim prout in quibusdam codicibus Hibernie reperitur, Sathane suisque satellitibus hereditario iure antiquitus attributa. . . . [Minor]28 enim pars ipsius insule angelis est dicata; Hibernice ‘Regles’, Latine ‘Regula’ nominatur. Inter orientem et meridiem in longitudine xxxta et latitudine v et dimidii passus tenet, locus aliquociens habundans arboribus quercinis, taxeis, ceteris pulcris arboribus, auium diuersarum dulciter melodiam resonancium satis plenum. Ipsius enim partis plaga meridialis et occidentalis capellam in honore Sancti Patricii . . . continet instauratam.29 (That same island measures one hundred and thirty paces in length and does not exceed twenty paces in breadth. For it is divided into two parts, the greater of which occupies its space in the north and west; it is called 26 Giraldus Cambrensis, Giraldi Cambrensis opera, ed. James F. Dimock, vol. 5, Rerum Britannicarum Medii Aevi Scriptores 21 (London, 1867), p. 83. 27 Bodleian Rawlinson MS B 490 and Trinity College Dublin MS 592. 28 Corrected from maior, a copying error on the part of the compiler of BL MS Royal 10.B.ix. Cf. Delehaye, ‘Le Pèlerinage de Laurent de Pasztho au Purgatoire de S. Patrice’, p. 49; Michael Haren, ‘Two Hungarian pilgrims’, in Michael Haren and Yolande De Pontfarcy (eds), The medieval pilgrimage to St. Patrick’s Purgatory: Lough Derg and the European tradition (Enniskillen, 1988), pp. 120–68, at p. 162 n. 112. 29 Delehaye, ‘Le Pèlerinage de Laurent de Pasztho au Purgatoire de S. Patrice’, pp. 48–9.

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‘Kernagh’ in the Irish tongue and ‘The Island of Wailing’ in the Latin tongue. This part of the island is darkly shaded by many types of plants and trees such as holly, thorn bushes, sorrels, elder trees, and other thorny trees as well as being exceedingly full of the most rapacious birds – ravens, sparrowhawks, coreduli,30 owls, and other rapacious birds – nesting there and screeching horribly. For, just as it is found in certain Irish books, this was allotted from antiquity to Satan and his attendants by hereditary right. . . . The smaller part of this same island is devoted to the angels; it is called ‘Regles’ in Irish, ‘Regula’ in Latin. It comprises thirty paces in length and five and a half in breadth between the east and south, a place greatly abundant in trees – oak, yew, and other noble trees, very full of various birds, sweetly making a melody. The south and west region of this same part contains a renovated chapel in honour of Saint Patrick.)

In the Memoriale and his later Gouernaunce of prynces, Yonge perpetuates common negative stereotypes of the Irish prevalent in both medieval and sixteenth-century Anglo-Irish writing. He populates the larger, northwest part of oblong Station Island with wild, untamed and rapacious plants and birds, reflecting contemporary attitudes – especially among Dublin bureaucrats employed by the offices of City and Crown – towards the Gaelic Irish then inhabiting the larger, northern and western parts of Ireland. Indeed, in the Gouernaunce of prynces, Yonge uses the image of uprooting noxious weeds to argue for the eradication of rebellious Irish.31 The peaceful, pleasant, south-eastern portion of Station Island represents the English-occupied areas of Ireland such as Dublin, Waterford and the earldoms of Kildare and Ormond. Value judgements are made concerning the demonic and angelic inhabitants, the output of the land – useless holly and bramble in the north-west and useful oak and yew in the south-east – and the language heard in each part. The birds of prey of the Gaelic Irish portion screech, while the songbirds of the Englishcontrolled south-east sing sweetly. Yonge later describes the location of the door of the Purgatory: Prior . . . eduxit eum ab eadem capella per quatuor passus tendentes inter orientem et septemtrionem ante vnam speluncam muratam lapidibus et voltatam foramine, introitus Purgatorii memorati existens in altera maiore parte insule sepedicte concludentis.32 30 Undefined; Isidore of Seville lists the bird as ‘coredulus, genus volatile, quasi cor edens’ (Coredulus, a flying species, as if heart-eating). Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarvm sive originvm, ed. W. M. Lindsay (Oxford, 1911), bk. 12, ch. 7.34. 31 Yonge, ‘Secreta Secretorum’, p. 164. 32 Delehaye, ‘Le Pèlerinage de Laurent de Pasztho au Purgatoire de S. Patrice’, pp. 49–50.

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(The prior . . . led him from that same chapel four paces towards the northeast before a cave walled with stones and an opening in its face – the entrance of the noted Purgatory, lying on the other, larger side of the said island which encloses it.)

This passage suggests that the door of the Purgatory was located on the very edge of the holy side of Station Island, while the rest of the cave, where the penitent pilgrim actually experienced his visions of purgatory, was on  the untamed and demonic side of the island. In entering the Purgatory, the knight is making a journey from the safe and holy to the dangerous and demonic. In the same way, Rathold arrives in largely Anglo-Irish Dublin and makes his way into the Gaelic Irish hinterland in order to reach the Purgatory. Once on Station Island, he makes a journey in the same direction, south-east to north-west, upon entering the Purgatory. His return journey takes him back from the wild area of Station Island and the untamed region of Ireland to the blessed part of Station Island and the civilised society of Dublin. Similar fears of the north-west, Irish-controlled portion of Ireland are evident in the late fourteenth-century pilgrimage account of Ramón de Perellós, and the area is described as being inter homines minus domitos situatur (located among less civilised people) in the Visiones Georgii.33 However, there is no similar description of Station Island itself in either of these works. Yonge describes the four visions of the knight in the Purgatory, interspersing the descriptions of each vision with sermon-like meditations on the cross and on the dangers of lust. These brief meditations take the place of the detailed theological discussions in between each of Grissaphan’s visions in the Visiones Georgii. Rathold and Grissaphan are both led through the Purgatory and back to the mouth of the cave by the same guide, the Archangel Michael. Among late medieval descriptions of otherworld journeys, Michael is unique to the Visiones Georgii and Yonge’s Memoriale, and it appears that this portion of Rathold’s visions was influenced by the earlier work.34 The Archangel Michael was commonly depicted in late medieval art as a fully armed warrior slaying a serpent or Satan, a reference to his struggle against Satan in the Book of Revelation.35 He was also a psychopomp, ushering the souls 33 Georgius Grissaphan, Visiones Georgii, Visiones quas in Purgatorio Sancti Patricii vidit Georgius miles de Ungaria A.D. MCCCLIII, ed. Louis L. Hammerich (Copenhagen, 1930), p. 80. 34 Edina Eszenyi, ‘Angelology in the peripheries: A fresh look at otherworld journey accounts’, Bulletin of International Medieval Research 15–16 (2011), pp. 141–61. 35 Apoc. 12: 7–9: et factum est proelium in caelo Michahel et angeli eius proeliabantur cum dracone et draco pugnabat et angeli eius et non valuerunt neque locus inventus est

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of the dead into heaven. Michael’s dual role as soldier and psychopomp may have made him the ideal guide for the soldier George Grissaphan in his journey through Saint Patrick’s Purgatory. Rathold probably ­visualised Michael as his own guide under the influence of Grissaphan’s  account. In addition, the Hungarian pilgrim may have had additional reason to envision Michael – the church in Rathold’s home town of Tar is dedicated to the Archangel. On a hill above the church sat the Rathold family manor house. Rathold may have spent his teenage years at court, but as a young boy, he probably gazed daily upon the Church of Saint Michael and developed a personal attachment to the Archangel. Where the stories of Grissaphan and Rathold differ considerably is in their approach to the visions of their respective pilgrims. Like H. of Saltrey’s knight Owein, Grissaphan experiences visions that terrify him; he is guided past a series of punishments associated with the seven deadly sins. Grissaphan beholds purgatory and witnesses the suffering of friends and relatives before he is given a glimpse of paradise. The emphasis in the descriptions is on the horrors placed before the pilgrim, and on the suffering of both the pilgrim and the sinners he beholds. Yonge’s text dispenses with much of the detailed description of the horrific sights and sounds of purgatory in favour of reporting the conversations that took place between Rathold and those he met in the Purgatory. Unlike Owein and Grissaphan, Rathold is not subjected multiple times to physical torture. In his first vision, he is seized by demons and dragged across the floor of the cave, such that his clothing is badly torn. Rathold’s remaining three visions test the pilgrim spiritually. His Christian faith is challenged by an old hermit who claims that Christ is an agent of Satan and is condemned to Hell. His temperance is then threatened by a demon disguised as a beautiful female friend of Rathold’s. Yonge spends the greatest amount of time and care describing Rathold’s fourth vision, his meeting with the Archangel and their conversation about purgatory, which is reported word for word. When Michael shows purgatory to Rathold, rather than entering into the long detailed descriptions so common to other narratives about Saint Patrick’s Purgatory, Yonge keeps his description to a single sentence before returning to the conversation between the pilgrim and the Archangel: eorum amplius in caelo et proiectus est draco ille magnus serpens antiquus qui vocatur Diabolus et Satanas qui seducit universum orbem proiectus est in terram et angeli eius cum illo missi sunt.

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Angelus autem volens satisfacere votis suis, ostendit ei vallem incredibiliter perignitam flammas perfundissimas emittendo in quo quidem torquebantur36 igne innumerabiles anime viuencium hominum habentes effigiem per vilissimos tortores.37 (The angel, desiring to fulfil his promises, showed him a valley extraordinarily ablaze, emitting the very deepest flames, in which fire countless souls, possessing the form of living men, were tortured by the vilest torturers.)

At the end of their conversation on the nature of purgatory and Michael’s role in comforting the souls awaiting entry into heaven, the Archangel leads Rathold out of the cave and then vanishes. Rathold’s return to Dublin After spending a short time after his Purgatorial journey with the Augustinian community at Lough Derg, Rathold again sought out Archbishop Fleming. Another letter carefully copied by Yonge into his Memoriale is Fleming’s acknowledgement of a letter from Matthew, the Augustinian prior at Lough Derg, asserting that Rathold had completed his pilgrimage to St Patrick’s Purgatory successfully. Fleming’s letter is dated 27 December 1411, and was composed at the Archbishop’s manor at Dromiskin, Co. Louth. Yonge makes no mention of Rathold’s return journey to Dublin and his stops along the way. The pilgrim exits the cave of the Purgatory, the prior rejoices in the knight’s safe return to the world, et militem in domum suam recepit in leticia cum honore (and in joy, he received the knight into his home with honour).38 Yonge moves the action swiftly on; we are next told that cum autem miles, prout placuit in celo presidenti, suum peregre finiuisset, ad ciuitatem Dublinensem est reversus (when the knight, as it pleased the governor in heaven, had finished his pilgrimage, he returned to the city of Dublin).39 We must reconstruct Rathold’s itinerary from the letter of Fleming, faithfully copied in chapter twelve, after the chapter on Rathold’s return to Dublin; this letter suggests that Rathold spent the Christmas season with the Archbishop prior to returning to Dublin. Antonio Mannini’s letter states that he and Rathold left Dublin on 25 September and were gone for three and a half months, 36 Corrected from tortores, a copying error on the part of the compiler of BL MS Royal 10.B.ix. 37 Delehaye, ‘Le Pèlerinage de Laurent de Pasztho au Purgatoire de S. Patrice’, p. 54. 38 Ibid., p. 57. 39 Ibid.

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indicating that the knight and his company arrived back in Dublin in early to mid-January 1412. Rathold spent a further four to six weeks in Dublin awaiting a boat to carry him to England. Mannini entrusted his letter, dated 25 February 1412, to Rathold for delivery to Corso Rustichi in London, which gives us a terminus post quem of late February for Rathold’s final departure from Dublin. This brief period of time is significant in the Memoriale, as it provides the occasion and impetus for the writing of the work. While Rathold’s initial arrival in Dublin the previous August had been relatively quiet, his return, we are told, caused some excitement: Ibi vero a multis venerabilibus ac nobilibus prelatis, dominis et civibus de votiuis successibus suis multum gaudentibus vt decuit honorabiliter est receptus (there he was indeed received with honour, as was proper, by many august and noble prelates, lords and citizens, rejoicing greatly in the success of his vowed pilgrimage).40 Thanks to surviving church and family records, we know a little about who these nobles, prelates, lords and citizens might have been. One can see the Hungarian receiving a series of visitors and invitations. Rathold may have become reacquainted with city officials such as the mayor, John Drake, and the bailiffs, Thomas Walleys – a young clerk who was making a name for himself in civic and royal offices – and Luke Dovedall, a member of a prominent Dublin family. The pilgrim probably met with church officials such as Thomas Spark, canon of St Patrick’s, and chaplains such as John Yonge (likely James Yonge’s uncle) and John Ingoll. Major landowners such as Richard Passavaunt and John Serjaunt, and prominent citizens like wealthy merchants Simon Doddenale and John Lytyll and their wives, Johanna and Alianora, respectively, likely paid the pilgrim a visit. He might also have received former bailiff Richard Bone, and well-to-do baker John Stafford, among others. Given the small population of the city, all of these people probably knew one another well. Surviving records indicate that they were neighbours, business associates, friends and rivals. Each of them certainly knew James Yonge, and it appears that Yonge had long-term friendships with Doddenale, Lytyll and Stafford. Yonge does not indicate where the knight and the citizens met, or where he himself conversed with the pilgrim, but clusters of extant deeds penned by Yonge on the same day and/or in the same place indicate that the scribe was highly mobile in carrying out his professional duties, bringing with him parchment, writing tools and possibly even a small writing table. If the citizens and Rathold met in public places rather than 40 Ibid.

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a rented room, they may have met in Gardener’s Inn on Cow Lane, where Yonge is known to have drawn up legal documents. Other inns that might have attracted merchants and bureaucrats were located along Winetavern Street and Bridge Street. In the citizens’ visits with the Hungarian visitor, the topic of conversation appears to have continually turned to the knight’s pilgrimage and his experiences in the Purgatory. Yonge tells us that his Memoriale was created not at the behest of the modest knight, but at the insistence of those citizens of Dublin who visited the pilgrim: audita tunc ab eo per diuersos valentes viros sue expedicionis gracia, de suo peregre sepedicto placuit eis vnum memoriale de huiusmodi expedicionis gracia Latino sermone sibi fieri cum effectu. Hoc autem magis sibi fieri cupientes cum idem miles dicta sua prout decuit domini Primatis antedicti litterarum testimonio confirmauit. (With various powerful men hearing from his lips the favourable outcome of his pilgrimage, it pleased them to have a record in the Latin language made for themselves about his aforesaid pilgrimage and the favourable circumstances of this expedition. This they desired all the more when this same knight confirmed his account, as was proper, by the testimony of the official letter of the aforesaid lord Primate.)41

It is significant that these diuersos valentes viros asked for a history not in English, then the dominant vernacular in English-controlled Ireland, but rather in Latin, the language of government and of the Church, as well as an international lingua franca. There are practical reasons for this choice of language: Latin was likely the common language of conversation between the Hungarian and his Dublin hosts. The use of Latin for the Memoriale reflects not only the education and priorities of the immediate audience of the Memoriale, but also the background and status of the readers that either the citizens or James Yonge himself wished to garner. This was an account intended for an international audience whose members had a significant level of education. Yonge’s complex Latin style also requires that readers of the Memoriale have more than a passing acquaintance with the language. His periodic sentence structure, use of rare words and complex astronomical dates (a practice borrowed from ecclesiastical documents), and inclusion of phrases in Greek and Hebrew are carefully constructed to showcase to the rest of Europe the erudition of the pilgrim Rathold and by extension the citizens of Dublin. Caralyn 41 Ibid.

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Bialo argues that one of Lodowick Bryskett’s several aims in writing A discourse of civill life (written early 1580s, published 1606) was to use humanist works, such as Giambattista Battista Giraldi Cinzio’s Tre dialoghi della vita civile, which he translates into English, and august interlocutors to showcase the erudition of Dublin’s elite.42 Yonge, as a civil servant representing English interests in the Irish colony, had similar intentions of demonstrating to the English government and to his potential European audience that Dublin was a center of civilisation and learning. While there is only one extant manuscript of the Memoriale, written in England prior to 1460, it seems that Yonge’s work did indeed reach a Hungarian audience.43 Hippolyte Delehaye mentions that in the first half of the nineteenth century, a manuscript containing the Memoriale was given by the Franciscan Etienne Magócsy to the Hungarian antiquary and philologist Gabriel Dobrentei, but this manuscript has since been lost.44 Whether through Yonge’s Memoriale or through the knight’s own reports, the tale of Rathold’s pilgrimage circulated in Hungary to such an extent that Rathold quickly earned the moniker ‘pokoljáró’ (‘Hell-descender’, or ‘Hell-walker’), and the pilgrim’s journey is chronicled in two sixteenthcentury poems by Hungarian authors, the first written c.1520 by an unknown author, and the second written by Sebestyén Tinódi Lantos in the middle of the century.45 In these works, Yonge’s campaign to promote Dublin seems to have failed; the city fades into the background in favour of details of Rathold’s journey through the Purgatory. Blending the legal and the literary: the Memoriale and documentary culture in Dublin Yonge presents his Memoriale like one of the notarial instruments he produced for his Dublin clients. These documents narrated a series of events, provided fair copies of associated legal documents and were prepared by specially appointed notaries. After setting out the major events of Rathold’s pilgrimage and faithfully recording supporting documents word for word, Yonge adds a colophon that, much like the eschatocol on notarial instruments, establishes the name of the notary, his credentials, 42 Caralyn Bialo, ‘The Elizabethan literary coterie on Irish soil’ (unpublished paper, presented at the 129th MLA Annual Convention, Chicago, 2014). 43 British Library Royal MS 10.B.ix. 44 Delehaye, ‘Le Pèlerinage de Laurent de Pasztho au Purgatoire de S. Patrice’, p. 43. 45 Eszenyi, ‘Angelology in the Peripheries’, p. 142, n. 5. I am grateful to Borbála Lovas for sharing with me some of her work on these Hungarian poems.

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the circumstances of the instrument’s creation and the veracity of the information it contains. Notarial instruments were far more commonly used in continental Europe than in England at the time, and Yonge’s choice to make his narrative bear the marks of a notarised document may have been carefully calculated to increase the trustworthiness and international cachet of the account.46 In November 1411, for instance, Yonge completed a notarial instrument for Dublin merchant Simon Doddenale, who was involved in a property dispute. The eschatocol follows a standard legal format: Et ego Iacobus Yonge clericus coniugatus Ciuis Dublinensis et Dublinensis Diocesus publicus auctoritate Imperiali Notarius, premissis omnibus et singulis dum sic ut premittitur per supradictum Simonem agerentur et fierent vna cum prenominatus testibus presens interfui eaque omnia et singula sic fieri, vidi, audiui, scripsi, publicaui et in hanc publicam formam redegi, signoque et nomine meis solitis et consuetis signaui, rogatus et requisitus, in fidem et testimonium omni et singulorum premissorum.47 (And I, James Yonge, a married clerk of the City of Dublin and the Diocese of Dublin, public notary by imperial authority, was present together with the aforementioned witnesses while all and singular of the preceding matters were carried out by the aforesaid Simon and took place just as they are set out above, and I saw, heard, wrote, made public, and rendered in this public form all and singular thus set down, and I, invited and asked for, signed it with my usual and customary sign and name according to the faith and testimony of all and singular here set down.)48

The structure of Yonge’s self-introduction in the Memoriale follows a remarkably similar format: Yonge identifies himself, recites his credentials and establishes that he has put the Memoriale together after many face-to-face meetings with Rathold. However, Yonge is also keenly aware that he is creating a document that is not only a record of events as they truly happened, but also a literary document meant to be read for edification and entertainment. The final section of chapter twelve has characteristics of both a notarial eschatocol and a literary colophon, demonstrating Yonge’s dual impulses in writing the Memoriale: Igitur ego Iacobus Yonge, notarius imperialis, ciuium et scriptorum minimus ciuitatis Dublinensis predicte, huius memorialis compilator indignus coram 46 Christopher Robert Cheney, Notaries public in England in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (Oxford, 1972), pp. 136–7, and passim. 47 Trinity College Dublin MS 1477.84. 48 Trinity College Dublin MS 1477, no. 84, 12 Nov. 1411.

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Deo, qui militi prenotato dum commorasset nauigio supradicto scripture ministerio multis diebus et noctibus deseruiui, et qui pluraliter cum eodem oretenus circa singula suprascripta tractaui, ad Dei laudem necnon instanciam predictorum validorum virorum et meum proficuum spirituale, hoc ad presens memoriale, prout tocius sciencie distributor michi tribuit facultatem secundum informacionem debitam militis prelibati, substancia non omissa, fideliter compilare et scribere dignum duxi, discrecioni supplicans singulorum hoc memoriale quodlibet visurorum, quatinus eiusdem defectus benigno fauore corrigant et emendent, cum me prefatum compilatorem insufficiencia excusatum reddit pocius quam voluntas. (Therefore I, James Yonge, imperial notary, least of the citizens and scribes of the aforesaid city of Dublin, the unworthy compiler of this history before God, who served the aforesaid knight in the capacity of secretary for many days and nights while he awaited the aforementioned ship, and who many times discussed with the same knight by word of mouth the particulars written above, to the praise of God and also at the insistence of the aforesaid powerful men and for my spiritual benefit, held it worthy faithfully to compile and write this present record, as far as the grantor of all learning gave me ability, following the necessary information of the aforementioned knight, leaving out nothing of substance, and begging the discernment of those individuals who will see this record in whatever way, that they might correct and emend its defects with good will, since insufficiency rather than will renders me, the aforesaid compiler, excused.)49

What begins as a standard legal formula, in which Yonge identifies himself and recites his credentials, his employers and his role in creating the document, slowly morphs into a standard colophon which begs for the reader’s indulgence for any errors found, and asks that those errors be corrected. The knight’s employment of Yonge as a secretary implies that Rathold was in a location where he could easily send and receive correspondence, and having a legal secretary close at hand facilitated this exchange. Considering the many visits that the pilgrim had with citizens of Dublin, this suggests that the knight found the city welcoming and well connected enough to communicate with the rest of Europe. In January and February of 1412, Rathold was able to both relax and conduct business. The presence of a legal secretary and author in Dublin also indicates to the Memoriale’s readers that the city is not a frontier town where public and legal matters are handled on an ad hoc basis; instead, Dublin’s citizens place their confidence in the centralised bureaucratic system that 49 Delehaye, ‘Le Pèlerinage de Laurent de Pasztho au Purgatoire de S. Patrice’, p. 59.

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supports the royal government, a system that is equipped to easily welcome noble visitors, even those from the other side of Europe. Though they were written in places other than Dublin, both Sigismund’s letter of safe passage and the letter of the Archbishop of Armagh confirming the success of Rathold’s journey enjoy a public reading and reception in Dublin. The citizens even experience an increase in their desire to create a further document detailing Rathold’s visions when they are presented with the Archbishop’s letter. The Memoriale is a corroboration of both official letters. It is also a document created by a well-placed scribe and notary at the behest of an educated and curious populace that appears to appreciate formal records. The words of the colophon were meant to be the final ones in the Memoriale. After writing his colophon, however, Yonge seems to have thought of a few questions that he had forgotten to ask his informant. The final section is a coda appended to the original document. Perhaps in reading other works on the Purgatory, or in discussing Rathold’s visions and his Memoriale with others, Yonge realised that two issues common to all other works on the Purgatory were missing from his account: the reason that the pilgrim sought out the Purgatory and a statement about whether the pilgrim experienced his visions bodily or spiritually. To answer these questions, Yonge appends a paragraph that was written on a single sheet by the knight himself. This addition to the Memoriale was probably made after Rathold left Ireland for England in late February or early March 1412. The scribe and the knight could have easily exchanged letters during March 1412, when the knight was in England representing Sigismund’s interests to King Henry IV. Sigismund and Henry IV (and later Henry V) were united in their support for Rome during the Papal Schism of 1378–1417 and were working together to bring it to an end. Rathold may have had a dual reason for visiting the Purgatory on the edge of the world. Not only would he benefit spiritually, but he would also have an opportunity to speak with Henry IV and Archbishop Fleming as well as other dignitaries. While Rathold was in England, he probably exchanged letters with Yonge. These letters likely departed and arrived with the frequent shipments of documents across the Irish Sea, and Yonge, placed as he was near the centre of Dublin’s administration, would have been able to include his personal correspondence with these dispatches. He might also have sent a complete copy of his Memoriale to the knight, a copy that included the appended text by Rathold.

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Theresa O’Byrne Conclusion

Dublin plays a significant role in Yonge’s Memoriale, in that it is the location that bookends Rathold’s journey to St Patrick’s Purgatory. Dublin is the place where Rathold first comes into contact with a relic of St Patrick. It is also a place where the official correspondence relating to Rathold’s pilgrimage has legitimacy. The language of the Memoriale and Rathold’s conversations with citizens suggest that some Dubliners were conversant in Latin. These conversations also suggest that Rathold found Dublin a comfortable place to rest after his arduous journey. In Dublin, he found the space and the leisure to receive many people. Rathold returned to Hungary in the summer of 1412, probably carrying a copy of Yonge’s Memoriale with him as part of the documentation for his successful pilgrimage. Yonge remained in the city of his birth, where his career blossomed. Within the next decade, Yonge would continue his work for the City of Dublin, be appointed second Engrosser of the Irish Exchequer, be employed by some of the most powerful members of Anglo-Irish society, including James Butler, king’s lieutenant in Ireland and fourth Earl of Ormond, and take on at least two students, both of whom enjoyed similar success as well-connected Dublin legal scribes. While the tale of Rathold’s pilgrimage lived on in Hungary, the Memoriale and its author were destined for relative obscurity in Dublin. The Memoriale was eclipsed by its author’s much more popular work, The gouernaunce of prynces. The Memoriale’s complex Latin style may have been partly to blame, and the English-language Gouernaunce of prynces also had a larger potential audience due to Butler’s patronage. In addition, the Purgatory’s days were numbered. In 1497, the cave at St Patrick’s Purgatory was destroyed by papal order. One of the root causes of its destruction was increasing doubt concerning the veracity of the visions experienced by pilgrims. The Memoriale, despite its attempts to provide ample internal proofs for itself, would have been a suspect text under these conditions. Yonge, once a prominent Dublin author, was almost forgotten two centuries after his death. His writing did, however, impact later Dubliners. Sir George Carew (1555–1629) collected a late fifteenth- or early sixteenthcentury manuscript copy of Yonge’s Gouernaunce of prynces.50 Carew was particularly interested in Yonge’s enumeration of the rights of the English Crown to Ireland. In The gouernaunce of prynces, Yonge updates and 50 London, Lambeth Palace Library, Carew MS 633.

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expands a list of rights given by Giraldus Cambrensis in his Expugnatio Hibernica. Carew, in his compilation of papers relating to Irish history known as the ‘Book of Howth’, paraphrases Yonge’s recitation of the rights and updates the list to the Elizabethan Age.51 Carew’s contemporary, Sir James Ware (1594–1666), lists Yonge as the author of Monita politica, de bono regimine (Political Advice, on Ruling Well) – a reference to Yonge’s Gouernaunce of prynces. Ware notes that Yonge or James Butler – the subject of his comment regarding the date is unclear – came to prominence around the year 1420.52 Long before dispensing advice to Butler, Yonge made a record for a globetrotting Hungarian knight to mark his journey to purgatory through civilised Dublin and its untamed hinterland.

51 London, Lambeth Palace, Carew MS 623, fols 152v–153v. 52 James Ware, De Scriptoribus Hiberniae (Dublin, 1639), Book II, p. 76.

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Books, politics and society in Renaissance Dublin Raymond Gillespie On 27 July 1662 James Butler, scion of one of the most prominent AngloIrish families and the newly created first duke of Ormond, arrived in Dublin to take up his post of lord lieutenant of Ireland. Describing that event in 1952, the architectural historian Maurice Craig used what must be one of the most striking phrases in the historical writing about ­seventeenth-century Ireland: ‘The Renaissance, in a word, had arrived in Ireland.’1 In one sense Craig was right. It was only in the late seventeenth century that Dublin could boast a building constructed entirely on the classical lines associated with the Renaissance. The Royal Hospital, designed on classical principles, was built at the edge of the city at Kilmainham in 1680–84 under Ormond’s patronage. Within the city, the new Tholsel built in the 1680s was also classical, at least in its aspiration if not in its execution.2 In other ways, as Craig well knew, the equation of Ormond with the Renaissance in Dublin was an exaggeration. It is certainly true that there was little architectural evidence for Renaissance influences in Ireland before the late seventeenth century, but in that context it needs to be remembered that the country as a whole was a poor one not given to monumental building. Sixteenth-century Dublin was a town not much bigger or wealthier than an English provincial town of the second rank. Only in the early seventeenth century, when wealth and political context made it possible, were large-scale building projects, such as the earl of Strafford’s house at Jigginstown, undertaken. Even when wealth did come after 1660 the Royal Hospital, apart from the baroque chapel, is a rather austere building for want of funding. Where finance for building was available in the sixteenth century, mainly in the south-east of the country, there is more substantial evidence for Renaissance-style architecture in build  1 Maurice Craig, Dublin, 1660–1860 (Dublin, 1952), p. 3.  2 Edward McParland, Public architecture in Ireland, 1680–1760 (New Haven, CT, 2001), pp. 26–8, 53–66.

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ings such as the Butler house at Carrick on Suir.3 Stylistically, evidence for the architectural Renaissance in sixteenth-­century Ireland comes not in grand building projects but in cheaper, though no less significant, structures or detailing on more traditional buildings. Funeral monuments, for instance, provide an abundance of examples of Renaissance-inspired detail in both Dublin and the rest of Ireland by the end of the sixteenth century.4 In the same period, those parts of south-east Ireland and Dublin which traded extensively with England and continental Europe saw the material cultures of those societies that they could afford arrive in their homes through the activities of merchants, adding touches of a wider world to local environments.5 Yet this reality is itself a distortion of the patterns of change in early modern Irish society. That movement that historians have termed ‘the Renaissance’ was not solely about architecture or painting but was firmly grounded in a textual world. Underpinned by a sense of humanistic thought, it approached old classical works in new ways both by developing principles of textual criticism to understand those texts better and by deploying the ideas and models contained in them to new ends through rhetorical techniques. Thus, the language of the Renaissance can be detected in Dublin long before its buildings took shape, although it was still late and poorly formed by European standards. The early library of Trinity College, Dublin, founded in 1592, for instance, showed none of the interest in the Greek language that had so fired enthusiasm in Cambridge at the beginning of the sixteenth century, when Renaissance influences were making themselves felt there. Moreover, it is difficult to detect in any of the speeches made at the founding of the college any of the political vocabulary forged in Renaissance Europe and drawn from classical literature. Ideas of republic or commonwealth were noticeably absent from any of the utterances of the first provost, Adam Loftus.6 The political language that was characteristic of the governors of Elizabethan England was being used by Dublin Corporation by the middle of the sixteenth century. In 1555 they ­complained of merchants  3 For example, Hanneke Ronnes, ‘Continental traces at Carrick on Suir and ­contemporary Irish castles: A preliminary study of date and initial stones’, in Thomas Herron and Michael Potterton (eds), Ireland in the Renaissance (Dublin, 2008), pp. 255–73.  4 For a dramatic example, see Paul Cockerham, ‘“To mak a tombe for the earl of Ormon and to set it up in Iarland”: Renaissance ideas in Irish funeral monuments’, in Herron and Potterton (eds), Ireland in the Renaissance, pp. 195–230.  5 Susan Flavin, ‘Consumption and material culture in sixteenth-century Ireland’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 64 (2011), pp. 1144–74.   6 J. W. Stubbs (ed.), Archbishop Adam Loftus and the foundation of Trinity College, Dublin (Dublin, 1892).

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who were ‘rather minding their private gain than the common wealth’ by bringing into the city goods that were already manufactured there. Again in 1562 they grumbled about ‘the greedy desire of some wilful persons in this city which have no respect to a common or public weal but are wholly set upon private gain without regard how or in what sorts they make the same’.7 Such assumptions that the workings of the city should not be dictated by private interests were a commonplace of civic humanism. The role of the governing institutions of the city was to prevent the actions of a few from exploiting others.8 This idea of the commonwealth in the city was not new. It had been embraced by the Anglo Irish of the Pale in the 1530s and 1540s, drawing on the rhetoric of those who were influenced by early Renaissance humanist ideas.9 It had been applied to the wider stage in the creation of the ‘kingdom’ of Ireland in the 1540s. It is difficult to measure, for want of evidence, the extent to which such ideas spread outside Dublin and the inner Pale, but there are some hints. The rhetoric of commonwealth was certainly deployed in Carrickfergus in the 1590s, and in 1593 the corporation demonstrated a firm mark of civic identity by building a new town house.10 Similarly Kilkenny Corporation in 1578–79 rebuilt their Tholsel, suggesting a corporate sense.11 Humanist ideas of the civil commonwealth gradually permeated Dublin Corporation. As a result, the rulers of the city began more far-reaching attempts to control the behaviour of those who lived there so that it would be – as the goldsmiths described their guild – ‘in decent and comely order . . . in this city and presently is in all places of civil rule and regiment’.12 Those attempts to bring the city into the civility of a commonwealth resulted in increased regulation of alehouses, brothels, hucksters and the poor, as well as the dress of the inhabitants of the town.13 All this required both better recordkeeping and more effective communications. In the late sixteenth century,  7 J. T. and Lady Gilbert (eds), Calendar of the ancient records of Dublin, 19 vols (Dublin, 1889–1947), vol. i, p. 449; vol. ii, pp. 22–3. For the language of the ‘monarchial republic’ in England, see Patrick Collinson, Elizabethans (London, 2003), pp. 1–57.  8 Phil Withington, Politics of commonwealth: Citizens and freemen in early modern England (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 115–18, 140–2; Jonathan Barry, ‘Civility and civic culture in early modern England’, in Peter Burke, Brian Harrison and Paul Slack (eds), Civil histories (Oxford, 2000), p. 103.  9 Brendan Bradshaw, The Irish constitutional revolution of the sixteenth century (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 49–57. 10 Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, T707. 11 John Bradley, The Kilkenny city charter of 1609 (Kilkenny, 2009), pp. 18–19. 12 Gilbert (eds), Calendar of the ancient records of Dublin, vol. i, p. 416. 13 Gilbert (eds), Calendar of the ancient records of Dublin, vol. i, pp. 446, 468, 469; vol. ii, pp. 28–9, 38–9, 89–90, 99, 164, 190, 274.

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Dublin’s record-keeping certainly improved, with a growing volume of surviving documents from the 1550s onwards, while new classes of records for leases and apprenticeships were created. The laws of the city were codified in 1557, and in 1574 the laws were reviewed ‘that so many of them as shall be thought good and expedient for the commonwealth of this city shall remain in force’.14 These initiatives needed to be communicated to the members of the commonwealth, and from the 1560s the Corporation used the royal printer in Dublin, Humphrey Powell, to print standardised documents for the regulation of the markets, thus ensuring that their instructions would be spread widely across the city. By the beginning of the seventeenth century mayoral proclamations were being routinely printed.15 The deployment of print by Dublin Corporation in the mid-sixteenth century could be deemed to mark the arrival of the Renaissance at least as much as the arrival of the duke of Ormond a century later. However, by the time a Dublin printer became active, Renaissance ideas, implicit in the humanist idea of commonwealth, were already well established in the city. One of the ways in which those ideas had embedded themselves in the social fabric of Dublin was through the books that were circulating in the city. Given that the Renaissance was primarily an encounter with texts, available in new and better editions, and with the rhetoric that they generated both in poetry and prose, if Dublin was a Renaissance city in any meaningful sense it was because it was a city with books. Precisely which books circulated in the city in the sixteenth century is difficult to determine because, unlike most European capitals, Dublin did not have its own printing press until 1551. Within the British Isles, Wales was the only other region without a press at this date. Even when a press was established in Dublin, its activities were financed by the state and for most of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the queen’s printer produced little other than standard religious works and the administrative necessities of government such as proclamations. This was, in the main, a reflection of the under-capitalisation of the business, with the queen’s printer relying on government subventions in order to produce books. The Irish market was simply too small to generate the income required to tie up money in paper and storage while waiting for works to sell.16 14 Gilbert (eds), Calendar of the ancient records of Dublin, vol. i, p. 463; vol. ii, pp. 97, 118, 324. 15 Dublin City Archives, MR/15, pp. 206, 207, 329, 662, 739. 16 Raymond Gillespie, Reading Ireland: Print, reading and social change in early modern Ireland (Manchester, 2005), pp. 55–7; see also Wilkinson’s chapter in this volume.

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This does not mean that Dublin was without books for most of the sixteenth century. The inhabitants of Dublin did own printed works, although their titles are rather elusive. In the middle of the sixteenth century two significant Renaissance humanists, Richard Stanihurst and Edmund Campion, both produced histories of Ireland in Dublin, drawing mainly on Stanihurst’s personal library. According to the sources listed in these works, history and law clearly predominated in this collection which must have included the standard English chronicles, including those of Robert Fabian and Edward Hall, Randulf Higden’s Polychronicon and the historical work of Roger Hovenden, as well as histories by Hector Boece and John Major on Scotland.17 That this was fairly standard fare for those at the upper end of the social hierarchy in the Dublin area may be judged from the fact that many of the same works appear in the library lists of the earls of Kildare at Maynooth in the 1520s and in the notes on his sources made by the compiler of the Book of Howth in the middle of the sixteenth century.18 Given that the Stanihursts were closely connected to the Kildare family in the early sixteenth century, it is possible that they first encountered such books in Kildare’s library. There is also good evidence to suggest that there was lighter reading, such as the Italian tales drawn on by Barnaby Rich for some of his works written in Dublin, but how widespread these were is very uncertain. In addition, individuals in the city were able to acquire more niche works, including books in French.19 The Dublin book trade was fed not by the works of a locally produced press but by imports from England, primarily the works of the London press. As early as the mid-1540s, the Dublin stationer James Dartas was already importing a wide range of works for sale in the city, and indeed there are indications that by the 1540s some London printers may have been producing works about Ireland targeted at the Irish market.20 It is possible to glimpse at least some of this trade in the early seventeenth century through the shipments of books from Chester and Bristol into Dublin. In the 1630s, William Bladen, the factor for the Stationers’ Company who had acquired the office of king’s printer, imported over 20 hundredweight of books from Chester into Dublin, presumably to 17 Colm Lennon, Richard Stanihurst: The Dubliner, 1547–1618 (Dublin, 1981), p. 28. 18 Gearóid Mac Niocaill (ed.), Crown surveys of lands, 1540–1 (Dublin, 1992), pp. 312–14, 355–7; Valerie McGowan Doyle, The Book of Howth: The Elizabethan reconquest of Ireland and the Old English (Cork, 2011). 19 Gillespie, Reading Ireland, pp. 62–3. 20 L. M. Oliver, ‘A bookseller’s account book’, Harvard Library Bulletin 16 (1968), pp. 149– 52.

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supply the needs of the Dublin bookshops. Others would also sell books in Dublin. Occasionally London stationers imported individual cargoes into Dublin, varying in size from 2 to 10 hundredweight; these may have been particular orders or ventures that had no follow-on. Exactly what sort of books were imported is less clear, although the staples of the trade included grammars, primers and other schoolbooks.21 Other, more scholarly works were also available in the library of Luke Challoner, one of the first fellows of Trinity College, whose collection amounted to 853 titles in 1596, rising to 885 titles by 1608, at least some of which had been acquired on book-buying expeditions to England. Specialist scholars, such as James Ware, who had a professional interest in books, had access to even wider markets. However, it is also important to note that the circulation of these imports was probably greater than a simple count of titles would suggest. Borrowing and lending networks within the city were well established, particularly among the learned. Luke Challoner and James Ussher, both fellows of Trinity College, Dublin, each opened their substantial libraries to their friends, with works on history, geography and medicine, as well as some on theology, circulating in this way. These men also borrowed books and manuscripts from English antiquarians, including Sir Robert Cotton, to aid them in their scholarly researches.22 Similarly, Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin had a library that contained a wide range of literary and theological works that seems to have been accessible to many of the worshippers there.23 The outcome of this pattern of circulation of print in Dublin was that the sort of books that were owned or read by citizens of the capital might be little different from the sort of works that contemporaries in many English provincial towns held. The dozen works owned by Lady Anne Hamilton in Dublin in 1638, listed when her estate was valued, included a copy of Virgil’s poetic works in English translation and a Greek New Testament, both works that reflected the Renaissance interests in classics and the text of the Bible in its original language. Unsurprisingly, she also had an ‘old’ English Bible. She also had two French works and a number of English devotional texts including those by Lewis Bayly, Nicholas 21 Gillespie, Reading Ireland, pp. 65–6. 22 Elizabethanne Boran, ‘Luke Challoner’s library’, Long Room 37 (1992), pp. 17–26; Elizabethanne Boran, ‘The libraries of Luke Challoner and James Ussher, 1595–1608’, in Helga Robinson-Hammerstein (ed.), European universities in the age of Reformation and Counter-Reformation (Dublin, 1998), pp. 75–115; Gillespie, Reading Ireland, p. 66. 23 Raymond Gillespie, ‘Borrowing books from Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, 1607’, Long Room 43 (1998), pp. 15–19.

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Byfield and Daniel Featley.24 Lewis Bayly’s The practice of piety (1613), Nicholas Byfield’s The marrow of the oracles of God (1619) and Daniel Featley’s Ancilla pietatis or the handmaid to private devotion (1626) were popular works for the English market. Bayly’s book was in its thirty-sixth edition and Byfield’s and Featley’s were in their tenth and sixth editions respectively by the time Lady Anne died. Bayly’s work, with its collection of prayers for use on particular occasions and its moralistic tone, seems to have been particularly valued by Protestants in early seventeenth-century Ireland.25 All this ensured that the language of religious discussion and devotion with which Lady Anne was familiar was conducted in a manner forged in England and dominated by the spiritual concerns that mattered there. This shaping of the Dublin Renaissance through external influences has been described in other contexts. However, there has been rather less comment on its implications. At one level the consequences of the late establishment of a press in Dublin may be limited. It might well be argued that the imitative nature of the relationship between Dublin and London in the sixteenth century meant that the sort of works that would circulate in Dublin in the sixteenth century, whether or not it had a printing press, would be those that London consumed. Richard Stanihurst’s characterisation of Dublin as superior to all other Irish towns with ‘manners and civility’, hospitality and loyalty, resulted in it being ‘commonly called the Irish or young London’ and hence it would imitate the fashions in vogue there.26 There is evidence that Dublin did indeed imitate London in at least some areas of literary fashion. In the early sixteenth century, when Dublin Corporation began to keep a mayoral chronicle, they were clearly imitating their London counterparts in this area of literary life. To underscore the point, they appear to have acquired a copy of a London chronicle and abstracted a number of entries from it to form the framework into which they inserted their own entries.27 It seems clear that Dubliners in search of civility looked to London as a centre of civic humanism on which they could model their own town. While the movement of books alone certainly played a large part here, there were enough people of diverse backgrounds moving between the 24 Dublin City Archives, MS C1/J/2/4, p. 228. 25 Gillespie, Reading Ireland, p. 143. 26 Liam Miller and Eileen Power (eds), Holinshed’s Irish Chronicle (Dublin, 1979), pp. 44–5. 27 For this project, see Raymond Gillespie, ‘Dubliners view themselves: The Dublin city chronicles’, in Seán Duffy (ed.), Medieval Dublin VIII (Dublin, 2008), pp. 213–27.

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two cities to ensure that ideas, books and literary models were exchanged between the two places. Those models were not confined to purely English ones since books and ideas from the continental Renaissance also circulated widely in London in the late sixteenth century. Most obviously, New English officials moved between Dublin and London, bringing their experiences of one place to the other. Thus those New English officials who planned plantation and colonisation in Ireland or thought about how that society might be reshaped often turned to classical and biblical principles of colonisation and social order to re-imagine Ireland. Not all the Renaissances came through the world of politics.28 Geoffrey Fenton, secretary of state in Ireland in the 1580s, had a well-established literary career that brought him into contact with Italian literary works in London before his arrival in Dublin. In 1567 he published Certain tragicall discourses, a translation (probably from the French) of thirteen tales by the Italian Matteo Bandello, bishop of Agen. This was followed by other translated work, and in 1579 he translated Guicciardini’s Storia d’Italia into English.29 Meanwhile Lodowick Bryskett, clerk of the Irish privy council, had the advantage of being the son of Italian parents and had travelled in Italy in the 1560s at the instigation of the future Irish lord deputy, Sir Henry Sidney. Thus, it is of little surprise that his A discourse of civill life, set in Dublin and published in 1606, is mainly derived from the 1565 Italian work by Giambattista Battista Giraldi Cinzio, De gli hecatommithi.30 In the early seventeenth century the Pale lawyer and playwright Henry Burnell probably drew on François de Beleforest’s Histories tragique, first published in Turin in 1571, for his 1640 play Landgartha, while Sir George Carew, soldier, administrator and antiquarian, found time in Dublin to translate Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga’s epic poem on the conquest of Chile.31 Finally, Sir John Davies, the early seventeenth-century 28 For examples, see Vincent Carey, ‘The Irish face of Machiavelli: Richard Beacon’s “Solon his follie” (1594) and republican ideology in the conquest of Ireland’, in Hiram Morgan (ed.), Political ideology in Ireland, 1541–1641 (Dublin, 1999), pp. 83–109. The English humanist Sir Thomas Smith was involved in an Ulster settlement: see Hiram Morgan, ‘The colonial venture of Sir Thomas Smith in Ulster, 1571–75’, Historical Journal 27 (1985), pp. 261–78. In Munster, Sir William Herbert drew explicitly on classical (both Greek and Latin) models for reform: William Herbert, Croftus sive de Hibernia liber, ed. Arthur Keaveney and John Madden (Dublin, 1992). 29 R. W. Maslen, Elizabethan fictions: Espionage, counter espionage and the duplicity of fiction in early Elizabethan prose narrative (Oxford, 1997), pp. 85–8, 96–113. 30 Lodowick Bryskett, A discourse of civil life, ed. Thomas E. Wright (Northridge, CA, 1970), pp. vii–xi. 31 Henry Burnell, Landgartha: A tragie-comedy, ed. Deana Rankin (Dublin, 2013), pp. 36–51; Patricia Palmer, The severed head and the grafted tongue: Literature, translation and violence in early modern Ireland (Cambridge, 2014), pp. 93–124.

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Irish attorney general, was best known in the late sixteenth century as a court poet whose works show all the traces of the influence of Philip Sidney and Renaissance verse, a practice that Davies abandoned after his posting to Ireland.32 From a different perspective, the Anglo-Irish gentry of Dublin and its environs moved easily between London and Dublin, transferring some of the values of one place to the other. One Richard Nugent, whose exact identity is obscure but who was certainly connected to the Nugents of Westmeath and whose family may have had connections with the Inns of Court in London, composed the neo-Petrarchan sonnet sequence Cynthia, containing direful sonnets, madrigals and passionate intercourses describing his repudiate affections expressed in love’s own language (1604). This was not an amateurish effort and an Italian poem was appended to it, firmly locating it in a Renaissance context. It was considered worthy of publication in London. In the sixteenth century the Nugent family spanned a number of worlds. One member had been responsible for the compilation of an Irish primer for Queen Elizabeth I in 1571, while the Irish poet Bonaventure Ó hEodhasa had composed praise poetry for the family in the late sixteenth century.33 Despite this capacity for linguistic and literary adaptation, according to Ann Fogarty, Nugent’s Cynthia ‘resorts to a metropolitan English mode when it comes to seeking an artistic vehicle for his ideas and feelings’, despite his dissatisfaction with the English state that is clear in the poem.34 The same sort of resort to the metropolitan literary values of London can be seen in others from among the Old English who were inhabitants of the Dublin area. Richard Bellings, from Castleknock near Dublin, when a student at the Inns of Court in London, turned his attention to that most emblematic text of the English literary Renaissance, Sir Philip Sidney’s The countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia, and attempted to finish the work by adding the sixth book, as others cognisant of literary fashion tried to do. Bellings’ work appeared in 1624 under the imprint of the Irish Stationers but there is a strong case to be made that Dublin was not the intended market for his composition. It was probably printed at Dublin to take advantage of lower labour rates there and 32 Robert Krueger (ed.), The poems of Sir John Davies (Oxford, 1975). For Davies’ literary legacy in Irish policy, see Jean R. Brink, ‘Sir John Davies: Lawyer and poet’, in Thomas Herron and Michael Potterton (eds), Ireland in the Renaissance, c.1540– 1660 (Dublin, 2007), pp. 88–104. 33 Cuthbert Mhág Craith (ed.), Dán na mBráthar Mionúr, 2 vols (Dublin, 1967–80), poem no. 8. 34 ‘Introduction’, Richard Nugent, Cynthia, ed. Angelina Lynch and Anne Fogarty (Dublin, 2010), p. 31.

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the shortage of work for the Dublin press, then under the control of the London Stationers, but the intention was that most of the output would be shipped to London for sale there. This was certainly the case with some of Archbishop James Ussher’s works produced in the 1630s by the Stationers in Dublin.35 While Bellings’ work certainly bears some of the traces of his interests as a Dubliner, those were well enough concealed within the Renaissance literary construct to make his writings acceptable in both cities.36 What these examples suggest is that in late sixteenth-century Dublin, though not necessarily elsewhere in Ireland, the Renaissance was essentially about texts mediated through the world of print. The lack of a Dublin printer meant that the Irish Renaissance was shaped not primarily in Dublin but in London and as much by economic as by political or cultural forces. The orientation of Dublin’s religion and culture was towards London rather than Edinburgh or any part of Gaelic-speaking Ireland. Over time, of course, this would change. From the 1630s, Irish landlords, such as the Boyles, began to send their sons on what would later be described as the Grand Tour where they could encounter the world of classical antiquity in an unmediated form. However, none of this means that the English Renaissance was replicated directly in Dublin by means of the books that flowed from England. Individuals in sixteenth and early seventeenth-century Dublin did not live in an Englishinspired Renaissance bubble uninfluenced by a wider world. An extreme example is the early sixteenth-century library of the earl of Kildare at Maynooth near Dublin. As is well known, this contained a number of works characteristic of Renaissance humanism, most famously Thomas More’s Utopia and other examples of his work. However, there are other works that might draw attention to the classical past, including Virgil, Ovid, Cicero, Juvenal and Terence. Yet these sat beside earlier works in Irish and Latin redolent of a much older world view. How Kildare saw these works as relating to one another, if at all, we do not know since the books and any marginalia that they contained have disappeared, but what seems clear is that Renaissance influences progressed unevenly and 35 Gillespie, Reading Ireland, p. 59. The work was clearly in circulation in Dublin in the 1630s; see Rolf Loeber and Magda Stouthamer-Loeber, ‘Books owned by members of Old English and Gaelic Irish families in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’, in Michael Potterton and Thomas Herron (eds), Dublin and the Pale in the Renaissance, c.1540–1640 (Dublin, 2011), pp. 286–8. 36 Raymond Gillespie, ‘The social thought of Richard Bellings’, in Micheál Ó Siochrú (ed.), Kingdoms in crisis: Ireland in the 1640s (Dublin, 2001), pp. 212–28. See also Coolahan’s chapter in this volume.

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fitfully.37 The response to older works by those exposed to newer forms of learning is more clearly hinted at in a manuscript made for Christopher St Lawrence of Howth in the 1560s and 1570s. The ‘Book of Howth’ is a compilation of historical material mainly relating to the history of the Anglo-Irish community, beginning with their origins in the AngloNorman settlement. In one part of the book, St Lawrence’s scribe turned his attention to the Fenian tale Cath Fionntraghe (Battle of Ventry). The scribe elaborated on and modernised his text by adding long pre-battle speeches and detailed battle scenes in the same way that he had added such material into his narrative of the Anglo-Norman settlement and his own account of the near contemporary Battle of Knockdoe.38 This sort of oratorical intervention in an older text had all the hallmarks of someone wishing to introduce classical models into a medieval text. The intention was to make the text useable in a new context where the standard of literary acceptability had become deeply imbued with classical norms.39 This attempt at rewriting older texts in Irish in a new literary context highlights what became one of the central elements in the understanding of those in Dublin who encountered the English Renaissance through their books – the renewed importance of rhetoric and literary form in their world. Despite the Renaissance interest in the vernacular, most of those in the Dublin area showed little interest in exploiting the local vernacular that could be heard widely in the city – the Irish language. Concern for appropriate language lay at the centre of the Renaissance world and the control of unruly language was one of the areas high on the agenda of urban civic humanism. Thus the sixteenth-century Dubliner Richard Stanihurst complained that in the use of language the Irish people ‘blab whatever comes to mind first. Instead of weighting their words with the grammarian’s precision and paying attention to syllabic qualities, they use inconstant standards of breathing in articulating their sentences.’40 In Stanihurst’s view, Irish as a language had little to recommend it, with few classical precedents for its structure. It was therefore a mark of barbarism, 37 Mac Niocaill (ed.), Crown surveys of lands, pp. 312–14, 355–7. For Kildare’s Continental connections, see Diarmaid Ó Catháin, ‘Some reflexes of Latin learning and of the Renaissance in Ireland, c.1450–1600’, in Jason Harris and Keith Sidwell (eds), Making Ireland Roman: Irish neo-Latin writers and the Republic of Letters (Cork, 2009), pp. 21–35. 38 McGowan Doyle, The Book of Howth, pp. 74–5. 39 For a slightly different use of Irish literary techniques in a Latin text, see David Edwards and Keith Sidwell (eds), The Tipperary hero: Dermot O’Meara’s Ormonius (1615) (Turnhout, 2011), pp. 25–6, 34–6, 38. 40 Lennon, Richard Stanihurst, p. 149.

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and one aspect of the politics of language in the sixteenth century was the humanist opposition by the Anglo-Irish elite of the Pale to the vernacular Irish language since it indicated not only a different ethnic but also a different cultural identity. Moreover, since Ireland had been conquered by the English, Stanihurst’s own predecessors, it was claimed that the native Irish should speak English.41 Yet Stanihurst’s complaints were not only directed against the Irish language since many of those in Ireland who spoke English also spoke it badly, so that the people of the Pale ‘spoke neither good Irish nor good English’.42 The humanist solution to this situation was, as Stanihurst’s father had suggested, education, and as speaker of the 1570 parliament in Dublin he had urged the establishment of grammar schools where ‘a pure English tongue’ might be taught.43 In addition, it must be presumed that Latin of a standard form was to be taught there from English grammars. Thus, for example, in 1587 when the Latin teacher at St Patrick’s Cathedral school used his own grammar, he was censured for introducing a ‘diversity of grammars’.44 Richard Stanihurst belonged in the mainstream of civic humanism and his attitude to language reflected both Anglo-Irish political identity and also the manner in which he had encountered and absorbed Renaissance ideals. His library, as far as we can reconstruct it from the passing references in his own works and those used by Edmund Campion when writing his history of Ireland in Stanihurst’s house, was composed of works in English that had been imported from London. Unlike St Lawrence at Howth, he had little recourse to manuscripts other than those that could be found in the major institutions in Dublin, such as Christ Church Cathedral, and his sources were mainly in English. Ultimately, it was not the problem of language that proved decisive to those in and around Dublin in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries but rather how that language was to be used both in relation to the government of Dublin and of the country as a whole. From 1534 the number of English officials in Dublin grew and confessional differences emerged between the Anglo Irish of the Pale and the mainly New English Protestant officials. The Anglo Irish of the Pale, from the early 41 See, for instance, Tony Crowley, Wars of words: The politics of language in Ireland, 1537–2004 (Oxford, 2005), pp. 9–35. 42 Tony Crowley, The politics of language in Ireland, 1366–1922: A source book (London, 2000), pp. 32–4. 43 Crowley, The politics of language, p. 28. 44 British Library, Add MS 4813, fos 157v–8. The first Latin grammar printed in Dublin was Christopher Syms, An introduction to the art of teaching the Latin speech (Dublin, 1634).

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sixteenth century, had been influenced by new conceptions of how social order worked, ideas promoted by humanistic scholarship in Cambridge.45 A new language of ‘res publica’ or ‘commonwealth’ shaped ideas about how a polity, whether the Corporation of Dublin or the nation as a whole, would be ordered. One could become part of this process in one of two ways: by virtue of birth and the nebulous idea of honour, or by learning the correct way to behave and learning to speak the appropriate language as approved by humanistic ideals. In Lodowick Bryskett’s A discourse of the civill life (1606), which claims to reflect the discussions on the nature of social organisation at Bryskett’s house near Dublin in the late sixteenth century, the Pale lawyer Sir Robert Dillon is given a long speech urging the importance of political engagement as opposed to retirement. The condition of this engagement is education: ‘What is the end of parents in the education of their children wherein they bestow so much care and spend their wealth to purchase them learning and knowledge; but a desire to make them able to be employed and so hope to see them raised to credit and dignity in the commonwealth?’ Again, against Bryskett’s desire for disengagement, Dillon argues a man of your sort bred and trained (as it seemeth you have been) in learning and that hath thereto added the experience and knowledge which travel and observation of many things in foreign countries must breed in him and hath seen many places and manners, orders and policies of sundry nations, ought rather to seek to employ his ability and sufficiency in the service of his prince and country than apply them to his particular benefit of contentment.46

The importance of education, where one might learn a political vocabulary drawn from classical precept and books, as a preparation for political engagement, was clearly vital for those who had absorbed the importance of the text as a basis for action. As early as the 1530s, at least one such school operating under Peter White and using Renaissance texts such as the works of Erasmus had been operating in Kilkenny with considerable success.47 In the 1570s James Stanihurst had been active in promoting legislation in parliament for the establishment of a school network to promote good learning so that the young might ‘prove good members of this commonwealth’.48 Dublin itself made a contribution to this process: 45 For this group see Bradshaw, The Irish constitutional revolution. 46 Bryskett, A discourse of civil life, p. 9. 47 Colm Lennon, ‘Pedagogy as reform: The influence of Peter White on Irish scholarship in the Renaissance’, in Herron and Potterton (eds), Ireland in the Renaissance, pp. 43–51. 48 Crowley, The politics of language, pp. 28–9.

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from 1560 the Corporation maintained a schoolmaster in the city and by 1566 that school was in the hands of the Oxford-trained master, Patrick Cusack.49 By the time Trinity College was founded in 1590 much of the early enthusiasm for Renaissance scholarship had passed and the new institution increasingly occupied itself with the pressing theological and confessional questions underpinning the definition of Irish Protestantism. This ability to use the political language of the Renaissance properly and to build a commonwealth went to the core of the most significant political debate of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries: the question of who had the ability to govern either Dublin or Ireland correctly. The New English settlers lacked the lineage (and by extension the correct social status and attributes) that underpinned the traditional advisers of the Crown, but they could acquire the trappings of knowledge and experience by reading and travel. In terms of transactional power, it was they who were in the confessional driving seat and in the case of the politics of Dublin Corporation this was to be a decisive influence on seventeenth-century developments.50 The Old English, on the other hand, had an appropriate lineage as the traditional advisers of the Crown, and at the beginning of the sixteenth century had deployed the idea of commonwealth in the reformation of Ireland, yet by the beginning of the seventeenth century saw education and office becoming closed to them for confessional reasons. Their position was perhaps best articulated by the Protestant Old English lawyer Richard Hadsor, who was certainly well informed about the workings of government. Hadsor urged the government to make more use of the Old English gentry of the Pale who had a strong sense of duty and were willing ‘to discharge the parts of good subjects and commonwealth men’. By contrast, the newly arrived New English were ‘sharks there that be of low birth and quality, which having not much to take unto before their arrival there do look more to their own ends than either to advance His Majesty’s revenue and profit’. In all, this conflict was the main cause ‘of the slow progress of the now growing commonwealth’ and indeed was responsible for ‘the enormities of that commonwealth [which] hath brought forth many rebellions’.51 From another perspective, the New English attorney general Sir John Davies in 49 Gilbert (eds), Calendar of the ancient records of Dublin, vol. ii, pp. 181, 245, 291, 438–9. 50 For this process see Colm Lennon, The lords of Dublin in an age of reformation (Dublin, 1989). 51 For this argument and the sources of the quotations see Raymond Gillespie, Seventeenthcentury Ireland (Dublin, 2006), pp. 13, 73. The same rhetoric runs through the work of Richard Bellings; see Gillespie, ‘The social thought of Richard Bellings’, passim.

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1612 was firmly of the view that what made ‘a good harmony in this commonwealth’ was the civil magistracy of which he was a prominent part.52 These social tensions quickly polarised around the issue of religion, seen as a marker of political loyalty and civility, after the mandates dispute of 1605. The aldermanic bench in 1606 was split between eleven Protestants and fifteen Catholics and the application of the oath of supremacy to newly elected mayors after 1606 disrupted the seniority of that group and the order of succession to the mayoralty.53 Disputes within the governing elite became increasingly common and religious symbols that had drawn allegiance from most Dubliners in the sixteenth century, such as Christ Church Cathedral, became signs of division.54 Just as books had helped to create the world of ‘commonwealth’ in the sixteenth century, they fed the divisions of the early seventeenth century as Protestant libraries were assembled by some of the inhabitants of Dublin, such as Lady Anne Hamilton. Catholic works were also available in the city and became increasingly available after 1605 as catechisms and other works were smuggled into Dublin.55 The language of commonwealth, learned from books imported from London or at the Inns of Court, was used by both sides of the confessional and political divide, and became a highly contested idea in the early seventeenth century. This is perhaps nowhere more clearly to be seen than in the writing of history by those who lived in Dublin. History in the early seventeenth century was an important handmaiden to the rhetoric of commonwealth. Sir James Perrot’s ‘Chronicle of Ireland’ (1616) was clear as to the usefulness of history: ‘The use of reading history is twofold, either private for a man’s particular knowledge and information, or public for the application of it to the service of the state’. The latter would ‘with more commendation (if not utility) farther the weal public’.56 It is hardly surprising that those readers in sixteenth-century Dublin about whom most is known had a considerable number of historical works among their libraries. The Stanihurst family library in Dublin contained the 52 John Davies, A discovery of the true causes why Ireland was never entirely subdued (London, 1612), p. 284. 53 Lennon, The lords of Dublin, pp. 51–2, 179. 54 Lennon, The lords of Dublin, pp. 45–6, 55. For Christ Church as a unifying symbol in the city during the sixteenth century and its subsequent fracturing, see Raymond Gillespie, ‘The shaping of reform, 1558–1625’, in Kenneth Milne (ed.), Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin: A history (Dublin, 2000), pp. 174–94. 55 Brian Mac Cuarta, ‘Old English Catholicism in Chester’, Archivium Hibernicum 57 (2003), pp. 7–8; Gillespie, Reading Ireland, pp. 114–15, 147–8, 165–6. 56 James Perrot, A chronicle of Ireland, ed. Herbert Wood (Dublin, 1933), pp. 3–4.

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standard sixteenth-century chronicles of England by Fabyan and Hall and the Polychronicon with the work of Hector Boece and John Major on Scotland, which appear to be typical of Anglo-Irish Dubliners’ reading in history in the period. They were certainly all mainstream works and their chronicle style provided a model for Stanihurst’s own history of Ireland. If, in the middle of the sixteenth century, the reading and writing of Irish history as part of the Anglo-Irish contribution to the making of the commonwealth had been contemporary and mainstream, the same could not be said of the New English ventures in early seventeenth-century Dublin. There can be little doubt that James Ware, as a later contributor to this volume will demonstrate, fully understood the Renaissance and humanist imperatives for the study of history. He sought out and consulted primary sources in Latin and Irish, with the aid of a translator where necessary. He was part of a scholarly network that transcended confessional allegiance and bought books across Europe including at the Frankfurt book fair. Yet, for all this scholarly endeavour, Ware’s presentation of his results was disappointing. As D. R. Woolf has argued, the annalistic-style chronicle in England was mortally wounded around the time that Stanihurst was engaged on his history in that style, and by the early seventeenth century it was all but dead.57 The Dublin city chronicle ceased to be kept in 1576. Yet it was this annalistic and list form that Ware continued to use into the 1660s, both in his episcopal succession lists and in formal annals as well as the rather disjointed compilations on antiquities and on the writers of Ireland and the history of the Irish bishops. Quite why Ware should have adopted this old-fashioned approach that rejected both the current trends in history publishing in England and the classical model of history writing offered by the Renaissance texts available in the library of Trinity College, Dublin is uncertain. One possibility is that realising the potential of historical investigation to inflame political passions – the reason why Richard Bellings would not allow his historical work to be published in the 1670s – he opted to conceal a more modern content within an older framework. He adopted a format that might act as a means of self-­ censorship or at least would disguise his history as not being seen in the civic humanistic historical tradition by casting it in a form that would signal to the reader that it was not intended to be ‘commonwealth work’.58 Indeed, this may well have been an attempt to maintain the good relations Ware cultivated with Catholic scholars in Ireland and beyond. Such 57 D. R. Woolf, Reading history in early modern England (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 11–36. 58 Gillespie, ‘The social thought of Richard Bellings’, pp. 213–15.

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a process of censorship is clear in his treatment of Edmund Spenser’s A view of the present state of Ireland that Ware edited in 1633 and in the process depoliticised by removing references that might have offended those who had been involved in the sixteenth-century events that he described, such as the earls of Kildare.59 If this suggestion about the form of Ware’s writing has any validity at all it points to a much wider problem in understanding the workings of the Renaissance in Dublin through the books that arrived in the city. The history of reading, or rather what people do with the books that they acquire, is at least as important as the production and acquisition of those books. Dublin may have experienced the Renaissance as a textual movement much earlier than any architectural revelation of the discovery of the past, acquiring those texts not from local printers but through imports and through the networks of travellers moving between England and Dublin. However, the result was not simply the recreation of the English Renaissance in Dublin but rather the local application of those general principles to specifically Irish problems. Political and confessional division could be reduced or enhanced by the way in which ideas about commonwealth or the proper qualities for a ruler, garnered from the books that arrived in Dublin, were applied in debate. The Renaissance city of books was its own creation.

59 Edmund Spenser, A view of the present state of Ireland, ed. Andrew Hadfield and Willy Maley (Oxford, 1997), pp. 170–6.

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Edmund Spenser’s Dublin Andrew Hadfield

It has long been accepted that Ireland had a potent effect on the imagination of Edmund Spenser (1552/4–99), the most important non-dramatic poet of the English Renaissance. Often this has been seen in entirely negative terms, especially since C. S. Lewis argued that ‘Spenser was the instrument of a detestable policy in Ireland’, so that by the fifth book of The Faerie Queene ‘the wickedness he had shared begins to corrupt his imagination’.1 That book – at least the allegorical representation of events in Ireland – was probably largely written when Spenser had acquired his estate at Kilcolman, north of Cork, part of the Munster plantation established from the escheated lands of the earl of Desmond in the late 1580s.2 Further evidence of what Lewis saw as Spenser’s corrupted imagination appears in his dialogue, A view of the present state of Ireland, written at about the same time that the second edition of The Faerie Queene, which contained Books IV–VI, was published in 1596.3 What is less often considered is the impact of Dublin on Spenser’s writing – and whether the experience of living in Ireland’s capital city played a role in his development as a poet.4 After all, Spenser spent considerable time in Dublin, presumably arriving there on 12 August 1580 in The Handmaid along with his new employer, Arthur Lord Grey de   1 C. S. Lewis, The allegory of love (1936; repr. Oxford, 1979), p. 349.   2 Some sections were undoubtedly written earlier: for one possible reconstruction see Josephine Waters Bennett, The evolution of ‘The Faerie Queene’ (Chicago, 1942).   3 For discussion, see W. C. Martin, ‘The date and purpose of Spenser’s View’, PMLA 47 (1932), pp. 137–43; Rudolf Gottfried, ‘The date of Spenser’s View’, Modern Language Notes 52 (1937), pp. 176–80.   4 An exception is Thomas Herron, ‘Edmund Spenser’s “Cleopolis” and Dublin’, in John Bradley, Alan J. Fletcher and Anngret Simms (eds), Dublin in the medieval world: Studies in honour of Howard B. Clarke (Dublin, 2009), pp. 448–56. This chapter argues that Dublin’s topography had a particular impact on the representation of fairyland in The Faerie Queene. There is no entry for Dublin in The Spenser encyclopaedia, a significant omission.

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Wilton. He would have lived in Dublin Castle, as he had earlier lived in Leicester House in London, although we have no idea whether his wife, Machybyas, son, Sylvanus, and daughter, Katherine, accompanied him.5 How much time Spenser spent in the city is hard to determine, but he must have been there long enough to carry out his duties in the city. He accompanied Grey on his disastrous expedition into the Wicklow mountains immediately after his arrival, where the English forces were surprised and overwhelmed at Glenmalure on 25 August: Spenser refers directly to the defeat in his account of the marriage of the Thames and the Medway in The Faerie Queene, describing the ‘balefull Oure, late staind with English blood’.6 And he was on the Dingle peninsula at the massacre of Smerwick (November 1580), as we have letters in his hand describing events copied out as part of his duties as secretary.7 Soon afterwards, he was rewarded for his service to the lord deputy with property in the city. On 27 January 1582 Grey wrote to Walsingham that he was able to redistribute land and property confiscated by the Crown after the rebellion of James Eustace, Viscount Baltinglass, who had fled to Spain in the wake of the massacre at Smerwick in the vain hope of raising more troops to continue the revolt, a conspiracy ‘motivated almost exclusively by religious concerns’.8 Grey noted that he had rewarded the treasurer, Sir Henry Wallop, Sir Walter Raleigh, Thomas Lee and others, and had granted ‘the lease of a house in Dublin belonging to Baltinglass for six years to come unto Edmund Spenser, one of the Lord Deputy’s secretaries, valued at 5l [£]’, showing that Spenser was being handsomely remunerated for his valuable service as the lord deputy’s secretary.9 This is probably where Spenser lived while he was in Dublin, after leaving residence in the castle: it was undoubtedly the largest property he had occupied so far and a sign that he was moving up in the world towards the status of a gentleman. The Baltinglass estates were to the south of the city centre, based around the village of   5 In a recent poetic sequence, Spenser (Westport, Co. Mayo, 2011), Seán Lysaght imagines that the family stayed in London. I am extremely grateful to Jane Grogan for this reference.  6 Faerie Queene, IV, xi, 44, line 5.  7 Edmund Spenser, Selected letters and other papers, ed. Christopher Burlinson and Andrew Zurcher (Oxford, 2009), pp. 13–27.   8 James Murray, Enforcing the English Reformation in Ireland: Clerical resistance and political conflict in the diocese of Dublin, 1534–1590 (Cambridge, 2009), p. 310; Christopher Maginn, ‘The Baltinglass Rebellion, 1580: English dissent or a Gaelic uprising?’, Historical Journal 47 (2004), pp. 205–32; Colm Lennon, ‘Eustace, James, third Viscount Baltinglass (1530–1585)’, ODNB, s.v.; Steven G. Ellis, Tudor Ireland: Crown, community and the conflict of cultures, 1470–1603 (Harlow, 1985), pp. 281–7.   9 Willy Maley, A Spenser chronology (Basingstoke, 1994), p. 30.

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Rathfarnham, now a suburb, three miles from Dublin Castle on a good road which appears on John Speed’s map of the city.10 Even if we assume that Spenser moved down to Munster relatively early, at some point in the 1580s before he took formal possession of Kilcolman on 22 May 1589, it is still clear that he spent a lot of time in the Irish capital.11 Moreover, it is clear that he returned on various occasions. A sonnet, written to his friend and mentor, Gabriel Harvey, was published as a sign of their enduring friendship in Harvey’s Fovre letters and certaine sonnets (1592): HARVEY, the happy aboue happiest men I read: that sitting like a Looker-on Of this worldes Stage, doest note with critique pen The sharpe dislikes of each condition: And as one carelesse of suspition, Ne fawnest for the fauour great: Ne fearest foolish reprehension Of faulty men, which daunger to thee threat. But freely doest, of what thee list, entreat, Like a great Lord of peerlesse liberty: Lifting the good vp to high Honours seat, And the Euill damning euermore to dy ; For Life, and Death is in thy doomefull writing: So thy renowne liues euer by endighting. Dublin: this xviij: Iuly: 1586. Your deuoted frend, during life, EDMUND SPENCER12

Perhaps Spenser was more of a Munster than a Dublin or Palesman, but we should not ignore the impact of the capital on his imagination. In this chapter I will examine Spenser’s involvement in the Irish legal system and suggest how it may have influenced his later conception of Irish law in A view; assess the nature of Dublin civic and cultural life and how it would have appeared in the 1580s; and chart Spenser’s involvement in a 10 John Speed, The theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine (London, 1612), map facing p.  142. For more on these contexts, see Andrew Hadfield, Edmund Spenser: A life (Oxford, 2012), passim. 11 Maley, Spenser chronology, p. 50. 12 Fovre letters and certaine sonnets, especially touching Robert Greene and other parties by him abused (1592), ed. G. B. Harrison (1922; repr. Edinburgh, 1966), pp. 101–2. For comment, see Virginia Stern, Gabriel Harvey: A study of his life, marginalia and library (Oxford, 1979), pp. 93–8.

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significant debate that took place in Rathfarnham soon after he arrived in Ireland. Edmund Spenser the bureaucrat On 22 March 1581 Spenser acquired another office, in addition to his role as secretary to the Lord Deputy, Arthur, Lord Grey de Wilton, when Spenser’s friend, Lodowick Bryskett, was made controller of the customs on wines and passed on his position as the registrar or clerk for faculties in Chancery, a position he may only have held for a year before he was succeeded by Roland Cowyk.13 Spenser would have worked for the new lord chancellor, Adam Loftus (1533/4–1605), archbishop of Dublin, sometime Puritan sympathiser, educational reformer and first provost of Trinity College, Dublin. Loftus was eager to make Dublin Protestant, although his enthusiasm soon waned and he was heavily criticised by Sir Henry Sidney for reducing the Church to a lamentable state.14 Loftus also had an unsavoury reputation for vigorously promoting his family’s own interests, and for falling out with other powerful figures.15 Unsurprisingly, his family became the leading landowners in the Dublin area by the mid-seventeenth century.16 It is likely that Spenser formed a low opinion of Loftus during his time in the court and satirised him in Mother Hubberd’s tale (1591) as a corrupt and selfinterested official, yet another instance of Spenser attacking in print those for whom he had worked.17 Given that Spenser benefited substantially from his patrons, notably Grey and Wallop, it is not clear how far 13 The Irish Fiants of the Tudor sovereigns during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Philip & Mary, and Elizabeth I, 4 vols (Dublin, 1994), vol. iv, p. 511; Frederick Ives Carpenter, A reference guide to Edmund Spenser (1923; repr. New York, 1950), p. 16; Frederick Ives Carpenter, ‘Spenser in Ireland’, Modern Philology 19 (1922), pp. 405–19, at pp. 414–15; Herbert Wood, A guide to the public records deposited in the Public Record Office of Ireland (Dublin, 1919), p. 58. 14 Murray, Enforcing the English Reformation, ch. 8; Alan Ford, The Protestant Reformation in Ireland, 1590–1641 (Dublin, 1997), pp. 31–5, passim; Mark A. Hutchinson, ‘Sir Henry Sidney and his legacy: Reformed Protestantism and the government of Ireland and England, c.1558–1580’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Kent at Canterbury, 2010), pp. 110–12, 179. 15 On Loftus’s life, see ODNB, s.v.; Brendan Kane, The politics and culture of honour in Britain and Ireland, 1541–1641 (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 245–67. 16 William J. Smyth, Map-making, landscapes and memory: A geography of colonial and early modern Ireland, c.1530–1750 (Cork, 2006), pp. 235–46. 17 Thomas Herron, ‘Reforming the fox: Spenser’s “Mother Hubberd’s Tale”, the beast fables of Barnabe Rich, and Adam Loftus, Archbishop of Dublin’, Studies in Philology 105 (2008), pp. 336–87.

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such attacks were really derived from noble principles, and how far they were based on pique. It is also unclear how extensive Spenser’s duties in his new post would have been, or how many of them he actually performed, as it was common practice to regard offices as sinecures that could be passed on to more junior scribes for a lower fee, the officer pocketing the difference. Spenser was certainly allowed to employ a deputy, as his terms of employment stated.18 The job was, however, a natural one for the lord deputy’s secretary to undertake, given the powerful role that the chancellor played alongside the vice-regent, and the incumbent would have been assigned documents to copy out and process for the chancellor, much as he did for the lord deputy. It was also a position that would have suited someone who had worked as a bishop’s secretary, with a knowledge of canon law.19 The chancellor ‘had the custody of the Great Seal; all royal charters, letters patent and close and other public instruments issued out of the Chancery, and were enrolled there; his writs set in motion the courts of justice, and authorised the issue of money from the King’s Exchequer. Thus he was at first an executive rather than a judicial officer.’20 The clerk’s duties would have involved overseeing a number of ecclesiastical issues, establishing who had the right to which benefice and which title, sorting out any resulting quarrels, distributing titles, goods and money after the death of an incumbent, and other related tasks.21 A record does indeed show that Spenser, in his role as servant to Lord Grey, appeared in person in the Court of Exchequer on official business, suggesting that Spenser’s duties may, in fact, have been demanding.22 Chancery was one of the principal courts of equity, but also oversaw some common law cases, causing some friction with the common law courts.23 It was notable also for making use of Brehon Law (native Irish law), especially the practice of ‘gavelkind’ (dividing lands between sons) in inheritance cases, because legal practice relied on close ­personal communication with the plaintiffs, and so undoubtedly contributed 18 Carpenter, ‘Spenser in Ireland’, p. 410; Maley, Spenser chronology, p. 18. 19 See W. H. Welply, ‘Edmund Spenser: Being an account of some recent researches into his life and lineage, with some notice of his family and descendants’, Notes & Queries 162 (1932), pp. 128–32, 146–50, 165–9, 182–7, 202–6, 220–4, 239–42, 256–60 (p. 148). 20 Wood, Guide to the public records, p. 2. 21 H. R. Plomer and T. P. Cross, The life and correspondence of Lodowick Bryskett (Chicago, 1927), p. 10. 22 James J. Ferguson, ‘Memorials of Edmund Spenser the poet, and his descendants, from the public records of Ireland’, Gentleman’s Magazine 44 (1855), pp. 605–9, at p. 605. 23 Hans Pawlisch, Sir John Davies and the conquest of Ireland: A study in legal imperialism (Cambridge, 1985), p. 38. See also Wood, Guide to the public records, pp. 3–58.

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to Spenser’s comments on Brehon Law in A view.24 The records for Chancery are – or, rather, were – among the most substantial historical archives for early modern Ireland, as is also the case in England. It is clear that plaintiffs involved in property disputes in particular sought redress in the Chancery courts because they felt they had little chance of success under the common law. The same is true in England in the same period, of course, as the extensive Chancery records in the National Archives demonstrate.25 However, the problem was especially acute for the English in Ireland, not simply because of the number of disputed properties and land holdings, but because they had good reason to fear Irish juries. When the Munster plantation was established in the mid1580s its architects managed to draft qualification rules for jurors that effectively excluded most English tenants. A juror had to be a forty-­ shilling freeholder for life and tenants on the plantation were disqualified as they were simply tenants for twenty-one years. As a result most juries were Irish.26 Spenser outlined what he saw as the issue in A view, where he complained that ‘theare are more attainted Landes concealed from her maiestie then shee now hathe possessions in all Irelande’, something he would have realised from his professional career. When it is objected that the honesty demanded by a fair trial would surely solve this problem, his mouthpiece, Irenius, explains that such assumptions cannot be made about the Irish because they are implacably opposed to the English: Not onelye soe in theire verdites but allsoe in all other theare dealinges speciallye with the Englishe they are moste wilfullye bente for thought they will not seme manifestlye to doe it yeat will some one or other subtill headed fellow amongest them picke some quirke, or devise some evacion whereof the rest will lightelye take houlde, and suffer them selves easelye to be led by him, to that themselues desired[.]27 24 Elizabeth Fowler, Literary character: The human figure in English writing (Ithaca, 2003), p. 218; K. W. Nicholls (ed.), ‘Some documents on Irish law and custom in the sixteenth century’, Analecta Hibernica 26 (1970), pp. 103–29; The works of Edmund Spenser: A variorum edition, ed. Edwin Greenlaw, Charles Grosvenor Osgood, Frederick Morgan Padelford and Ray Heffner, 11 vols (Baltimore, 1932–45), vol. x, pp. 47–8, 53. 25 Henry Horwitz, Chancery equity records, 1600–1800: A guide to documents in the Public Record Office (London: HMSO, 1995), pp. 45–71. I am grateful to Simon Healy for explaining many of the complexities of Chancery courts to me. 26 Anthony J. Sheehan, ‘Provincial grievance and national revolt: Munster in the Nine Years War’ (unpublished MA thesis, University College, Dublin, 1982), p. 16; Michael McCarthy-Morrogh, The Munster plantation: English migration to southern Ireland, 1583–1641 (Oxford, 1986), pp. 57–8. 27 For analysis, see David J. Baker, ‘“Some quirk, some subtle evasion”: Legal subversion in Spenser’s A View of the Present State of Ireland’, Spenser Studies 6 (1986), pp. 147–163.

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Irish jurors are master of deception and duplicity, working against the interest of the settlers and the Crown, a defining – but hardly surprising – feature of English experience in Ireland, according to Spenser. It is little wonder that legal issues feature so prominently in A view. Spenser had a privileged insight into the workings of executive and legal power, in this instance, the relationship between the office of the lawmaker and his ability to override the established practices of case law to correct injustices – which could, of course, mean to protect the integrity of the executive itself. This would have been especially pronounced as the late sixteenth century was a period of significant law reform as the Crown sought to expand its power over Ireland through the spread of legal as well as military means. The chief legal figures in Ireland, the lord chancellor, the master of the rolls, the two chief justices and the baron of the exchequer, were all members of the Irish Privy Council, meaning that constitutional and legal power overlapped, a fact that would have been obvious to Spenser and undoubtedly influenced his conception of government.28 The drive was begun in particular by the Lord Deputy Henry Sidney in the 1570s, and one of Spenser’s key patrons, Sir Henry Wallop, who was known for his combative and partisan style of conducting himself, became a key figure in enhancing the power of legal institutions in Ireland in the 1580s and 1590s.29 It is also worth noting that the Irish Chancery court received a significant number of appeals from women, often cases brought against their husbands, which may have been relevant when Spenser helped his wife bring a case against her step-father in 1596.30 However, the court also had a reputation for applying legal principles more rigidly than its English counterpart, and was often in conflict with the Irish Star Chamber, the Court of Castle Chamber, as each court sought to uphold its judgments to be endorsed by the Crown.31 The Chancery Court’s guiding principle, equity, its importance in defining sovereignty as well as its potential abuse, is a key concept in Spenser’s later work, especially the second part of The Faerie Queene, suggesting that his experience in the Dublin courts had a profound effect on his conception of the law and his literary imagination, and helps to explain why Spenser placed 28 Jon G. Crawford, A Star Chamber court in Ireland: The Court of Castle Chamber, 1571–1641 (Dublin, 2005), p. 27; Darryl J. Gless, ‘Law, natural and divine’, The Spenser encyclopaedia, ed. A. C. Hamilton (Toronto and London, 1990), pp. 430–1. 29 Crawford, Star Chamber Court in Ireland, pp. 31, 38, 115. 30 Mary O’Dowd, ‘Women and the Irish Chancery Court in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries’, Irish Historical Studies 31 (1999), pp. 470–87. 31 Crawford, Star Chamber Court in Ireland, pp. 29–30.

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such heavy emphasis on the significance of the principle of equity in legal judgments.32 English Dublin Dublin, in contrast to most of Ireland, was conspicuously anglicised by 1580, and much of the surrounding area was dominated by old families, mainly Old English, the descendants of the Anglo-Norman colonists in Ireland who were being displaced by the Tudor settlers and gradually turning from loyalty to the Crown and making common religious and political cause with the native Irish.33 John Speed’s map of 1610 shows a carefully planned walled town which resembles any number of equivalent provincial English towns.34 However, the capital was obviously more militarised than its English counterparts, as the dominating nature of the huge square castle, where Spenser probably lived at first, demonstrates.35 John Derricke’s images of Sir Henry Sidney’s riding out from Dublin Castle and his triumphal return into Dublin where he is received by the grateful aldermen of the city gives the same impression of the capital, the heads on the walls perhaps reminding viewers that justice was dispensed in Ireland as it was in London.36 The capital was, nevertheless, a conspicuously Catholic city, with only a few significant families leaning towards Protestantism.37 As Raymond Gillespie’s chapter has already noted, Dublin was a city of about 6,000 people, slightly smaller than the populations of such major English cities as Norwich, York, Bristol, Exeter and Newcastle, which contained about 9,000–12,000 people at the same time. The city 32 Andrew Zurcher, Spenser’s legal language: Law and poetry in early modern England (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 130–52. On the development of the concept in England and its literary representation, see Bradin Cormack, A power to do justice: Jurisdiction, English literature, and the rise of Common Law, 1509–1625 (Chicago, 2007), pp. 102–14, passim. 33 Smyth, Map-making, landscapes and memory, pp. 233–4. On the Old English, see Aidan Clarke, The Old English in Ireland, 1625–42 (Dublin, 1966); Nicholas P. Canny, The formation of the Old English elite in Ireland (Dublin, 1975). 34 John Speed, The theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine presenting an exact geography of the kingdomes of England, Scotland, Ireland, and the iles adioyning (London, 1612), map of Leinster between pp. 141 and 142. See also T. W. Moody, F. X. Martin and F. J. Byrne, eds, A new history of Ireland, 10 vols (Oxford, 1976–2011), vol. ix, p. 37. 35 Denis McCarthy, Dublin Castle (second ed., Dublin, 2004), pp. 29–40. 36 Derricke, Image of Irelande, plates 6 and 10; Alan J. Fletcher, Drama, performance, and polity in pre-Cromwellian Ireland (Cork, 2000), p. 141. 37 Henry A. Jeffries, The Irish Church and the Tudor Reformations (Dublin, 2010), p. 188; James Murray, Enforcing the English Reformation in Ireland: Clerical resistance and political conflict in the diocese of Dublin, 1534–1590 (Cambridge, 2009), p. 261.

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was run by a corporation consisting of a group of aldermen (jurés) who elected a mayor each year. Beneath them were a group of demi-jurés and a group of ‘numbers’, elected from the various trade guilds. Towards the end of the sixteenth century the administration of Dublin was dominated by merchants who had roughly the same concerns as their London counterparts: they aspired to make trade flourish, and were eager to protect and promote their families. They did those through the promotion of a self-interested civic culture and calculated intermarriage. Overseas trade and the export of goods were important, but internal trade was probably the decisive factor in determining the success of any individual family. The most important trades were wool and linen, as they were in England. Like London, Dublin suffered from serious epidemics and about 3,000 of its inhabitants died from the plague in 1575. Many aspects of Dublin life would not have seemed that much different from life in Westminster or Cambridge, especially if Spenser was staying in Dublin Castle as he had lived in Leicester House.38 Each street had a particular character and role, as they did in London: the High Street contained meat stalls, shops selling leather goods, and places to eat; the fish market was in Fishamble Street; sheep were sold in Ship (Sheep) Street; and wine and beer were sold in Winetavern Street.39 The Chancery courts were next to Christ Church Cathedral, so much of Spenser’s life in the city would have been spent between the three dominating institutions: the Castle, Christ Church Cathedral and, to a lesser extent, St Patrick’s Cathedral, just outside the city walls.40 Beyond the city there was relatively affluent farmland, which grew less wealthy the further one travelled from Dublin but was clearly able to support the large population of the Pale.41 Dublin does not appear to have had a commercial theatre until the Werburgh Street theatre was established in c.1635/6.42 The corporation did, however, sponsor a number of public pageants performed throughout the year on key dates, and there was the annual riding of the franchises, in which civic officers and important figures in trade guilds processed around the city’s boundaries, ‘an expression of community, a reassertion 38 See Colm Lennon, The Lords of Dublin in the age of Reformation (Dublin, 1989), chs 2–4, to which this paragraph is heavily indebted. See also D. B. Quinn and K. W. Nicholls, ‘Ireland in 1534’, in Moody et al. (eds), New history of Ireland, vol. iii, pp. 1–38, at pp. 4–5. 39 McCarthy, Dublin Castle, p. 37. 40 On the roles of Christ Church and St Patrick’s cathedrals, see Murray, Enforcing the English Reformation, appendix 1, pp. 322–3. 41 Smyth, Map-making, landscapes and memory, pp. 230–1. 42 Christopher Morash, A history of Irish theatre, 1601–2000 (Cambridge, 2002), ch. 1.

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of hierarchy, and a proclamation of collective privilege’, very similar to the civic pageants in Elizabethan London.43 These processions and public performances often expressed Dublin’s complex sense of itself, caught between Gaelic Ireland and imperial England, uneasily negotiating a sense of identity between the two. They also suggest that Dublin would have seemed more obviously connected to the past than many English cities and it is not clear how vigorously medieval practices were swept away.44 On St George’s Day (23 April) a pageant of the adopted English saint was performed, the actors processing through the streets, which saw him slay the dragon.45 We know that Spenser was at work on The Faerie Queene in the first few years after he came to Ireland. It may be that this pageant, the nature of its performance, and the overt or suppressed reactions to what Dubliners saw, representing the complicated and problematic relationship between the different communities of Old English, New English and Gaelic Irish in Ireland, had an impact on his decision to write Book I, the story of the Red-Cross Knight, a section of the poem that was clearly not written first. Dublin also had a large number of musicians, and the corporation sponsored frequent public events and spectacles and there were a significant number of performances of plays and music in private houses.46 Spenser, connected to the New English elite, even if not actually part of it, would have attended some of these. His cultural life in Dublin was probably almost as rich and varied as it had been in London, certainly more lively than it would have been had he lived in a number of substantial English provincial cities. Even so, Dublin was a city conspicuously aware that it was under threat, not least because of the heavy taxes that were imposed on the citizens to 43 S. J. Connolly, Contested Island: Ireland, 1460–1630 (Oxford, 2007), p. 31. On London and its civic culture, see David L. Smith, Richard Strier and David Bevington (eds), The theatrical city: Culture, theatre and politics in London, 1576–1649 (Cambridge, 1995); Lawrence Manley, Literature and culture in early modern London (Cambridge, 1995), ch. 5. 44 McCarthy, Dublin Castle, p. 36. 45 Fletcher, Drama, performance, and polity, pp. 137–41. The legend of St George was important in Ireland: in Limerick on 6 November 1579, Pelham decreed that every horseman in the army in Ireland should wear two red crosses, on the front and back of their tunics. The evidence has been cited to claim that Spenser was in Ireland in 1579 immediately after his wedding: see Calendar of the Carew manuscripts, preserved in the Archiepiscopal Library at Lambeth (1515–1624), ed. J. S. Brewer and W. Bullen, 8 vols (London, 1867–73), vol. iii, 1575–88, pp. 166–7; Roland M. Smith, ‘Origines Arthurianae: The two crosses of Spenser’s Red Cross Knight’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology 54 (1955), pp. 670–83; Paul E. McLane, ‘Was Spenser in Ireland in early November 1579?’, Notes & Queries 204 (1959), pp. 99–101. 46 Fletcher, Drama, performance, and polity, pp. 148–53.

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maintain the army. These had become especially burdensome in the late 1570s as Sir Henry Sidney had sought funds to pay for campaigns, most importantly in Connaught, and had levied a new tax, ‘composition’, without parliamentary authority. There were frequent delegations of Palesmen to the English court and parliament protesting against Sidney’s actions which helped to establish the colonial Old English identity of Dublin and the Pale caught between the Crown and Gaelic Ireland.47 Spenser, as his later published work demonstrates, especially Colin Clouts come home againe (1595), was acutely aware of the nuances of colonial identities, an understanding that would have dated from his first years in Ireland. New English Dublin Spenser’s acquaintances in this period were probably predominantly other New English settlers, principally those working for the Dublin administration. We know that he was close to Lodowick Bryskett, who had first come to Ireland with Sir Henry Sidney and had subsequently worked for a number of lord deputies as clerk to the Council and clerk in Chancery, the position he passed on to Spenser.48 Bryskett accompanied Sir Philip Sidney on his Grand Tour (1572–74), probably as a language tutor, and appears to have enjoyed cordial relations with Sidney, but was undoubtedly much closer to Spenser, who was from a similar social stratum.49 As he came from an Italian family and moved in Catholic circles, Bryskett also acted as a government spy, while his own extended family was extremely complicated in terms of its religious affiliations – rather like that of the next generation of Spensers, in fact.50 Spenser later followed Bryskett down to Munster, after Bryskett was disappointed that he did not get the post of secretary of state for Ireland, which went to Geoffrey Fenton. Bryskett had been petitioning Burghley for the post, 47 Ciaran Brady (ed.), A Viceroy’s vindication: Sir Henry Sidney’s memoir of service in Ireland, 1556–78 (Cork, 2002), pp. 19–20; Lennon, Lords of Dublin, p. 122; Ellis, Tudor Ireland, pp. 168–74. On the relationship between the Old and New English, see Willy Maley, Salvaging Spenser: Colonialism, culture and identity (Basingstoke, 1997), ch. 3. 48 See Alan Stewart, Philip Sidney: A double life (London, 2001), p. 71. On Bryskett, see also Plomer and Cross, Bryskett; Deborah Jones, ‘Lodowick Bryskett and his family’, in C. J. Sisson (ed.), Thomas Lodge and other Elizabethans (Cambridge, MA, 1933), pp. 243–361. 49 Katherine Duncan-Jones, Sir Philip Sidney, courtier poet (London, 1991), p. 25. 50 Michael Questier and Simon Healy, ‘“What’s in a name?”: A Papist’s Perception of Puritanism and conformity in the early seventeenth century’, in Arthur F. Marotti (ed.), Catholicism and anti-Catholicism in early modern English texts (Basingstoke, 1999), pp. 137–53, at p. 141.

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when it was clear that the incumbent, John Challoner, was in failing health.51 Spenser later represented Bryskett as Thestylis, a shepherd friend of Colin’s in Ireland, in Colin Clouts come home againe.52 Spenser also addressed sonnet thirty-three of the Amoretti to his friend, lamenting his inability to finish off his magnum opus: Great wrong I doe, I can it not deny, to that most sacred Empresse my dear dred, not finishing her Queene of faëry, that mote enlarge her liuing praises dead: But lodwick, this of grace to me ared: doe ye not thinck th’accomplishment of it, sufficient worke for one mans simple head, all were it as the rest but rudely writ.53

The sonnet concludes that the poem is too much for one man so he will stop work on it until his ‘proud loue’ grants him some rest, a public acknowledgement that The Faerie Queene cannot be finished. But, through the carefully ambiguous use of pronouns, the reader is left unsure whether the love who is keeping him from his rest is Elizabeth Boyle or the queen, hinting that the completion of the poem depends on proper government. The reason why this sonnet was addressed to Bryskett was probably because Bryskett had been involved in debates about the poem during their time in Dublin, as his A discourse of civill life records. This adaptation of Giambattista Giraldi Cinthio’s Tre dialoghi della vita civile, the second part of De gli hecatommithi (1565), was not published until 1606 but was originally written in the early 1580s, probably 1582, and planned as a work for Lord Grey, undoubtedly to show off the intellectual culture that thrived under his leadership.54 It may have had a direct impact on The Faerie Queene, and Spenser would have read the work in manuscript.55 The dialogue, also read elsewhere in this volume, describes a real or imagined meeting of various intellectuals at Bryskett’s house, about a mile and a half from Dublin, possibly in Rathfarnham, where 51 Bryskett to Burghley, 15 May 1581, TNA: SP 63/83/27. 52 Bryskett contributed two poems to the volume mourning Sir Philip Sidney’s death centred around Spenser’s Astrophel, and attached to Colin Clouts come home againe (1595), in the first of which he represented himself as Thestylis: A. H. Bullen (ed.), An English garner: Some longer Elizabethan poems (London, 1903), pp. 287–301. 53 Edmund Spenser, The shorter poems, ed. Richard A. McCabe (Harmondsworth, 1999), p. 404. 54 ODNB, s.v.; Plomer and Cross, Bryskett, ch. 9. 55 Tobias Griffin, ‘A good fit: Bryskett and the bowre of bliss’, Spenser Studies 25 (2010), pp. 377–9.

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Bryskett and Spenser may have lived.56 As well as Spenser, described as ‘late your Lordship’s secretary’, the nine friends present were John Long, archbishop of Armagh (1547/8–89); Sir Robert Dillon (d. 1579), a judge, the only Old English member of the group, related to Bryskett by marriage (which suggests that the debate cannot have taken place quite as represented); George Dormer, described as ‘the Queenes sollicitor’, probably working for the Irish judiciary under the lord justice; Sir William Pelham, the lord chief justice, whose second wife was the widow of Sir William Dormer, clearly a relative of George; Captain Christopher Carleill (1551?–93), who travelled to Russia, saw action in the Low Countries and served in Drake’s fleet in the West Indies; Sir Thomas Norris (1556–99), the fifth of the Norris brothers who, like Sir John Norris, spent considerable time in Ireland and later acted as Spenser’s superior in Munster; Warham St Leger (1525?–97), sometime president of Munster, colonial adventurer in Ireland, who later became a neighbour of Spenser’s on the Munster plantation; Captain Nicholas Dawtrey (c.1528–c.1601), who had a long military career in Ireland; and Thomas Smith, an apothecary, and the first medical practitioner in Dublin.57 All of this group either definitely were or could have been in Dublin in 1582.58 Bryskett’s purpose in recording those present at the debate is to show how lively and varied the intellectual culture of the New English in Dublin was, perhaps as a means of promoting and defending Grey, but probably his real aim was to illustrate how civilised and sophisticated they were in trying to establish culture in an island best known to an English audience as a violent, savage outpost, and a graveyard for English forces. Although they are assigned speaking parts in the dialogues, the group are not really required to further the debate, which takes place over three days. The first day concerns the ideal education of a young child; the second, the progress from youth to adulthood; and the third, the proper activities and pursuits of a mature man.59 It is notable that this is a group of diverse citizens from the civil service and the military who have a wide range of 56 Plomer and Cross, Bryskett, p. 80. 57 ODNB, s.v.: ‘Long, John’ by Henry A. Jeffries; ‘Dillon, Sir Robert’; by Jon G. Crawford; ‘Pelham, Dorothy’ by Hugh Hanley; ‘Carleill, Christopher’ by D. J. B. Trim; ‘Norris, Sir Thomas’ by Judith Hudson Barry; ‘St Leger, Sir Warham’ by David Edwards. See also Maley, Spenser chronology, p. 90; Maley, Salvaging Spenser, pp. 68–72; Nicholas Canny, Making Ireland British, 1580–1650 (Oxford, 2001), pp. 5–9. 58 John Erskine argues that the debate is a fiction: see ‘The virtue of friendship in The Faerie Queene’, PMLA 30 (1915), pp. 831–50, at pp. 837–42. 59 Thomas E. Wright, ‘Bryskett, Lodowick’, Spenser encyclopaedia, p. 119.

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interests, from the conquest of Ireland and the establishment of colonies to treatises and poems on self-government and education (Spenser and Bryskett). Bryskett’s record of his symposium is probably a good guide to the aspirations of the more educated and studious English in Ireland in the late sixteenth century and it is likely that similar gatherings took place later when Spenser and Bryskett moved south to Munster, although geographical factors undoubtedly limited their frequency. There was a need not only to stage such events but to make sure that they were recorded and duly noted. Spenser is lavishly praised by Bryskett in the only passage devoted to him in the work. Bryskett describes Spenser as conspicuously well educated, a model of the sophisticated gentleman, who is ‘perfect in the Greek tongue, but also very well read in Philosophie’.60 Bryskett tells everyone that Spenser has been instructing him in Greek, and urges him to teach the company about ‘the great benefites which men obtaine by the knowledge of Morall Philosophie, and in the making vs to know what the same is, what . . . be the parts therefore, whereby vertues are to be distinguished from vices’ (pp. 25–6). The text may, of course, have been emended before it was published in 1606 to take account of the retrospective knowledge of the two published volumes of The Faerie Queene (1590; 1596). But, even so, we are given a clear sense of Spenser’s high standing within colonial circles, and his reputation as a serious thinker and teacher. Spenser declines the invitation to ‘open . . . the goodly cabinet, in which this treasure of vertues lieth locked vp from the vulgar sort’ (p. 26), Bryskett’s phrasing indicating that the event serves as a process of selfvalidation for the group as an elite able to discuss complicated and difficult issues. He asks to be excused because he has already vndertaken a work tending to the same effect, which is in heroical verse, vnder the title of a Faerie Queene, to represent all the moral vertues, assigning to euery virtue, a Knight to be the patron and defender of the same: in whose actions and feares of arms and chiualry, the operations of that virtue, whereof he is the protector, are to be expressed, and the vices and vnruly appetites that oppose themselues against the same, to be beaten downe & ouercome. Which work, as I haue already well entred into, if God shall please to spare me life that I may finish it according to my mind, your wish (M. Bryskett) will be in some sort accomplished, though perhaps not so effectually as you could desire. . . . Whereof since I haue taken in hand 60 Lodowick Bryskett, A discourse of civill life containing the ethike part of morall philosophie. Fit for the instructing of a gentleman in the course of a vertuous life (London, 1606), p. 25. Subsequent references to this edition in parentheses in the text.

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to discourse at large in my poeme before spoken, I hope the expectation of that work may serue to free me at this time from speaking in that matter, notwithstanding your notion and all your intreaties (pp. 26–7).

Instead, he urges them to listen to a reading of Bryskett’s translation of Giraldi, to which they assent, even though ‘they had shewed an extreme longing after his worke of the Faerie Queene, whereof some parcels had bin by some of them seene’ (p. 28). Spenser’s poem is used as a means of introducing Bryskett’s translation and, again, it is not clear whether this stands as a faithful record of the event or a retrospective reconstruction that, with some humour, promotes Bryskett’s own status via his famous dead friend. Nevertheless, Spenser’s clear, precise, polite and familiar manner of speech does bear a close resemblance to his surviving non-poetic works, the Letters, the letter to Raleigh appended to The Faerie Queene, and sections of A view, which establish the nature of the interaction between Irenius and Eudoxus. Perhaps we are genuinely hearing his voice here. We also learn that Spenser’s work circulated widely in manuscript, as it did in England, which suggests that many possible echoes of Spenser’s work that appeared before the relevant text was printed are likely to be authentic.61 The discussion of works and their circulation among colonists appears to have been a key method of constructing a shared series of reference points, even a common identity, notable features of a number of works Spenser published in the 1590s. Oppositional identity It is not easy to prove that particular passages in Spenser’s writings can be traced back to his experience of Dublin. There may well be particular representations of the city as an imagined place in the poetry, and Thomas Herron has made a case that Dublin features as Cleopolis, the capital of Faerieland, in The Faerie Queene (II.x.72–3).62 However, we must be careful not to imagine that such useful allegorical identifications exhaust Spenser’s flexible allegorical method, which rarely ties any one symbol down to a particular, definite image (the poem continually warns against overconfident and fixed interpretation, showing the Red-Cross Knight defeating a large dragon called Error in the first canto of the poem, 61 Andrew Hadfield, ‘Edmund Spenser and Samuel Brandon’, Notes & Queries 56 (2009), pp. 536–8. 62 Herron, ‘Edmund Spenser’s “Cleopolis” and Dublin’, pp. 448–56.

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i­magining that he has no more thinking to do, and consequently falling into a whole series of errors). And it is important to note that Dublin does not feature as a definite presence in A view – because that work was produced at a desperate time as the Nine Years’ War gathered pace, requiring action in the south and north of the island where the threat to English sovereignty was greatest, not in the most anglicised stronghold. If we wish to see the influence of Dublin in Spenser’s work we would probably spend time most fruitfully thinking about his understanding of living in the urban culture of another country, and his relationship to its institutions. More specifically, we should explore the nature of his experience in the city’s law courts and, more importantly still, as part of the New English who wanted to fashion themselves as the colonial elite, establishing an English culture that could rival that in the English centres of power, most notably that of the court. Attacking the small-minded attitudes of London was a common feature of Dublin intellectual life. Richard Stanihurst (1547–1618), one of the principal Old English writers in Dublin, described the lamentable ignorance of an English lord who came to Ireland and returned, boasting that Irish was not so difficult, failing to realise that he had been exposed to the Chaucerian English of the queen’s true subjects in Ireland.63 Stanihurst’s point is that the Europeanised English of the metropolis is no match for the pure language spoken by the English in Ireland. Spenser performed a similar act of defiance in The Faerie Queene, Book V, canto 9, when Arthur and Artegall return to Mercilla’s court, having just defeated the rebel, Malengin, part Jesuit and part wild Irishman.64 Their entrance silences the courtiers who do not realise who they are or what they have achieved: by whom they passing in Went vp the hall, that was a large wyde roome, All full of people making troublous din, And wondrous noyse, as if that there were some, Which vnto them was dealing righteous doome. By whom they passing, through the thickest preasse, The marshall of the hall to them did come; His name hight Order, who commaunding peace, Them guyded through the throng, that did their clamors ceasse. 63 Cited in Andrew Hadfield, Spenser’s Irish experience: Wilde fruit and salvage soyl (Oxford, 1997), p. 24. 64 Harold Skulsky, ‘Malengin’, Spenser encyclopaedia, p. 450.

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They ceast their clamors vpon them to gaze; Whom seeing all in armour bright as day, Straunge there to see, it did them much amaze, And with vnwonted terror halfe affray, For neuer saw they there the like array. Ne euer was the name of warre there spoken, But ioyous peace and quietnesse alway, Dealing iust iudgements, that mote not be broken For any brybes, or threates of any to be wroken (23–4).

The courtiers, who think – or pretend – that they are acting justly, simply cannot recognise the knights in the field who are out in Ireland protecting their interests. Military matters in Ireland were overseen by the colonial administration in Dublin under the command of the lord deputy. In such lines Spenser pledges allegiance to the military culture that protected and rewarded him in Ireland, and in doing so he is turning away from the English court and towards his fellow settlers in Ireland, who were often more loyal to Dublin than London. By all accounts Dublin in the late sixteenth century looked like a substantial provincial town in England, more impressive than anything in Scotland or Wales – Edinburgh excepted. It could not really rival London, which was expanding at a phenomenal rate and had become one of Europe’s largest cities by 1600 with a population of 120,000 inhabitants.65 Even so, one could obviously live well in Dublin as an English official with a decent salary. The city was relatively secure compared to the rest of Ireland (although it had to face internal as well as external threats, notably the Baltinglass Rebellion, from which Spenser benefited); there was a well-established civic infrastructure; a decent housing stock; an English-speaking cultural life; and, perhaps most importantly, a community within which one could exist. As the writings of Bryskett, Stanihurst and others demonstrate, Dublin had no rivals as the cultural and intellectual centre of Ireland, leaving its mark on English settlers such as Edmund Spenser. It is hard to tell how grateful or resentful Spenser was of life in Ireland, as his writings on his adopted homeland were all published in the 1590s after he had acquired an estate in Munster and the situation had started to become extremely perilous for English settlers. Perhaps he was more enthusiastic about life in Dublin than life in southwest Ireland; perhaps he would have been better off staying in or near 65 Steve Rappaport, Worlds within worlds: Structures of life in sixteenth-century London (Cambridge, 1989), p. 61.

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the capital which so evidently influenced his imagination. In the end it was probably the lure of property that inspired his journey to the southwest, where he acquired riches beyond those he could have hoped for in England or the Irish capital.

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Complaint and reform in late Elizabethan Dublin, 1579–94 David Heffernan In the late spring of 1593, an extensive memorandum concerning the affairs of the kingdom of Ireland was delivered to William Cecil, Lord Burghley and lord high treasurer of England. The fifty-three-page document, entitled ‘A breviat or sumiarie of the causes againste the lord deputye’, had been authored by Robert Legge and outlined in stark and expansive detail the corrupt practices engaged in by the chief governor of Ireland at the time, William Fitzwilliam.1 Legge had sporadically held the office of deputy to the chief remembrancer of the exchequer in the late 1580s and early 1590s, during which time he had acquired a reputation as a serial complainer, regularly dispatching exhaustive memoranda detailing the inadequacies of government institutions in Ireland and the corrupt activities of senior officials there.2 His targets ranged from practices such as the abuse of martial law and malfeasance amongst the exchequer officers to individuals as highly placed in the Irish administration as Adam Loftus, the archbishop of Dublin, lord chancellor of Ireland, and sometime lord justice. For his troubles he had been removed from office in 1589, and again in 1592, by Fitzwilliam, but had habitually been reinstated on orders from the privy council in London, which had expressed the view that Legge was a valued servant of the Crown.3  1 Robert Legge, ‘A long book of accusations against Sir William Fitzwylliam, the Lord Deputy, drawn by Robert Legge’, 1593, TNA: PRO, SP 63/169/3.  2 For other examples of Legge’s invectives, see his ‘Memoranda’, 1590, TNA: PRO, SP 63/152/2; ‘Book by Robert Legge touching the debts of the Lord Chancellor, the Bishop of Meath, Sir Robert Dillon, Sir N. White, and other principal officers when John Perrot came over from Ireland in July 1588’, 1590, TNA: PRO, SP 63/150/52(ii); ‘Legge’s informations against the Lord Deputy’, 1591, TNA: PRO, SP 63/157/69; and ‘Remembrances for Her Majesty concerning the better regulation of sheriffs, pardons, execution of martial law’, 1593, TNA: PRO, SP 63/172/47. The latter document is an unsigned copy but the similarity of content with Legge’s other memoranda almost certainly marks him as the author.   3 ‘Privy Council to the Lord Deputy’, 1589, TNA: PRO, SP 63/151/1(i).

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The ‘Breviat’ which he sent to Burghley in 1593 is notable amongst his writings, not solely for its length, but also for the sustained manner in which Legge levelled unrelenting criticism at Fitzwilliam. As Legge perceived it, the lord deputy was guilty of obstructing the application of the common law, treading on the rights of Elizabeth’s Irish subjects and appointing officers who were wholly unsuited for the positions to which they were advanced.4 A personal slant also entered his complaints when he related an incident which had occurred in the council chamber in Dublin in 1591, when Fitzwilliam had attacked Legge after he had questioned the lord deputy on whether or not certain debtors had been forced to make restitution of monies owed to the Crown. Fitzwilliam, who frequently allowed associates of his to escape such restitution, was incensed and subsequently assaulted Legge, who recollected in his ‘Breviat’ that ‘his Lo. might haue murthered me had he not bene wearye of his bad vsage of me, by which tyme I loste 2 of my teethe’.5 Legge’s treatise, and his career more generally, are interesting as an example of dissent within government circles in Ireland, and particularly so in the administrative capital of the kingdom, Dublin, during the 1580s and 1590s, at a time when Ireland was increasingly experiencing the impact of the Renaissance. The degree to which Ireland, and specifically Dublin and its hinterlands, were influenced by the spread northward of the Renaissance has been the subject of much welcome scrutiny in recent years.6 Much of this work has focused on literary figures such as Richard Stanihurst, Barnaby Rich and Edmund Spenser and their associations with Dublin.7 Indeed, Thomas Herron’s recent article on the allegorical works of both Spenser and Rich directly addresses the fact that works which were designed to encourage reform largely originated within the   4 On Fitzwilliam’s second term as chief governor, see Hiram Morgan, Tyrone’s Rebellion: The outbreak of the Nine Years War in Tudor Ireland (Suffolk, 1993), pp. 55–81.   5 TNA: PRO, SP 63/169/3, f. 14r.  6 Thomas Herron and Michael Potterton (eds), Ireland in the Renaissance, c.1540– 1660 (Dublin, 2007); Thomas Herron and Michael Potterton (eds), Dublin and the Pale in the Renaissance, c.1540–1660 (Dublin, 2011); Jason Harris and Keith Sidwell (eds), Making Ireland Roman: Irish neo-Latin writers and the Republic of Letters (Cork, 2009); Jason Harris, ‘Renaissance Ireland – some problems and perspectives’, in Thomas Barr (ed.), Italian influences and Irish outcasts: Essays on Torquato Tasso and aspects of the Renaissance in Ireland, Europe and beyond (Coleraine, 2009), pp. 102–18.  7 Thomas Herron, ‘Pale martyr: Politicizing Richard Stanihurst’s Aeneis’, in Herron and Potterton (eds), Dublin and the Pale in the Renaissance, pp. 291–318; Eugene Flanagan, ‘Captain Barnaby Rich (1542–1617): Protestant witness in Reformation Ireland’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Trinity College Dublin, 1995); Thomas Herron, ‘Reforming the fox: Spenser’s “Mother Hubberd’s tale”, the beast fables of Barnabe Riche, and Adam Loftus, Archbishop of Dublin’, Studies in Philology 105:3 (2008), pp. 336–87.

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political culture of Dublin and the Pale. The texts he considered, particularly Spenser’s Mother Hubberd’s tale, illustrate that literary production in Renaissance Ireland often took the form of political commentary. However, what has remained relatively unexplored is the degree to which the spread to Ireland of new systems of bureaucracy and the proliferation of administrative, secretarial and political literature which was attendant on it, paralleled the arrival of the literary and cultural Renaissance in the course of the sixteenth century. This chapter addresses this development by focusing on a debate on government policy which occurred within that bureaucratic system in the closing decades of the reign of Elizabeth I. There were serious divergences of opinion at this time on how the Irish kingdom ought to be governed, disagreements which consequently spawned an extensive ‘literature of complaint’. This literature, to which Legge’s tract was only one contribution, was concerned with uncovering the many abuses and corruptions which had crept into Irish officialdom. Dublin, as the centre from which the new powers of this bureaucratic state were exercised, was the focal point for much of this debate on government policy. Historiography This debate, and in particular the kind of opposition which Legge expressed to the policies which were currently emanating from Dublin Castle, is especially interesting given that his stance seems to controvert so many assumptions which have recently been made concerning late Elizabethan Ireland. Generally historians of the period have depicted the final two decades of Elizabeth’s reign in Ireland as a time when government officials became united in opposition to the Gaelic-Irish and Old English communities.8 In keeping with this, the period is also   8 The following are just some of the more prominent examples from amongst the numerous studies which have drawn such a conclusion: Nicholas Canny, The formation of the Old English elite in Ireland (Dublin, 1975); Brendan Bradshaw, ‘Sword, word and strategy in the Reformation in Ireland’, The Historical Journal 21:3 (1978), pp. 475–502; Nicholas Canny, ‘Edmund Spenser and the development of an Anglo-Irish identity’, The Yearbook of English Studies 13, Colonial and Imperial Themes Special (1983), pp. 1–19; Steven Ellis, Tudor Ireland: Crown, community and the conflict of cultures, 1470–1603 (London, 1985), pp. 278–313; Jon Crawford, Anglicizing the government of Ireland: The Irish Privy Council and the expansion of Tudor rule, 1556–1578 (Dublin, 1993), pp. 419–23; Ciaran Brady, The chief governors: The rise and fall of reform government in Tudor Ireland (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 291–300; Jon Crawford, A Star Chamber Court in Ireland: The Court of Castle Chamber, 1571–1641 (Dublin, 2005), pp. 227–85; and Nicholas Canny, The Elizabethan conquest of Ireland: A pattern established, 1565–1576 (Sussex, 1976), which placed emphasis on the viceroyalties of Henry Sidney as leading to the breakdown in relations between the New English on the one hand and the Old

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c­ haracterised as one wherein a more extreme view on the implementation of crown policy, often centred around the application of violence, was adopted.9 Furthermore, those who espouse this interpretation generally identify the years surrounding the simultaneous revolts of the earl of Desmond in Munster, and the viscount Baltinglas in the Pale, in the late 1570s and early 1580s, as a tipping point, prior to which the outlook of English officials in Ireland was somewhat benevolent and after which more extreme views began to prevail.10 Conversely, it is maintained that this late hardening of attitudes was diametrically opposed to what had directly preceded it, for many who posit that this consensus broke down in the 1580s suggest that government policy as far back as the early 1540s was based on conciliation and a sanguine reform programme. As such, Tudor rule in Ireland from the 1530s to the late 1570s is portrayed as a long experiment in extending crown government island-wide through a programme of assimilative, legal reform.11 Thus, reformist initiatives such English, along with the Gaelic Irish, on the other, thus identifying the 1570s as the key period in this alienation. There have, admittedly, been some minimal attempts at softening this view in more recent years. See, for example, Ciaran Brady, ‘New English ideology in Ireland and the two Sir William Herberts’, in A. J. Piesse (ed.), Sixteenth-century identities (Manchester, 2001), pp. 75–111.   9 Ciaran Brady, ‘The road to the View: On the decline of reform thought in Tudor Ireland’, in Patricia Coughlan (ed.), Spenser and Ireland: An interdisciplinary perspective (Cork, 1989), pp. 25–45; Brady, ‘The captains’ games: army and society in Elizabethan Ireland’, in Thomas Bartlett and Keith Jeffrey (eds), A military history of Ireland (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 136–59. 10 This tendency is most clearly demonstrated in the textbooks of the period, nearly all of which have a chapter covering the period up to the end of the 1570s and then a new chapter dealing with the apparently more straitened circumstances of the 1580s and 1590s. See, for example, Ellis, Tudor Ireland, p. 278; S. J. Connolly, Contested Island: Ireland, 1460–1630 (Oxford, 2007), p. 171; Nicholas Canny, From Reformation to Restoration, 1534–1660 (Dublin, 1987), p. 108; The exception to this rule is Colm Lennon, Sixteenth-century Ireland: The incomplete conquest (Dublin, 1994), whose treatment of each province in individual chapters negated such a layout. 11 Crawford, Anglicizing the government of Ireland, esp. pp. 414–19; Crawford, A Star Chamber Court in Ireland, pp. 8–11; Brady, The chief governors; Ciaran Brady, ‘Sixteenth-century Ulster and the failure of Tudor reform’, in Ciaran Brady, Mary O’Dowd and Brian Walker (eds), Ulster: An illustrated history (London, 1989), pp. 77–103. This is also the argument of Brendan Bradshaw, The Irish constitutional revolution of the sixteenth century (Cambridge, 1979), though Bradshaw contends that reform failed much earlier, in the mid-Tudor period. Brady’s stance has been altered recently with some attempt to incorporate the proliferation of martial law commissions into his model of reform government. However, even here it is suggested that this pernicious and incendiary practice was a carefully modelled and controlled instrument of reform. See Ciaran Brady, ‘From policy to power: The evolution of Tudor reform strategies in sixteenth-century Ireland’, in Brian MacCuarta (ed.), Reshaping Ireland, 1550–1700: Colonization and its consequences: Essays presented to Nicholas Canny (Dublin, 2011), pp. 21–42.

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as the policy of ‘surrender and regrant’ are central to the pre-1579 period in such interpretations of Tudor Ireland, while a drift towards overtly hostile relations dominate the late Elizabethan period, ultimately leading to the calamitous conflict known as the Nine Years’ War. This reading of post-1580 Tudor Ireland has become the orthodox interpretation of the period and has been forwarded stridently by Ciaran Brady and Jon Crawford, among others.12 It is, however, open to criticism on two accounts. The first of these is in relation to the preponderance of more hard-line tactics amongst government officials in Ireland as far back as the 1530s. At this time scorched earth, the replacement of the Gaelic lords with regional English commanders and transplantation had all either been recommended or employed by leading government officials.13 This shortcoming in the orthodox interpretation of the history of Tudor Ireland has been identified in a number of recent studies.14 However, a further criticism can also be levelled at the tendency to divide the history of Tudor Ireland into an early period of sanguine reform followed by the unilateral adoption of a programme of conquest after 1579, specifically that more peaceful methods were advocated in government circles, above all in Dublin, in the 1580s and 1590s.15 Just as English officials in Ireland were willing to countenance hard-line tactics as early as the 1530s, they were also prepared to highlight perceived injustices at a time of supposedly inflexible opposition to the Gaelic-Irish and Old English communities after 1580.16 Accordingly, a more nuanced appraisal of the final two 12 Brady, The chief governors; Crawford, Anglicizing the government of Ireland. 13 Robert Cowley, ‘R. Cowley to Crumwell’, 1536, SP Henry VIII, ii, 129; ‘The Council of Ireland to Crumwell’, 1537, SP Henry VIII, ii, 152, p. 444; John Alen, ‘Lord Chancellor Alen to Mr Comptroller William Paget’, 1548, TNA: PRO, SP 61/1/129; ‘A Memoriall, or a note, for the wynnyng of Leynster, too bee presented too the Kynges Majestie and His Graces most honorable Counsayle’, 1537, SP Henry VIII, ii, 162. 14 Fiona Fitzsimons, ‘The Lordship of O’Connor Faly, 1520–1570’, in William Nolan and Timothy O’Neill (eds), Offaly: History and society (Dublin, 1998), pp. 207–42; Christopher Maginn, “Civilizing” Gaelic Leinster: The extension of Tudor rule in the O’Byrne and O’Toole lordships (Dublin, 2005); David Edwards, ‘The escalation of violence in sixteenth-century Ireland’, in David Edwards, Padraig Lenihan and Clodagh Tait (eds), The age of atrocity: Violence and political conflict in early modern Ireland (Dublin, 2007), pp. 34–78; Rory Rapple, Martial power and Elizabethan political culture: Military men in England and Ireland, 1558–1594 (Cambridge, 2009), pp. 139–50; David Heffernan, ‘Tudor “reform” treatises and government policy in sixteenth-century Ireland’, 2 vols (unpublished PhD thesis, University College Cork, 2013), vol. i, pp. 58–107. 15 Ibid., pp. 213–32; Hiram Morgan, ‘An introduction to the study of political ideas in early modern Ireland’, pp. 22–3, at http://www.ucc.ie/celt/Ideology.pdf, has previously remarked on the need for such a study. 16 There have been some attempts made recently at identifying these ambiguities: see,

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decades of Elizabeth’s reign in Ireland will have to acknowledge that there was a great deal of dismay felt about the direction of government policy at the time. Moreover, the over-militarisation of the country, along with the many abuses which had crept into the workings of the army executive, along with further complaints about gross corruption within officialdom and systems of exploitation which had become prevalent countrywide, should be recognised as central to the concerns of a wide array of officials like Legge at this time. What follows will argue the case for the existence of this literature of complaint in late sixteenth-century Ireland. The significance of Dublin as the administrative hub of the Irish kingdom and consequently its position as the epicentre of these developments will also be explored. Additionally, the broad range of figures critiquing government policy and the political culture of the Irish kingdom, from high-ranking officials to more marginal figures, will be examined. As will presently become clear, a disproportionately high number of those involved were operating in and around the capital, as many of the abuses were being highlighted by officials in Dublin dismayed at developments in the provinces, where military commanders and regional officials were subjected to less scrutiny. Furthermore, a number of the key themes which emerged in these writings, such as the scepticism felt in relation to the centrality of the military in the formation of policy as well as excessive corruption in all echelons of the administration, will be examined. It will also be shown that this barrage of complaints had at least one tangible result, in the reeling in of martial law in the early 1590s. Finally, the parallel development of an exculpatory literature of justification in response to the criticism of highranking crown officers will be discussed. Antecedents Evidently, there were significant precursors to the development of this literature of complaint, the overwhelming majority of which had their origins in Dublin and the Pale. The earliest of these originated amongst a handful of government officials during Henry VIII’s reign, the foremost for example, Nicholas Canny, Making Ireland British, 1580–1650 (Oxford, 2001), pp. 59–120. Ben Kiernan, in Blood and soil: A world history of genocide and extermination from Sparta to Darfur (New Haven, 2007), pp. 169–212, esp. pp. 203–12, acknowledges that there were more moderate voices in the ranks of Irish officialdom in the 1580s and 1590s, but he incorrectly asserts that the figures espousing these views were too marginal for their suggestions to have had any significant impact.

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of whom was William Darcy, who in 1515 penned a set of articles condemning the government of the aristocratic viceroy, Gerald FitzGerald, ninth earl of Kildare. Amongst other accusations, Darcy contended that the lord deputy was guilty of taking ‘coign and livery’, a catch-all term for the system of bastard feudal exactions taken throughout Ireland, while it was also asserted that he was making war and peace at his own discretion.17 A number of additional documents from this period made similar allegations in relation to the Anglo-Irish lords.18 Yet many of these were written from a biased position. Darcy, for instance, had no qualms about serving under his target’s father, but having suffered removal from office by the ninth earl suddenly entered a crisis of conscience concerning the actions of the Geraldines.19 Similarly, a host of Old English lawyers and officers, such as Patrick Finglas, David Sutton and Thomas Luttrell, composed a stream of reports in the course of the 1530s bemoaning the cultural and political decay of the lordship.20 However, this depiction of the Irish polity was as much for the purposes of stressing the authors’ own claims for their community, the Old English of the Pale, to both steer government policy and be its principal beneficiaries, as it was a genuine lamentation of the degeneracy of the Anglo-Irish lords. An altogether different brand of complaint began to emerge with the onset of increased government intervention in Irish affairs in the aftermath of the Kildare rebellion. This largely centred round the creation of 17 William Darcy, ‘Articles’, 1515, Cal. Carew MSS. 1515–1574, 2. 18 Robert Cowley, ‘A discourse of the evil state of Ireland’, c.1528, BL, Lansdowne MS. 159, fos 2–16. The document has been well calendared in L. P. IV(ii), 2405. The attribution of the treatise to Cowley is in Fiona Fitzsimons, ‘Cardinal Wolsey, the native affinities and the failure of reform in Henrician Ireland’, in David Edwards (ed.), Regions and rulers in Ireland, 1100–1650: Essays for Kenneth Nicholls (Dublin, 2004), pp. 78–121, whom I have followed here. The terms Anglo-Irish and Old English clearly have to be handled with some caution. In general, for the purposes of this chapter, the Old English are taken to be those of English descent in Dublin, much of the Pale, the corporate towns and some scattered areas which had not experienced severe Gaelicisation. ‘Anglo-Irish’ is generally used to refer to those of English descent in more wayward areas. 19 Steven Ellis, ‘An English gentleman and his community: Sir William Darcy of Platten’, in Vincent Carey and Ute Lotz-Heumann (eds), Taking sides? Colonial and confessional mentalités in early modern Ireland (Dublin, 2003), pp. 19–41. See also Lennon, Sixteenthcentury Ireland, pp. 77–86, which pays specific attention to Darcy when considering the rise of an anti-Geraldine reform movement in the early decades of the century. 20 Patrick Finglas, ‘A breviat of the getting of Ireland, and of the decaie of the same’, c.1535, printed in Walter Harris (ed.), Hibernica, 2 vols (Dublin, 1747), vol. i, pp. 79–103; Thomas Luttrell, ‘Luttrell to Sentleger & c.’, 1537, SP Henry VIII, ii, 184; David Sutton, ‘Presentment by David Sutton to the King’s High Commissioners’, 1537, TNA: PRO, SP 60/5/13, in H. J. Hore and J. Graves (eds), The social state of the southern and eastern counties of Ireland in the sixteenth century (Dublin, 1870), pp. 160–6.

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what came to be the permanent garrison in Ireland, an institution which would be at the heart of criticisms of government policy there for the remainder of the century.21 Accordingly, the head of the military presence in Wexford, William St Loe, was accused in 1539, by the receiver of the county, James Sherlock, of appropriating large sums of money which should have accrued to the king for recognisances and fines.22 His retinue fared little better, the council in Dublin reporting that they were guilty of extortion and of oppressing the populace of Wexford.23 The following year a riot erupted in the capital between the garrison and contingents of the city populace.24 Censure, when it was cast in the ensuing decades, would persistently return to the problems posed by the presence of a permanent garrison in the kingdom and the difficulties pursuant thereupon. Increasing resort to purveyance, the imposition on the Pale community to victual the crown forces, or the ‘cess’, as it came to be known, compounded these problems during the viceroyalty of the earl of Sussex.25 These issues were manifested in a broad range of critics casting doubt on the methods being pursued by the earl and the military executive more generally. Some of the complainants at this time included the archbishop of Armagh, George Dowdall, a group of law students from the Pale who presented their grievances to the queen’s favourite, Robert Dudley, in 1561, a prominent Meath gentleman, William Bermingham, and a Dublin official, John Parker.26 These protestations did produce tangible results. In 1563 a commission consisting of Nicholas Arnold and Thomas Wrothe was dispatched to investigate Irish affairs which gradually uncovered financial abuse and extortion in the operations of the military. These findings were made even in the face 21 Steven Ellis, ‘The Tudors and the origins of the modern Irish states: A standing army’, in Bartlett and Jeffrey (eds), A military history of Ireland, pp. 116–35. 22 ‘The Council of Ireland to Crumwell’, 1539, SP Henry VIII, iii, 261, pp. 112–13. 23 Ibid.; Bradshaw, The Irish constitutional revolution of the sixteenth century, pp. 166–7, surveys these events in more detail. 24 Anthony St Leger, ‘Lord Deputy Sentleger to King Henry VIII’, 1540, SP Henry VIII, iii, 322, pp. 237–8. 25 Brady, The chief governors, pp. 89–94, 209–44; Heffernan, ‘Tudor “reform” treatises and government policy in sixteenth-century Ireland’, vol. i, pp. 125–35. 26 Brady, The chief governors, pp. 101–12; Thomas Gogarty (ed.), ‘The Archbishop of Armachane’s Opinion touchinge Ireland’, Journal of the County Louth Archaeological Society 2:2 (1909), pp. 149–64; ‘A book comprehending twenty-four articles, specifying the miserable estate of the English Pale in the years 1560 and 1561, delivered to the Privy Council, by certain students of Ireland and subscribed with their hands’, 1562, TNA: PRO, SP 63/5/51, printed in Crawford, Anglicising the government of Ireland, appendix 2, pp. 432–8; John Parker, ‘A slanderous book addressed to the Queen against the Lord Lieutenant Sussex’, 1562, TNA: PRO, SP 63/6/37.

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of non-compliance amongst senior officials, many of whom refused to turn over records and muster books for inspection. Arnold dispatched his most expansive account of Irish affairs to Dudley and Cecil in 1565, wherein he noted that the combined burden of the cess and the garrison’s malfeasance had ‘brought this contrey into so great povertie and myserye . . . as may shortly growe to the great perill of the whole estate’.27 Arnold’s findings, though a severe indictment of the Irish executive, were not to have the drastic effect they might have had, the regional unrests which erupted in 1565 distracting from attempts at fundamentally reforming the military establishment and Irish policy more generally.28 Of perhaps greater significance than Arnold and Wrothe’s reports in the 1560s were those penned a decade later by William Gerrard while holding the second-highest office in the Dublin-based administration, that of lord chancellor. His major memorandum on affairs there, a collection presented at court in 1578, was a scathing indictment of the practices being pursued across the Irish Sea.29 In particular he suggested that by favouring a policy of military engagement the progress of the common law had been blocked and the cost to the queen enormously increased. The palliative Gerrard prescribed for these problems was to root out corruption within the army and legal system, encourage the application of the common law throughout Ireland and generally favour legal reform over a reliance on military coercion in governing the country. For instance, he suggested that the appointment of seneschals and sheriffs to remote parts of Ireland to monitor the behaviour of the Gaelic and Anglo-Irish lords there be re-evaluated as it was clear that these same seneschals and sheriffs were guilty of the type of extortion and heavy-handedness that they had been appointed to prevent in the first place.30 Gerrard’s views, when combined with the reports produced by numerous individuals and interest groups in Dublin and the Pale over the previous decades, added to a growing awareness at court of the manifest problems inherent in the Irish administration. Moreover, they might well have resulted in an immediate effort to reform some of the abuses he highlighted had it not been for the outbreak of simultaneous revolts in Munster and the Pale shortly thereafter. However, this does not mean that 27 Nicholas Arnold, ‘Notes to be considered of, by Cecil, for the government of Ireland, sent by the Lord Justice Arnold to the Earl of Leicester and Cecil’, 1565, TNA: PRO, SP 63/12/20, f. 61r. 28 Brady, The chief governors, pp. 109–12. 29 Charles MacNeill (ed.), ‘Lord Chancellor Gerrard’s notes of his report on Ireland, 1577–8’, Analecta Hibernica 2 (1931), pp. 93–291. 30 Ibid., p. 116.

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criticism of the internal workings of the Irish government ended in 1579. While a temporary hiatus may have occurred as a result of the rebellions, Desmond’s defeat in Munster ushered in a renewed period of critical observation of the government of Ireland which lasted for the following decade and a half. The authors and their associations with Dublin The authors of this literature of complaint were a disparate group who were primarily operating out of Dublin and holding government office. Of those who matched this description none was as vociferous in his complaints as the master of the rolls, Nicholas White. At the height of the second Desmond rebellion his was one of the few voices raised in opposition to the policies being implemented from Dublin Castle. This was demonstrated in 1581, and again in 1582, when he refused to append his signature to a number of letters concerning the actions of senior officials in Ireland.31 His most daring action, though, was the composition of a report on the policies being pursued in Ireland, for perusal by Burghley, which White committed to paper in his house by St Catherine’s priory in Dublin late in 1581.32 Here he suggested that over-reliance on the military to govern Ireland was undermining crown government rather than strengthening Dublin Castle’s hold on the country, as was intended. Furthermore he inferred that self-interest was the motive which governed those charged with running Ireland, an inclination which led many to promote conflict there for private gain. In place of such policies he counselled temperance and reliance on the common law, which he believed his own community, the Old English, should be charged with implementing.33 White’s audacity in strongly rebuking government policy at a time when the state was threatened from many sides was doubtlessly owing to his friendship with Burghley, and his having risen to high office through the patronage of the earl of Ormond, and the subtext of his letter seems to hint at its contents being divulged to Elizabeth. White’s high profile as a Dublin-based complainant was only matched by that of the chief justice of Queen’s Bench, Robert Gardener. Arriving 31 Nicholas White, ‘N. White to Burghley’, 1581, TNA: PRO, SP 63/80/48; ‘Council of Ireland to Walsyngham’, 1582, TNA: PRO, SP 63/94/101; ODNB, s.v. White, Sir Nicholas. 32 Nicholas White, ‘N. White, Master of the Rolls, to Burghley’, 1581, TNA: PRO, SP 63/87/55; Nicholas Canny, ‘Identity formation in Ireland: The emergence of the AngloIrish’, in Nicholas Canny and Anthony Pagden (eds), Colonial identity in the Atlantic world, 1500–1800 (Princeton, 1989), pp. 159–212, 166–7. 33 TNA: PRO, SP 63/87/55, f. 151v.

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in Ireland in 1586, this Suffolk-born legist later served as an interim viceroy in association with Adam Loftus from late 1597 through to the second earl of Essex’s appointment early in 1599. As will be seen, his most significant contribution to this late Elizabethan reform movement was the prominent role he played in perhaps the most tangible result of that process, the near prohibition of martial law in the early 1590s.34 One other high-ranking member of the judiciary with a history of reaction against policy as pursued from Dublin Castle was the chief justice of common pleas, Robert Dillon. This scion of one of the Pale’s most powerful families had been involved with the students who protested against Sussex’s resort to the cess in the 1560s; however, he later appears to have become a calculated careerist, albeit one who was willing to cast a disapproving eye over the political landscape of Ireland.35 Others staffed lower offices in Dublin. As noted, Legge served in the exchequer office; however, his talents evidently made him versatile, and prior to this he had been involved with surveying and distributing the confiscated lands of the viscount Baltinglas following his rebellion.36 Roger Wilbraham, the English-born solicitor general, also composed scathing reports from Dublin. Equally, one of the Pale’s senior aristocrats, the baron of Delvin, Christopher Nugent, wrote a treatise calling for a number of reforms within the military in 1584.37 Others who regularly resided in Dublin but did not occupy high office composed missives on the perceived problems in the government of Ireland. One such was Barnaby Rich, who when not railing against the pernicious influence of Catholic seminaries and Jesuits was writing castigating reports on a host of establishment figures in Ireland, the foremost of whom was the archbishop of Dublin and sometime lord chancellor, Adam Loftus.38 Rich was a former military captain, a background which he shared with a near neighbour, Thomas Lee, who was also a soldier and contributor to this literature of complaint. Posted just south of Dublin in the Wicklow mountains, Lee, unlike Rich, was still serving within the 34 F. E. Ball, The judges in Ireland, 1121–1921, 2 vols (London, 1926), vol. i, pp. 222–3. 35 DIB, s.v. Dillon, Sir Robert. 36 ‘Note of attainted and other lands passed by lease and in reversion in the Lords Justices time, under the hand of Robert Legge’, 1584, TNA: PRO, SP 63/113/62. 37 Roger Wilbraham, ‘Mr. Solicitor Roger Wilbraham to Burghley’, 1591, TNA: PRO, SP 63/161/28; Delvin, ‘Baron Delvin’s plot for the reformation of Ireland’, 1584, TNA: PRO, SP 63/108/58, printed in the preface to John T. Gilbert (ed.), Facsimiles of national manuscripts of Ireland, 5 vols (London, 1874–84), vol. iv, part i. 38 DIB, s.v. Rich, Barnaby; Flanagan, ‘Captain Barnaby Rich (1542–1617): Protestant witness in reformation Ireland’.

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military executive during the 1590s when he penned a series of treatises condemning Fitzwilliam’s government.39 It must be noted that this was not a homogeneous lobby group, and the fact that they exhibited common concerns in their writings should not lead to an assumption that they acted in shared interest. White, for instance, appears to have had the standing of his own community in mind when he wrote on the overly confrontational approach of the New English to the descendants of the twelfth-century settlers, the AngloIrish and Old English.40 Conversely, Dillon’s ruthlessness in furthering his own career saw him clash with numerous high-standing members of the Pale community. Another critic of the Irish polity, Andrew Trollope, suspected White of being a papist and went so far as to accuse Delvin of idolatry, comments which belie any concord between these individuals.41 Wilbraham, though scornful of certain abuses, was a senior member of Fitzwilliam’s government, of whom Lee was such a passionate opponent, the latter’s hostility largely resulting from his demotion upon Fitzwilliam’s appointment in 1588. Gardener presents one of the more puzzling characters. He was at the centre of the events which saw martial law essentially shelved in the early 1590s, yet he was an intimate of many of those regional commanders whose abuse of extra-legal methods had been so acute as to warrant virtually a blanket prohibition, notably the notorious governor of Connaught, Richard Bingham.42 Evidently, then, the motives of the contributors to this literature of complaint were myriad and very often self-serving. However, what these writers did share was a common connection with Dublin. Many of them served there, either within the ranks of the judiciary or as senior officials and bureaucrats. This linked them in many 39 Thomas Lee, ‘Ifformacion giuen to Queen Elizabeth against Sir William Fitzwilliams, his gouernmente in Irelande’, 1594, BL, Harley MS. 35, fos 258–65, transcribed at http:// www.ucc.ie/celt/published/E590001002/index.html; Thomas Lee, ‘A brief declaration of the government of Ireland’, in John Lodge (ed.), Desiderate curiosa Hibernica, 2 vols (Dublin, 1772), vol. i, pp. 87–150; the ‘Declaration’ is also printed in John Curry (ed.), An historical and critical review of the civil wars in Ireland from the reign of Queen Elizabeth to the settlement under King William (Dublin, 1775), pp. 359–90. Both these editions are transcribed from TCD MS. 652. Other copies are BL, Royal MS. 17 B XLV; Huntington Library, EL MS. 1731; James P. Myers, Jr, ‘Early English colonial experiences in Ireland: Captain Thomas Lee and Sir John Davies’, Éire-Ireland 23:1 (1988), pp. 8–21; John McGurk, ‘A soldier’s prescription for the governance of Ireland, 1599–1601: Captain Thomas Lee and his tracts’, in MacCuarta (ed.), Reshaping Ireland, 1550–1700, pp. 43–60. 40 For the distinctions between Old English and Anglo-Irish, as used here, see n. 19. 41 Andrew Trollope, ‘Andrew Trollopp to Burghley’, 1587, TNA: PRO, SP 63/131/64. 42 Rapple, Martial power and Elizabethan political culture, p. 270.

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ways to the arrival of the Renaissance state in Ireland with an attendant bureaucratic structure and concern for more effective forms of governance. Certainly it is clear that many of the positions which figures such as Gardener, Dillon, Legge and White held had formed part of the architecture of the Irish government back well into the late medieval period. However, it was only with the advent of increased intervention by a centralising bureaucratic state from the reign of Henry VIII onwards that these offices came to be staffed by individuals trenchantly espousing the concerns displayed in this literature of complaint, while, moreover, these figures were also increasingly men of English birth. As such, this literature of complaint, and the more than casual associations of its writers with Dublin, is symptomatic of the development of the city as a centre of a certain type of bureaucratic literature which was intrinsically Renaissance. It would, though, be remiss to claim that these criticisms of the conduct of crown forces and the direction of government policy in Ireland was isolated to Dublin, for there was an array of writers in the provinces who also composed significant denunciations of practices and individuals. These ranged from Edmund Tyrrye, a Cork-based merchant, to William Herbert, an undertaker in the Munster plantation, to such marginal characters as Andrew Trollope and William Udall. However, many of these figures operating in the regions were also inevitably connected to Dublin as the administrative hub of the kingdom. Trollope’s career in Ireland is instructive in this regard. He arrived in Ireland in 1581 and spent several years traversing the country, during which time he sent a number of extensive treatises to senior government ministers in England.43 These were castigating, with Trollope often admonishing almost every figure in the Irish administration, from lowly Pale gentlemen who refused to attend the state-sanctioned church services to those as highly ranked as lord deputy Arthur Grey. Trollope leaves the reader in no doubt that he believed that the efforts of Turlough Luineach O’Neill to invade the Pale from Ulster, and of Feagh MacHugh O’Byrne and Phelim O’Toole to do likewise from the Wicklow mountains, had occurred as a result of Grey’s excessive granting of pardons and his dithering prosecution of the wars in Leinster and south Ulster.44 Despite his wandering existence and his concern for events in the provinces, Trollope appears to have always 43 Andrew Trollope, ‘Reipubliciae benevolus’, TNA: PRO, SP 63/85/39, fos 96–7; Andrew Trollope, ‘Andrew Trollopp to Burghley’, 1587, TNA: PRO, SP 63/131/51; TNA: PRO, SP 63/131/64. 44 TNA: PRO, SP 63/85/39, fos 96r–97r.

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found his way back to the capital, as it is from Dublin that he wrote and sent his reports. One final figure merits mention. James Croft, a former lord deputy, comptroller of the queen’s household and privy councillor, had maintained an interest in Irish affairs following his brief stint as viceroy in the early 1550s.45 In 1581 he presented a ‘Discourse’ directly to the queen which bemoaned the over-reliance on the military to govern Ireland and the fundamental flaws inherent in such a policy, particularly the alienation engendered by the cess in the loyal Pale community. In one of his more expressive passages Croft exclaimed that the unrest of Ireland could hardly be wondered at when policy was to attempt ‘to winne men with force, and not by reasonable meanes’, for ‘to correct before teachinge is preposterous’.46 Thus, although Dublin, as the fulcrum of the Renaissance centralising state in Ireland, was the principal location from which these writings emanated, it is certainly of significance in determining the relative importance of this discontent concerning the Irish polity that these views were held even by senior officials at the very heart of that state, in the court in London. Subjects of criticism Croft’s were strong words, but from a man doubtlessly emboldened by his high-ranking position. Yet the concerns which he raised were fundamentally the same as those found in the dozens of other memoranda and treatises which make up this literature of complaint. Those who took up their pen in Dublin and beyond to rebuke policy and practice in Ireland were more reluctant to use such inflammatory phraseology, but the substance of their criticisms was markedly similar in content. Clearly the gravest issue for these commentators, and the foremost theme of their writings, concerned the role of the military in the determination of Irish policy. Many commentators believed that Dublin Castle had become far too reliant on the garrison to govern the country. While 45 See, for example, a tract he composed in 1561 on the problem posed by the incursions of the Scots into Ulster: James Croft, ‘A remembrance by Sir James Croft showing the need of some to administer justice throughout Ireland, and proposing that Grammar Schools be erected, that the people may be bred to be meet for that purpose; also the dissensions in Ulster, the number of Scots, and proposals for reformation thereof ’, 1561, TNA: PRO, SP 63/3/17. 46 James Croft, ‘A Discourse for the reformacon of Ireland’, 1583, Northamptonshire Records Office, Fitzwilliam MS. 67. I am grateful to David Edwards for allowing consultation of a pre-publication copy of a paper on, and transcription of, the ‘Discourse’.

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the use of force was widely accepted as necessary to govern Ireland, a broad cross-section of individuals argued that force was only justifiable to the extent that it was necessary to enforce the common law. What was criticised was a situation in which force was being used solely, and arbitrarily, to govern the country, without an attendant attempt to foster the growth of common law institutions. In the process the unrest caused by having large numbers of armed men stationed throughout the country was undermining relations between crown government and both the Pale community and the Anglo-Irish and Gaelic-Irish throughout the country. As seen, two men of considerable influence, White and Croft, were willing to clearly state their belief that an over-reliance on the army was poisoning attempts at reforming Ireland, the master of the rolls writing almost as explicitly to that effect to Burghley as Croft had to Elizabeth: And in conclucen it is perceaved that this violent and warlik forme of goverment will but exhawste her mat’s treasyor, wast her revenue, depopulat the Pale, weaken the Englishe nobilitie that haue bene, and may be made the suertie of this state, leade the wild Irishe to ther dasires that be the perill therof, and consume with mysery of the warrs her soyldiors.47

There was widespread agreement with these sentiments. The baron of Delvin might not have been so overt in his criticism of the military buildup attendant upon the second Desmond rebellion but such disapproval was nevertheless inferred in his recommendation in 1584 that the standing garrison be reduced to 1,000 soldiers.48 Yet, it was not just the presence of a standing army in Ireland which aroused the resentment of the native communities, be they Gaelic-Irish, Anglo-Irish or Old English, but also the difficulties which were attendant upon having such a force stationed around the country. These included, but were not limited to, the economic burden of the cess, and later the scheme known as composition, the extortion of the senior officers, the blatant contravention of the common law by both the executive and the rank and file, and a seeming willingness to act in the most incendiary of fashions within the regions. The latter aspect was alluded to by White who noted that many in Ireland sought a continuation of the wars there to ‘seke more ther owne settinge a worke’, while the chief justice of Munster, Nicholas Walsh, posited that the burdens of the cess and composition were the true causes of the unrest in Munster at the 47 TNA: PRO, SP 63/87/55, f. 151r. 48 TNA: PRO, SP 63/108/58, f. 145r.

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time of the second Desmond rebellion.49 Delvin in his book on the reformation of Ireland listed seven issues which he believed in combination would work the destruction of the kingdom, two of which related to malfeasance within the military. These consisted of the economic ruin brought about by the extortion of the army and the cess along with the ‘privie plott’ of the captains to force the Irish into rebellion ‘wherbie the queene is dryven to chardge and the contrie wasted, ffor no longer warre no longer paie’.50 Trollope reported from Dublin in 1587 that bands in Munster were guilty of recusancy and excessive requisitioning of goods under the heading of the cess. Moreover, the captains were so inattentive to their duties and determined to exact as much pay as possible for themselves that one band had allegedly been made up of just nineteen soldiers.51 Robert Dillon, writing at the height of the second Desmond rebellion, reached similar conclusions. In his view the armed forces in the Pale were abusing the cess, and there were far too many needless offices being created within the military executive, while the army numbers, which reached 6,000 in the official musters, were not above 3,000 strong.52 Charges of excessive corruption and extortion were not solely levelled against figures within the military, with the ranks of the judicial and administrative establishment also coming in for sharp censure in this regard. Evidently this was not the standard level of corruption which was endemic in all of Europe’s pre-modern societies, and which was to some extent tolerated, but corruption on an abnormal scale, which could not be abided.53 Certainly it seems safe to conclude that the individual whom Robert Rosyer, the attorney general of Munster, claimed in 1586 had been found guilty of treason nine times and had received pardons on each occasion as a result of repeated acts of bribery would not have escaped punishment had his crimes been committed in England.54 Delvin, when addressing the same topic, counselled the removal from office of judges who were found to be guilty of corruption 49 TNA: PRO, SP 63/87/55, f. 151v; Nicholas Walsh, ‘Justice Nicholas Walshe to Walsyngham’, 1581, TNA: PRO, SP 63/81/31. 50 TNA: PRO, SP 63/108/58, fos 142r–142v. 51 TNA: PRO, SP 63/131/64. 52 Robert Dillon, ‘Justice Robert Dillon to Walsyngham’, 1581, TNA: PRO, SP 63/86/27, f. 92r. 53 For a study of the prevalence of corrupt behaviour within the legal system in England, see Wilfrid Prest, ‘Judicial corruption in early modern England’, Past and Present 133 (1991), pp. 67–95. 54 Robert Rosyer, ‘Mr Robert Rosyer to Burghley’, 1586, TNA: PRO, SP 63/126/22, f. 64r.

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and bribery, while they were to be tried in Dublin before the lord deputy and council, who would inform the queen and privy council when guilt was proven.55 More often than not those who protested about such underhanded practices were explicit in identifying those whom they criticised. Adam Loftus was a regular object of censure. Early in 1590 Legge reported that upon examining the exchequer records in Dublin he had discovered that the lord chancellor owed large sums of money to the crown and was also guilty of accepting fines for pardons which he failed to pass on to the government. Clearly Loftus was not oblivious to the complaints as he verbally abused Legge for meddling and uttered his regret that the ever-reviled exchequer officer had not drowned on his way to Ireland.56 Barnaby Rich laid a series of accusations throughout the early 1590s against Loftus, ranging from negligence in promoting the religious reformation to corrupt activity, which culminated in Rich fleeing Ireland, having twice in the space of two days been attacked on the streets of Dublin by Loftus’s men in June 1592. Much of the criticism of the archbishop centred on his attempts to construct his own faction in Dublin and the Pale in order to further his numerous offspring.57 His nepotism apparently proved to the detriment of crown government on numerous occasions. One Udall, most likely William, a character of some controversy who was associated with the earls of Kildare and Tyrone, proposed that Loftus’s appointment of his sons as army captains was detrimental to the state. Remarking in a somewhat mocking fashion on the defection of troops from their bands, he stated ‘I hope my L. chancelor’s sonnes wold not entertayne those who had a naturall inclination to rebellion’.58 Loftus was just one of the numerous characters whose conduct was reproached. An on-themake Richard Boyle had charges of forgery and perjury directed at him.59 Others such as the governor of Connaught, Richard Bingham, also came 55 TNA: PRO, SP 63/108/58, f. 146r. 56 TNA: PRO, SP 63/150/52(ii); Herron, ‘Reforming the fox’. 57 Barnaby Rich, ‘Barnabe Ryche to Burghley’, 1591, TNA: PRO, SP 63/158/12; Barnaby Rich, ‘Barnaby Ryche to Burghley’, 1591, TNA: PRO, SP 63/158/52; Edward M. Hinton, Ireland through Tudor eyes (Philadelphia, 1935), pp. 57–61. 58 William Udall, ‘Considerations respecting the state of Ireland’, c.1598, BL, Add. MS. 19,831, fos 3–4, f. 4v. 59 Ibid., f. 3v; Terence O. Ranger, ‘Richard Boyle and the making of an Irish fortune, 1588– 1614’, Irish Historical Studies 10:39 (1957), pp. 257–97; Terence O. Ranger, ‘The career of Richard Boyle, first earl of Cork, in Ireland, 1588–1643’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1959); James Carty, ‘The early life and times of Richard Boyle, afterwards the “Great Earl of Cork”’ (unpublished MA thesis, University College Dublin, 1927).

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in for severe criticism, while the holding of high office did not shield Grey or Fitzwilliam from reproach.60 The latter was, on the evidence of his numerous critics, guilty of another major concern of the contributors to this literature of complaint, namely the excessive granting of pardons to known rebels. This was a practice which was clearly rampant in late Tudor Ireland, buoyed up by the twin benefits of leading to an immediate, if temporary, cessation of hostilities and also bringing a cash payment to the government which was often misappropriated. Certainly Lee and Legge adjudged Fitzwilliam guilty of personally profiting from the awarding of pardons.61 While their own dealings with the governor might have inclined them to exaggerate the extent to which this practice was severely undermining the state during Fitzwilliam’s time in office, no such bias would appear to have coloured Thomas Lovell’s judgement. In a tract he composed around 1592 he suggested that this practice was the root cause of all Ireland’s problems. Following a description of how hosts of rebels would commit themselves against the state by descending into murders and robberies only to be granted pardons to cease their activity, Lovell suggested that these amnesties simply acted as a means for a respite before offenders engaged in further egregious behaviour: ‘So by the meanes of protecting of rebells geveth them assistance, as well to make prouyssion for theire victualles, as for libertie, contynueth long warres and doth much imboulden them to rebell, because they know that after protecting they get pardons, or pardonns are gotten for them by such as first put them out.’62 In addition to facilitating the rehabilitation of perpetual offenders against the Crown, Lovell surmised that the resulting lack of an enemy for crown forces to engage with led to the placing of soldiers in peacetime on the loyal populace, whose disillusionment with their rapine and extortion led those same people to turn against the State. Thus, the granting of pardons augmented, rather than reduced, the number of those hostile to Dublin Castle. Another often maligned convention was the sale of offices. Edmund Tyrrye sent an extensive memorandum on venality to Burghley in 1585 which complained that a pyramid scheme had been created in Munster, 60 As noted, Grey and Fitzwilliam came in for censure from a wide range of writers from Trollope to Legge and Lee. For examples of Bingham’s critics, see Thomas Jones, ‘Thomas Jones, Bishop of Meath, to Burghley’, 1589, TNA: PRO, SP 63/144/30; Robert Fowle, ‘Robert Fowle to Burghley’, 1590, TNA: PRO, SP 63/155/12. 61 BL, Harley MS. 35, fos 258–65; TNA: PRO, SP 63/169/3. 62 Thomas Lovell, ‘The beginning and contynuannce of the rebells of Ireland, bye degrees truly discouered’, c.1592, BL, Add. MS. 34,313, fos 49–56, f. 53r.

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with the county sheriffs creating posts which they could sell on down the chain of officers. He went on to note that there were now men filling positions in Cork with ‘nothing els to doo but eatinge and drinking vppon the pore husbandman whoo som tymes is forced to fast all daie and night with his poor wife and children’.63 Venality was not the only fault found in the political and social life of Munster, where numerous undertakers were encountering accusations in relation to their failure to abide by the articles of the plantation grants. Curiously, although these events occurred in Munster, criticism of such practices was again most acute in Dublin, and this is yet another clear example of regional officials and practices being scrutinised and criticised from the centre, in the capital. It was from Dublin that Solicitor General Wilbraham, in December 1591, dispatched a report querying in a pessimistic tone whether the queen would receive the envisaged increase in rents following the plantation, as Munster was not being inhabited by Englishmen. Avoiding an outright attack on the undertakers, he simply stated that Irish tenants were much more profitable, but the inference was clear: the undertakers were failing to abide by the articles stipulating that they settle their lands with English tenants and their motive was private gain.64 Nor was this the only occasion on which the solicitor general expressed reservations about the reliability of the undertakers. In 1587, having returned to Dublin from the southern province he presciently stated that the conditions under which Irishmen were willing to accept leases were such that no English tenant would be favoured by the undertakers, regardless of the articles by which they were expected to abide.65 While these were the most critical subjects that arose within this literature of complaint, many lesser issues surfaced periodically. Anxiety over the appointment of sheriffs, and in particular a desire that individuals not purchase these offices but rather be chosen to fill them on merit, was regularly expressed.66 In relation to the granting of custodians of escheated and concealed lands it was urged that these be surveyed and recorded in the exchequer office before any such grants were made, as a failure to do so was resulting in a significant loss of revenue to the Crown.67 Finally, 63 Edmund Tyrrye, ‘A particular relation of the extortions tolerated in the province of Munster, showing the evils which result from the sale of offices’, 1585, TNA: PRO, SP 63/116/68(i), f. 161r. 64 TNA: PRO, SP 63/161/28. 65 Roger Wilbraham, ‘Mr Solicitor-General Roger Wilbraham, to the Lords Commissioners for Munster causes’, 1587, TNA: PRO, SP 63/131/13. 66 BL, Add. MS. 19,831, fos 3–4; TNA: PRO, SP 63/172/47. 67 TNA: PRO, SP 63/152/2; TNA: PRO, SP 63/172/47.

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in respect of religious reform, a number of commentators regularly complained about the failure to implement existing laws which they believed would aid in furthering the reformed faith.68 The tangible results of this steady stream of correspondence eschewing policy and practice in Ireland are hard to determine, in many cases because the outbreak of disturbances in Ulster from the early 1590s onwards retarded efforts at acting on these complaints. Yet in at least one instance, that of martial law, there was an unequivocal response to the objections which were raised. The granting of such commissions had begun in earnest during the mid-Tudor period and had increased exponentially in the following decades.69 By the 1580s it was evident that the granting, and use, of such commissions was not just being abused but was largely out of control, with many attendant problems. Consequently there was increasing support at this time for either a severe curtailment of the use of martial law or even for outright prohibition. Legge, for instance, in 1590 recommended that martial law ‘cease, except in time of rebellion and in place of rebellion, and then and ther not to be grannted, except to chief officers as governors of provincs’.70 Such appeals combined with the reports of a number of local controversies brought about by the misuse of such commissions had impressed upon the queen the necessity of bringing a halt to such abuses by the late 1580s, while by the early 1590s a prohibition of some sort was favoured.71 Central to this process was Legge’s colleague in Dublin, Robert Gardener, who composed a brief memorandum during a visit to England late in 1590 which recommended that ‘all comissions for martiall law formerlie grannted by any gouernors may be called in’.72 Gardener also drew up a draft proclamation by which it was assumed the queen would ‘by this our proclamacion command all persons, of what sort so ever, to whom any aucthoryty of execucion of marshall lawe eyther is, or shalbe grannted, or comytted, within any or provinces if Lenister, Mynster or Connaughte, 68 See, particularly, William Herbert, ‘Description of Munster’, 1588, TNA: PRO, SP 63/135/58; William Herbert, ‘A note of such reasons which as moved Sir W. Herbert to put the statute in execution against Irish habits’, 1589, TNA: PRO, SP 63/144/57(ii). 69 David Edwards, ‘Beyond reform: Martial law and the Tudor reconquest of Ireland’, History Ireland 5:2 (1997), pp. 16–21; David Edwards, ‘Ideology and experience: Spenser’s View and martial law in Ireland’, in Hiram Morgan (ed.), Political ideology in Ireland, 1541–1641 (Dublin, 1999), pp. 127–57. 70 TNA: PRO, SP 63/152/2. 71 Edwards, ‘Ideology and experience’, pp. 140–2. 72 Robert Gardener, ‘A memorial for Ireland delivered by Justice Gardener’, 1590, TNA: PRO, SP 63/150/5, f. 14r.

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forwith, vppon publication herof, to forbeare any execution of ther said comission vntill our further pleasuer be singnifyed therin’.73 Ulster was to be omitted from the ban as a result of its unsettled state, though even here it was ‘very sparinglye to be vsed’ as attested to by a policy document in relation to the northern province drawn up by Gardener and the under-treasurer, Henry Wallop, in 1590.74 It seems the chief justice’s suit did not fall on deaf ears, for late in 1591 martial law was effectively prohibited by Elizabeth except in times of rebellion.75 Evidently this persistent criticism of the use of martial law resulted in a decision to reel in the granting of commissions by the early 1590s, with Gardener, in spite of his close associations with some of the worst exploiters of such commissions, acting as the chief instrument of the Crown in implementing this prohibition. Thus, in this specific instance, the chorus of complaints and calls for reform emanating most vocally from the ranks of the Dublin bureaucracy led to tangible action. Literature of justification From the foregoing it is clear that there was a marked and palpable increase in the number of those who were critiquing policy as being overseen from Dublin Castle. That these critics gained a hearing from the government in London is clear not just from the fact that Elizabeth and her ministers were acting to curb such transgressions but also in the emergence of a parallel literature of justification. The 1580s and 1590s saw the proliferation of memoirs and journals by numerous viceroys and other prominent officers of crown government justifying their conduct and extolling their accomplishments. However, whereas the most vocal critics of government policy were to be found at the centre of the bureaucratic state in Dublin, it was often from the peripheries of the country, where the subjects of those same criticisms were stationed and, thus, capable of acting with more impunity, that these justificatory accounts emanated. In addition, former Irish officials who had been recalled to England often contributed to this literature of justification as part of their concerted attempts to rehabilitate themselves at court. This writing of accounts of service was not an entirely novel ­occurrence. 73 Robert Gardener, ‘Draft proclamation to restrain martial law in Ireland’, 1590, TNA: PRO, SP 63/150/4(i), f. 13r. 74 ‘Opinions of the Justice Gardiner and Sir Henry Wallop for the reformation of Ulster’, 1590, TNA: PRO, SP 63/152/39, f. 132r. 75 Edwards, ‘Ideology and experience’, p. 142.

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From the first incursions of the New English under Henry VIII, governors had composed journals, or had them composed on their behalf, recounting their military exploits in Ireland. The early Elizabethan viceroy, the earl of Sussex, through the pen of the Athlone Pursuivant, Ireland’s junior herald, availed himself of such literary devices to celebrate and promote his perceived successes.76 The erstwhile lord lieutenant also pioneered the writing of end-of-service reports in 1565 – though his ‘note’ was as much an attack on his successor, Nicholas Arnold, as an acclamation of his own accomplishments – a trend which was adopted by figures other than the chief governor, specifically John Perrot, as president of Munster and the earl of Essex, following his attempt to colonise Antrim and Down in the early 1570s.77 This type of document, though, underwent a subtle, but significant, change during the 1570s, for where these earlier examples were p ­ rincipally concerned with lauding the achievements of the central figure, the aim of the end-of-service reports and memoirs which appeared in the last two decades of the sixteenth century was increasingly to vindicate the governor or official from whose pen they came. Certainly the earlier texts in this regard betrayed some anxiety in relation to accusations which were being levelled against figures such as Sussex, but this was clearly not as overt as in the later texts. Increased, and in many instances sustained, criticism of the conduct and dubious service of figures like Sidney, Grey, Perrot and Loftus in Ireland was leading those at the centre of these criticisms to more frequently attempt to justify their time of service in Ireland by writing vindicatory accounts thereof. Nowhere was this shift in the outward purpose of composing such a text manifested more clearly than in Connaught, where concurrent provincial governors, Nicholas Malby and Richard Bingham, put pen to paper to clear their names of specific charges. Bingham, in 1586, had come under severe scrutiny concerning his handling of unrest amongst the MacWilliam Burkes in Mayo. 76 Various copies of these journals are contained in LPL, MS. 621 and calendared in Cal. Carew MSS. 1515–1574, 207, 211, 212, 215, 217, 238; copies are also contained in TCD, MS. 581. 77 Sussex, ‘A briefe note of the Earle of Sussex cowrse in his government of Irelande from the beginning of his chardge withe a declaracion of Sir Nicholas Arnoldes doings there synce his first arrivall as Commissioner in that realme, and a note of the present state thereof ’, 1565, BL, Add. MS. 4,767, fos 156–60. See also another unattributed text, the origin of which may have been the lord lieutenant: Sussex, ‘A brief memorial of service done in Ireland, during the government of the Earl of Sussex’, 1566, TNA: PRO, SP 63/19/83; Essex, ‘Memorial touching the service of the Earl of Essex in Claneboy’, 1574, TNA: PRO, SP 63/48/1; John Perrot, ‘Brief report of the important service done by Sir John Perrot in his presidentship of Munster’, 1575, TNA: PRO, SP 63/50/80.

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Responding to charges of high-handed behaviour and inattention to due process, he composed an extensive ‘Discourse’, in which he portrayed himself as an exemplary adherent of the common law in an attempt to clear his name.78 His efforts were largely successful, unlike Malby’s, who despite the distribution of a similar treatise justifying his suppression of comparable unrest in the province in 1581, was rebuked by the queen while at court in 1582 and suffered a diminution in his pay and authority.79 As such this new type of end-of-service report, far from being an attempt at self-glorification, was designed to rescue the reputation of the author in England from ignominy and suspicions of wrongdoing. Given the reduced scrutiny of the conduct of Elizabeth’s officials in the remoter parts of the country, and consequently the increased opportunity for misbehaviour, it was somewhat inevitable that such journals would be distributed by the likes of Bingham and Malby. However, even in Dublin at the heart of crown government in Ireland, charges of wrongdoing could lead to exculpatory declarations on paper. Most prominent here were the answers proffered in 1592 by the city’s archbishop, Adam Loftus, to the charges laid against him by Rich and Legge, though other Dublin notables such as Robert Pipho were also alleged to have slandered the lord chancellor’s reputation.80 The archbishop’s rejoinders to the accusations of corruption, nepotism and general misconduct were predictable enough, floundering from outright denial of wrongdoing to careful attempts at exhibiting his ignorance to his own unwitting participation in the misconduct of others. Thus, where he was adjudged to have received deliveries of malt as bribes from the bishop of Leighlin, he laid the blame on a steward of his who had failed to notify him of the arrival of this consignment. He concurrently claimed that the shipment was merely a gift from the bishop for a crew of workmen whom Loftus was employing at the time. Elsewhere, he argued that his bestowal of prebendaries upon 78 Richard Bingham, ‘A discourse of the services done by Sir Richard Byngham in the county of Mayo, within the province of Connaught, for the quieting of the said country, the suppression of such of the Burkes as revolted there, and the overthrow of the Scots who lately invaded the same province, in July, August, and September 1586’, 1586, TNA: PRO, SP 63/126/53(i); Rapple, Martial power and Elizabethan political culture, pp. 250– 300. 79 Nicholas Malby, ‘Discourse of Sir N. Malbie’s proceedings and journey’, 1581, TNA: PRO, SP 63/72/39. 80 Adam Loftus, ‘The Lord Chancellor to Burghley’, 1592, TNA: PRO, SP 63/166/1, wherein Loftus attributes the charges against him to these three figures; Adam Loftus, ‘The answers of the Lord Chancellor of Ireland to certain articles objected against him by Barnaby Ryche and Robert Legge’, 1592, TNA: PRO, SP 63/166/59; Canny, Making Ireland British, pp. 113–16.

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a large number of his family members and kinsmen, far from being a demonstration of his partiality, was a result of the fine characters of those involved, while in the face of Rich’s complaint that Loftus’s men had set upon him on the streets of Dublin, the lord chancellor asserted that it was in fact Rich who had attacked one of his men. Other writers were not forced to make such specific responses to the allegations of their detractors as Loftus was required to, preferring instead sweeping accounts of their tenure of office which, by highlighting their perceived successes and downplaying any failures experienced, aimed to vindicate their term in office. The primary protagonists in this respect were former lord deputies, with Sidney, Grey and Perrot all joining in this conceit. Sidney in particular appears to have been fighting a battle to rehabilitate himself when he composed his ‘Memoir’ in the early 1580s. The disgraced former viceroy, by focusing on his accomplishments, for instance the downfall of Shane O’Neill, and by avoiding the issues which had seen him recalled in ignominy in 1578, the cess controversy and allegations of financial malfeasance, clearly believed he could persuade his readers that he was a suitable candidate for appointment as chief governor yet again.81 This is borne out by his active canvassing for appointment as lord lieutenant at this time in conjunction with his son, Philip.82 Grey’s reputation was similarly tarnished upon his recall, a fact which was largely attributable to the lord deputy’s blunders around Dublin and 81 On the charges of financial malfeasance brought against Sidney, see Brady, The chief governors, pp. 146–58; David Edwards, ‘A viceroy’s condemnation: Matters of inquiry into the Sidney administration, 1578’, Analecta Hibernica 42 (2011), pp. 1–24; Robert Shephard, ‘The motives of Sir Henry Sidney’s Memoir (1583)’, The Sidney Journal 29:1–2, Special Issue: Sir Henry Sidney in Ireland and Wales (2011), pp. 173–86; Ciaran Brady (ed.), A viceroy’s vindication? Sir Henry Sidney’s memoir of service in Ireland, 1556–78 (Cork, 2002). Brady’s contention that Sidney was writing a personal reflection aimed at making sense of his own time in Ireland does not stand up to scrutiny. In particular the manner in which Sidney appears to have left the text unfinished, with significant indications within the latest produced copy that it was to be the basis for yet a further draft, would seem to suggest he abandoned it when it became clear that he would not be reappointed early in 1583: see Brady, A viceroy’s vindication?, p. 1. This seems to have remained a possibility up to then, with William Piers acting as advocate for the former viceroy in April of that year: William Piers, ‘Captain William Piers the elder to Walsyngham’, 1583, TNA: PRO, SP 63/101/20. For a further analysis of Brady’s interpretation, see Willy Maley, ‘Apology for Sidney: Making a virtue of a viceroy’, The Sidney Journal 20:1 (2002), pp. 94–105. 82 Henry Sidney, ‘Certain speciall notes to be imparted to Mr Philippe Sidney, in the hand writting of Edm. Molyneux, Esq; and signed by Sir Henry Sydney, 27 April, 1582’, in Arthur Collins (ed.), Letters and memorials of state, 2 vols (London, 1746), vol. i, pp. 295–6; Michael Brennan, The Sidneys of Penshurst and the monarchy, 1500–1700 (Aldershot, 2006), pp. 75–6, 87.

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the Pale, where, despite the unrest in Munster, he spent most of his time in office. The ‘Declaracion’ of service which he composed in 1583 was a conscious attempt at justifying these mistakes, notably the embarrassing military defeat he suffered at Glenmalure in the Wicklow mountains. He also glorified his taking of rebel lives, most palpably by appending a synopsis of rebels slain to the declaration.83 Perrot, following his replacement by Fitzwilliam in 1588, composed a memorandum on his viceroyalty which was doubtlessly put to use shortly thereafter in shoring up the former governor’s reputation as his successor began a smear campaign, designed to remove the last vestiges of Perrot’s influence from the Irish administration. While the furore temporarily abated in 1588, the death of Walsingham, Perrot’s patron, in 1590 saw the onset of a determined campaign, perhaps by Burghley, to have the former lord deputy charged with treason. Ultimately, no amount of literary self-promotion could prevent this from ending in Perrot’s conviction and eventual death in the tower while awaiting execution.84 Perrot’s account of his service and the numerous other justificatory reports composed by leading Irish officials, when looked at in conjunction with the writings of those who railed against perceived injustices in Ireland, provide a much more variegated view of Ireland in the 1580s and 1590s, one which fundamentally contradicts the prevailing orthodox historiographical interpretation of that period. In particular, they suggest that, rather than being dominated by a cohort of hard-line officials who had finally determined to reduce the country by a programme of concerted conquest and coercion, there was broad support for the alteration of government policy from militaristic methods to a programme of sanguine, conciliatory political and legal reform. This was manifested most clearly in the writings of officials and individuals based and living in and around the administrative heart of the Irish kingdom in Dublin. That this was so is hardly incongruous, for the literature of complaint to which they were contributing can, broadly speaking, be said to have been symptomatic of the development of a bureaucratic state in Ireland in which 83 Arthur Grey, ‘Declaration by Arthur Lord Grey, of Wilton, to the Queen, showing the state of Ireland when he was appointed Lord Deputy, with services during his government, and the plight he left it in’, 1583, TNA: PRO, SP 63/106/62. 84 John Perrot, ‘A brief declaration of part of the services done to your Majesty by Sir John Perrot, knight, during the time of his deputation in the realm of Ireland’, 1588, TNA: PRO, SP 63/139/7; Hiram Morgan, ‘The fall of Sir John Perrot’, in John Guy (ed.), The reign of Elizabeth I: Court and culture in the last decade (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 109–25; Roger Turvey, The treason and trial of Sir John Perrot (Cardiff, 2005); Pauline Henley, ‘The trial of Sir John Perrot’, Studies 21:83 (1932), pp. 404–22.

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Dublin stood at the centre. These writings ought to be further appreciated, not just for contributing to the development of this aspect of the Renaissance in Tudor Dublin, but, perhaps more importantly, because it points towards a much more nuanced view of government policy in late Elizabethan Ireland.

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Renaissance Dublin and the construction of literary authorship: Richard Bellings, James Shirley and Henry Burnell Marie-Louise Coolahan

That quintessentially Renaissance literary project – the ­humanist ­dialogue translated – was apparently undertaken in Dublin in the early 1580s by the colonial administrator and writer Lodowick Bryskett. Not published until 1606, Bryskett’s A discourse of civill life (adapted from the Italian Giambattista Giraldi Cinthio’s Tre dialoghi della vita civile of 1565) was careful to represent its author at the centre of another typically Renaissance literary ideal: the community of eminent men engaged in scholarship, government and the free exchange of ideas. Best known for its account of The Faerie Queene’s genesis, placed in the  mouth of Spenser himself, Bryskett’s Discourse presents an i­ ntriguing tableau of the influential middlemen of the Elizabethan administration, gathered at the author’s house on Dublin’s outskirts to debate with him issues of moral philosophy and the values of the contemplative over the active life. The image projected is that of an exemplary h ­ umanist circle, accustomed to meeting regularly at the author’s Dublin home. But most of the group were not primarily associated with Dublin at all. John Long was archbishop of Armagh. Captain Christopher Carleill served in Ulster, first as commander of Coleraine and later as governor of Carrickfergus. Edmund Spenser, Captain Thomas Norris (brother to Sir John, Lord President of Munster, to whom Spenser dedicated a sonnet prefixed to the 1590 edition of The Faerie Queene) and Warham St Leger were all undertakers of the Munster plantation; Norris and St Leger had been active combatants in the quelling of the Desmond rebellion that preceded it. Sir Robert Dillon was an eminent Palesman from county Meath, knighted for his role in the suppression of the

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1581 Nugent rebellion.1 Of the remaining three named by Bryskett – Captain Nicholas Dawtrey, George Dormer, ‘the Queenes Sollicitor’, and Thomas Smith, the author’s apothecary – the occupations of the latter two make it likely they were based in Dublin.2 While these men might well be expected to visit Dublin, they were not all resident there. The ideal community of literati for the colonial New English class was difficult to sustain. Most likely, the gathering itself was a fiction.3 Its value lay precisely in its projection of Renaissance ideals. The set-up facilitates the narrative’s adoption of the dialogue form; the social context conveys a sense of the regard in which the author is held by his contemporaries. As Anne Fogarty has argued, ‘Bryskett’s Irish garden is transformed into a vista of Renaissance order, while conversely the discussion of the moral qualities of a civil society becomes implicitly a commentary on their absence in Ireland.’4 Of course, in discussing these qualities at all, Bryskett and his cohort are exalted above the common fray. The social pretext highlights the importance of representing the author-figure at the centre of an erudite coterie: he (and they) are to be taken seriously. This chapter focuses on the construction of literary authorship in Dublin during the first half of the seventeenth century. It argues that the depiction of literary community – whether real or imagined – was central to authorial self-construction and that the mechanisms of print culture were manipulated in order to project this. The evidence for pockets of literary community is tantalising rather than profuse. It is forged through the paratexts of works published in print. Genette’s classic study directed attention to the modus operandi of paratextual apparatus, illuminat  1 Jon G. Crawford, ‘Dillon, Sir Robert (c.1540–1597)’, ODNB, s.v.; David Edwards, ‘St Leger, Sir Warham (1525?–1597)’, ODNB, s.v.; Judith Hudson Barry, ‘Norris, Sir Thomas (1556–1599)’, ODNB, s.v.; Henry A. Jefferies, ‘Long, John (1547/8–1589)’, ODNB, s.v.; D. J. B. Trim, ‘Carleill, Christopher (1551?–1593)’, ODNB, s.v.; Nicholas Canny, Making Ireland British, 1580–1650 (Oxford, 2001), pp. 1–9.   2 Lodowick Bryskett, A discourse of civill life containing the ethike part of morall philosophie (London, 1606), pp. 5–6.   3 The dates and titular positions do not tally. Pitched as a period of contemplation following Bryskett’s resignation as clerk of the council of Ireland in 1582 and his appointment as clerk of the council of Munster in November 1583, the Discourse identifies Long as primate of Armagh. But Long was consecrated on 13 July 1584. Carleill arrived in Ireland for his first appointment at Coleraine only in 1584. Dillon died in 1579. See also Andrew Carpenter, Verse in English from Tudor and Stuart Ireland (Cork, 2003), pp. 20–1; Andrew Hadfield, Edmund Spenser: A life (Oxford, 2012), pp. 179–80.   4 Anne Fogarty, ‘Literature in English, 1550–1690: From the Elizabethan settlement to the Battle of the Boyne’, in Margaret Kelleher and Philip O’Leary (eds), The Cambridge history of Irish literature, 2 vols (Cambridge, 2006), vol. i, p. 150.

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ing how it functions to condition our interpretation of the text.5 This chapter is focused on the ways in which such liminary material shapes our reception of the author-figure. In representing the author at the heart of a literary community, such constructions simultaneously depict Dublin as an amenably literary location (if not centre). Print volumes by Richard Bellings, James Shirley and Henry Burnell assert images of Dublin as a city where literary folk could thrive. The community is presented as sustaining and supporting the author’s literary activities. Richard Bellings In 1624, the Old English author Richard Bellings, former pupil at Lincoln’s Inn and chronicler-to-be of the confederate wars, published A sixth booke to the Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia. In rising to the challenge of concluding Philip Sidney’s open-ended prose romance, Bellings was staking a claim for himself in the anglophone tradition. Bellings was Catholic; his continuation of Sidney’s story has been interpreted as creating a happy ending in order to imagine religious reconciliation in Ireland. Deana Rankin shows that this was a propitious moment for such an endeavour: negotiations over Prince Charles’ marriage to the Spanish infanta resulted in the relaxing of anti-Catholic policies in Ireland.6 Bellings’ dedication to Elizabeth Cary, herself a published author and married to then Lord Deputy Falkland, positions him in close connection with the Dublin court. Indeed, Cary was notoriously to convert to Catholicism on her return to London, a decision that estranged her from her husband, thrusting her into poverty and legal strife. Her conversion occurred at the home of another Old English Catholic, Walter Butler, eleventh earl of Ormond, in November 1626. Two years prior, Bellings lauded Cary as his ‘worthy patronesse’. He identified her as his work’s first reader, involved in its conception: ‘at the first birth of it was meant for your Honour’; ‘in its infancie it was vowed to you’.7 On the one hand, this is a conventional assertion of patron–client dynamics, but at the   5 Gérard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of interpretation, trans. Jane Lewin (Cambridge, 1997). For discussions of paratexts in the Renaissance, see the special issue on Spenser: Studies in the literary imagination 38:2 (2005), and Helen Smith and Louise Wilson (eds), Renaissance paratexts (Cambridge, 2011).   6 Deana Rankin, ‘“A more worthy patronesse”: Elizabeth Cary and Ireland’, in Heather Wolfe (ed.), The literary career and legacy of Elizabeth Cary, 1613–1680 (Basingstoke, 2007), p. 210.   7 Richard Bellings, A sixth booke to the Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia (Dublin, 1624), sig. A2r. See also Rankin, ‘Elizabeth Cary and Ireland’, pp. 213–15.

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same time it serves to r­ equisition the Dublin court’s endorsement of his volume. Bellings’ preface to the reader addresses the boldness of the enterprise in terms that focus attention on its Irish context. Adopting a pose of authorial trepidation, the ‘rashnesse’ of adding to Sidney’s original is asserted and excused by reference to his youth. Yet the literary presumption is then figured in strikingly ambiguous terms: ‘That he [Sidney] should undergo that burden, whose mother tongue differs as much from this language, as Irish from English; augments the danger of the enterprise.’8 The difference in language – which we might construe as the difference in literary skill between the master and the pretender – is here depicted as translation: Bellings’ ending for the Arcadia is written in a different language to that of the original. Lest we miss the politicised linguistic connotations, the simile further polarises the distinction. This sentence has been interpreted to mean that Bellings’ language is as different from Sidney’s as Irish is from English.9 Indeed, this is what we expect it to mean, given that Sidney even then was the canonical Renaissance poet of English Protestantism. But its symmetry problematises or even reverses this expectation. The word order encourages us to equate the mother tongue with Irish and ‘this language’ with English, undermining the anticipated polar opposition. The politics of language was charged with significance in early modern Ireland. Bellings was Old English, a class whose integration since the twelfth century and persistence with the Catholic faith aroused suspicion and hostility on the part of New English colonial settlers. Richard Stanihurst, an Old English writer of the previous generation, had been at pains to neuter these sources of contention by insisting on the distinct linguistic purity of his own community: ‘The inhabitantes of the English pale haue bene in olde tyme so much addicted to all ciuilitie, and so farre sequestred from barbarous sauagenesse, as their only mother tongue was English.’10 Vincent Carey has argued that Stanihurst’s protestations fail to gloss over the bilingual realities of the Pale – a point supported by Brendan Kane’s recent argument of the Jacobean period; ‘that the Irish language was not only quite vibrant in the deeply anglicized Pale, but that it was also of significant importance even to those who seemed to have rejected it and the larger culture of  8 Bellings, Sixth booke, sig. A3r.   9 Deana Rankin, Between Spenser and Swift: English writing in seventeenth-century Ireland (Cambridge, 2005), p. 195. 10 Liam Miller and Eileen Power (eds), Holinshed’s Irish chronicle (Dublin, 1979), p. 13.

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which it was a part’.11 Such protestations as Stanihurst’s in themselves attest to the issue as a hot potato. Perhaps the most famous articulation of New English antipathy to Old English assimilation is that of Spenser’s Irenius, who draws a direct line between the mother tongue and Irish customs as he castigates the practice of fostering children to Irish wet nurses: ‘the childe that sucketh the milke of the nurse, must of necessity learne his first speach of her, the which being the first inured to his tongue, is ever after most pleasing unto him, insomuch as though hee afterwards be taught English, yet the smacke of the first will alwayes abide with him; and not onely of the speach, but also of the manners and conditions.’12 On one level, Bellings’ simile trades on the gulf between these two languages in order to illustrate the injury he has done to Sidney’s original. But the alleged sin committed against Sidney is a rhetorical ploy, a tactic to pre-empt and disarm criticism. Moreover, by using Irish and English – so fraught with political anxieties – as figures, he invites his reader to frame his work in this politicised context. How, then, are we to understand the metaphor? Following Stanihurst, if Bellings’ language is ‘auncient Chaucer English’, does that leave Sidney as the proponent of a less pure English?13 Conversely, and following Spenser, if Bellings’ language has been contaminated by Irish, how might this impact upon his meaning? If Sidney is English, is Bellings claiming an Irish (rather than hybrid) identity? It has been argued that Bellings composed his continuation of the Arcadia while in London, as might be hinted by the references to his youth in both his own preface and one of the commendatory poems.14 However, Bellings’ assertions (cited above) that Elizabeth Cary – who lived in Dublin from 1622 to 1625 – was crucial to its inception suggest otherwise. The 11 Vincent Carey, ‘“Neither good English nor good Irish”: Bi-lingualism and identity formation in sixteenth-century Ireland’, in Hiram Morgan (ed.), Political ideology in Ireland, 1541–1641 (Dublin, 1999), pp. 45–61; Brendan Kane, ‘Languages of legitimacy? An Ghaeilge, the earl of Thomond and British politics in the Renaissance Pale, 1600–24’, in Michael Potterton and Thomas Herron (eds), Dublin and the Pale in the Renaissance, c.1540–1660 (Dublin, 2011), p. 269. See also Bernadette Cunningham, ‘Loss and gain: Attitudes towards the English language in early modern Ireland’, in Brian Mac Cuarta (ed.), Reshaping Ireland, 1550–1700: Colonization and its consequences (Dublin, 2011), pp. 163–86. 12 Edmund Spenser, A view of the present state of Ireland, ed. Andrew Hadfield and Willy Maley  (Oxford, 1997), p. 71. Although not published in print until 1633, Spenser’s text was entered into the Stationers’ Register in 1598 and circulated widely in manuscript. 13 Miller and Power, Irish chronicle, p. 14. 14 Bellings, Sixth booke, sig. A3. See Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin, ‘Bellings, Richard (c.1603–1677)’, ODNB, s.v.; see also Gillespie’s chapter in this volume.

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Dublin-printed volume, though certainly pitched at an English as well as Old English audience, explicitly draws attention to its Irish genesis. As discussed below, the commendatory poems present the volume as emanating from a coterie culture that is complementary with, but distinct from, that of England. Whether composed in London or Dublin, or both, the paratexts frame Bellings’ work as Irish. Travelling between the two countries as a student, the author’s antennae would have been attuned to the complexities of his situation. At the least, this semantic riddle posed by his figurative use of both languages reveals as unsustainable the kinds of distinctions that both Stanihurst and Spenser tried so hard to establish. The commendatory poems prefacing Bellings’ work locate the author in a socio-literary context as well as further elucidating this metaphor. Three of these five poems take their cue from Bellings himself in locating his writing according to the Sidneian inheritance. They contradict the rhetorical stance of Bellings’ preface in order to support his claims to authorship; they are unequivocal in their praise of Bellings’ writing as reaching the same high standard as Sidney’s. They especially approve his realisation of Sidney’s language. Martyn, for example, claims to see ‘Sir Philip Sidney’s ghost’ as he reads, averring: so like in all Was matter, phrase, and language which did fall From thy chaste pen, that surely both being gone Next age will write your characters in one.15

Contrary to Bellings’ self-deprecating preface, his friend lauds the seamlessness of his literary achievement. That this is not simply the flattery of a friend is clear from the afterlife of Bellings’ continuation. Sidney’s original spawned five other continuations but Bellings’ was the most successful, added to all London editions of the Arcadia from 1627 to 1739.16 His triumph of impersonation is reiterated in Delaune’s poem which imagines that, were Sidney alive again, ‘Thou hast therein such wittie smoothnesse showne, / As out of doubt it would be thought his owne’.17 These poems forcefully remind us that Bellings was writing in the same language as Sidney. Why, then, did he bother to introduce the Irish 15 Bellings, Sixth booke, sig. A4r. Carpenter suggests this may have been a brother to Richard Martin, who was acquainted with Bellings in London: Tudor and Stuart Ireland, p. 165. 16 For other continuations, see Rankin, Between Spenser and Swift, p. 196, n. 15. 17 Bellings, Sixth booke, sig. A4v.

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language to the equation at all? The answer may lie in the exploitation of paratext to position Bellings as the pioneer of a self-consciously indigenous literary revival. The first-placed of these commendatory verses, attributed to R. C., hails ‘his entirely beloved kinseman the author’ as reviving and resuscitating the literary traditions of Ireland: This Isle, sometimes the nurse of sacred Arts, Wasted by warre, and overgrowne with weedes Of ignorance, that had ore’run all parts; Did still (I see) retaine some living seeds Of that old learning, which soft peace doth nourish, And now begin afresh to spring and flourish.

The recognition here of an older inheritance of culture and learning reflects exactly the accommodation of the Old English that was feared by writers such as Spenser. Rather than an overtly Sidneian, English tradition, the ‘author’ is seen as contributing to an ancient, interrupted tradition of scholarship and literature. As with the broad use of the term ‘Irish’ in Bellings’ preface, no explicit differentiation is made here between Gaelic and Old English traditions of ‘old learning’. The reference is ambiguous, open to interpretation as connoting simply his Old English roots or alluding to the more capacious inheritance signalled in Spenser’s ‘Mutabilitie Cantos’: ‘when IRELAND florished in fame / Of wealths and goodnesse, far aboue the rest / Of all that beare the British Islands name.’18 Bellings’ work is lauded in expressly patriotic terms: ‘Which benefite, thy country and thy friends / Reape from the happie labours of thy youth.’19 Moreover, this poem attends to the arts’ dependence on social stability; peace is the precondition for any revival. The second poem by the same (unidentified) author again praises Bellings as literary pioneer, spearheading the introduction of pastoral poetry in Ireland: ‘Thou art the first who with thy well-tun’d reed / Awak’d thy countries Muse, and led thereby / Into the pleasant fields of Arcady / Her flockes, her Pastors, and the sportfull crue / Of all her youth that shall thy steps pursue.’20 Both poems explicitly position Bellings at the vanguard of renewal and innovation, as the root of renaissance. The contrast with Spenser’s sonnet to Thomas Butler, tenth earl of Ormond, is instructive. One of the dedicatory sonnets to the first edition of The Faerie Queene, this poem also yearns for the fellowship of l­iterary 18 Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, ed. A. C. Hamilton (Harlow, 1977), p. 720. 19 Bellings, Sixth booke, sig. A3v. 20 Bellings, Sixth booke, sig. A4r.

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community. But Spenser vehemently rejects any literary or scholarly continuities. On the contrary, his verse has overcome odds that are stacked against literary authorship in Ireland. His epic poem is offered as ‘the wilde fruit, which saluage soyl hath bred’; ‘the fruit of barren field’. This serves both to extol his attempt in itself and to exonerate it from any deficiency in quality. For Spenser also, warfare is an enemy to the arts. His Munster, shaped by contemporary turmoil, is bereft and inhospitable. Instead, the poetic hankering after community is indulged through a classicised vision of his patron’s seat: Which being through long wars left almost waste, With brutish barbarisme is ouerspredd: And in so faire a land, as may be redd, Not one Parnassus, nor one Helicone Left for sweete Muses to be harboured, But where thy selfe hast thy braue mansione; There in deede dwel faire Graces many one. And gentle Nymphes, delights of learned wits, And in thy person without Paragone All goodly bountie and true honour sits.21

Spenser, like R. C., was writing in the aftermath of rebellion, in a time of relative peace. Yet the bleakness of his representation of Munster as a literary desert, redeemed only by Ormond’s enlightened patronage, is sharply divergent from R. C.’s optimistic advocacy of Bellings’ work as a harbinger of literary revival. As Judith Owens and Thomas Herron have argued, the contrast may well be exaggerated for political purposes, in order to critique Ormond’s insufficiently strict governance of his palatinate.22 Again, a straightforward opposition of New to Old English is unsatisfactory. McCabe points to the irony that Ormond chose not to act as patron to Spenser but did support Gaelic bardic culture, and this despite the fact that ‘the only poem in the canon expressly addressed to an “Irish” aristocrat should praise him for being “English”’.23 Hadfield treats this sonnet in relation to that addressed to Arthur, Lord Grey (in the same sequence), the juxtaposition ‘draw[ing] attention to a fractur21 Spenser, Faerie Queene, p. 742. Hadfield identifies Ormond’s castle at Carrick-on-Suir: Edmund Spenser, p. 252. 22 Judith Owens, Enabling engagements: Edmund Spenser and the poetics of patronage (Montreal, 2002), pp. 102–5; Thomas Herron, ‘Ralegh’s gold: Placing Spenser’s dedicatory sonnets’, Studies in the Literary Imagination 38:2 (2005), pp. 143–4. 23 Richard McCabe, Spenser’s monstrous regiment: Elizabethan Ireland and the poetics of difference (Oxford, 2005), p. 29.

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ing of Englishness in Ireland, rather than its unity, and the difficulty, not the  ease, of drawing up distinctions’.24 The point is further emphasised by the divergence in positions adopted in Spenser’s and R. C.’s poems and in the various formulations of the ‘mother tongue’. Although foregrounding in its title the emulation of Sidney, the Protestant Renaissance ideal, Bellings’ volume also aims to showcase the author as a courtly poet. His continuation of the Arcadia is followed by a number of Sidneian eclogues and eight free-standing original poems. This final section is central to the construction of Bellings as an accomplished Renaissance poet, demonstrating the range and gallantry of his poetic ability: the dialogue ‘Directions to a Painter to draw his Mistris’; ‘The description of a Tempest’; and the love poems ‘To his neere kinswoman’, ‘On her lipps’, ‘He showes his Mistris how he came to love her before he saw her’, ‘On the beauteous black Ophelia’, ‘A Farewell’, ‘To his Booke’. But again, the mechanisms of print are exploited to represent the author as self-effacing, in imitation of the reluctance to appear in print of contemporaries more comfortable with the control mechanisms of English manuscript culture.25 Bellings’ poems are disingenuously introduced: ‘These following verses at severall times came to the hands of the right worth. Sir R. C who being the Authors deere friend, & therfore thinking them too good to perish, hath caus’d them here to be annexed to his booke.’26 This epigraph is placed prominently at the top of the first page of this final section. It apparently removes responsibility for print publication from Bellings. But the (im)posture does not fit. Bellings has claimed authorial credit in his prefaces. He is lauded as exemplary author of his country in the commendatory poems. The reticence here is a device; its deployment of conventional codes positions Bellings as a gentleman-scholar. The print volume enacts the tensions between modesty and self-assertion. At the same time, it conditions our reception of its author, representing him in the context of an actively literary community, rooted in long-standing scholarly traditions, and spearheading the country’s literary rebirth.

24 Andrew Hadfield, Edmund Spenser’s Irish experience: Wilde fruit and salvage soyl (Oxford, 1997), p. 6. 25 See Margaret J. M. Ezell, Writing women’s literary history (Baltimore, 1993); Arthur Marotti, Manuscript, print, and the English Renaissance lyric (Ithaca, NY, 1995); Wendy Wall, The imprint of gender: Authorship and publication in the English Renaissance (Ithaca, NY, 1993); Henry Woudhuysen, Sir Philip Sidney and the circulation of manuscripts, 1558–1640 (Oxford, 1996). 26 Bellings, Sixth booke, sig. O3r.

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By the time James Shirley arrived in Dublin as playwright-in-residence for Werburgh Street theatre in 1636, the recently deceased Jonson had trumped Sidney as a literary model.27 The London theatres were closed due to an outbreak of plague from May 1636 to October the following year. Fletcher argues that Dublin offered Shirley greater artistic freedom and evasion of censorship in England.28 But Shirley worked to preserve his connections, returning to London in spring 1637 and again in 1638. As Rankin has observed, this sojourn was intended as a career progression; he was ‘seeking both to make a name for himself in Dublin and to raise his cultural capital back home, to return to London as successor to both Spenser and Jonson’.29 Shirley wrote three plays initially intended for the Dublin stage: The Royall Master; Rosania, or Love’s Victory (alias The Doubtful Heir); and St. Patrick for Ireland. The Royall Master was published simultaneously in Dublin and London in 1638, both editions dedicated to George FitzGerald, sixteenth earl of Kildare. This dedication exhibits Shirley’s maintenance of a keen eye on his London reception. It announces him as ‘a stranger in this kingdome’ grateful for Kildare’s acquaintance. But in asking that the play substitute for his person – ‘since my Affaires in England hasten my departure, and prevent my personall attendance, that something of me may be honourd to waite upon you in my absence’ – he draws attention to his dual commitments. His ambivalence about the Irish stage is manifest in the discrepancy between the title page’s proclamation of its performance ‘as it was acted in the new Theater in Dublin: and before the . . . Lord Deputie of Ireland, in the Castle’ and the dedication’s assertion that ‘tis new, and never yet personated, but expected with the first, when the English stage shall bee recovered from her long silence’.30 Fletcher has argued that the dedication was written prior to the play’s performance at the turn of 1637.31 Regardless, the contradiction was retained. It implies that 27 For discussions of the date of the theatre’s opening, see Alan Fletcher, Drama, performance, and polity in pre-Cromwellian Ireland (Cork, 2000), pp. 262–4; and Christopher Morash, A history of Irish theatre, 1601–2000 (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 4–6. For a suggestion that Shirley was involved in plans for a Dublin playhouse as early as 1630, see Eva Griffith, ‘James Shirley and the earl of Kildare: Speculating playhouses and dwarves à la mode’, in Potterton and Herron (eds), Dublin and the Pale in the Renaissance, pp. 357–62. 28 Fletcher, Drama, performance, and polity, p. 269. 29 Rankin, Between Spenser and Swift, p. 96. 30 James Shirley, The royall master (London, 1638), sig. A2. 31 Fletcher, Drama, performance, and polity, p. 272.

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authentic performance occurs on the English stage and that his impact in London was most highly valued by the playwright. Indeed, a certain eagerness to depart underlies the final words: ‘And when by the favour of the winds and Sea, I salute my Country againe, I shall report a story of the Irish honour, and hold my selfe not meanely fortunate to have beene written and receiv’d.’32 His reception was an issue Shirley sought not to leave to chance. This first play was published, in both editions, with ten commendatory poems by nine authors then based in Dublin as well as the epilogue addressed to Lord Deputy Wentworth. Richard Bellings himself contributed, his ‘On the Royall Master, to his Friend the Author’ brandishing a solid acquaintance. Having exploited print culture to represent himself at the centre of a Dublin literary coterie, he now performed the corresponding endorsement role for Shirley.33 The compilation of these poems builds an image of a community centred around Dublin theatre, regularly writing social verse. Those who contributed included the Irish master of the revels, John Ogilby, formerly dancing master to Lord Deputy Wentworth’s children and founder of Smock Alley theatre in 1662. One of the English actors employed in the Werburgh Street company, Thomas Jordan, also commended Shirley in verse.34 Another contributor was William Smith, Catholic secretary, printer and attorney to the Butlers of Ormond. Smith contributed a commendatory poem to Henry Burkhead’s Tragedy of Cola’s Furie (Kilkenny, 1646), and wrote at least one Royalist poem following the execution of Charles I.35 It is possible that Francis Butler, another member of the group, was also connected to the Ormond branch; Saudia Burner identifies him as a Royalist captain during the 1640s.36 But the poem by Andrew Cooper, English Royalist news reporter and poet, is most revealing of Shirley’s aspirations.37 Its recognition of the dual literary traditions of Ireland recalls R. C. but posits a different 32 Shirley, Royall master, sig. A2v. 33 Shirley, Royall master, sig. A4r. Rankin proposes that this friendship may have prompted Shirley to adapt Sidney for the stage in his A pastorall called The Arcadia (London, 1640): Between Spenser and Swift, p. 192. 34 For Jordan, see Griffith, ‘Shirley and the earl of Kildare’, pp. 366–7; Sandra A. Burner, James Shirley: A study of literary coteries and patronage in seventeenth-century England (New York, 1988), pp. 119, 125–6. 35 For Smith, see Carpenter, Tudor and Stuart Ireland, pp. 273–5; Burner, James Shirley, p. 125. See also Henry Burkhead, A tragedy of Cola’s Furie, or, Lirenda’s Miserie, ed. Angelina Lynch and Patricia Coughlan (Dublin, 2009). 36 Burner, James Shirley, p. 127. The remaining three poets – W. Markham, John Jackson and James Mervyn – are unidentified. 37 For Cooper, see Carpenter, Tudor and Stuart Ireland, p. 216.

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vision to that in Bellings’ volume. Here, Spenser is the conquering hero of anglophone poetry in Ireland echoing, perhaps, the Red-Cross Knight, ‘for knightly giusts and fierce encounters fitt’: When Spencer reign’d sole Prince of Poets here, As by his Fairy Queene doth well appeare There was not one so blind, so bold a Bard, So ignorantly proud or foolish-hard To encounter his sweete Muse.38

The third line connotes both bardic and classical traditions, recalling blind Homer as well as Gaelic poets. His English Renaissance epic selfevidently superior, Spenser’s dominance goes unchallenged and implicitly lays down a marker for Shirley. The playwright is lauded as a celebrity arrival: ‘my Shirley from the Albion shore / Comes laden with the Muses, all their store / Transferres to Dublin.’ Cooper is unstinting in his promotion of Shirley’s claim to Jonson’s laureateship: Shirley stand forth, and put thy Lawrell on, Phoebus next heire, now Ben is dead and gone, Truly legitimate, Ireland is so just To say, you rise the Phenix of his dust.39

Another poem, attributed to W. Markham, buttresses Shirley’s jostling for the literary mantle: this Play ‘oth publicke Stage Hath gain’d such fair applause, as ‘t did engage A nation to thy Muse, where thou shalt raigne Viceregent to Apollo, who doth daigne (His darling Ben deceased) thou should’st be Declar’d the heire apparent to his tree.40

Thus, Shirley’s publication of his first Dublin play is framed in a coterie setting. Two of this cohort were inveigled to support vociferously his campaign for the English laureateship. Dublin, his temporary base, is a suitably literary venue for a playwright with prospects. This image of the Dublin scene, of course, suits Shirley’s purposes; it was in his interests to advertise the city as a thriving location for his literary career. 38 Spenser, Faerie Queene, p. 29; Shirley, Royall master, sig. A3v. 39 Shirley, Royall master, sig. A3v. 40 Shirley, Royall master, sig. A4v. Confirming this tendency to segregate Shirley to an English literary tradition, James Mervyn portrays his work as channelling Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher (sig. B2r).

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But his time in Ireland did not accord with his early hopes. William Davenant won the laureateship in late 1638 and Shirley’s Irish prologues (including those written for productions of plays by other authors) articulate his encroaching disillusion and bitterness with Dublin audiences. ‘A prologue to the Irish Gent’ laments an audience unhabituated to his style of theatre and warns witheringly: ‘Let it not prove a storie of your time . . . That wit, and soule-enriching Poesie, / Transported hither must like Serpents dye.’41 The serpent imagery – obviously referring to the legend of St Patrick, itself dramatised in his final Dublin play – was also used in his prologue to a Fletcher play. This threatens that ‘An English poet’ will report ‘that you have Serpents in this Isle’.42 ‘A [different] prologue to another of Master Fletcher’s Playes there’ castigates Dublin audiences for preferring pageants, freak shows and bear-baiting to his brand of theatre.43 In desperation, ‘A Prologue to a Play there; call’d No Wit to a Womans [Middleton’s No Wit, No Help like a Woman’s]’, addresses the audience from sore personal experience: ‘Ile tell you what a Poet sayes, two yeare / He has liv’d in Dublin, yet he knowes not where / To finde the City.’ He goads the Irish audience with the discrepancy between reputation and reality: When he did live in England, he heard say, That here were men lov’d wit, and a good Play; That here were Gentlemen, and Lords; a few Were bold to say, there were some Ladies to: This he beleev’d, and though they are not found Above, who knowes what may be under ground: But they doe not appeare.44

Nine of Shirley’s prologues to plays performed at Werburgh Street were published together in Poems &c. of 1646, his alienation (and probable relief at escaping) palpable in persistent titular references to the country as ‘there’. His second play for Werburgh Street theatre, Rosania, or Love’s Victory, was published as The Doubtful Heir in 1652, with no reference to its Irish performance (despite publication of the Irish prologue with the others in 1646).45 St. Patrick for Ireland was published in 1640 with no prefatory material other than its prologue, which expressed the 41 Shirley, Poems &c., p. 38 (sig. C4v). 42 Shirley, Poems &c., pp. 35–6 (sig. C3). 43 Shirley, Poems &c., pp. 42–3 (sigs C6v–C7r). 44 Shirley, Poems &c., pp. 40–1 (sigs C5v–C6r). 45 The doubtful heir: A tragi-comedie, as it was acted at the private house in Blackfriars (London, 1652); Poems &c. (London, 1946), pp. 148–9 (sigs Dv–D2r).

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playwright’s dejection. By this final prologue for the Irish stage, a note of resignation has set in: ‘We should be very happy, if at last, / We could find out the humour of your taste.’46 This first part of St. Patrick for Ireland was presented as testing the waters, a second promised if successful.47 It was not to be. Shirley embraced his role in Dublin in order to enhance his reputation in London. The first of his Werburgh Street plays was printed in order to represent Shirley at the vanguard of Dublin literary culture. Ultimately, however, his audiences disappointed him. Rather than continue to project himself in the context of a receptive literary community, his prologues witnessed increasing disenchantment. Henry Burnell Dublin theatre audiences were problematic for indigenous as well as visiting playwrights. Landgartha (Dublin, 1641) by the Old English Dubliner Henry Burnell was the last play to be performed at Werburgh Street, on St Patrick’s Day 1640, the day after parliament had reassembled. Centred on the Amazon queen Landgartha, the play dramatises her military alliance with Reyner, king of Denmark, against the king of Sweden. Having defeated the latter, Landgartha marries Reyner but is betrayed when he leaves her for his Danish lover, Vraca. The play has been read allegorically by critics, with Reyner and the Danes standing in for King Charles I, the Swedes representing the Scots and sometimes the New English, and Landgartha and the Amazons (in particular the character of Marfisa, who wears native Irish dress) deputising for the Old English.48 Despite the title page’s announcement that the play was performed ‘with good applause’, the paratextual apparatus tells a different story – justifying, pre-empting and intervening for Burnell’s reception. The play is dedicated ‘To all faire, indifferent faire, vertuous, that are not faire and magnanimous Ladies’, the heroine Landgartha presented as a virtuous model for the women in the audience.49 Following this dedication is a series of commendatory poems engaged in a rather highbrow construction of authorship. The first 46 James Shirley, St. Patrick for Ireland: The first part (London, 1640), sig. [A2]r. 47 For discussions of this play and the Old English audience, see Fletcher, Drama, performance, and polity, p. 274; John Kerrigan, Archipelagic English: Literature, history, and politics, 1603–1707 (Oxford, 2008), pp. 170–5. 48 Fletcher, Drama, performance, and polity, pp. 275–7; Morash, History of Irish theatre, pp. 8–9; Deana Rankin (ed.), Landgartha: A tragie-comedy by Henry Burnell (Dublin, 2013), pp. 11–66; Rankin, Between Spenser and Swift, pp. 105–6; Catherine Shaw, ‘Landgartha and the Irish dilemma’, Éire-Ireland 13 (1978), pp. 26–39. 49 Henry Burnell, Landgartha (Dublin, 1641), sig. A2.

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of these, by John Bermingham, is unequivocal in its claim for Burnell of the Jonsonian mantle: though thou England never saw’st: Yet, this (Let others boast of their owne faculties, Or being Sonne to Iohnson) I dare say, That thou art farre more like to Ben then they That lay clayme as heires to him, wrongfully: For he survives now only, but in thee And his owne lines; the rest degenerate.50

The latter clause has particular connotations for the Old English. Spenser had used the term to denigrate those who had assimilated to Irish society. As Rankin also notes, its use here upends that formulation.51 Here, the Old English author maintains Jonsonian standards in opposition to those English writers who claim a direct line of descent from the laureate. There follow three poems in Latin: two by Burnell’s daughter Eleanor and another by Philip Patrick. Eleanor’s two poems are the only known Latin verses by an Irishwoman of this period to survive. Their publication here signals humanist consanguinity, recalling Thomas More’s involvement in the education of his daughter Margaret. The Burnells were of the Old English elite. Eleanor’s mother was Lady Frances Dillon, her uncle the second earl of Roscommon, and his wife was sister to Lord Deputy Wentworth. This may perhaps explain the text’s encouragement of female humanist education. Eleanor put this to good filial use, imagining her father as international flagbearer for the literature of Ireland: Ad te à Iuvernis flexit victoria vatem partibus his cedunt Brutiginaeque tibi . . . Terra tuas certum est exhauriet extera laudes; clarescet scriptis insula nostra tuis . . .52

To have an educated Latinist for a daughter in itself reflected well on Burnell as a humanist; her portrayal of him as the embodiment of literary Ireland further gilded the lily. But straining against this literary support, Burnell’s own paratexts 50 Burnell, Landgartha, sig. A3v. 51 Rankin, Between Spenser and Swift, p. 97; see also Rankin, Landgartha, p. 34. 52 ‘Victory has turned away from the Irish towards you [in your capacity as] a poet, / And the [English] descended from Brutus in these regions yield to you . . . / It is certain that a foreign land will drink its fill of your praises; / Our island shall become famous thanks to your writings’: Jane Stevenson, Women Latin poets: Language, gender, and authority, from antiquity to the eighteenth century (Oxford, 2005), p. 385. See also Rankin, Landgartha, pp. 74–7.

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evince a more unstable sense of authorial self-construction. His prologue is aggressive towards the audience. It is delivered by ‘an Amazon with a Battle-Axe in her hand’. The (Jonsonian) precedent for such armed confrontation is framed as critical counter-attack: The best of English Poets for the Stage (Such was the envie, nicenesse, and the rage Of pettish weakelings, and detracting fooles, That could prayse no man; and i’ th’ muddie pooles Of their owne vices were o’rwhelm’d) was faine An armed Prologue to produce.53

The defiant tone is explained as the warrior refers to the poor reception of Burnell’s previous (unnamed and now lost) play: ‘The present author (having not forgot / How in’s first Play, he met with too much spite)’ sends in his armed Amazon ‘to let those know, / He cares not each of them prove still a foe’.54 He protested, perhaps, too much. This defensiveness follows through to the epilogue, in which the character Scania speaks on behalf of the author, again armed with sword in hand. Torn between rejection and approval, she begins, ‘Though our Author cares not, how his Play may take’, but quickly relents: ‘Yet . . . He hath sent me ‘fore the Court breake up, to appeare / For him agen; to see how it hath pleas’d.’ Doing himself few favours, Burnell has Scania boast that his writing of this play has taken but two months, where other playwrights spend a year. Despite the authorial bravado, it is clear that Burnell lacked Shirley’s confidence and sure-­footedness. Picking up on Bermingham’s poem, Burnell’s epilogue ultimately expresses a less ­grandiose – and perhaps more realistic – self-construction: For he ‘s not too ambitious of the dignitie Of a prime Poet; which he needs must know, The Muses chiefe (Apollo) doth bestow But very rarely. Himselfe he knowes too Better I’th’ Art, then some that to be so Thought worthy, maligne him. If this please you, It’s all he’ll aske of Hellicon: Adieu.55

But the paratextual mixed signals persist; Burnell printed a bad-tempered postscript in the first-person narrative voice. This undermines the title 53 Fletcher argues that Jonson’s prologue to Poetaster is intended: Drama, performance, and polity, p. 447, n. 93. 54 Burnell, Landgartha, sig. A4v. 55 Burnell, Landgartha, sig. Kr.

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page’s positive advertisement of the play by grappling with a more uncertain reception. Focused on those who objected to the ending (in which Landgartha refuses to stay with the bigamous King Reyner of Denmark and returns to Norway), Burnell justifies it in terms of genre: ‘I answer (omitting all other reasons:) that a Tragie-Comedy sho’d neither end Comically or Tragically, but betwixt both: which Decorum I did my best to observe, not to goe against the Art, to please the over-amorous. To the rest of bablers, I despise any answer.’56 The evasiveness here – prioritising genre over sentiment, glossing over alternative motives, dismissing other critiques – leaves room for interpretation. Where Fletcher and Rankin have seen this as a comment on Wentworth’s bigamy legislation, Kerrigan has argued that its open-endedness betrays Old English political doubts over Charles I.57 The print construction of Burnell as author extends in opposing directions. Lauded in the commendatory poems as a worthy successor to Jonson, as a poet whose fame will transcend and represent Ireland, Burnell’s manipulation of paratexts is conflicted. His attempts to rise above his critics are sabotaged by his insistent compulsion to explain himself. Such interventions on behalf of their literary reputations by both Shirley and Burnell suggest that Dublin audiences could be vicious; that, despite the careful construction of authorship according to paratextual conventions, Dublin theatrical reception was a minefield. This propensity was countered by the poet and playwright Katherine Philips via canny and careful cultivation of a courtly audience two decades later. But even the highly successful Restoration theatre of her time ran out of steam. She reported in an undated letter that ‘those on the Stage cannot thrive: For the Players disband apace, and I am afraid you will shortly see a Farce, or a Puppet-show at LONDON, call’d IRELAND in ridicule; wherein all the Plays will be repeated, and the Actors themselves acted in Burlesque’.58 Constructions of literary authorship Projections of literary community of the kind discussed here were not limited to Renaissance Dublin. Richard Nugent’s sonnet sequence, 56 Burnell, Landgartha, sig. Kv. 57 Fletcher, Drama, performance, and polity, pp. 275–6; Rankin, Between Spenser and Swift, pp. 105–8; Kerrigan, Archipelagic English, p. 177. 58 Katherine Philips, The collected works of Katherine Philips: The Matchless Orinda, ed. Patrick Thomas, Germaine Greer and Roger Little, 3 vols (Essex, 1990–93), vol. ii, pp. 96–7.

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Cynthia (London, 1604), engaged innovatively with humanist and Petrarchan models of love poetry. Its third section is a poetic epistolary exchange, on the Italian Renaissance model of the tenzone, between the speaker, exiled in an unnamed foreign land, and his Old English Westmeath friends. This bantering circle of male poets shows yet another use of print to publicise the social contexts of the author’s literary activity.59 Anglophone women in Ireland also sought to establish ideal literary communities; these operated within manuscript rather than print culture.60 Moreover, community altered and reshaped authorial self-­ constructions. In some cases, residence in Dublin refashioned an author’s writing. It could elicit self-conscious constructions that would justify a change in authorial direction. For Barnaby Rich and Francis Quarles, for example, Renaissance Dublin (as a place in time) was a conducive literary environment that inspired writerly evolution. They were Englishmen who found their sense of literary authorship positively altered by residence in Dublin. Both writers experimented with literary genre and located that experimentation firmly in their Dublin milieux. Rich’s The Irish hubbub or, The English hue and crie (the preface of which is dated Dublin, 14 May 1617) is a social satire. The humorous mockery of antisocial behaviour is aimed at English and Irish audiences but avowedly derives its generic form from an Irish model. Explaining the etymology of the titular synonyms – the Irish hubbub and English hue and cry – Rich recounts his assimilation to the culture of the Pale: ‘Is it any wonder then that my selfe hauing had so long residence in that country, but that I should be something leaning and inclining to their maners and conditions, and to learne of them to mocke, and to giue the Hubbub to any thing that I see to be foolish, or worthy the laughing at.’ Expounding upon the Irish tradition of keening and the proverb ‘to weep Irish’, he positions himself as a borrower of Irish tradition: ‘So that it appears how the Irish haue wit and discretion, both to weepe when they list, and to laugh at their pleasure. And I am glad of it: for I will make a little bold to borrow some of their agilitie . . . to laugh, and to give the Hubbub when I see a cause, and neither to forbeare Irish nor English.’61 The Irish ‘hubbub’ offers a template for the 59 Richard Nugent, Cynthia, ed. Angelina Lynch (Dublin, 2010). See also Deirdre Serjeantson, ‘Richard Nugent’s Cynthia (1604): A Catholic sonnet sequence in London, Westmeath and Spanish Flanders’, in David Coleman (ed.), Region, religion and English Renaissance literature (Farnham, 2013), pp. 67–85. 60 Marie-Louise Coolahan, ‘Ideal communities and planter women’s writing in ­seventeenth-century Ireland’, Parergon 29:2 (2012), pp. 69–91. 61 Barnaby Rich, The Irish hubbub or, The English hue and crie (London, 1617), pp. 2, 5.

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author’s derisive and corrective social aims. The culture of Renaissance Dublin forges the literary genre he wishes to write. Quarles was an established religious poet when he arrived with James Ussher, newly appointed archbishop of Armagh, as his secretary in 1626. But in Dublin he shifted from devotional to secular subject matter.62 Five years after Bellings, Quarles published his mock-heroic Sidneian romance in verse, Argalus and Parthenia (London, 1629). The preface is dated at Dublin, 4 March 1628/9. It attends to the anticipated surprise of his readers at this turn – English readers familiar with his earlier work: ‘This Booke differs from my former, as a Courtier from a Churchman.’ Quarles figured his strategy as transplantation; conceived in Dublin, the book was directed at an English readership: ‘She hath crost the seas for your acquaintance.’63 But this experiment with secular romance was confined to his stay in Ireland. He had returned to London by March 1630, where he went on to become one of the most popular devotional poets of the century. Inspired by his new location to try out a new genre, Quarles’ experience conforms with the rise and fall of literary community outlined in this chapter. The communities associated with Bellings, Shirley and Burnell, celebrated and crystallised in print, highlight the fitfulness of any literary renaissance in Dublin. Such moments were short-lived, representing ‘re-mort’ rather than ‘re-naissance’. The ‘soft peace’ hailed by Bellings’ friend could not withstand political volatility for long. The seeds cast by such influential writers as Sidney and Spenser did not take root in any prolonged way, notwithstanding the fact that their reputations enjoyed longevity. The extent to which Ireland experienced a renaissance has been subject to reappraisal in recent scholarly volumes.64 Humanist values such as the revival and exaltation of classicism, cultural patronage, and discovery have been located far beyond the Pale and anglophone culture. The constructions of literary authorship discussed in this chapter exploited print culture to convey an image of the author at the centre of Dublin-based coteries. These are not historical documents but effective assertions in print of Dublin as a location favourable to Renaissance humanist values. Of course, the failure to build momentum renders it 62 See also Fogarty, ‘Literature in English, 1550–1690’, pp. 162–3. 63 Francis Quarles, Argalus and Parthenia, ed. David Freeman (London, 1986), pp. 49–50. 64 Michael Potterton and Thomas Herron (eds), Ireland in the Renaissance, c.1540–1660 (Dublin, 2007); Jason Harris and Keith Sidwell (eds), Making Ireland Roman: Irish neo-Latin writers and the Republic of Letters (Cork, 2009); Potterton and Herron (eds), Dublin and the Pale.

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impossible to speak of sustained rebirth. Rather, these constructions of literary authorship constitute repeated attempts to experiment with what a Dublin author could and should be, with how he (for it is almost inevitably ‘he’) should present himself and shape his audience.

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‘A real credit to Ireland, and to Dublin’: the scholarly achievements of Sir James Ware Mark Empey In 1879 the curate of St Werburgh’s Church wrote to the editor of The Irish Builder seeking help to restore the vault of the seventeenth-century antiquary and historian, Sir James Ware, and to solicit subscriptions to erect a mural tablet in his honour. Rev. J. H. McMahon’s intentions were quite explicit: to pay tribute to ‘Ware’s vast merits as a reliable writer of Irish history, and as a real credit to Ireland, and to Dublin, his native city’.1 McMahon’s assessment was no exaggeration. Over four decades, between 1626 and 1665, Ware published eleven substantial historical works. They drew on a wide range of Latin, English and Irish manuscript sources, having as their primary objective the promotion of Ireland’s rich heritage. Indeed, based on the consistently high standards of his scholarship and the esteem in which he was held by his peers in Ireland and in Europe, Ware was arguably the leading Irish historian of his day. This is all the more remarkable given the continual disruption of his life during the turbulent decades of the 1640s and 1650s, taking as he did a leading role in the administration, to be followed by almost a decade in exile. Yet, despite such a distinguished career, he continues to be overlooked by historians.2 Ware’s work has never been a secret: in an address to the   I would like to express my gratitude to the Irish Research Council for their generous research grant for the preparation of this article. I also wish to thank the National University of Ireland for their financial assistance, which enabled me to pursue my 1 research. The Irish builder, xxi, no. 474 (15 September 1879), p. 278.   2 The closest there is to a study of Ware is in the introduction of William O’Sullivan, ‘A finding list of Sir James Ware’s manuscripts’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Section C, xcvii (1997), pp. 69–77. See also Mark Empey, ‘“Value-free” history? The scholarly network of Sir James Ware’, History Ireland 20:2 (2012), pp. 20–3; Bernadette Cunningham, ‘Seventeenth-century historians of Ireland’, in Edel Bhreathnach and Bernadette Cunningham (eds), Writing Irish history: The four masters and their world (Dublin, 2007), pp. 53–9; Mark Williams, ‘“Lacking Ware, withal”: finding Sir James

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Bibliographical Society in London in 1917, Philip Wilson commented: ‘it is greatly to be wished that some competent Irish scholar would undertake a really critical edition of Sir James Ware’s writings.’3 Wilson’s proposal never materialised, with the result that Ware’s enormous contribution to Irish history was effectively relegated to a footnote in modern studies. There are two key reasons for examining Ware’s career. Firstly, it is essential to explore the extent of his scholarly achievements. His research was not only thorough; it was also in high demand because he pushed against the boundaries of the way that Ireland had been previously understood. Secondly, his manuscripts shed important light on the culturally vibrant community of seventeenth-century Dublin. This chapter will therefore pursue two distinct lines of inquiry. It will explore Ware’s particular interest in the ecclesiastical, political, administrative and cultural aspects of Dublin’s past. The second objective will be to examine how he compiled such an impressive collection of manuscripts. It will expose the existence of a wide scholarly network, thereby demonstrating the extent of social and cultural interaction between ethnic and religious communities. Researching Dublin’s history It is no accident that the authors of two notable histories of Dublin – one in manuscript form, the other published – were related to Ware, the second of which was posthumously published as The history and antiquities of the city of Dublin from the earliest accounts (1766). Written by Walter Harris, who was married to Ware’s granddaughter, it was the first published history of the city.4 Harris’s work drew heavily on the manuscript ‘History and Antiquities of Dublin collected from authentic records’, written by Ware’s son, Robert, in 1678.5 Robert’s investigations were made possible by the fact that he inherited his father’s extensive collection of manuscripts after Sir James’ death in 1666. In the preface of his work he stated: Ware among the many incarnations of his histories’, in Jason McElligott and Eve Patten (eds), The perils of print culture: book, print and publishing history in theory and practice (Basingstoke, 2014), pp. 64–81.  3 Philip Wilson, ‘The writings of Sir James Ware and the forgeries of Robert Ware’, Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, 15 (1920), p. 86.  4 For a superb analysis of Harris’s exploitation of Ware’s research in the eighteenth century, see Toby Barnard, Improving Ireland? Projectors, prophets and profiteers, 1641– 1786 (Dublin, 2008), pp. 112–19.  5 Colm Lennon, ‘The medieval town in the early modern city: Attitudes to Dublin’s immediate past in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’, in John Bradley, Alan J. Fletcher and Anngret Simms (eds), Dublin in the medieval world (Dublin, 2009), p. 442.

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My scope is onely to comply with those inducements which have bene often vehemently urged unto mee for the publishing in the best method I can such observations of my deceased father Sir James Ware knt, and other particulars of moment relateing to the Citty of Dublin, since the conquest of Ireland, as I finde in the severall volumes of those manuscripts, which hee was pleased to bequeath unto mee, as a legacy of great price.6

Of course, much has been made of the gross inaccuracies and forgeries in Robert’s work. Philip Wilson vociferously accused him of being ‘guilty of offences’ and cited the fabrication of the annals under the reign of Elizabeth as ‘a mere peccadillo’ given his many other misdemeanours.7 More recently, Diarmaid MacCulloch asserted that Robert’s history of Dublin included ‘some beguilingly specific and detailed but also hairraisingly inaccurate or unverifiable material from all dates’.8 Yet the fact that successive generations of antiquaries depended almost exclusively on Sir James’ manuscripts and notebooks underlines just how comprehensive his research was. This raises important questions about Ware’s interest in Dublin. Did he ever intend to compile a history on his native city? And if not, then why not? Certainly in his final years all the evidence suggests that his attention was predominantly focused on annalistic studies. A notable inclusion in the second edition of De Hibernia et antiquitatibus ejus disquisitiones (1658) were the annals of Ireland during the reign of Henry VII.9 That was followed by Rerum Hibernicarum annales (1664). More significantly, only a month before his death Ware employed the Gaelic scholar, Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhisigh, to translate Irish annals dated between 1443 and 1468.10   6 Robert Ware, ‘The history and antiquities of Dublin: Collected from authentic records and the manuscript collections of S[i]r James Ware Knight, by Robert Ware, son of that learned antiquary’ (1678), p. 1 (Armagh Public Library).   7 Wilson, ‘The writings of Sir James Ware and the forgeries of Robert Ware’, p. 85.  8 Diarmaid MacCulloch, ‘Foxes, firebrands, and forgery: Robert Ware’s pollution of Reformation history’, The Historical Journal 54:2 (2011), p. 312. See also Raymond Gillespie, ‘Robert Ware’s telling tale: A medieval Dublin story and its significance’, in Sean Duffy (ed.), Medieval Dublin V (Dublin, 2004), pp. 291–301; T. K. Moylan, ‘Vagabonds and sturdy beggars’, Dublin Historical Record 1:1 (March 1938), pp. 11–18.   9 Although they accompanied the revised edition of De Hibernia, the annals were not intended to be of secondary importance. On the contrary, Ware presented the annals as a separate work, providing a title cover with its own pagination to emphasise their significance: ‘Rerum Hibernicarum Henrico VII regnante, Annales’, after page 356 in De Hibernia et antiquitatibus ejus disquisitiones (London, 1658). 10 British Library, Additional MS 4799, fols 45r–70v. See also John T. O’Donovan, ‘The annals of Ireland, 1443–1468, translated from Irish by Dudley Firbisse’, The miscellany of the Irish Archaeological Society, Vol. 1 (Dublin, 1846), pp. 198–302.

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The evidence suggests, therefore, that there was no imminent study on Dublin being prepared. That does not paint the full picture, however. By examining his manuscripts in tandem with his earlier publications, it is clear that Dublin was a key feature of his research. Not only did he produce a catalogue of the Leinster bishops containing a comprehensive account of the lives of the archbishops of Dublin, but he also carried out extensive research on the city’s mayors, bailiffs and other civil authorities abstracted from an impressive array of manuscripts, registers and chain books. Ware’s first study of Dublin was De praesulibus Lageniae sive provinciae Dubliniensis. It was published in 1628, and coincided with his MA at Trinity College, Dublin. The two events may well have been connected.11 As for the text, the obituaries of the archbishops of Dublin extended over forty-one pages and accounted for two-fifths of the final content. It began with the first Ostman (descendant of Scandinavian settlers) bishop, Donat (d. 1074), who was believed to have overseen the construction of Christ Church, and concluded with Lancelot Bulkeley, who was promoted to the see in 1619 and was still alive at the time of publication. It was by any measure an impressive achievement. Drawing on a wide range of sources, these accounts of the archbishops of Dublin provided useful biographical pen-sketches as well as descriptions of the major events that characterised their episcopates. For example, in his treatment of Archbishop Laurence O’Toole (1162–80), Ware referred to a medieval life published by Laurentius Surius, a German Cathusian hagiographer (1522–78).12 The papal letters that he cited were probably drawn from Archbishop Alen’s register, while he relied on Giraldus Cambrensis for the later events of O’Toole’s turbulent episcopate. Both of these sources were in his personal library.13 It may also be remarked that Ware did not repeat Gerald’s suspicions about Lawrence’s political loyalties, which suggests that he detected biases in Cambrensis’s reportage. It is possible to detect other historical interests pursued by Ware in these lives, such as gleaning information about the history of great ecclesiastical institutions like Christ Church and St Patrick’s Cathedral. He explains how Laurence O’Toole created a regular chapter in Christ Church in 1162, and seems to have begun the building of the present cathedral at 11 The entry for Ware in the Dictionary of National Biography wrongly states that he graduated with an MA in 1616. In one of Ware’s notebooks which he entitles ‘Notes touching my self ’, he specifically states: ‘I tooke the degree of M[aste]r of Arts 3 January 1627[/8] (in Trinity College by Dublin)’, Trinity College, Dublin, MS 6406, fol. 97v. 12 James Ware, De praesulibus Lageniae sive provinciae Dubliniensis (Dublin, 1628), p. 7. 13 Librorum manuscriptorum in bibliotheca Jacobi Waræi equities aur. catalogus (Dublin, 1648), pp. 5, 9.

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the ­instigation of Richard de Clare (Strongbow).14 In much the same vein Ware recounts the origins of St Patrick’s Cathedral during the episcopate of his Anglo-Norman successors, John Comyn and Henry of London,15 noting the attempted founding of a university there by Alexander Bicknor in the first half of the fourteenth century.16 Furthermore, Ware pays attention to the secular roles of the archbishops of Dublin, especially their involvement with the royal administration. His distinctly neutral tone is arguably the most striking characteristic of the catalogue and, by extension, of his research. Ware does not judge the actions of the archbishops as either good or bad, although he occasionally comments on their learning (Comyn) or charitable disposition (O’Toole). His analysis is consistently balanced. His concern for historical accuracy is plainly a primary objective. The entry on Lancelot Bulkeley, the last archbishop to be mentioned in the catalogue, is a case in point. Ware was closely associated with Bulkeley. As a committed Protestant and apprentice in the administration, he moved in the same social circles.17 In his diary, he frequently refers to attending baptisms and consecrations in which the archbishop participated, while in 1648 Ware donated a copy of his catalogue of books in his personal library to Bulkeley.18 Yet there is no suggestion in De praesulibus Lageniae that any such relationship existed. The account simply states that Bulkeley was descended from a noble family from Anglesey, and provides details of his education together with a brief record of his promotion as well as particulars about his consecration.19 Equally interesting is the way in which Ware presents the archbishops in the tumultuous years between 1534 and 1560. His fluid and impartial style displays no obvious signs of bias in his treatment of the Reformation era. The way he deals with the ­episcopacies 14 Ware, De praesulibus Lageniae, pp. 7–8. 15 Ibid., pp. 9–11. 16 Ibid., p. 21. It is worth noting that Ware owned a manuscript containing the statutes of the synods of Dublin when Bicknor was archbishop, Librorum manuscriptorum, p. 14. 17 At the time of publishing De praesulibus Lageniae, Ware’s role in politics was limited. He worked as an apprentice for his father, who was auditor general at the time – a post Ware inherited in 1632. Prior to that his only recorded involvement in governmental affairs was in 1629 when he was nominated to assist Sir John Bingley as a special envoy to the English Privy Council concerning the virtual bankruptcy of the Irish government (Calendar of State Papers, Ireland 1625–32, p. 434). It was quite likely his negotiating skills in getting a financial compromise with the Crown for paying the Irish army that led to his knighthood in 1630. See Adam Loftus, lord chancellor of Ireland, to Sir John Coke, principal secretary of state, April 1630 (H.M.C. Report 12, Appendix 1, p. 406). 18 Mark Empey (ed.), ‘The diary of Sir James Ware, 1623–66’, Analecta Hibernica, 45 (2014), p. 60; TCD, MS 6404, fol. 164. 19 Ware, De praesulibus Lageniae, p. 41.

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of John Alen, George Browne, and even more remarkably Hugh Curwin, who presided over Dublin during the Marian interlude, are notable for the lack of discrepancies in his assessment.20 Ware made no reference to the restoration of Catholicism during Curwin’s time in office, merely stating that ‘he governed this see for twelve years (and in that time was constituted one of the Lords Justices of Ireland)’.21 Yet for all Ware’s endeavours to produce a distinctly neutral work, it was ‘still identifiably Protestant’, as Alan Ford has noted. In charting the obituaries ranging from pre-­Norman prelates all the way to Bulkeley in the seventeenth century, Ware ‘presumed the rightful inheritance of the Protestant episcopal line and disowned the post-reformation Catholic episcopate’.22 The significance of this cannot be understated as this alignment of the succession reveals Ware’s firm religious convictions. At the same time, however, the influence of his mentor, James Ussher, archbishop of Armagh, who was close at hand over the course of his research, clearly informs much of Ware’s writing. Whereas Ussher’s De Christianarum ecclesiarum successioe et statu historica explicatio (1613) emphasised ‘true doctrine’, Ware’s work, although it shared broadly similar concerns, was significantly more subtle and understated.23 Ware’s first two publications traced the lives of bishops in the provinces of Cashel, Tuam and then Dublin, but it would be wrong to conclude that this somehow defined the limit of his research capabilities.24 A cursory examination of his manuscripts indicates a much broader interest in ecclesiastical history. He paid considerable attention to succession lists of deans, priors, abbots and archdeacons not just within the county of Dublin but throughout the whole kingdom. For example, the list of the 20 Ibid., pp. 32–8. 21 Ibid., p. 38. 22 Alan Ford, ‘The Irish historical renaissance and the shaping of Protestant history’, in Alan Ford and John McCafferty (eds), The origins of sectarianism in early modern Ireland (Cambridge, 2005), p. 153. 23 See Mark Empey, ‘Creating a usable past: James and Robert Ware’, in Mark Empey, Alan Ford and Miriam Moffitt (eds), The Church of Ireland and its past: history, interpretation and identity (Dublin, 2017), ch. 3. For an excellent comparable analysis, see Anthony Milton, Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Churches in England Protestant thought, 1600–1640 (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 270–321. See also Alan Ford, James Ussher: Theology, history, and politics in early-modern Ireland and England (Oxford, 2007), pp. 72–6; Crawford Gribben, The Puritan millennium: Literature and theology, 1550–1682 (Dublin, 2000), pp. 80–100. 24 Ware’s first work traced the succession of Irish archbishops for the province of Cashel and Tuam in 1626 with an appendix on the history of the Cistercian monasteries in the kingdom, entitled Archiepiscoporum Cassiliensium et Tuamensium vitae . . . adijctur [sic] historia Coenobiorum Cisterciensium Hiberniae (Dublin, 1626).

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abbots of St Mary’s Abbey ranged from pre-1131 to 1531. The deans of St Patrick’s Cathedral spanned nearly four hundred years, from 1235 to the early seventeenth century. Likewise, ‘the priors of Christchurch in Dublin and deans thereof since the suppr[e]ssion’ extended from 1180 to 1638, while the succession of the archdeacons of the diocese of Dublin ran from 1185 to 1498.25 Furthermore, Ware displayed a keen interest in the history of the medieval monasteries. He transcribed notes from the registers of the priory of St John the Baptist without Newgate and the priory of All Saints’ near Dublin, and St Savior’s priory, to name a couple.26 Two monasteries feature more than others in his manuscripts and notebooks: the monastery of the Blessed Virgin Mary near Dublin, and the monastery of St Thomas the Martyr near Dublin, founded in memory of Thomas Beckett in 1177. Ware regularly explored both the annals and the registers of the monasteries for his research.27 He even held St Mary’s register in his personal library: in 1627 Sir Robert Cotton, one of the leading English antiquarians of his day, was sent ‘an old register’ of St Mary’s as a gift, and was informed that the abbey ‘was one of the richest in possessions in this kingdome’.28 What is so notable throughout his years of study was his persistent interest in these monasteries because he regarded them as the cornerstone of Dublin’s illustrious past. The wealth of material, particularly from the registers, placed Ireland on the same historical footing as the other kingdoms in Europe. Indeed it was largely due to Ware that these manuscripts were not only preserved but also gained international scholarly attention. In 1653 another distinguished English antiquary, Sir Roger Twysden, sent him a transcription of the abbots of St Mary’s Abbey compiled in 1314 by William Asseburne and continued by subsequent writers to 1518: ‘I long since transcribed this catalogue of 25 TCD, MS 6404, fols 36r–38r, 39v. 26 BL, Add. MS 4797, fol. 5; Librorum manuscriptorum, p. 10. 27 There are numerous examples in Ware’s manuscripts but for the purpose of demonstrating his specific interest in St Thomas’s and St Mary’s, see Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Rawlinson B 495; Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Rawlinson B 499, fols 151r–152v; BL, Add. MS 4821, fols 118r–118v; BL, Lansdowne MS 418, fols 15r–18v, 20–21vr; TCD, MS 664, fols 215r–215v; TCD, MS 6404, fols 100r100v; Librorum manuscriptorum, p. 6. See also H. J. Lawlor, ‘The foundation of St Mary’s Abbey, Dublin’, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 16:1 (1926), pp. 22–8; Aubrey Gwynn, ‘The early history of St. Thomas’ Abbey, Dublin’, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 134:1 (1954), pp. 1–35; Aubrey Gwynn, ‘Unpublished texts from the Black Book of Christ Church, Dublin’, Analecta Hibernica 16 (1946), pp. 316–18; A. L. Elliott, ‘The Abbey of St. Thomas the Martyr, near Dublin’, in Howard Clarke (ed.), Medieval Dublin: The living city (Dublin, 1990), pp. 62–76. 28 Ware to Sir Robert Cotton, 19 June 1627 (BL, Cotton MS, Julius C. III, fol. 386v). A copy of the same letter is in the Bodleian Library, Smith MS, fol. 147.

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Abbots . . . What is red inke in it, I have inserted but ye other is wholy ye Mss wch I have followed so exactly, as I have not at all varyed from ye originall.’29 Attached to the letter is a one-page catalogue with the abbots numbered on the left margin and their respective obituaries beside their names. Only eight abbots have recorded year-dates. Twysden’s letter is very revealing for another reason. At the time of writing, Ware was in his fourth year in exile, having been expelled from Dublin by parliamentary forces on account of his Royalist loyalties.30 Unable to access his notes at his Irish residence, his enquiry about Asseburne’s catalogue shows his determination to obtain Irish material for researching his native city even in the most unpromising circumstances.31 Ware’s research extended well beyond the confines of ecclesiastical history. Several entries in his notebooks contain significant information about medieval Dublin. One such example is an extract from the collections of Thady Dowling: This citty is called Dublin by reson that plott where the suburbes are were black lakes & black mire soe that when the tide did flowe & kum ov[er] that blacke marte it showed verie darke & blacke & they caled a blacke fluid lind duib and the same being turned Duib Lin that is Dowlyn & Dublin it was allsoe caled Baile at cliat because before the waters were staied wthin the bankes of the haven they must needes lay a greate store of timber ov[er] croste & hurdles wth soades to make a foundacon to builde uppon & these hurdles & croste timber are caled in Irish Cliateib, baile is a town & at is a ford.32

Multiple references to city life can also be found in ‘The Voyage of Sir Richard Edgecomb Knt, sent into Ireland by King Henry the VII Anno Domini 1488’.33 Containing twenty-four folios, the voyage provides a detailed diary of events relating Edgecomb’s administration of the oaths of allegiance to the new king’s Irish subjects. On 21 July, for example, 29 Sir Roger Twysden to Ware, 3 April 1653 (BL, Add. MS 4783, fol. 21). 30 ‘Sir James Ware, French journey, 1649’ [Jacobi Waraei equities, itinerarium Gallicum, anno 1649] (BL, MS Cotton Vesp. E. VI. 1). 31 While in exile in London, Ware continued to publish his research despite being unable to gain access to all his notes which were in Dublin. In the preface of De Hibernia et antiquitatibus ejus disquisitions (London, 1654) he revealed his frustration, stating, ‘I do not deny but that many things here might have been better disposed, if I had thought it worth the while, so I confess that I could have added many more out of my private manuscripts, which were not to hand as I was endeavouring to do these things’ (sig. A4r). 32 BL, Add. MS 4821, fol. 65r. 33 TCD, MS 664, fols 73r–97r.

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Edgecomb went to St Thomas’s Abbey with the earl of Kildare where ‘the lords & councell were assembled & there in a great chamber called the kings chamber’. They then attended mass in the adjoining monastery, which afforded the occasion for the earl of Kildare, the bishops and the lords to take the oath of allegiance to the king. Another curious entry recounts how ‘the quire w[i]th the organs sung it up solemly & at that tyme all bells in the church rung’ as Kildare and most of the lords dined at Edgecomb’s residence, commenting that Edgecomb placed ‘a collor of the kings livery about the s[ai]d earles neck, w[hi]ch he wore through out the s[ai]d citty of Dublin’.34 The document is remarkable not only for its content; it is also one of the rare instances in which Ware transcribed the full account. In general he preferred to selectively abstract material relating to the research he was pursuing at any given time.35 Above all, Ware had a keen interest in the mayors and bailiffs of Dublin dating as far back as the mid-fourteenth century and continuing to the 1640s.36 This information was primarily sourced from chain books and registers and on occasion from various manuscripts housed in the castle. While he did not publish any list during his lifetime, it is possible that he planned to write a history of Dublin or at the very least produce a catalogue along the same lines as De praesulibus Hiberniae (1665), which was his final work. The fact that alongside the list of mayors and bailiffs there are commentaries about special events which gives grounds for suspecting that he may well have contemplated such a project. For 1496, for instance, Ware records that Jencken Caydon was mayor and then notes that ‘Sr Edward Poynings arrived at Howth and was lord deputy and Jenico Marks [mayor in 1486] was slaine at Gisers Lane’ (just off Cook Street).37 Again, when noting that Thomas Rogers was mayor in 1555, Ware explains how ‘the Cavenaghs made a prey w[i]th in the shire 34 TCD, MS 664, fol. 84v. 35 This point has been recently illustrated by Valerie McGowan-Doyle in relation to Ware’s use of the Book of Howth, particularly the sections on John de Courcy. See Valerie McGowan-Doyle, The Book of Howth: The Elizabethan re-conquest of Ireland and the Old English (Cork, 2011), pp. 121–2. 36 ‘Catalogus majorum Hiberniae’ (TCD, MS 664, fols 49v–51v). This catalogue (which also includes the names of bailiffs) begins from 1341 under the reign of Edward III. For a more extensive list, see ‘The register of ye Mayers of Dublin wth other memorable observations’ (BL, Add. MS 4791, fols 133r–146r). This records the names of the mayors and bailiffs between 1406 and 1592. Other entries, chiefly from the sixteenth century, can be located under ‘Fragment of annals of Dublin’ (BL, Add. MS 4822, fols 43v–45v). He also cites the city officials in the brief period between 1619 and 1622. It is possible to follow this sequence by examining his private diary which continues until 1648, Empey (ed.), ‘The diary of Sir James Ware, 1623–66’, pp. 60–127. 37 BL, Add. MS 4791, fol. 135v.

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of Dublin & the country rose upon them & drove them into the castle of Powerscourt’, adding that ‘the k[night]t m[ar]shal with many of his army went thither the 3 of May [1556] & besieged them round about 3 [o’clock]’. The episode concluded ‘on the 14 of May w[hi]ch was Assention day [where] they were brought to the k[ing]s Castle about 8 of the clock at night & the day following there was 14 hanged’.38 Ware’s preoccupation with details of this kind is quite striking because it must surely indicate that he was planning something more ambitious than cataloguing the civic officials of the city. He was plainly interested in the broader history of Dublin.39 Put another way, the information he assembled was not only intended to demonstrate the important contribution made by the city’s mayors and bailiffs – its purpose was also to celebrate Dublin’s proud past. But whatever plans Ware may have entertained, the tumultuous events of the 1640s severely impeded his research. After the first Irish biographical dictionary – De scriptoribus Hiberniae in 1639 – it took him fifteen years to produce another significant historical work. This is scarcely surprising since in the course of this period he served as a member of the Irish Privy Council and as an advisor to the king on Irish affairs on behalf of the earl of Ormond, became a prisoner of parliamentary forces in the Tower of London, and lived in exile in Caen, Paris and then in London.40 Renaissance Dublin How Ware came to play such a central role in the intellectual milieu of early modern Dublin can be partially explained by his extensive library collection. His accumulation of manuscript sources is significant because it reveals the scale of his intellectual interests. In 1648 he published Librorum manuscriptorum in bibliotheca Jacobi Waræi equities aur. catalogus – apparently the only book printed in Dublin in that year – which details many of the manuscript sources that were in his possession.41 38 BL, Add. MS 4791, fol. 141v. 39 For other examples of Ware’s research into the city’s civic officials, see, in particular, ‘An account of some of ye officers & remarkable actiones of the citty & citizens of Dublin’ (BL, Add. MS 4784, fols 103r–105r; TCD, MS 6404, fols 10v–11r). 40 Ware was appointed Irish Privy Councillor on 20 July 1640 (Cal. S. P. Ire., 1633–47, p. 244). On Ware’s activities in the 1640s, see John Lowe (ed.), Letter-book of the earl of Clanricarde (Dublin, 1983), pp. 130, 138; James Hogan (ed.), Letters and papers relating to the Irish Rebellion, between 1642–46 (Irish Manuscripts Commission, Dublin, 1936), passim; ‘Sir James Ware, French journey, 1649’ [Jacobi Waraei equities, itinerarium Gallicum, anno 1649] (BL, MS Cotton Vesp. E. VI. 1). 41 E. R. McClintock Dix, Catalogue of early Dublin-printed books, 1601 to 1700: Part II: 1626 to 1650 (Dublin, 1899), p. 82.

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Covering an impressive twenty-two pages, Ware divided the catalogue into five sections: theology; history, politics and geography; law; poetry; and, finally, philosophy, medicine and mathematics. These, in turn, were broken down into various subsections: twenty-five for theology, fifty-five for history, politics and geography, five for law, two for poetry and 135 for philosophy, medicine and mathematics. That it was the first catalogue of a private manuscript library to be printed in Ireland is highly significant. More than that, his library represented in all probability one of the largest collections in Ireland, surpassed only by that of Ussher – ‘the most extensive library’ in Ware’s opinion.42 Accordingly Ware’s collection placed him at the centre of a sophisticated and culturally vibrant community, the members of which engrossed themselves in Irish history and culture. Tucked away in the last two folios of Ware’s commonplace book is a list recording the names of people to whom he lent manuscripts and books. Dating from 1630, it reveals a fascinating cross-section of people in Dublin actively involved in such transactions. Many of those mentioned are very obscure, moreover. Sir James Cra[i]g alias Cradog, for instance, is mentioned in the parish records of St Werburgh: he received ‘Fragments of the history of Ireland’.43 Thomas Hooke acquired a copy of Campion’s Chronicle of Ireland (this had been originally incorporated by Richard Stanihurst in Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (first edition, 1577; second edition, 1586)). He was a parishioner of SS Catherine and James.44 Roger Moore and Patrick Gough were given a loan of the Irish translation of the New Testament and the lives of SS Modur and Brigit respectively. Both men lived within the parish confines of St John the Evangelist.45 Meanwhile, Thomas Reynolds borrowed the Annals of Ulster. He was probably a kinsman of Ware and connected to the Reynolds family whose names are listed in the vestry records of St John the Evangelist and SS Catherine and James.46 42 Librorum manuscriptorum, p. 13. ‘In Bibliotheca instructissima Reverendissimi Doctussimiq; Viri, D. Jacobi Usserij Archiepiscopi Armachani.’ 43 BL, Add. MS 4821, fol. 242v; cf. Adrian Empey (ed.), The proctors’ accounts of the Parish Church of St Werburgh, Dublin 1481–1627 (Dublin, 2009), pp. 146–7. Sir James Craig, a Scottish undertaker in the Ulster plantation. See Victor Treadwell (ed.), The Irish Commission of 1622 (Dublin, 2006), p. 521. I would like to thank David Edwards for bringing my attention to Craig’s identity. 44 BL, Add. MS 4821, fol. 239v; cf. Raymond Gillespie (ed.), The vestry records of the parishes of St Catherine and St James, Dublin, 1657–1692 (Dublin, 2004), p. 215. 45 BL, Add. MS 4821 fol. 242v; cf. Raymond Gillespie (ed.), The vestry records of the parish of St John the Evangelist, Dublin, 1595–1658 (Dublin, 2002), pp. 102, 105, 107, 108, 136. 46 BL, Add. MS 4821, fol. 242v. Edward Reynolds is listed in the vestry records for

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Besides these relatively unknown members of the Dublin laity, Ware also records prominent figures who held important political or religious offices. For example, Ussher was loaned ‘my [Irish] annals’ that included the annals of Ulster, Leinster and Innisfallen. Edward Parry, later bishop of Killaloe, approached Ware for a copy of ‘The life of Belarmine’ and George Downham’s A Treatise Concerning Antichrist (1603).47 Both Ussher and Parry were among the inner circle of friends to whom Ware donated copies of his Catalogus in July 1648.48 Within the administration, a broad spectrum of diverse individuals such as Sir William Parsons, William Hilton, Daniel Molyneux and Nathaniel Catelyn appear on Ware’s list. Parsons was master of the court of wards. He obtained ‘Sir John Davies reports’, while Hilton, a judge who came to prominence under the deputyship of Sir Thomas Wentworth, borrowed Captain John Smith’s Generall historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles (1624).49 Furthermore, Molyneux, the Ulster king of arms and a keen genealogist of Gaelic families, was given a copy of Giraldus Cambrensis’s work.50 Catelyn, recorder of the city of Dublin and second sergeant-atlaw, got an untitled book attributed to the renowned English historian Henry Spelman.51 SS Catherine and James while there is a William Reynolds mentioned in records for St John the Evangelist. See Gillespie (ed.), The vestry records of the parishes of St Catherine and St James, Dublin, p. 216; Gillespie (ed.), The vestry records of the parish of St John the Evangelist, Dublin, p. 27. Ware’s brother-in-law was Humphrey MacRannel (Reynolds) of Lough Scur near Carrick-on-Shannon: Michael Herity, ‘Rathmulcah, Ware and MacFirbisigh’, Ulster Journal of Archaeology 33 (1970), p. 50. In a letter to Sir George Lane in 1664, Ware requested that his nephew, James Reynolds, be fully restored to his lands in the pending Bill of Settlement. In a second letter to James, Duke of Ormond, he informed the lord lieutenant that Reynolds had been in his company since the first year of the rebellion. See Ware to Lane, 25 June 1664 (Bodleian Library, Carte MS 33, fol. 437); Ware to Ormond, 4 January 1665 (Bodleian Library, Carte MS 34, fol. 3). Both Humphrey and Thomas Reynolds are listed as landowners in Leitrim by the royal commissioners in 1622: see Treadwell (ed.), The Irish Commission of 1622, p. 678. See also J. P. Meehan, ‘Notes on the Mac Rannals of Leitrim and their country: Being introductory to a diary of James Reynolds, Lough Scur, County Leitrim, for the years 1658–1660’, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquities of Ireland, fifth series, 35:2 (1905), pp. 139–51. 47 BL, Add. MS 4821, fol. 239v. On Ware’s collection of Irish annals, see D. P. McCarthy, The Irish Annals (Dublin, 2008), pp. 71–81. 48 TCD, MS 6404, fol. 164v. 49 BL, Add MS 4821, fols 242v, 239v. 50 BL, Add. MS 4821, fol. 239v. Molyneux was acknowledged by Ware in his work on the Leinster bishops in 1628. Under the entry of the thirteenth-century bishop of Ferns, John St John, Ware thanks Molyneux for loaning him the canons of the synod convened by St John between 1223 and 1243: Ware, De praesulibus Lageniae, p. 57. See also BL, Add. MS 4788, fols 139v–140v. 51 BL, Add. MS 4821, fol. 242v.

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These men represent only a fraction of the people to whom Ware loaned material. Beyond the Dublin cultural nexus there existed a wide network of friends. These were by no means confined to traditional Protestant circles, as one might expect. While it is possible to identify members of the New English community within the web of Ware’s book-loaning club, he clearly formed good relations with Catholics as well, particularly with the secular and regular clergy and, most notably of all, influential representatives of Gaelic society. Ware frequently exchanged material with David Rothe, Catholic bishop of Ossory, and with his cousin Robert Rothe who lived in Kilkenny. These included important sources like the register of the twelfth-century Augustinian priory of Kells and the Annals of Friar Clyn.52 Similarly, Ware was in regular contact with the Franciscan Thomas Strange (also known as Thomas Strong) who acted as an agent for Luke Wadding, Guardian of St Isidore’s in Rome.53 That he was probably introduced to Rothe and Strange by Ussher is a reflection of the close-knit scholarly community in Ireland.54 Ussher, moreover, seems to have been the instigator of his dealings with Conall Mageoghegan in Westmeath, who was at the nerve centre of the Gaelic literary world.55 But while it seems Ussher was chiefly reliant on Mageoghegan for Irish sources, Ware opened up a number of channels within Gaelic society to acquire important material. On 21 September 1639, for example, he recorded notes from an Irish manuscript belonging to Brien O’Birne from Roscommon.56 Likewise, he was given access to the Cashel Psalter thanks to Edmund Ó Cruitin from Thomond, while Brien Mc Murrogh Roe of Wicklow had the Martyrology of Irish Saints at his disposal, in which Ware took a special interest.57 52 TCD, MS 6404, fol. 6r; Mark Empey (ed.), ‘Sir James Ware’s bibliographic lists’, Irish Historical Studies 39:153 (2014), p. 122. 53 BL, Add. MS 4821, fol. 242v. 54 Bernadette Cunningham and Raymond Gillespie, ‘James Ussher and his Irish manuscripts’, Studia Hibernica 33 (2004–5), p. 83; William O’Sullivan (ed.), ‘Correspondence of David Rothe and James Ussher, 1619–23’, Collectanea Hibernica 36–37 (1994–95), pp. 8–49. 55 TCD, MS 6404, fol. 146r. On Ware, Mageoghegan and the Annals of Clonmacnoise, see Sarah Sanderlin, ‘The manuscripts of the Annals of Clonmacnois’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Section C, 82 (1982), pp. 111–23. 56 BL, Add. MS 4788, fol. 136v. 57 TCD, MS 6404, fol. 146r. On the back of a letter from Rothe to Ussher in 1619, the latter listed a number of manuscripts in Irish and their owners. In the first entry Ussher recorded ‘(Edmunds brother) for Psalter Cassell (which his friend hath)’. This must surely be Edmund Ó Cruitin who probably was in possession of the document by the time Ware discovered its whereabouts: O’Sullivan (ed.), ‘Correspondence of David Rothe and James Ussher, 1619–23’, p. 20; Pádraig Ó Riain, ‘The Psalter of Cashel: a provisional list of contents’, Éigse 23 (1989), p. 124.

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Ware’s brief notices about his book and manuscript lending practices are important for two reasons. Firstly, it shows the remarkable extent of his wide network of friends and scholars. His records of people to whom he loaned material and those who possessed sources of interest to him indicate a high level of cultural interaction which criss-crossed ethnic, religious and political divisions. The fact that such a broad scholarly network, like the one operated by Ware, could exist in the early seventeenth century suggests that at this level Irish society was by no means as polarised as it is often thought to have been. Secondly, and no less significant, Ware’s list shows a demand among the inhabitants of Dublin for predominantly Irish-related works. Whereas the relatively limited production of printed works from the king’s printers in Ireland might indicate a lack of interest in books among the reading public, Ware’s records suggest that the city was in fact a hive of activity in the 1630s.58 Ware’s connection with the Franciscans is arguably the most curious relationship that he developed over the course of his research. By the time he published his second catalogue on the lives of the Leinster bishops in 1628, Ware had evidently formed a close bond with Strange. Writing to Wadding, Strange urged his superior to send drafts of his work to Ware, who had promised to authenticate the findings with the original manuscripts.59 Their friendship quickly blossomed. Three years later Strange’s correspondence continued in the same positive vein. ‘I was in Dublin a fortnight ago’, he informed Wadding, ‘and Sir James Ware bade me remember him to Your Paternity, and will aid me with what he has . . . he is a worthy man, and will, I hope, prove altogether good.’60 Ware’s cordial relations with prominent members of the Catholic clergy were by no means exclusively Franciscan. Rothe, who was characteristically cautious about corresponding with his religious opponents, alluded to his amicable rapport with Ware. In a letter dated July 1631 the bishop revealed that ‘manny annals are cited by Sir Josue Ware in his brief History of the Archb[isho]ps, which may be gotten by frendship’.61 There is a crucial 58 See Raymond Gillespie, Reading Ireland: Print, reading and social change in early modern Ireland (Manchester, 2005). 59 Strange to Wadding, 5 August 1628, Wadding Papers 1614–38, ed. Brendan Jennings (Dublin, 1953), p. 269. 60 Strange to Wadding, 30 May 1631, Wadding Papers 1614–38, p. 524. I owe an enormous debt to Susie Hayes, who translated a number of letters that were originally in Spanish. 61 Rothe to Wadding, 20 July 1631, Wadding Papers 1614–38, p. 551. On Rothe’s apprehension in regard to forming too much of an intimate relationship with Ussher, see his letter to William Malone SJ, April 1619 in O’Sullivan (ed.), ‘Correspondence of David Rothe and James Ussher, 1619–23’, p. 15; Cunningham and Gillespie, ‘James Ussher and his Irish manuscripts’, pp. 83–4.

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point to be made in all of this: while Strange, Wadding and Rothe were fully cognisant of Ware’s religious convictions, the fact remains that their natural caution was readily overcome by their shared interest in Irish history. Bernadette Cunningham and Raymond Gillespie argue that ‘the participants in this scholarly circle, which focussed in particular on ecclesiastical manuscripts of Irish historical interest, were scholars and senior clergy who, despite strong confessional differences, could relate to one another on terms of mutual respect’.62 Ware was certainly held in high regard by his Catholic contemporaries. The Catholic bishop of Waterford, Patrick Comerford, admitted to using Ware’s work as an authority to settle a dispute with Father John Maddan, who laid claim to the abbey of Mothell.63 Meanwhile another Franciscan, Hugh Bourke, informed a colleague that he was unable to find any of Ware’s books in London, indicating that the demand for his works among Catholics extended well beyond Ireland.64 It may be noted too that the library catalogue of the Augustinians of Galway in 1731, in which the majority of printed books were from the mid- to late seventeenth century, lists Ware’s De Hibernia (1654) in its collection. This is all the more remarkable because historical works were poorly represented in the library.65 It was therefore unsurprising that the respect for Ware inspired all levels of genuine affection conveyed so clearly in Strange’s letters. Yet for all the fascinating insights into cross-denominational cooperation the real litmus test for reciprocal admiration of ‘opposing’ groups was Ware’s relationship with key figures in Gaelic Ireland. The existence of these important nationwide contacts has already been established, but his association with the distinguished Gaelic scholar Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhisigh from Sligo merits particular attention. After returning to Dublin following the collapse of the Cromwellian regime, Ware immediately immersed himself in Irish sources in an effort to complete various projects which had been interrupted during the Interregnum. 62 Cunningham and Gillespie, ‘James Ussher and his Irish manuscripts’, p. 84. 63 Patrick Comerford to Wadding, 22 November 1629, Wadding Papers 1614–38, p. 322; Comerford to Wadding, 8 January 1630, Wadding Papers 1614–38, p. 335. 64 Hugh Bourke to [Wadding?], n.d. [1650s?], H.M.C. Franciscan MSS (Dublin, 1906), p. 57. Mark Williams makes the important point that while Bourke’s inability to find Ware’s books in London might suggest the works received serious scholarly attention, it could also reveal the limitations on the circulation of texts: Mark Williams, ‘History, the Interregnum and the exiled Irish’, in Mark Williams and Stephen Paul Forest (eds), Constructing the past: Writing Irish history, 1600–1800 (Woodbridge, 2010), p. 47. 65 Hugh Fenning, ‘The Library of the Augustinians of Galway in 1731’, Collectanea Hibernica 31–32 (1989–90), pp. 163–4, 184–5.

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Accordingly he employed Mac Fhirbhisigh to translate Irish material in or before 1665.66 These included valuable sources such as the Book of Lecan, the Annals of Innisfallen and the Annals of Tigernach – the latter two being in Ware’s private collection.67 Far from being a purely formal relationship, it is evident that the two men became very close: in the opening paragraph of his list of 140 early and medieval Irish bishops, Mac Fhirbhisigh addressed it to the ‘Right Worshipfull and Ever Hono[u]red Sir James Ware’.68 The fact that the Gaelic scholar was both working and lodging at his patron’s house testifies to the warmth of the friendship.69 Indeed, it is likely that Mac Fhirbhisigh was living with Ware when the latter died in December 1666. While these men were undoubtedly from very different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, which might in other circumstances prove to be insuperable obstacles to friendship and trust, it is clear that these could be overcome by their mutual devotion to the course of preserving Ireland’s rich medieval heritage. Whatever might be said about the divisive nature of Irish society in the seventeenth century, Ware’s extensive network suggests that such divisions were by no means impermeable. The passion Ware demonstrated in his scholarly endeavours interlinks with the second important observation about his book-lending records. The information they provide reveals the existence of a broader, more inclusive book-reading community in Dublin capable of responding to, and participating in, his historical interests. The relatively low yield of printed works commissioned by the Society of Stationers would indicate an uninterested reading public, particularly before the political turmoil of 66 The earliest date we can associate Mac Fhirbhisigh with is 1665. However, it is quite possible he was working for Ware before then as he was assisting his patron in preparing De praesulibus Hiberniae which was published in Dublin in 1665. 67 See Nollaig Ó Muraíle, The celebrated antiquary: Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhisigh (c.1600– 1671): His lineage, life and learning (Maynooth, 2002), pp. 247–63; William O’Sullivan, ‘The manuscript collection of Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhisigh’, in Alfred P. Smyth (ed.), Seanchas: Studies in early and medieval Irish archaeology, history and literature in honour of Francis J. Byrne (Dublin, 2000), pp. 439–47. It should be noted that Ware also looked to Muircheartach Ó Cionga for help in translating Irish sources, notably the Book of Lecan (BL, Add. MS 4797, fol. 88v). The two were on very friendly terms and Ware was instrumental in recommending Ó Cionga to Bishop William Bedell, who endeavoured to translate the Old Testament into Irish; see E. S. Shuckburgh (ed.), Two biographies of William Bedell (London, 1902), pp. 131, 142. 68 This appears under the list entitled ‘Ex Ferbisii Annalibus de Leakan in Tireraghmuaii’ (BL, Add. MS 4799, fol. 18r). 69 In the heading at the top of the page Mac Fhirbhisigh wrote: ‘This translaten beginned wass by Dudley fferbissie in S[i]r James Wares house at Castle-street, Dublin. vi novembris 1666’ (BL, Add. MS 4799, fol. 45r). See also O’Donovan, ‘The Annals of Ireland, 1443–1468, translated from Irish by Dudley Firbisse’, p. 200.

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the 1640s.70 Indeed, the earl of Cork’s chaplain, Steven Jerome, bemoaned the lack of printed material available by calling Ireland ‘little bookish’.71 However, in recent years Gillespie has questioned this. He has shown how William Bladen, the king’s printer in Dublin, imported an estimated 20 hundredweight of books from Chester in 1632: not only were merchants actively involved in the book trade, but professional booksellers had become established in Dublin by the 1630s.72 For example, the London printer John Crooke, together with his brother Edmond, Thomas Allot and Richard Sergier, set up their business in 1637 and became a source of a large supply of bound and unbound books.73 Even more significant is Ware’s involvement in the book trade. His manuscripts show that he consulted catalogues from the Frankfurt book fair.74 Indeed, his main point of contact for obtaining specific continental works were his neighbours on Castle Street – the Society of Stationers. On 15 December 1625, for example, Ware recorded money owed to the king’s printer in Ireland, Bartholomew Downes, for books that he received via the printing company.75 Below his memorandum are two lists: the first contains the titles of books he received while the second makes reference to additional works which he sought to purchase. The vast majority of the titles were religious, which is no surprise given that he was completing his first publication on the lives of the archbishops of Cashel and Tuam. The works that he bought included Thomas Hibernicus, Flores omnuim pene doctorum (Lyon, 1567), Petri Opmersensis, Omnium Archiepisciporum Coloniensium ac Trevirensium catalogus (Cologne, 1578) and Thomas Messingham, Florilegium insulae sanctorum seu vitae et acta sanctorum Hiberniae (Paris, 1624). The most notable aspect of all is the manicule directed at Henricus Willot’s Athenae othodoxum sodalitii Franciscani (Liege, 1598) and an anonymous text entitled ‘Chronicles of the Cistercian 70 McClintock Dix, Catalogue of early Dublin-printed books, 1601 to 1700: Part II: 1626 to 1650, pp. 53–73 (for the period 1626–41). Gillespie recorded that there were only ninety-six titles printed between 1603 and 1641 and, more interestingly, the majority of these were after 1618 when the London Society of Stationers took control of the king’s printer at Dublin. See Raymond Gillespie, ‘Irish printing in the early seventeenth century’, Irish Economic and Social History 15 (1988), 81–8, at p. 81. 71 Stephen Jerome, Irelands Jubilee or Irelands joyes lo-paen (Dublin, 1624), sig. A3, as cited in Gillespie, ‘Irish printing in the early seventeenth century’, p. 86. 72 BL, Add. MS 4821, fol. 69r, 236v. 73 Gillespie, Reading Ireland, pp. 65–6; Raymond Gillespie, Seventeenth-century Dubliners and their books (Dublin, 2005), pp. 7–8. 74 Empey (ed.), ‘Sir James Ware’s bibliographic lists’, p. 125. 75 Ibid., pp. 123–4; Mary Pollard, A dictionary of members of the Dublin book trade, 1550– 1800 (London, 2000), p. 166.

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Order’, ­indicating sources which were of particular interest to him in the mid-1620s. Ware’s acquisitions are important for a number of reasons. To begin with, they demonstrate how well informed he was about works in circulation throughout Europe. Messingham’s Florileguim (1624) had only been in print for one year when he received a copy. Similarly, Ware enquired about the possibility of purchasing Philip O’Sullivan Beare’s Historiae Catholicae Hiberniae compendium (1621), which was printed just four years previously. All of this points to the fact that Ware was sufficiently wealthy to acquire a private library. Requesting a substantial collection of works, especially from the Continent, undoubtedly came at a considerable cost. Moreover, that Downes facilitated Ware’s demands suggests that the latter was creditworthy. A third and final observation brings the argument back to his list that recorded the books and manuscripts he loaned. His accumulation of valuable sources was in the first instance intended to advance his scholarly curiosity. But their mere existence had the secondary effect of enlightening an increasingly inquisitive Dublin community. Whether they were financially constrained or lacked influential contacts in the printing world, it is quite clear that Dubliners looked to Ware to satisfy their intellectual interests. It is not simply the enthusiasm for books and manuscripts that is so fascinating, but the range of the material which individuals sought to borrow. For example, John King was loaned the History of Elizabeth (1625) by William Camden. Edward Parry received John Owen’s Epigrammata (1606–13) while Ware’s brother, Joseph, asked for a Latin play composed by George Wither, pointing to a demand for literature. There is also evidence of lively cultural engagement: Moore’s acquisition of the New Testament in Irish, Hilton’s enquiry about Captain Smith’s History of Virginia (1632) and John Ware’s request for Fynes Moryson’s Itinerary (1617) suggest an appetite among some Dubliners to expand their cultural horizons. There were others who were more focused on historical sources. The translator and Irish scribe Murtagh King was given a copy of a crucial medieval Irish manuscript known as the ‘Psalter Narrane’. Similarly, Thomas Strange OFM was loaned works by the sixteenth-century historian Nicholas Harpsfield and the archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker. What is even more remarkable is the fact that Ware’s collection of historical works was loaned not only to scholars but also to laymen who took a personal interest in chronicles, annals and other historical studies. James Barry obtained manuscripts of Bishop John Bale, Nicholas Loftus borrowed the Register of Kilmainham and Sir James Craig requested John Selden’s Analecta Anglo Britannica

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(1615). Finally, and unsurprisingly, there is a significant emphasis on religious works. As has already been noted, Parry asked for ‘The life of Belarmine’ and Downham’s A treatise concerning Antichrist (1603). This was also in demand by Joseph Ware. Added to that were copies of saints’ lives which were probably used for devotional activity rather than for purely antiquarian pursuits.76 Ware gave a copy of the lives of St Patrick to Mr Lisaght whereas Gough received the lives of SS Modur and Bridget.77 Thus, the list has significance far beyond a private collection. It plainly demonstrates that Dublin was a vibrant community where books and manuscripts were widely understood and appreciated. Most importantly, it shows Ware to be at the centre of this emerging cultural hub. Conclusion Thomas Herron recently noted that ‘Ireland is conspicuously not among those recent books heralding a ‘Renaissance’ along Europe’s and Britain’s fringes, including Poland, Sweden and Scotland’.78 This interesting observation deserves closer examination. While there are inevitable reservations about the terms ‘Renaissance’ and ‘Ireland’ in the same sentence, he is right to draw parallels between Ireland’s cultural contribution and developments in continental Europe.79 Distinguished Irish scholars like Ussher, Ware, Rothe, Wadding and Ó Cléirigh played an integral role in that wider intellectual community. For example, Ware and Rothe were united not only in their endeavours to discredit the views advanced by the Scottish writer Thomas Dempster but also in placing Ireland’s ancient status on a par with the great kingdoms of Europe.80 While seventeenth-century Irish historians have been generally recognised for their individual merits, Ware has surprisingly gone unnoticed despite being at the forefront of scholarly research.81 His work on his 76 See Cunningham and Gillespie, ‘James Ussher and his Irish manuscripts’, p. 86. 77 BL, Add. MS 4821, fols 239v, 242v. 78 Thomas Herron, ‘Introduction: A fragmented Renaissance’, in Thomas Herron and Michael Potterton (eds), Ireland in the Renaissance, c.1540–1660 (Dublin, 2007), pp. 35–6. 79 See Michael Potterton, ‘Introduction: The FitzGeralds, Florence, St Fiachra and a few fragments’, in Michael Potterton and Thomas Herron (eds), Dublin and the Pale in the Renaissance, c.1540–1660 (Dublin, 2011), p. 40. 80 David Rothe, Hibernia resurgens (Paris, 1621); Sir James Ware, De Hibernia et antiquitatibus eius disquisitions (London, 1654). 81 See Ford, James Ussher; Bernadette Cunningham, The Annals of the Four Masters (Dublin, 2010); Thomas O’Connor, ‘Custom, authority, and tolerance in Irish political thought: David Rothe’s Analecta Sacra et Mira (1616)’, Irish Theological Quarterly

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native city is a case in point. The catalogue on the lives of the Dublin bishops was by any measure a remarkable achievement for its time. In this work he not only examined an impressive range of manuscript sources, but also undertook extensive investigations into the city’s history. It is a mark of his enduring legacy that historians of Dublin in the succeeding centuries continued to rely extensively on his research, beginning with the first published work on Dublin in 1766. Moreover, it formed a central part of J. T. Gilbert’s multi-volume A history of the city of Dublin (1854– 59) which was printed two hundred years after Ware’s death. Ware’s reputation extends well beyond his enormous contribution to Irish history. His manuscript collection reveals a broad cultural curiosity that was by no means confined to a scholarly elite. On the contrary, it shows that members of multiple religious, social and ethnic backgrounds were eager to engage with manuscripts and books, whether related to matters of national or international interest. Viewed in this context, it is not unreasonable to consider Dublin as a Renaissance city of literature with Ware at its centre. The very diversity of his network reveals that seventeenth-century Dublin, and by extension Ireland, was more culturally vibrant than has been previously thought.

65:2 (2000), pp. 133–56; Colm Lennon, ‘Political thought of Irish counter-reformation churchmen: The testimony of the “Analecta” of Bishop David Rothe’, in Hiram Morgan (ed.), Political ideology in Ireland, 1541–1641 (Dublin, 1999), pp. 181–202.

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Translation and collaboration in Renaissance Dublin Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin Translation is an essential activity of a literate age, when that is also an age of multilingual communication. This truth seems especially relevant in Ireland, which like the rest of Europe inherits the polyglot culture of a Christianity inflected by classical learning. In addition, Ireland (like many European countries) is a place where the dominance of a single vernacular has been impossible for almost one thousand years.1 While the Irish middle ages are alive with translation, the Renaissance brings a sense of new departures, especially, I suggest, in a new historical emphasis which examines the gap between original and source, between antiquity and modernity, in ways that enhance our awareness of cultural as well as linguistic encounters. This is true in general of Renaissance translation, imitation and appropriation, and it is true of translation in Ireland. The role of Dublin, in particular, as the point of cultural contact between nations and languages, as the centre out of which the foreign is disseminated, has not been sufficiently appreciated. This chapter examines the entangling of translation, poetry, autobiography and other literary genres in Dublin in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. My focus is on elements of translation which relate to the city as the seat of government: the choice of texts to translate, the effect of frequenting a translation milieu, the interface between translated text and audience, the role of the institutions of the city. I hope to show what was in common between different types and undertakings of translation, and what was necessarily diverse. Whether a text is being freely redeployed for a particular and personal purpose or is being faithfully interpreted under a religious command, translation is a social, material and cooperative phenomenon.   1 See Michael Cronin and Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin (eds), The languages of Ireland (Dublin, 2003).

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In Ireland, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are ages of renewed and developing scholarship, in both of the main vernacular languages and in Latin. The 1526 list of the contents of the library of the earls of Kildare is regularly invoked by scholars. Together with the collection owned by the Franciscan friars of Youghal, catalogued between 1490 and 1523, it reminds us that the linguistic reach of traditional Ireland – clerical and aristocratic – was wide, embracing books in the learned languages, in vernacular translation and in foreign vernaculars.2 The almost hyperactive scholarship of Ussher in the seventeenth century, with his network of European contacts (but it seems also of local translators from Irish to Latin) is illuminated by the work lately done on his correspondence.3 Much recent critical writing has shown how antiquarianism and historiography flourished and how they did so in an international context and with a comparative approach. In particular, Making Ireland Roman, the volume edited by Jason Harris and Keith Sidwell, has drawn attention to the importance of the neo-Latin writers, in Ireland and abroad, while in Thomas Herron and Michael Potterton’s Ireland in the Renaissance, artefacts, buildings and landscape as well as texts are made to reveal affinities and allusions to Europe which time has obscured.4 The same volume contains Colm Lennon’s essay on Peter White’s school in Kilkenny, alerting the reader to the practicalities of the language learning which makes scholarship and translation possible, and Clare Carroll’s account of Irish clerics in Rome who were in the thick of sophisticated theological arguments but also preserved and furthered Gaelic linguistic scholarship. Lennon’s research on the culture of the English-speaking Pale complements Mícheál Mac Craith’s and Brendan Bradshaw’s on Gaelic Ireland, while Carroll’s points to a well-equipped diaspora.5  2 Crown surveys of lands, 1540–41, with the Kildare Rental begun in 1518, ed. Gearóid Mac Niocaill (Dublin, 1994), pp. 312–14; Colmán Ó Clábaigh, The Franciscans in Ireland, 1400–1534: From reform to Reformation (Dublin, 2002), pp. 158 ff.  3 Elizabethanne Boran, ‘Ussher and the collection of manuscripts in early modern Europe’, in Jason Harris and Keith Sidwell (eds), Making Ireland Roman: Irish neo-Latin writers and the Republic of Letters (Cork, 2009), pp. 176–94; ‘Libraries and collectors, 1550–1700’, in Raymond Gillespie and Andrew Hadfield (eds), The Oxford history of the Irish book, Vol. 3: The Irish book in English, 1550–1800 (Oxford, 2006), pp. 91–110, at pp. 93, 103. See also the chapter by Empey in this volume.   4 Thomas Herron and Michael Potterton (eds), Ireland in the Renaissance, c.1540–1660 (Dublin, 2007).   5 Colm Lennon, ‘Pedagogy and reform: The influence of Peter White on Irish scholarship in the Renaissance’, in Herron and Potterton, Ireland in the Renaissance, pp. 43–52; Clare Carroll, ‘“Tutte le antiche usanze”: Preserving Irish culture in Rome’, in Herron and Potterton, Ireland in the Renaissance, pp. 138–49; Mícheál Mac Craith, ‘Gaelic Ireland and the Renaissance’, in Glanmor Williams and Robert Owen Jones (eds), The  Celts

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Study of the history of printing and book production has revealed a slow and limited development of publishing, which complicates the fate of translated texts.6 The two translated works I will principally discuss in this chapter, Lodowick Bryskett’s A discourse of civill life taken largely from the Italian of Giraldi Cinzio, and the Bible in Irish, a good part of which was translated under the aegis of William Bedell, were in the end printed in London, while the translations were (in the second case partly) done in Dublin. We need also to bear in mind the limitations, the difficulties and necessities which beset all scholarly activity, and how they were faced. If a multilingual culture is enriched by its diversity, it is also full of opportunities for incomprehension, which in turn stimulates translation. Charlie Dillon’s research on French devotional works mediated for seventeenth-century Irish Catholics, by translations undertaken in Prague and Louvain, leads him to consider, as well as the authorship of translations, the class profile of the Irish readership and the inevitable mismatch between cultures which translation seeks to bridge.7 The history of the Irish Bible – like the early history of the Bible in English – is full of quarrels, interruptions, suspicions and political upheavals. However, it also offers us some striking examples of cooperation and of persistence in a dauntingly large enterprise.8 Translators and their works in Dublin While this volume is focused on place, the location of translation in Ireland in this period is sometimes hard to fix, in part since translation is itself a passer of boundaries, in part because of the complications that arise from the troubles of the time and the strength of international alliances. Even more than other writers, translators may be exiles, travellers, missionaries, diplomats, colonists. When we can connect a translated work with Dublin we are struck by other connections as well, outside the city and usually outside the country. Richard Stanihurst declares himself as Dubliniensis when he publishes his Harmonia, seu, Catena, a work on and the Renaissance (Cardiff, 1990), pp. 57–89; Brendan Bradshaw, ‘Manus “the Magnificent”: O’Donnell as Renaissance Prince’, in Art Cosgrove and Donal McCartney (eds), Studies in Irish history presented to R. Dudley Edwards (Dublin, 1979), pp. 15–36.   6 Gillespie and Hadfield (eds), The Oxford history of the Irish book, Vol. 3: The Irish book in English, 1550–1800, p. iii.   7 Charlie Dillon, ‘An tSeanmóir a aistriu: Téacs agus Comhthéacs sa 17ú haois’, in Charlie Dillon and Ríona Ní Fhrighil (eds), Aistriú Éireann (Belfast, 2008), pp. 120–30.  8 See Cosslett Ó Cuinn, ‘An Bíobla Naofa’, Comhar 41:1 (1982), pp. 12–13; Terence McCaughey, Dr. Bedell and Mr. King: The making of the Irish Bible (Dublin, 2001).

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dialectic probably written in Oxford or London in 1570, and his De Rebus in Hibernia Gestis, published in 1584 in Leiden,9 but he doesn’t do that on the title page of his English version of Virgil’s first four books, also printed in Leiden in 1582, shortly after he left Ireland, and much more likely therefore to have been composed in Dublin – it is dedicated to his cousin Patrick Plunkett, Lord Dunsany.10 Translators are on the move, some like Stanihurst forced out of Ireland, others sucked in as part of their upward mobility. As we shall see, a translation apparently done in Dublin, likely to have been circulated in manuscript there, may achieve print publication in London, for reasons ranging from patronage relationships to the sheer size and capacity of the London printing industry. Political and military upheavals and disproportions are reflected in the fate of translators and their texts. In the later sixteenth century some stabilising elements were taking hold in the English-speaking culture, for which Dublin was the locus of government, the centre of the state Church and the seat of the university. However, writers including translators came and went from England. Geoffrey Fenton made quite a career as a translator, culminating in his version of Guicciardini’s Storia d’Italia, but after getting a good job in Ireland he gave it up.11 The version of the ecclesiastical history of Eusebius done out of Greek by Meredith Hanmer in 1577 may have helped him to his Irish preferment.12 And manuscripts could move too; the translation of the history of Ireland, from a manuscript owned by the O’Neills, said to have been done by the Marian archbishop of Armagh George Dowdall, is in Lambeth, Dowdall having died in London. A piece of Machiavelli’s Discorsi in English is in the Blage manuscript in Trinity College Dublin, along with a version of a story from the French of Queen Marguerite of Navarre. John Scattergood argues that the manuscript, originating in England, must have reached Ireland in the sixteenth century and that the tale from Marguerite’s Heptameron may have been done there – but where was the other translation made?13 A tantalising scrap of four lines on the quest for the Golden Fleece, reproduced by Andrew Carpenter  9 Some copies show the place of publication as Antwerp; see Stanihurst, De rebus in Hibernia Gestis, ed. John Barry and Hiram Morgan (Cork, 2013). 10 The first foure bookes of Virgil his Aeneis translated into English heroical verse by Richard Stanyhurst (Leiden, 1582; Condon, 1583). 11 See ODNB, ‘Geoffrey Fenton’. 12 See DIB, ‘Meredith Hanmer’. 13 DIB, ‘George Dowdall’; John Scattergood, ‘Humanism in Ireland’, in Corinna Salvadori, Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin and John Scattergood (eds), Italian culture: Interactions, transpositions, translations (Dublin, 2006), pp. 69–89.

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from a lost ‘most Pithi and Plesant History whear in is the destrouction of Troye . . . turned [my italics] into English myttere’, which was apparently printed in Dublin in 1558, obligingly identifies itself as a translation; but the book has for the moment quite disappeared from view. Can this be the same as another lost text, mentioned by W. B. Stanford, ‘The story of Jason’, possibly translated by Nicholas Whyte of Tipperary from Valerius Flaccus, that surfaces in the Stationers’ Register in London in the 1560s?14 Carpenter names Francis Edderman as the poet, but he may be only the author of the dedication to Sir Henry Sidney, with whom Whyte worked in the 1560s. (The Sidney presence in Ireland appears in several translation contexts, unsurprisingly as translation connects with learning and patronage.) In a last digression, before getting down to particular examples of translation that we can actually pin to Dublin, I want to draw a distinction between various kinds of translation. One variety reflects readers’ demand, and may be typified by the international romances which continued to be translated in this period, presumably on the basis of their popularity.15 Another is practical, and is exemplified by the body of medical literature translated into Gaelic, in both Ireland and Scotland, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.16 The translation of the Bible into Irish, since the patrons and translators regarded it as essential for Protestant evangelisation, belongs in this category. Alongside the scriptures in the native vernacular, we observe translations aimed at other groups, such as the seventeenth-century translation of the Psalms from an Armenian version to the learned vernacular, Latin, by the judge, MP and Trinity professor Dudley Loftus in 1661, and the French version of the Book of Common Prayer by the minister of the French Church in Dublin in 1665.17 All of these kinds presume a reader or perhaps a hearer 14 Andrew Carpenter, Verse in English from Tudor and Stuart Ireland (Cork, 2003), p. 48; W. B. Stanford, ‘Towards a history of classical influences in Ireland’, PRIA (1970), pp. 13–91, at p. 47. 15 See, for example, Eachtra Uilliam: An Irish version of William of Palerne, ed. Cecile O’Rahilly (Dublin, 1949); Lorgaireacht an tSoidhigh Naomhtha: An early modern Irish translation of the Quest of the Holy Grail, ed. and trans. Sheila Falconer (Dublin, 1953); for more Arthurian examples, see L. Gowans, Bibliography of Gaelic Arthurian literature, at http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/acpbibs/gowans.htm, accessed 11 January 2012. 16 See, for a discussion of the present state of scholarship on this subject and links to some translated texts, http://www.ucc.ie/celt/medical.html, accessed 11 January 2012. 17 DIB, ‘Dudley Loftus’; Mary Ann Lyons, ‘Foreign language books 1550–1700’, in Gillespie and Hadfield, The Oxford history of the Irish book, Vol. 3: The Irish book in English, 1550–1800, pp. 347–67, at p. 359.

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who lacks competence in the language of the original text. However, there is another kind of translation which is not unusual, that which is done for readers who can conceivably read the original if they wish, and who may be in a position to appreciate the changes made and the strategies chosen by a translator. Lodowick Bryskett’s translation of Cinzio belongs to this third category, as must Stanihurst’s Virgil, since it seems hard to imagine a reader who couldn’t read Latin having the patience to hack through Stanihurst’s hexameters. Any discussion of translated works which ignores the difference between these approaches to the audience and its needs is in danger of oversimplification. Bryskett, his circle and translation from Italian The text that invites us to unfold its complexities most intriguingly, but whose gestation also remains in some ways mysterious, is Lodowick Bryskett’s part-translation, part-adaptation of Giambattista Giraldi Cinzio’s Tre dialoghi della vita civile as A discourse of civill life. Bryskett’s work is of interest for a number of reasons. The choice of a text to translate and the apparently destined readership of the translation suggest that the translator has got a particular political and cultural agenda which involves the invention, through a free imitation of aspects of the original, of an ideal reading community typical of Renaissance literary society, located in Dublin. The Discourse was published in 1606 but its opening suggests that the work of translation was done in the early 1580s. This is a long introductory dialogue which has attracted attention because of its inclusion of Edmund Spenser as one of the speakers, and the announcement by the poet of the plan of The Faerie Queene. The work is ‘written to’ Arthur Grey, lord deputy of Ireland from 1580–82, and patron of both Spenser and Bryskett; Grey, Spenser and Bryskett are all connected with the Earl of Leicester’s network of patronage, and in particular with Leicester’s brother-in-law, Sir Henry Sidney. Bryskett had been Sir Henry’s son Philip’s companion on his travels on the Continent in the previous decade. Grey was recalled from his post in 1582, after the notorious massacre of foreign troops at Smerwick in County Kerry, but probably rather because of the hostility of the Old English of the Pale than any recoil from the bloodshed in Munster. However, Grey’s admirers almost defiantly continue to celebrate him in their work (Spenser makes him the hero of Book V of The Faerie Queene), and if Bryskett’s address to him was written in the same year as his recall it may count as a declaration of loyalty in spite

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of disfavour. The translation then can be seen as illustrating the culture of a faction in the English state and the colonial government.18 Bryskett himself may have been aiming for preferment in setting out to translate Cinzio. Geoffrey Fenton had apparently attracted favourable attention by his versions of Italian works, most noticeably Guicciardini’s Storia d’Italia. This work was severely critical of the papacy (though the most outspoken passages were censored in all of the printed versions) and thus its translator could display both erudition and discretion in choosing as his source a text likely to be acceptable to Protestant readers.19 Fenton gave up translation on his leaving London for Ireland but went on to have a prosperous career as an administrator. In fact he got the job that Bryskett wanted as secretary of state for Ireland, although Grey had recommended Bryskett – at which Bryskett gave up his post of clerk of the council and retired, he says, to his studies and to his ‘little cottage’ which is the setting of the introductory dialogue.20 He thus prepares us for the discussion of public duty and responsibility, and the occasional need to withdraw from public service, which is the core of the Discourse. But this is not a straightforward translation. The main source of Bryskett’s work is usually described as the ‘second part’ of Cinzio’s Ecatommithi.21 In fact the place of the dialogue in the original work is at the beginning of the second volume, and its relationship both to the Italian canon and to the translation is complex. The passage with which Bryskett introduces his version replaces an elaborate framing of his text by the original author and reframes it for a new readership. The location of the linking dialogue in Dublin is, as we shall see, part of his strategy. 18 ODNB, ‘Arthur Grey’. Bryskett is most often discussed, by literary critics as well as historians, as the friend and colleague of Spenser; while I will have something to say about the major poet’s support for translated works, I do not intend to discuss the relationship in any detail. Bryskett’s movements, acquisitions, employments and patrons are discussed in Andrew Hadfield’s Edmund Spenser: A life (Oxford, 2012); see also Willy Maley, Salvaging Spenser: Colonialism, culture and identity (Basingstoke, 1997), pp. 69–72, which profiles the interlocutors of the Discourse. Nicholas Canny, in the opening chapter of his Making Ireland British (Oxford, 2001), while dismissing the Discourse as ‘no more than a translation’, usefully inserts Bryskett’s circle into the ‘Leicester/Sidney/ Grey connection’; see pp. 1, 3–4. 19 See Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and Deirdre Serjeantson, ‘The Petrarch they tried to ban’, in Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin and David Parris (eds), Translation and censorship: Patterns of communication and interference (Dublin, 2009), pp. 93–105. 20 Richard McCabe discusses Grey’s patronage of Spenser and the patronage of Fenton by Burghley; see ‘Rhyme and Reason’, in David Womersley and Richard McCabe (eds), Literary milieux: Essays in text and context presented to Howard Erskine-Hill (Newark, 2008), pp. 30–51, at pp. 30–3 and 33–5. 21 See, for example, A. C. Hamilton (ed.), The Spenser encyclopedia (London, 1990), ‘Bryskett, Lodowick’.

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Giambattista Giraldi Cinzio (or Cinthio), like the Dublin-based translators, seems to have at one point held the political office of secretary. He also held a chair of rhetoric at Ferrara and had a large literary reputation as dramatist and theorist as well as moral philosopher and writer of novelle. He clearly intended his collection of one hundred stories (which gave Shakespeare the plots of Measure for Measure and Othello and supplied various other Elizabethan dramatists with sources for episodes or whole plays)22 to recall Boccaccio’s Decameron. However, he published in 1565, in tough times, when the Tridentine censorship of literature was getting under way in Italy, and his work is prefaced by a protestation of Catholic religious orthodoxy. The stories are told by a group of refugees from a disaster – not plague as in Boccaccio, but the sack of Rome in 1527 by German troops ‘infected with the ideas of Martin Luther’. Their flight by ship to Marseille is justified as a temporary withdrawal, and the stories are told on shipboard to pass the time, as in Boccaccio’s country retreat. The ship has to put in at Genoa because of bad weather, and while the younger members of the party are entertained by hunting parties, the older ones engage in serious discussions on civil life and on the upbringing of the political elite with their Genoese hosts – a gesture, it might seem, to the more recent classic Il Cortegiano. The three dialogues are followed by fifty more novelle.23 Civil life Given the prestige of Italian culture in the Renaissance, and the deep suspicion (not only in England but in general among Protestants) of Italian religion and morals, the translation of Italian texts was a tense affair. Lady Anne Cooke selected the sermons of the ex-Capuchin Protestant refugee in England Bernardo Ochino; Fenton headed for Guicciardini’s exposure of papal politics; Sir Thomas Hoby translated Castiglione, whose book was recommended by Roger Ascham as the ideal and safe substitute for travelling to Italy with its dangerous exposure to papistry and sexual corruption.24 Bryskett is drawn to the civic culture of the Italian city-states, which Cinzio explores in his dialogues, where a life of public respon22 See Michele Marrapodi, ‘Beyond the Reformation: Italian intertexts of the ransom plot in Measure for Measure’, and Jason Lawrence, ‘“The story is extant and writ in very choice Italian”: Shakespeare’s dramatizations of Cinthio’, in M. Marrapodi (ed.), Shakespeare, Italy and intertextuality (Manchester, 2005), pp. 73–90, 91–106. 23 G. Giraldi Cinzio, De gli hecatommithi (Mondovi, 1565), i, A1r-B1v; Kkk7v-8r; ii, A3r ff. 24 Roger Ascham, The Schoolmaster, ed. Lawrence V. Ryan (Charlottesville, VA, 1974), p. 55.

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sibility is celebrated, even though a genuflection is made to the superiority of the religious and contemplative life as the Church would have demanded, and even though the protagonists in his dialogue have taken flight from a military action, the war between emperor and Pope. I argued some years ago for the importance of the writers who praise the active life in politics, especially such Venetian patricians as Contarini, Ugoni and Paruta (whose Della perfezione della vita civile eloquently defends politics as a legitimate goal for human beings, against the ecclesiastical insistence that the only true felicity is spiritual), in forming the political views of Bryskett’s patron Philip Sidney. Sidney was in Venice in 1573–74; Bryskett remained on after his departure and was engaging in dealings on his behalf into 1575.25 Venetian resistance to papal power made the city’s wise constitution a popular theme with Protestant political writers.26 Another of the famous independent maritime republics, Genoa, is the setting for Cinzio’s dialogues; perhaps not coincidentally it was also the native place of Bryskett’s father, and Sidney and Bryskett had gone to much trouble to visit Genoa during their north Italian sojourn.27 In Sidney’s romance, Arcadia, the first version of which was already completed by the 1580s, the theme of public activity and political wisdom is balanced by that of withdrawal into a rural retreat and the cultivation of pastoral poetry, perhaps reflecting Sidney’s own failure up to 1584 to gain responsible political employment. In the Discourse Bryskett too adapts the theme of withdrawal from the world of politics to suit his own circumstances and the crisis in his career. He accommodates his translation to his location in Dublin, as he was to do in the lament for Sidney later published along with poems by Spenser in Astrophel. In the pastoral elegy, The mourning muse of Thestylis, his original is Bernardo Tasso’s Selva on the death of Luigi Gonzaga. He calls on the nymphs of the ‘Liffies cristall streames’ (who replace those of the Emilian Reno) to mourn his fallen friend.28 In his version of Cinzio he does much the same, repopulating his translated dialogue with local figures. In the place of the Italian ­double-framing 25 See Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, ‘Sidney’s political Odyssey: Anti-tyranny themes in Sidney’s Arcadia’, in Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and J. D. Pheifer (eds), Noble and joyous histories: English romances, 1375–1650 (Dublin, 1993), pp. 194–219, at pp. 209–10; James Osborn, Young Philip Sidney (New Haven, 1972), p. 541; Henry R. Plomer and Tom Peete Cross (eds), The life and correspondence of Lodowick Bryskett (Chicago, 1927), pp. 13, 78. 26 Ní Chuilleanáin, ‘Sidney’s political Odyssey’, pp. 206–7. 27 Osborn, Young Philip Sidney, pp. 157–9. 28 Lodowick Bryskett, Literary works, ed. J. H. P. Pafford ([Farnborough, Gregg], 1970), p. 300; see p. xv for the debt to Bernardo Tasso.

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narrative, we have a reproduction of the Genoese conversations, which it is clear was intended to be recognisable as such, replacing the original speakers with identifiable Irish-based interlocutors who might well have plausibly engaged in such a discussion with Bryskett, though not necessarily meeting as he describes all together on successive days in his ‘little cottage’ near the city. Thus, the question of whether human felicity can be found in this world is appropriately raised by an ecclesiastic, the archbishop of Armagh; a discussion of lies, truth and the ethics of duelling, which in the original text was initiated by a promising Genoese fourteen-year-old, is introduced here by a soldier, the well-known military leader Captain John Norris.29 Bryskett imagines his own translation as half-finished, a confused mass of papers, full of corrections, out of which he reads to the other speakers, but into which the reader can observe that they intervene. Their interruptions elicit on one occasion a brazen admission of his manipulation and adaptation of the original: ‘the like request was made to him [the author] by one of that company.’ Elsewhere he incorporates his own autobiography, and references to stories he claims to have heard himself from acquaintances.30 He draws on material from other Italian sources, ‘and (as well as I could) enterlaced it with this discourse, where mine author seemed to me too brief, or too obscure’.31 A sense of location, combined with an author’s protestations that what he produces is unpolished or unfinished, or incompletely recollected, often contributes to the apparent authenticity, ease and grace of Renaissance dialogue. The garden in Antwerp, scene of the discussions in Book I of Utopia, the palace of Urbino, dawn coming up unnoticed on the hills behind, in the Cortegiano, provide a relaxed setting where speakers can communicate informally, among friends, and thus say what they sincerely mean. In Bryskett’s Discourse the slightly comic, here’s-one-Imade-earlier poise, and the materiality of the bundled papers, enact the transfer of the work from a location, a language, a culture that are, and very variously, different to those at its destination. But they also provide an equivalent for the courteous, if more sedate, entertainment offered by the Genoese to their fugitive guests. The self-consciousness of Bryskett’s translation tells us about its expected readers. It takes a piece of writing already carefully framed in 29 Cinzio, Hecatommithi ii, C3v; Bryskett, Literary works, p. 65; see Maley, Salvaging Spenser. 30 Bryskett, Literary works, pp. 61, 72–4, 174–5. 31 Ibid., pp. 158–9 [the authors he draws on are Alessandro Piccolomini and Stefano Guazzo].

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the context of its origins, and reinserts it into a comparable but totally alien discussion about the distribution of public responsibility and private aspiration within the Dublin administration. The translator, by telling us that he didn’t mean to print his version but had undertaken it for ‘my practice in both languages’, calls attention both to his bilingual capacities and to his claim to be detached from the world of vulgar publication. He is also creating a work which has currency in the political world. Its transition from manuscript to print circulation provided the opportunity for a complimentary (second) dedication, supervening on the address to Arthur Grey, to Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, who had exerted himself to rescue Bryskett from captivity in the Low Countries a few years after his flight from Ireland. The readership of Bryskett’s translation is expected to be an elite one, and is invited to model itself on the speakers in the introductory dialogue. Such readers as Spenser, or Archbishop Long (who intervenes with Greek and theology), are not expected to be ignorant of languages or of Italian culture, but to appreciate the writer’s skill of selection, of phrasing and of staging the discussion. The Dublin world is presented as an equivalent of the Italian courtly milieu where soldiers, churchmen and writers could hold elegant debates, in the midst quite often of military disasters – or against a background such as that supplied by the disaffections and rebellions which had marred Grey’s time in Ireland. The speakers are thus made to act out the insertion of a translation into a host culture. Through the equivalence he constructs, Bryskett is also reinforcing a version of Italian intellectual life that is acceptable to English Protestants: grave, civic and refined. This English view of Italy is selective, abhorring Roman corruption but impressed by the clarity and seriousness of Guicciardini’s history, by the ethical philosophy of Cinzio, and by such works as Stefano Guazzo’s La civil conversazione and Alessandro Piccolomini’s De la ­institutione di tutta la vita de l’homo nato nobile e in citta libera, titles expressing the orientation of the genre towards society and public activity. Both writers are mentioned by Bryskett, and as I have mentioned are laid under contribution along with Cinzio. The praise of Venice Piccolomini was a professor of Aristotelian philosophy at Padua in the Veneto, famous in England for its university where many Englishmen (including the constitutional writer Sir Thomas Smith, and Grey’s ally and Sidney’s father-in-law Francis Walsingham) had studied. His tenure

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corresponded with the time of Bryskett’s visit to Venice and Padua in the company of Philip Sidney. A book the English travellers certainly encountered is the one Sidney read immediately after his arrival, Cardinal Contarini’s Republica et magistrati di Venetia. It is for a translation of Contarini dedicated by Lewis Lewkenor (a relative of the Sidneys) to Philip’s aunt by marriage, the countess of Warwick, that Spenser wrote a sonnet praising the wisdom of the Venetian commonwealth. Spenser’s commendatory sonnets for translations (three out of his four ‘Miscellaneous’ sonnets are prefixed to translated works) show how thoroughly he had considered the issues they raise. The conceit of the sonnet on the English version of Contarini’s book on Venice is the way the city reflects two ancient polities, Babylon and Rome – a reflection which paradoxically surpasses the original. The translation is then said to surpass the city itself: ‘Yet not so fayre her buildinges to behold/As Lewkenors stile that hath her beautie told.’ The same trope of reflection appears in another sonnet printed among the commendatory poems for Lewkenor’s translation, on the same page as Spenser’s. This one, by Sir John Astley, suggests the way Venice was seen in England: as mirror image of the island kingdom. When thou shalt from thy Adriatique seas, View in this Ocean Isle thy painted face, In these pure colours coyest eyes to please, Then gazing in thy shadowes peereles eye, Enamour’d like Narcissus thou shalt dye.32

Venice is important to English readers as an exemplar of ‘policie of right’ in Spenser’s words, and, as I have argued elsewhere, as a state which is felt to be an exception from the prevalence of tyranny and misgovernment in Italy because it (like England) tempers monarchy with representative institutions and the rule of law.33 It is also important to Europeans in the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries as a place where meetings between Protestants and Catholics could take place in an atmosphere of mutual respect and a degree of cooperation. Such meetings in Ireland were of course still more likely to be fraught, but perhaps also tempered by values held in common. If an accommodation between the English-speaking literati in Dublin and certain aspects of Italian culture is expressed in the translation activity of Bryskett, and in Spenser’s praise, 32 Gaspare Contarini, The commonwealth and government of Venice, trans. Lewes Lewkenor (London, 1599), sig. *3v. 33 Ní Chuilleanáin, ‘Sidney’s political Odyssey’, pp. 206–7.

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there is an even closer connection between Italian intellectual life and a succeeding generation of English-born administrators in Ireland. In the work of the Bible translators of the early seventeenth century we witness a different kind of linguistic encounter and an emphatically different approach to the source text, but we also find a continuity of translation activity of the same collaborative kind as we saw in Bryskett’s Discourse, as well as an important connection with the experience of foreign visitors to the Venetian Republic. Bedell and the Bible One of the major undertakings of the seventeenth-century Church of Ireland is the translation into Irish, and the publication, of the whole Bible. The patron most closely connected with the completion of this work was William Bedell, provost of Trinity College and later bishop of Kilmore. Bedell’s biographers took pains to stress the importance of his experience as chaplain to the English ambassador to Venice, Sir Henry Wotton, between 1607 and 1611, and Marc Caball has recently discussed the relevance of his Venetian sojourn to his Irish career and especially his translation projects, pointing out that as well as learning the language of the country he recruited helpers from its native learned elite.34 While the bulk of the work that Bedell oversaw and promoted, the version of the Old Testament, was done while he was resident in Kilmore, important parts of the Bible translation had been, and were to be, undertaken in Dublin, including the Psalter under Bedell’s direction. The New Testament had been in print since 1602, and Bedell’s commissioning of a translation of the Psalms (which had been omitted from the Irish version of the Book of Common Prayer) for the Chapel of Trinity occurred soon after his arrival as Provost in 1627. The account of the translators of the New Testament which is often quoted from his contemporary biography allows us to suppose that much of the work had been done in the provinces: This Irish New Testament was that the translation which had been, in pursuance of the recommendation of Queen Elizabeth, commenced by Nicholas Walsh, Bishop of Ossory, continued by Nehemiah O’Donnellan, Archbishop of Tuam, assisted by John Kearney, Treasurer of St. Patrick’s, 34 Marc Caball, ‘“Solid divine and worthy scholar”: William Bedell, Venice and Gaelic culture’, in James Kelly and Ciarán Mac Murchaidh (eds), Irish and English (Dublin, 2012), pp. 44–57.

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Dublin, and completed by William O’Donel or Daniel, the successor of O’Donnellan in the Archbishopric of Tuam, the expense being borne by the Province of Connaught and Sir William Ussher, Clerk of the Council.35

This account perhaps unintentionally reduces the role of Dublin and its institutions. Among the translators, as well as John Kearney, Nicholas Walsh had a connection with St Patrick’s Cathedral, as its chancellor from 1571 to 1578; work on the New Testament was begun about 1573. Uilliam Ó Domhnuill was a fellow of Trinity College from 1593, and as well as translating he oversaw the printing of the New Testament in the college up to the Gospel of Luke, at which point a dispute with the printer stopped the work. Ó Domhnuill was recruited by his brother-in-law O’Donnellan to preach in Galway, but returned to Dublin as treasurer of St Patrick’s in 1601; the printing of the New Testament was finished the following year. It seems in fact that these two institutions, the college and the cathedral, were instrumental in undertaking and bringing the thirtyyear New Testament project to a successful conclusion. Bedell in Venice Bedell’s arrival in Ireland as provost of Trinity was expedited, it seems, by the letter which Henry Wotton, former ambassador to Venice, wrote to recommend him for the post. Wotton hints strongly that Bedell is both reliably Protestant and skilled at cooperation with well-disposed Catholics: being requir’d to render unto your Majestie some testimony of the said Mr. William Bedell, who was long my chaplain at Venice in the time of my first employment there . . . [he praises Bedell’s] erudition and piety, conformity to the rites of the Church, and zeal to advance the cause of God; wherin his travells abroad were not obscure in the time of the excommunication of the Venetians; For it may please your Majestie to know that this is the man whom Padre Paulo took (I may say) into his very soul: with whom he did communicate the inwardest thoughts of his heart; from whom he professed to have received more knowledge in all divinity, both scholastical and positive, than from any he had ever practiced in his daies . . .36

Bedell had been a fellow of Emmanuel College Cambridge, founded to educate Protestant preachers, and his serious Protestant convictions have 35 Thomas Wharton Jones (ed.), A true relation of the life and death of the right reverend father in God William Bedell, Lord Bishop of Kilmore in Ireland (London, 1872), p. 175. 36 Wharton Jones, Bedell, p. 25.

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led him to be described as a Puritan, a term perhaps too lightly used. Wotton’s description stresses both zeal and conformity, whereas those labelled as Puritans were generally suspicious of the remaining traditional ‘rites of the Church’ and unlike Bedell did not associate with Catholics or crypto-Catholics. Arguing against an anachronistic view of Bedell as proto-ecumenist, Marc Caball points out that Uilliam Ó Domhnuill had been a scholar of Emmanuel, and that his Tiomna Nua was in the college library in the early seventeenth century, details which tend to reinforce the continuity of the translation project from its inception to its completion, and to stress its evangelical purpose.37 Wotton thought Bedell’s Venetian experience important enough to make it central to his recommendation seventeen years after his return. His sojourn as chaplain to Henry Wotton, when the latter was ambassador to the Venetian Republic, had, in spite of Wotton’s assertion quoted above, happened after the end of the Venetian interdict of 1605–7, which was watched with great interest in England. Wotton and his chaplain cultivated warm relationships with Catholic clergy who supported the Venetian state’s resistance to Pope Paul V’s claims; during the period of the interdict it had seemed as if the republic might set up a state church, and Wotton encouraged the idea. Such a church would have resembled the Church of England in subordinating clergy to the secular authority, in allowing free circulation of scripture in the vulgar tongue, and probably in leaving unchanged the clerical hierarchies inherited from the late middle ages. Under the influence of such hopes, an Italian Bible was being translated by the Swiss Protestant of Italian extraction, Giovanni Diodati. Even though the interdict had been lifted by the time it appeared in print, the book was a success when it was covertly circulated. Wotton reported to the earl of Salisbury that the Pope had protested, while Diodati wrote to the Huguenot leader Du Plessis Mornay that people were tearing the books from each other’s hands. A visit to the city by Diodati was arranged by Wotton in 1608, apparently with the approval of the ‘Padre Paulo’ mentioned in Wotton’s letter, the famous anti-papal theologian and Servite friar Paolo Sarpi.38 Wotton appears, with Sarpi’s collaboration, to have continued to work for some form of quasi-Protestant church in Venice, a mirror version of Anglicanism. It was not, however, only the Bible that needed to be 37 Caball, ‘Solid divine and worthy scholar’, p. 53. 38 Wharton Jones, Bedell, pp. 110–18; W. B. Patterson, King James VI and I and the reunion of Christendom (Cambridge, 1997); David Wootton, Paolo Sarpi: Between Renaissance and Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 94, 121–2.

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translated. Bedell, whose Italian appears to have been rapidly learned, was commissioned to produce a version of a work by Sir Edwin Sandys, the Relation of the State of Religion (1605). Sandys reviews the states of Europe and their religious disagreements, praising some of what he finds in Italian religious practice, and suggesting that the best hope for unity in the Christian church is for the Catholic powers to pursue an orderly, conservative Reformation, overseen by the State and tolerant of some degree of doctrinal variation.39 It was an ideal text for conciliating Italian Christians. A second piece of translation work assigned to Bedell was an Italian version of the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England, presumably as a model for reformed liturgy, or as a reassurance that Anglicans valued orderly worship. Translation into a foreign language is always difficult, nevertheless, and Bedell turned for help with Italian to his patron’s allies, Sarpi and his collaborator and later biographer Fulgenzio Micanzio, whom he refers to as ‘the Fathers’.40 The translation of Sandys was not in fact published (with notes by Sarpi) until 1625 and the prayer book remained in manuscript during Bedell’s lifetime. Bedell’s Venetian sojourn gave him experience of collaboration, and allowed him to attend Catholic but also Jewish sermons – the latter he found more impressive. He improved his command of Hebrew, studying with Rabbi Leo of Modena, and bought an important Hebrew manuscript which he bequeathed to Emmanuel. The experience also exercised his abilities as a translator, at a moment when translations were influential – and sometimes viewed as dangerous – elements in political and religious developments, both in and between European states. He continued his translation activity after his return to England; he is credited with the first two books of the Latin translation of Sarpi’s masterpiece, the History of the Council of Trent (London, 1620), and his dedication to the recently crowned Charles I of a Latin translation of Sarpi’s History of the Interdict (1626) commemorates his dead friend as a conscientious champion of truth, praised for his learning and candour even while remaining a prisoner of his Catholic birth and education, in ‘illa captivitate in qua natus et educatus’.41

39 James Ellison, George Sandys: Travel, colonialism and tolerance in the seventeenth century (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 32–5. 40 Wharton Jones, Bedell, p. 118. 41 Paolo Sarpi, Interdicti Veneti historia de motu Italiae sub initia Pontificatus Pauli V commentarius . . . Recèns ex Italico conversus (Cambridge, 1626), sig. ¶2v.

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The translation of the Old Testament into Irish The translation of the Bible was the foundational activity of Protestant reform, and Bedell in Ireland, both as linguist and as a conscientious Protestant in a largely Catholic country, felt bound to promote it – though it must be noted that many English-speaking Protestants in Dublin disagreed with him. Initially it harmonised with his responsibility as provost (providing for daily worship in Irish in the college, in ‘conformity to the rites of the church’ which included the use of the Psalms, and providing his graduates with a complete prayer book when they were given responsibility for Irish-speaking parishes), and it continued to be part of his work as bishop. He saw that his children learned Irish ‘in the hope that they may endeavour to open the eyes of some part of the Irish Nation’.42 As with Italian, he had set out to learn the language himself, but he also made contact with native masters of the idiom. Some of those he employed, and for whom he found preferment in the Church of Ireland, were suspected to be still papists, but Bedell’s Venetian experience of collaboration with friars and with Jewish rabbis, in both scholarly and political contexts, seems to have stood him in good stead. While he remained as provost at Trinity for only two years, moving to Kilmore when he was appointed bishop of that diocese, it was during his time in Dublin that he confronted, and in providing the Psalter partly achieved, the task of making the Old Testament available to Irish readers. Terence McCaughey has drawn attention to the similarity between the scene in Kilmore, where the Irish translation was read aloud while Bedell and his clergy compared it with the Hebrew manuscript he had brought from Venice, with Diodati’s Italian and with the Vulgate and the Septuagint, and the larger multilingual meetings that had taken place among the translators of the 1611 Authorised Version.43 But the meetings between Bedell and his Italian advisers in Venice must have been very similar, and the experience of coping with translation into a new language for Bedell must have been relived in Ireland. We can imagine that such meetings also took place in Trinity College during the translation of the Psalms; we are told that Mr Fitzgerald, a fellow, was asked to give an opinion on the first Psalm, and I think the image of a group of readers or listeners consulting over a translation is one that will do for the Dublin-based Psalm translation as well as the meetings in Venice and 42 Wharton Jones, Bedell, p. 175. 43 McCaughey, Dr. Bedell and Mr. King, pp. 2–4.

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Kilmore.44 The same scene of consultation reappears when Bedell’s whole Bible, including the Dublin New Testament, was at last being prepared for publication in 1685 in London, under the patronage of Robert Boyle.45 Its Dublin promoter, Narcissus Marsh, himself by now provost of Trinity, and his Irish scribes and revisers consulted over a copy of Walton’s Polyglot Bible of 1657: when a quantity of sheets was transcribed, I got Dr Sall, Mr Higgins, Mr Mullen and some gentlemen well skilled in Irish to compare the transcript with the original copy, then to render the Irish into English, whilst I had the Polyglott Bible before me, to observe whether it came up to the original [Hebrew] and where any doubt did arise, after a debate, and their agreement upon a more proper expression, twas written in the margin, and left to Mr Boyle to advise with Mr Reilly thereupon.46

Mullen was an Irish scribe hired by Marsh to copy the manuscript recovered from Bedell’s study in Kilmore by Denis Sheridan in 1641; Andrew Sall was a Tipperary-born former Jesuit and professor in Spain, who had changed his religion in 1674, acquired a DD from Trinity and had met Boyle in Oxford. He held the prebend of Swords but lived in Dublin, in Oxmantown, when working. Another scribe was Paul Higgins, lecturer in Irish in Trinity and also a former priest, the grandson of the sixteenthcentury bardic poet Tadhg Dall Ó hUiginn. Hugh O’Reilly was an Irish scholar who worked for Boyle in London.47 Sall and the other Irish speakers had quite a tussle with the transcription of the rescued manuscript; Sall called it ‘a confused heap, pitifully defaced and broken’ in a letter to Boyle.48 But it made its way into print, Bedell’s name was on the title page when it appeared at last, and it is known to this day as Bedell’s Bible. Conclusion Translation in the Renaissance is not always as well documented as it is in the cases we have seen here. These texts are unusual in that not only are we informed about the identity of the translators, but we have narratives from them or from close observers of their ways of working. These accounts may not be entirely free from the wish to aggrandise the p ­ rojects 44 Ibid., p. 43. 45 Nicholas Williams, I bprionta i leabhar: Na protastúin agus prós na Gaeilge 1567–1724 (Dublin, 1986), pp. 72–94. 46 ODNB, ‘Narcissus Marsh’. 47 Williams, I bprionta i leabhar, pp. 80–7, 90. 48 Ibid., p. 90.

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they describe, but from them we can learn much about the approach to translation and the pressures that affected the translator in this place and time. The picture of translation we get, from the stories surrounding these texts, includes the presence of practitioners and patrons with various levels of language competence. We see how closely translation is connected to the centres of government and power, whether in Dublin, London or Venice. The accounts, whether accurate or fictitious, of the ‘confused heap’ of papers that is a translation in progress, remind us of the materiality of the process, and its need to be accommodated in space. We are shown the ideal image of readership, and in the historical traces we encounter something of the actuality, of one possible audience for translation, a group of variously qualified expert readers and learners, without whose presence the work might never have begun. The Renaissance gave a new impetus and a wide diffusion to the image and the reality of the city as a centre of thought and culture. Notions of civil life were diffused and adapted, as we have seen, through translation. Its practice linked cities as distant and different as Dublin and Venice, whether as an element in State policy, as missionary project or as an instrument for the career advancement of ambitious individuals.

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8

Omnia vincit amor: Gaelic poetry and English books Mícheál Mac Craith Gaelic Ireland is somewhat under-represented in studies of the Renaissance. While two recent volumes of essays, edited by Thomas Herron and Michael Potterton in 2007 and 2011, for example, clearly disprove the commonly held view that Ireland was untouched by the Renaissance, the editors would be the first to admit weaknesses in coverage.1 Each volume, in fact, contains only four chapters on the Gaelic world. Emmet O’ Byrne’s contribution describing the efforts of the Tudor state to tighten its grip on the Gaelic lords of east Leinster, though providing a necessary background, is political rather than cultural in content.2 James Lyttleton’s chapter on architecture and Christopher J. Smith’s novel contribution on music are undoubtedly welcome in highlighting hitherto neglected aspects of Renaissance culture in Gaelic Ireland, which means that we are left with just five chapters that are textually based.3 The excellent contributions of Clare Carroll and Salvador Ryan deal with works published in Rome and Louvain respectively, thus unintentionally reinforcing the old view that Gaelic Ireland only encountered the Renaissance   1 Thomas Herron and Michael Potterton (eds), Ireland in the Renaissance, c.1540–1660 (Dublin, 2007); Michael Potterton and Thomas Herron (eds), Dublin and the Pale in the Renaissance, c.1540–1660 (Dublin, 2011).For the influence of the Renaissance on the Gaelic world, see Mícheál Mac Craith, ‘Gaelic Ireland and the Renaissance’, in Glanmor Williams and Robert Owen Jones (eds), The Celts and the Renaissance (Cardiff, 1990), pp. 57–89; ‘From the Elizabethan settlement to the Battle of the Boyne: Literature in Irish, 1560–1690’, in Margaret Kelleher and Philip O’Leary (eds), The Cambridge history of Irish literature (Cambridge, 2006), vol. i, pp. 191–231.   2 Emmet O’ Byrne, ‘The Tudor state and the Irish of East Leinster’, in Michael Potterton and Thomas Herron (eds), Dublin and the Pale in the Renaissance, c.1540–1660 (Dublin, 2011), pp. 68–92.   3 James Lyttleton, ‘Gaelic classicism in the Irish midland plantations: An archaeological reflection’, in Thomas Herron and Michael Potterton (eds), Ireland in the Renaissance, c.1540–1660 (Dublin, 2007), pp. 231–54; Christopher J. Smith, ‘Gaelic and European interactions on Ireland’s harmonic frontiers’, in Michael Potterton and Thomas Herron (eds), Dublin and the Pale in the Renaissance, c.1540–1660 (Dublin, 2011), pp. 251–66.

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in the counter-Reformation colleges on the Continent.4 In examining the evidence for ownership of books by members of Gaelic Irish and Old English families, Rolf Loeber and Magda Stouthamer-Loeber open up a new avenue for exploring conduits of cultural transmission in Gaelic Ireland, albeit conceding that the data is disappointingly scarce.5 This means that we have just two chapters that actually treat Irish-language literary texts composed in Ireland. One is Brendan Kane’s persuasive argument that the poetic intellectual dispute known as the Contention of the Bards (Iomarbhágh na bhFileadh) was actually instigated in Dublin by Donough O’Brien, fourth earl of Thomond to bolster his place in Pale elite society.6 The other is Richard A. McCabe’s analysis of Lughaidh Cléirigh’s ‘Life of Red Hugh O’Donnell’ as a work of political biography along the lines favoured by Jean Bodin.7 In an attempt to redress this imbalance, the following chapter analyses three examples of Gaelic love poetry from the early seventeenth century.8 These poems are remarkable not only for their interest in the classics – a renewal of interest in classical culture having long been considered to be one of the characteristics of the Renaissance – but also because their familiarity with Ovid was mediated through the work of contemporary English poets, namely, John Harington, Charles Best and William Percy. Furthermore, this accessibility of English poetry to Gaelic bilingual poets naturally presumes the availability of printed books as well,   4 Clare Carroll, ‘“Tutte le antiche usanze”: Preserving Irish culture in Rome’, in Thomas Herron and Michael Potterton (eds), Ireland in the Renaissance, c.1540–1660 (Dublin, 2007), pp. 138–49; Salvador Ryan, ‘“New wine in old bottles”: Implementing Trent in early modern Ireland’, in Thomas Herron and Michael Potterton (eds), Ireland in the Renaissance, c.1540–1660 (Dublin, 2007), pp. 122–37.   5 Rolf Loeber and Magda Stouthamer-Loeber, ‘The survival of books formerly owned by members of Old English and Gaelic Irish families in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’, in Thomas Herron and Michael Potterton (eds), Dublin and the Pale in the Renaissance, c.1540–1660 (Dublin, 2011), pp. 280–90.   6 Brendan Kane, ‘Languages of legitimacy? An Ghaeilge, the earl of Thomond and British politics in the Renaissance Pale, 1600–24’, in Michael Potterton and Thomas Herron (eds), Dublin and the Pale in the Renaissance, c.1540–1660 (Dublin, 2011), pp. 267–79.   7 Richard A. McCabe, ‘Fighting words: Writing the “Nine Years War”’, in Thomas Herron and Michael Potterton (eds), Ireland in the Renaissance, c.1540–1660 (Dublin, 2007), pp. 105–21.  8 For broader contexts, see Mícheál Mac Craith, Lorg na hIasachta ar na Dánta Grá (Baile Átha Cliath, 1989); Mac Craith, ‘Gaelic courtly love poetry: A window on the Renaissance’, in Cyril J. Byrne et al. (eds), Celtic languages and Celtic peoples: Proceedings of the second North American Congress for Celtic Studies (Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1992), pp. 347–68; Mac Craith, ‘Fun and games among the jet set: A glimpse of seventeenthcentury Gaelic Ireland’, in Joseph Falaky Nagy (ed.), Memory and the modern in Celtic literatures, CSANA Yearbook 5 (Dublin, 2006), pp. 15–36.

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thus ­necessitating a broadening of the parameters for cultural transmission beyond the evidence for book ownership advocated by the Loebers in their aforementioned chapter. While the demand for books in early modern Ireland was met largely by imports to Dublin through Chester, we cannot rule out the role played by Bristol in exporting books to Galway and the large towns of the south of Ireland. We must not confine our assessment of the circulation of books to the commercial book trade, however. Friendship networks of borrowing and lending also played an important role. John Harington, Amores and Riocard do Búrc Sir John Harington, author, ‘saucy godson’ of Elizabeth I and inventor of the flush toilet, visited Ireland on two occasions, in 1586 and 1599. The latter visit, when he accompanied Robert Devereux on his doomed expedition, is well documented in the numerous letters Harington wrote to friends in England. He was delighted at the reception he received in the west of Ireland as the translator of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso into English (1591): The Irish lords, gentry, yea, and citizens, where I come, I have found so apt to offer me kindness, so desirous of may acquaintance, that my friends think it a presage of a fortune I might rise to in this kingdom; though myself do little affect it, and much less hope to effect it. My ‘Ariosto’ has been entertained into Galway before I came. When I got thither, a great lady, a young lady, and a fair lady, read herself asleep, nay dead, with a tale of it: the verse, I think, so lively figured her fortune: for, as Olympia was forsaken by the ungrateful Byreno, so had this lady been left by her unkind Sir Calisthenes; whose hard dealing with her cannot excused, no not by Demosthenes.9

Just over two months later, when Sir William Warren was negotiating a truce with Hugh O’ Neill, he invited the translator of Ariosto along so that he could see the great rebel for himself. As the chief protagonists got down to serious business, Harington took the opportunity to engage in conversation with O’ Neill’s two sons: After this he fell to private communication with Sir William, to the effecting of the matters begun the day before, for which I thought it not fit to intrude myself, but took occasion the while to entertain his two son, by posing them in their learning, with their tutors, which were one Fryar Nangle, a Franciscan; and a younger scholar, whose name I know not; and   9 To master Thomas Combe 31 August, 1599, in The letters and epigrams of Sir John Harington, ed. Norman Egbert McClure (1930; repr. Philadelphia, 1972), p. 74.

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finding the two children of good towardly spirit, their age between thirteen and fifteen, in English clothes like a nobleman’s sons; with velvet gerkins and lace; of a good cheerful aspect, freckle-faced, not tall of stature, but strong, and well set; both of them (learning) the English tongue; I gave them (not without the advice of Sir William) my English translation of ‘Ariosto’, which I got at Dublin; which their teachers took very thankfully, and soon after shewed it to the earl, who call’d to see it openly, and would needs hear some part of it read. I turn’d (as if it had been by chance) to the beginning of the 45th canto, and some other passages of the book, which he seemed to like so well, that he solemnly swore his boys should read all the book over to him.10

Despite O’ Neill’s external joviality, he may well have considered Harington’s reading of the beginning of canto 45 as little less than a threat. On the other hand, Harington’s own explanation of the verse indicates that he saw it as referring to the change in fortunes of Elizabeth from an imprisoned princess to an all-powerful queen: Look how much higher Fortune doth erect The Clyming sight on her unstable wheele, So much the higher may a man expect To see his head where late he saw his heele.11

Whatever his intentions, Harington’s visit to O’ Neill incurred the wrath of his royal godmother, though the tongue-lashing and short period of banishment from court was a minor fate compared with that inflicted on the unfortunate Essex. Outliving his godmother by twelve years, his fame in Ireland among both language groups lasted right up to the end of the seventeenth century. The anonymous prose romance Eachtra Melóra agus Orlando is a striking example of Harington’s influence. Set within the general framework of Arthurian tales, the narrative recounts how Arthur’s daughter Melóra, disguised as a knight, performs numerous feats to rescue her lover Orlando who has been imprisoned in a cave through the wicked machinations of Sir Madór, a secret admirer of Melóra. The earliest of the three manuscripts containing the Gaelic romance, TCD 1399, was penned by the poet and prose writer Eoghan Ó Donnghaile, and it is not beyond the realms of possibility that he was the author of our text as well as its earliest known scribe. Many years ago Robin Flower suggested that the Irish tale was based on an incident from Canto IV 10 To Justice Carey, October 1599, The letters and epigrams of Sir John Harington, p. 77. 11 Clare Carroll, ‘Ajax and Ariosto in Ireland: Translating the Orlando Furioso’, in Circe’s cup: Cultural transformations in early modern Ireland (Cork, 2001), pp. 75–6.

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of Orlando Furioso where the warrior maiden Bradamente rescues her lover Ruggiero from the thralls of the magician Atlante.12 More recently Clare Carroll has noted similarities between the Irish tale and another incident from Orlando Furioso where Orlando is rescued from madness by an English knight Astolfo. Carroll suggests that the author of the Irish tale conflated these two incidents from Ariosto’s work to produce his own composition, and it is hardly coincidental that the name Orlando occurs in both texts.13 Though the Irish tale bears only the loosest structural similarities to Ariosto, a close perusal of one of its three manuscript sources yields even further evidence of influence. TCD 1355 was penned by the scribe Uilliam Ó Loinsigh in 1696. Ó Loinsigh’s text of Eachtra Mhelóra agus Orlando is accompanied by two fine pen-and-ink drawings that closely resemble in minute details two of the engravings accompanying Harington’s 1591 translation of Orlando Furioso, engravings that were taken from the Franceschi edition of the original printed in Venice in 1584.14 As well as indicating close familiarity with Harington’s verse, the TCD 1335 copy of Eachtra Mhelóra agus Orlando also provides interesting evidence of the sometimes intricate relationships between ­manuscripts and printed books in early modern Europe. The above tale, however, is not the only evidence of Harington’s influence on the Gaelic literary world. In a perceptive comment heading his translation of a poem ascribed to Riocard do Búrc, the Earl of Longford wrote ‘in imitation of Ovid’. Rather than pre-empt our discussion, however, it would be better to quote the poem in full first, accompanied by the earl’s translation. Riocard do Búrc

He loves them all by Richard Burke An imitation of Ovid

Fir na Fódla ar ndul d’éag Do ghean ar ghné na rosg nglas, Muna raibh eire óir ar a folt, Dar leó féin is olc an dath.

The men of Fodhla faint and die For girls that own a bright blue eye, And but for loads of golden hair Will swear there’s no right colour there.

Ní hionann iad is mé féin; Dar liomsa ní clé an chiall, Ní fearr liom dath dá mbia ar a súil Ná an dath bhíos ar chlúmh na bhfiach.

But I’ll forswear the Irish rule, Tho’ I’m no madman and no fool, And I my song of love and sing To eye as black as raven’s wing.

12 Robin Flower and Standish Hayes O’ Grady (eds), Catalogue of Irish manuscripts in the British Museum, Vol. 2 (1926; Dublin, 1992), p. 339. 13 Carroll, Circe’s cup, p. 77 14 Carroll, Circe’s cup, pp. 75–83.

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Ní iarraim iomad den rós ‘na haghaidh, ná ór ‘na gruaig; Ait liom lí cailce ar a corp, Is a folt ar dhath an ghuail.

For clouds of gold I would not seek, Nor rosy gardens in her cheek. No! let her skin as chalk be white, ‘Neath coal-black tresses dark as night.

Dubh do bhí máthair na mná Tréar cuireadh ar lár an Trae; ‘s do bhí a hinghean mhaiseach mhór Go ndeallradh óir ar a céibh.

They say that Leda’s hair was black, Whose daughter gave proud Troy to sack. Tall Helen’s hair with gold aglow Did lay the towers of Ilion low.

Cé do bhí an dias bhéildearg bhinn Bean díobh fionn agus bean dubh; Níor bh’fheas d’aon dá bhfacaidh iad Cé don dias do b’áille cruth.

The dark head and the golden head Had voice so sweet and lips so red That none who saw them ever knew Which was the comelier of the two.

Péarla croinn ar n-a cheangal d’ór, Do mhnaoi bhig is mór mo ghean; Beag do hórdaigheadh ar dtús, An t-each, an chú is an bhean.

The tall girls and the tiny girls Are golden chains of varying pearls. In truth the hound, the horse, the maid Were little when they first were made.

Do-ghéan m’fhaoisidin ós ard, Inneósad do chách mo chaoi; Créad is mó dá ndearna d’olc Nach faicthear dom locht ar mhnaoi.

Yes, I’ll confess my ways aloud And tell my weakness to the crowd: I never found in big or small A fault in any girl at all.

Ní locht liom uirthi a beith beag, Ní misde leam a beith mór; Sáith ríogh ar leaba ‘s ar láimh Gach inghean árd álainn óg.

Her smallness is, I think, no curse, Yet if she’s tall ‘tis none the worse. A tall young girl is a thing To lie in bed beside a king.

Muna raibh a cneas mar chuip, Nó mar shneachta cnuic gan clódh; Ní locht liom uirthi a beith ciar, Geanamhail iad ó bheith crón.

How fair is skin of foamy white, Like trackless snow upon the height, Yet browner skin can charm no less, And there’s delight in swarthiness.

Cuma liom a beith ‘na siair Nó a beith ó iath Inse Craobh, Acht amháin gur dúbalta an grádh Ag na mnáibh ó bheith ‘na gaol.

A girl may come from east or west, I still do find it for the best, Tho’ I may like her all the more If I did like her kin before.

Ní do na mnáibh glioca a-mháin Do-bheirim fós grádh nó gnaoi; Aithne an bhiolair tar an bhféar Níor bheag liom do chéill ag mnaoi.

A woman’s mind a man might move To give his liking or his love, And yet I find them differ less Than common grass or watercress.

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Ionmhain liom (maith do-ním) ‘na baintreabhaigh í is ‘na hóigh; Gidh maith anmhain ris an aois, Is maiseach í ó bheith óg.

I love the widow, love the maid, And that’s the way the game is played. With ripeness it is good to dwell, Yet she that’s young is fair as well.

Maith bean i n-eaglais na naomh, Tromdha ar tulaigh, caomh ‘na teach; Romhaith liom í lán de lúth Nuair is éigean dúinn bheith leamh.

I like a girl that says her prayers, Or one that drives away my cares, Or the one that’s wise when she must speak, Or one that’s strong when I am weak.

Ní bhfaghaim locht – bríogh mos sgéil – Ar mhnaoi faoin ngréin acht bheith sean; Is óg ar dhá fhichid iad, – ‘s léigthear a mhian do gach fear.15

I find no fault – my tale is told – In womankind save being old. They’re young at forty, and a man Has room to do the best he can.16

Given the fact that it occurs in more than twenty manuscripts, Fir na Fódla ar ndul d’éag was very much in demand among scribes and apparently the most popular of the dánta grádha or Gaelic courtly love poems. We know next to nothing about the author, however, apart from his name, Riocard do Búrc. The aptness of the Earl of Longford’s perceptive title ‘He loves them all’ (An imitation of Ovid) was borne out by a remark once made to me by the great scholar Seán Ó Tuama when he said that the poem reminded him very strongly of John Donne’s ‘The Indifferent’. This latter poem drew its inspiration from Ovid, Amores II.iv: Non ego mendosos ausim defendere mores, but I think that we can actually go further than the Earl of Longford and Ó Tuama and assert that the Irish poem is actually a translation of Amores II.iv. Having said that, however, one must bear in mind that medieval and early modern Gaelic translators had a rather cavalier approach to this literary art. One could say that they took the theory of ‘dynamic equivalence’ to extremes long before the theory was ever invented. Their aim seemed to entail selection, adaption and revamping to such an extent that the end product would be so completely transposed into a Gaelic setting that it appeared much more like an original composition than an accurate translation. Rather than put Ovid into Gaelic, the Gaelic translator prefers to ask how Ovid would have composed his verse had he been a Gaelic speaker in the first place. Before dealing with the qualities of the translation, however, we need to analyse the make-up of the Latin original. Amores II.iv is a highly 15 Thomas F. O’Rahilly (ed.), Dánta Grádha: An anthology of Irish love poetry (A.D. 1350–1750) (1926; Cork, 2000), pp. 5–7. 16 Earl of Longford, Poems from the Irish (Dublin and Oxford, 1945), pp. 18–20.

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structured text. It opens with an introduction in which the poet seemingly laments his inability to remain faithful to any one woman: I would not venture to defend my faulty morals or to take up the armour of lies to shield my failings. I confess – if owning my short-comings aught avails; and now having owned them, I madly assail my sins. I hate what I am, and yet, for all my desiring, I cannot be but what I hate; ah, how hard to bear the burden you long to lay aside!   For I lack the strength and will to rule myself; I am swept along like a ship tossed on the rushing flood. ‘Tis no fixed beauty that calls my passion forth – there are a hundred causes to keep me always in love.17

Ovid goes on to describe some of these hundred causes that keep him always in love. First of all he describes women with particular moral qualities and he compares in particular women who are shy with those who are forward (11–16). Then he enumerates women with particular skills, contrasting the learned with the ignorant (17–32). Finally he compares different kinds of physical beauty, contrasting tall women with short, darkhaired women with blondes, young women with old (33–46). It is not a question of choosing between the different types, however, as the poet makes clear with a final flourish: ‘In fine, whatever fair ones anyone could praise in all the city, my love is candidate for the favours of them all’ (47–8). Having summarised the argument and structure of the poem, we can now proceed to the commentators. These have not always been of one mind, however. Georg Luck, for example, treats Ovid’s poem with the utmost gravity: But Ovid’s poem is not all polished surface and bland persuasion. He has explored most seriously the root of an almost metaphysical longing. The desire which he describes is similar to an endless movement, an ever new beginning or, perhaps, a series of new beginnings, where each one is more startlingly new than any previous one. This is not necessarily a tragic situation. The tragedy of Ovid is that of Don Juan. Both are fascinated by the magic of numbers. With admirable boldness they accept quantity and numbers as values per se. To cumulate experience upon experience, to make the immeasurable measurable, this is their ambition. Ovid desires in order to desire, but his desire grasps its object with self-abandon and without any afterthoughts. It is a carefree feeling which reveals a certain artistic innocence; for once, the ‘chaste life’ and the ‘frivolous Muse’ are working, not against, but with each other.18 17 Ovid, Heroides and Amores, trans. Grant Showerman, Loeb Classical Library (London, 1963), ll. 1–10, p. 391. 18 Georg Luck, The Latin love elegy (London, 1979), pp. 172–3.

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Peter Green, on the other hand, adopts a much lighter tone in his critique: So wide-ranging a spectrum of types and interests (some, on the face of it, mutually exclusive), suggests, once more, that what turns Ovid on is sex, with everything else ancillary to this overriding concern – except literary creativity, which both feeds on and feeds off the erotic preoccupation. A man who finds so many women attractive must be drawn, ultimately, by the common factor of their femininity rather than by the individual traits which distinguish them from one another. They may be different to begin with, but refracted through Ovid’s gaze they are all alike: all serve the same purpose. Indeed, throughout the poem what Ovid repeatedly anticipates is getting the object of his affections into bed (see lines 14, 16, 22, 24, 33, 44–5): in fact or fantasy makes no difference. The psychology is consistent throughout. And why not? Ovid would ask. Why not, indeed. Nothing, I suspect, would depress him more, could he return from the shades, than the earnest literary hash posterity has made of his more casual impulses, the avalanche of solemn exegesis burying his lightest verse.19

Having examined the original Latin poem with the aid of two critiques, we are now in a much better position to make an assessment of the Gaelic translation. The first thing that strikes one is the translator’s complete omission of Ovid’s philosophical or pseudo-philosophical introduction; the only hint remaining, perhaps, is line 23, do-ghéan m’fhaoisidin ós ard, ‘I will make my confession out loud’, echoing confiteor (line 3) of the original. It would seem that Ovid’s self-analysis and introspection, be it serious or in jest, did not appeal to the translator. When it comes to the cataloguing of contrasting types, however, do Búrc feels much more at home. While he does not adhere to Ovid’s strict threefold division, he nonetheless sets about his work with relish, and the fact that we are dealing with a translation becomes clear when we compare verses 3–5 of the Irish with lines 41–4 of the Latin: Ní iarraim iomad don rós ‘na haghaidh, ná ór ‘na gruaig; Ait liom lí cailce ar a corp, Is a folt ar dhath an ghuail.

seu pendent nivea pulli cervice capilli, Leda fuit nigra conspicienda coma; Seu flavent, placuit croceis Aurora capillis Omnibus historiis se meus aptat amor.

Dubh do bhí máthair na mná If dark locks hang about a snowy neck, then Leda was famous for her black hair; Tréar leagadh ar lár an Trae ‘s do bhí a hinghean mhaiseach mhór If they are golden, then Aurora’s saffron Go ndeallradh óir ar a céibh. tresses are pleasing. My love can adapt itself to all the stories (my translation of the latin). 19 Ovid, The erotic poems, ed. Peter Green (Harmondsworth, 1984), pp. 292–3.

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Cé do bhí an dias bhéildearg bhinn Bean díobh fionn agus bean dubh, Níor bh’fheas d’aon dá bhfacaidh iar Cé don dias do b’áille cruth. I do not seek too much of the rose in her face, nor gold in her hair. I prefer her body to be the colour of chalk and her hair the colour of coal. Black was the girl’s mother on whose behalf Troy was razed, while her elegant stately daughter had hair of golden hue. Though both of them were sweet and redlipped, one fair, the other dark, nobody who saw them could say which of them was the more beautiful (my translation of the Irish).

Yet even here do Búrc is not above taking liberties with his original. Whereas Ovid contrasts dark-haired Leda with the fair Aurora, do Búrc goes for a far stronger contrast between Leda and her world-famous daughter Helen of Troy, realising at the same time that not many of his audience would be familiar with Aurora.20 Do Búrc also omits the classical references in the original to the Sabines, Callimachus, Hippolytus and Priapus. Stanza eight of the Gaelic corresponds to Ovid’s lines 33–6. One could safely say that here the translation is as accurate as possible, allowing for the metrical differences between the two languages: Ní locht orm a beith beag, Tu, quia tam longa es, veteres heroiadas Ní meisde liom a beith mór, aequas Et potes in tota multa iacere toro. Sáith riogh ar leaba ‘s ar láimh Gach inghean árd álainn óg. Haec habilis brevitate sua est. corrumpor utroque; Convenient voto longa brevisque meo. I do not fault her for being small, I do not mind if she is tall. Fit for a king in bed and in hand is every beautiful tall young girl (my translation of the Irish).

You are as good as the heroines of old because you are so tall and you can lie the full length of the bed. This one is manageable because she is short. I am

20 The reference bank of Gaelic poets was stocked mainly with exemplars from indigenous literature. References to the classics are few and far between. See Eleanor Knott in her introduction to the bardic poems of Tadhg Dall Ó hUiginn (1550–91), Irish Texts Society, Vol. 22 (London, 1922), lxi; Liam P. Ó Caithnia, Apalóga na bhFilí, 1200–1650 (Baile Átha Cliath, 1984), p. 25.

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seduced by both. Tall and short, both suit my desire (my translation of the Latin).

Verse nine of the Gaelic accords to lines 39–40 of Ovid’s poem. In each case we have three colours, white, dark and swarthy, though regarding the first colour the Irish poet prefers to use a comparison with foam and snow instead of a simple statement. This conceit of relating physical beauty to certain aspects of nature has a long and honoured tradition in Gaelic letters: Muna raibh a cneas a mar chuip, Nó mar shneachta cnuic gan clódh Ní locht liom uirthi a beith ciar, Geanamhail iad ó bheith crón. If her skin is not like foam nor as the driven snow of the hillside, I do not fault her for being dark, they are lovable, if they are swarthy (my translation of the Irish).

Candida me capiet, capiet me flava puella, est etiam in fusco grata colore, Venus The fair one enthralls me, the golden girl enthralls me and even if she is darkly coloured, Venus is still pleasing (my translation of the Latin).

Do Búrc’s verse 11 corresponds to lines 11–16 in the original Latin: Ní do na mnáibh glioca a-mháin Do-bheirim fós grádh no gnaoi; Aithne an bhiolair tar an bhféar Níor bheag liom do chéill ag mnaoi. It is not only to the clever women that I give my love and affection. As long as she can distinguish between water-cress and grass, that is sense enough for a woman in my opinion (my translation of the Irish).

Sive es docta, places raras dotata per artes: sive rudis, placita es simplicitate tua. If you learned, you are pleasing because of your endowments of rare gifts; if you are unlearned, you are equally pleasing to me in your simplicity (my translation of the Latin).

While Ovid writes in a somewhat abstract manner, contrasting docta with rudis, do Búrc, on the other hand, prefers to adopt quite concrete metaphors. If his lady has enough wit to distinguish between watercress and grass, then that is sufficient learning for him. While it might be more accurate to talk of an elaboration than a strict translation, the very earthiness of the metaphor has the advantage of transposing the scene into an Irish rural setting. The final piece of evidence showing do Búrc’s indebtedness to Amores II.iv comes in verse 12 which corresponds to Ovid’s lines 45–6:

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Ionmhain liom (maith do-ním) ‘na baintreabhaigh í is ‘na hóigh; Gidh maith anmhain ris an aois, Is maiseach í ó bheith óg. I love her (rightly so) when she’s a widow, I love her when she’s a maid. Though it is worth while waiting for age, she is lovable because of her youth (my translation of the Irish).

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Ne nova sollicitat, me tangit serior aetas; haec melior, specie corporis illa placet. The young girl entices me, the older one moves me. This one is better, the other pleases with her bodily form (my translation of the Latin).

Once again we have an example of do Búrc’s penchant for the clear example. Though he uses aois and óg for serior aetas and nova, he also clarifies with baintreabhach and ógh, widow and maiden. This predilection for the concrete example over the abstract is the most striking feature of do Búrc’s translation and may have as much to do with the attitude of the Gaelic mind in general as with the translator’s own personal preference. One could add that the overall tone of the translation replaces the urban and urbane atmosphere of imperial Rome with a rustic ambience more in keeping with the material culture of the old Gaelic order. The five comparisons just quoted between the Gaelic poem and the original Latin have been very instructive in giving an insight into the mind of the Gaelic translator at work. We have been able to observe not only his process of rejection and selection, but also his method of adapting the material selected to his own culture. But perhaps we have been premature in presuming that do Búrc was working directly from the Latin original. Could he in fact have translated from an existing translation in another European language? It is significant in this regard that the Amores were not translated into any European vernacular before 1600 except English. The English exception was Christopher Marlowe’s posthumous publication of his translation of the first three books of the Amores in 1597.21 Marlowe made his translation during his student days in Cambridge (1581–87), and there was great demand for manuscript copies of his work. The published volume, however, incurred ecclesiastical censure in 1599, and all known copies were ordered to be called in and publicly burnt.22 Given the fate of Marlowe’s book, it is highly unlikely, though not impossible, that it provided the model for the Gaelic ­translation. 21 R. R. Bolgar, The classical heritage and its beneficiaries (Cambridge, 1963), pp. 530–3. 22 Caroline Jameson, ‘Ovid in the sixteenth century’, in Ovid, ed. J. W. Binns, Greek and Latin studies: Classical literature and its influence (London, 1973), p. 224.

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Sir John Harington made a translation of Amores II.iv in 1593 and this poem appeared in his Epigrams which were published posthumously in 1618 and reprinted in 1625 and 1633–34. Harington’s translation of Ovid’s poem bears quoting in full: Ovids Confession. Non ego mendosos defendere mores. To lyve in lust I make not my profesyon Nor in my verse my vyces to defend But rather by a true and playn confession To make yt known my meaning is to mend. I hate and am my selfe the thing I hate I loade my self yet stryve to bee dischardged Lyke steerlesse Shipp vnstayd runs my estate Bownd by my self, I sue to be inlardged No certen shape my fancye doth enflame A hundred Causes kindle my affection Yf sober looks do showe a modest shame Straight to those eyes my soule is in subiection A wanton looke no lesse my hart doth peerce Because it shows a pleasaunt inclination Yf she be coye lyke to the Sabines feerce I thinck suche coyness deep dissimulation Yf she be Learned, I honour giftes so rare Yf ignorant, I love a sweet simplicity Yf she doe prayse my vearses and compare Them wth the best in her I take felicity Yf she disprayse my verses and the maker To winne her lyking, I some love would lend her Goes she well grac’te to her gate wolde make me take her Yf not I thinck to touch a man might mend her Yf so shee be a sweet and cunning singer To snatch a kisse from her I have a will Yf she play well on Lute wth learned finger What hart could hate a hand so full of skill But yf she knowe wth art her armes to move And Daunce Quarantos with a stately grace To ‘omitt my self that easily fall in Love Hippolitus would thear take Priaps place

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Lyke auncyent Heroyns I count the tall Mee thinckes they fill a good lardge roome in bed Yet nimbler sportes proceed from statures small Thus tall or small my fansy still have fedd Yf shee goe playne, then what a peece wear this Weare she attyred; yf brave, I lyke her bravery   the    the    the

Ffayre (lovely) browne, blacke, none comes amisse My wanton Lust is thralld in so great slavery Yf heare lyke Gett, her Neck lyke Ivorye cover Ledas was black and that was Ledas glory With yellow lockes Aurora pleased her Lover Loe thus my fansy suites to every storye The Matron grave the greene young gerle and pretty I love for age or manners vnsuspicious In fine to all in Country Court or Citty  prove My Love doth press to (make) it self ambicious.23

The above translation merits a number of observations. Harington, while retaining classical references to the Sabines, Hippolitus, Priapus, Leda and Aurora, omits the reference to the songs of Callimachus in line nineteen, replacing it simply ‘with the best’. On other occasions he takes certain liberties with the original Latin, transposing from the Roman world to that of the Elizabethan court. I refer to the word ‘Lute’ in stanza seven and ‘daunce Quarantos’ in stanza eight, the latter referring to a dance that was popular in the second half of the sixteenth century. Harington’s last two lines (‘In fine to all in Country Court or City Prove / My Love dothe presse to (make) it self ambicious’) correspond to Ovid’s Denique quas total quisquam probet urbe puellas / Noster in has omnis ambitiosus amor. Whereas Ovid has simply tota urbe, the ‘whole city’, Harington elaborates in a threefold form to say ‘country, court or city’. It can hardly be coincidental that the Gaelic translation also includes three locations in the corresponding stanza:

23 Ruth Hughey, The Arundel Harington MS of Tudor poetry (Columbus, OH, 1960), vol. i, pp. 233–54; Gerard Kilroy, The epigrams of Sir John Harington (Farnham, 2009), pp. 177–8.

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Maith bean i n-eaglais na naomh I like a woman in the holy church, Tromdha ar tulaigh, caomh ‘na teach; wise in the place of assembly, mild in her Romhaith liom í lán do lúth home; Nuair is éigean dúinn bheith leamh. I really like her full of vim When my vigour is on the wane (my translation).

The word tulach, dative tulaigh, literally means ‘mound’, but as Gaelic chieftains were wont to consult with their advisers on a hillside near their dwelling, the word can also have a secondary meaning indicating a place of assembly. The place of assembly in the Gaelic world could well function as the dynamic equivalent of ‘court’ in the Elizabethan world. We have already remarked that do Búrc rendered Ovid’s contrast between serior aetas and nova as one between baintreabhach and ógh. It is remarkable that Harington rendered the same contrast as one between a ‘Matron grave’ and a ‘green young gerle and pretty’, both vernaculars preferring concrete examples to the rather abstract language of the original. We suggested earlier that the Gaelic faoisidin echoes the Latin confiteor. Faoisidin in the Irish language is nearly always used in an ecclesiastical sense, whereas confiteor has a much wider range than the technical language of the Roman Catholic Church. Faoisidin makes much better sense, therefore, as deriving from Harington’s confessyion, with its sacramental overtones, rather than from the neutral confiteor. In the light of this discussion, it seems to me that a very good case can be made for deriving do Búrc’s poem from Harington’s translation rather than from the original Latin, not to mention that Harington’s four-line stanza structure is much closer to the requirements of Gaelic prosody than Ovid’s elegiac couplets. Given the dearth of information on do Búrc, we cannot say which edition of Harington’s epigrams he consulted, but our comparison between the Gaelic, Latin and English texts points to a bilingual Gaelic poet using printed books in English between 1618 and 1634. Pádraigín Haicéad, Metamorphoses and Charles Best Do Búrc was not the only Gaelic poet in the early modern period to become acquainted with Ovid through the medium of English. The following poem by Pádraigín Haicéad (1600–54) is a love poem to one Máire Tóibín.

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Dála an nóinín – (ó’d-chí soilse i ngréin Like the daisy when first it sees the sun Is gearr go gcomhsgaoil clóilíon trilseach And its interlocking petals loosen all at géag, once Is tráth um nóin laoi, ar dtós dí i gcoim na Or in the evening at the first cloud’s cover néall, When its seedhead by a leaf is sheltered Fáisgidh fóichnín pórdhlaoi chruinn a over: craobh) – Mo dháil le hóigín óirnidhe is milse méin, Máire Tóibín, lóithnín lingthe laoch, Ghrádhmhar ghlóirfhíor ghnóchaoin ghrinnghlic ghaoth; Tálaim óm chlí sódh sídhe is sinn lairé.

So I, when this sweet distinguished friend – Mary Tobin, breath of air, that storms the fighting men; My true-voiced love who moves with gentle ease – When I’m with her my heart pours out a gentle peace;

‘S mar fhágbhas m’óighbhrid gcóirchíogh gcoimseach mé, Ní fhághaim óm chridhe comhnaidhe i gcuing go gcéill, Ach trácht, ar nos tsíor-nóinín fhinn na raon, Rem bháthadh i mbrónchaoi ghleódhaoir ghoilseach ghéir.

And if she leaves, my virgin of the perfect breasts, My heart does not allow me sensibly to rest But moves like the white eternal daisy of the field And drowns me in the clamour of a bitter grief.

Má tá nach dóigh shíl tóraidhe i ndruim a Though fruits do not seed on the crown of her head dlaodh, Táinig cróch buidhe i gcoróin naoi a cinn Yet the crocus comes forth, where there is no earth gan chré, Fánar cóirigheadh borrdhlaoi choinnleach And around goes a plait, glittering, in the chlaon form Do tháin na n-eón bhíos ó shín Of a birdflock tired from a winter storm. gheimhridh tréith. Ní táire fóisgríob chló chaoilphinn go A stroke from a sharpened quill is not more ngléas slim Than her eyebrows black as the beetle’s Ná a dhá córrbhraoi ar shnó an daoil wing chionnduibh chéir, Ós ardaibh bórrbhlaoisg mhórdhaidhe a Above her eyes – two spheres of liquid grey – The archetypal rose is in the whiteness of lionnruisg léith, Láimh re sómplaibh róis trí fhionn ‘na gné. her face; Cáidh ‘s cóir í a sróinín; slim a taobh; Bréaghdha a beól caoin: cróichíor chruinn a déad; Álainn óghshnoighe a meóir mhín trilseas

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Her fine and smooth and well-proportioned nose, Her gentle lips that well-shaped teeth enclose –

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gréas, Lovely her holy hand fashioning Is sgáil a sgornaighe fó mbíonn sgim ar aol. needlework, Lovely her throat’s hue beside which lime seems dull. Ní sáimhe ceól sidh i bhfóidtír inse Néill, Entrancing music in our land gives not ‘S i gcáil ní glóraighe geóin tsaoi sheinnte more peaceful sound téad, The expert harpist’s air has no more Ná rádha róchaoin bheóilín bhinn na bé, eloquence Sás ler thóg sí an ceo bhí ar m’intinn féin. Than the smallest saying of her sweet mouth That lifts the fog that clouds up all my sense. Cé tharla slóighlíon d’óigshíol Ghoill is Many young men come, all of NormanGhaoidheal, Irish seed, Unmanned in the embers of their aching I gcásaibh cróilighe ó a ghrís tinnsheirc tréimhs’. need; I n-áitibh óglaoich an ngeóbha sí sbreill Instead of these, to choose a wretch as I? mar mé? No better than death my life: no richer she Ní fearr mo bheó, ‘s ní móide í sinn iar that I die.24 25 n’éag.

Haicéad’s poem differs in form from do Búrc’s in that it is composed in the stressed metre of the amhrán, and not in the syllabic metre of classical Gaelic verse. Both forms of verse existed side by side for much of the seventeenth century before the eventual triumph of stressed metre over syllabic verse. Perhaps the most striking feature of Haicéad’s poem is the extended simile of the daisy in the first twelve lines. While nóinín nowadays is the Gaelic word for ‘daisy’, there is evidence that it could also represent the heliotropium, heliotrope, sunflower or marigold, and it is this latter meaning that is most germane to our understanding of Haicéad’s poem. The origin of the marigold is found in a famous tale narrated by Ovid in his Metamorphoses (IV, 167–270). In this account, the nymph Clytie was in love with Sol, god of the sun, but he rejected her advances for the sake of another nymph, Leucothöe. Incensed at her rejection, Clytie betrayed Leucothöe to her father who was so angered at his daughter’s unchastity that he had her buried alive. Eliminating her chief rival was of no avail to Clytie, however, as Sol still displayed 24 Michael Hartnett, Haicéad (Loughcrew, Oldcastle, 1993), pp. 17–18. 25 Máire Ní Cheallacháin, Filíocht Phádraigín Haicéad (Baile Átha Cliath, 1962), pp. 3–4.

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no interest. Dismayed at her failure to win Sol’s affection, Clytie began to pine away, neither eating nor drinking. She eventually turned into a flower, a flower continually turned towards the sun – hence the words ‘heliotrope’ and ‘sunflower’, alternative names for the marigold. What is fascinating about Haicéad’s use of Ovid’s tale, however, is the role reversal of the two chief protagonists. Whereas the sun is the male lover in the original story, with the hapless female lover constantly turned towards him, the Gaelic adaption places Máire Tóibín in the role of the sun, while it is the ill-starred male who is constantly turned towards her. This same role reversal is found in a poem by Thomas Watson (1545/6–92) that was published in an anthology of his work in 1582. Furthermore, far from concealing this manipulation of his source, Watson openly proclaims his technique: Clytia (as Perottus witnesseth) was a glorious Nimph, and thereof had her name: for κλέος in greeke signifieth glorie: and therefore she aspired to the love of Sol him selfe, who preferring Leucothöe before her, she was in short space ovvergone with suche extremetie of care, that by compassion of the Gods shee was transformed into a Marigolde; which is significantilie called Heliotropium, because even nowe after change of forme she still observeth the rising and going down of hir beloved the sunne as Ovid mentioneth,    Illa suum, quamvis radice tenetur,    Vertitur ad Solem, mutataque servat amorem Metam. Lib. 4 And by this it maie easilie be ghessed, whie in this Passion the Author compareth him selfe with the Marigold and his louve vnto the Sunne. The Marigold so likes the louely Sunne, That when he settes the other hides her face, And when he ginnes his morning course to runne, She spreades abroad, and shows her greatest grace; So shuts or sprouts my joy, as doth this flow’re, When my Sheesunne doth either laugh or lowre. When shee departes my sight, I die for paine, In closing vp my hearte with cloudie care; And yet when once I viewe her face againe, I straight reuiue, and joye my wonted fare:   Therewith my heart ofte saies, when all is done   That heau’n and earth haue not a brighter sunne. A jealous thought yet puttes my mind in feare, Lest Ioue him selfe descending from his throne Shoulde take by stealth and place her in his sphere Or in some higher globe to rule alone: (their praye)

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Which if he should, the heau’ns might boast But I (alas) might curse yat dismall day.26

In his citation of his classical source, Watson is adhering to the Renaissance principle of imitation. His claim to recognition as a poet is firmly based on his imitation of Ovid. Given that Haicéad uses both the same source and the same inversion of that source, it is tempting to conclude that the Irishman used Watson’s text. One major difficulty in accepting this conclusion, however, is that we only know of seven copies of Watson’s anthology, The ‘Εκατομπαθια or Passionate Centuries of Love (1582). The poet’s fame rests, apparently, on his inclusion in famous anthologies such as The Phoenix Nest (1593), England’s Helicon (1600), England’s Parnassus (1600) and A Poetical Rhapsody (1602). The latter anthology contains twenty poems by Watson, followed immediately by an interesting poem by Charles Best: A SONNET OF THE SVN A jewell being a sun-shining vpon the Marigold closed a heart of gould sent to his Mistresse named Mary. The Sun doth make the marigold to flourish, The Suns departure makes is droup againe. So goulden Maries sight, my iuyes do nourish, But by their absence all my ioyes are slaine. The sunne, the marigould make it liue and die, By her the sun shines brighter, so may I. Her smiles do grace the sun, and light the aire, Reuiue my heart, and cleare the cloudie Skie, Her frownes the aire make darke the sun to lower, The marigould to close my heart to die. By her the sun, the flower, the aire, and I, Shine and darken, spread, and close, liue and die, You are the sun, you are the golden Marie, Passing the sun in brightnesse, gold in power: I am the flower whom you do make to varie. Florish when you smile, droup when you do lowre. O let this heart of gold, sunne, and flowre, Still liue, shine, and springing in your harts bowre.27 26 Thomas Watson, The ‘Εκατομπαθια, or Passionate centurie of love 1582, ed. Edward Arber (London, 1870), p. 45. 27 Hyder Edward Rollins, A poetical rhapsody, 1602–1621 (Cambridge, MA, 1932), vol. i, pp. 285–6.

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While using the same role reversal based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses tale of the heliotrope as Watson and Haicéad, Best also indulges in a certain wordplay on ‘marigold’ and ‘golden Marie’. Haicéad attempted the very same wordplay. His attempt at punning did not succeed, however, because of the inherent differences between the two languages, English and Gaelic. Whereas Best has ‘marigold’ and ‘golden Marie’, Haicéad can only achieve nóinín and óigín óirnidhe . . . Máire Tóibín. The juxtaposition of óirnidhe/‘golden’ with Máire/‘Mary’ is a clear indication that the Irishman was well aware of the wordplay involved with ‘marigold’/‘golden Marie’. Unfortunately, the Gaelic language’s equivalent of ‘marigold’, nóinín, was incapable of providing the necessary balance and foil. It appears that English is the only western European vernacular in which this particular wordplay can succeed. The failure of Haicéad’s effort to carry over the pun into his own language, however, is sufficient proof of his use of an English source. Best’s poem is the only one known to me that contains the same three distinctive features as Haicéad’s: knowledge of Ovid’s story of the sunflower, a gender reversal of the roles of the two chief protagonists, and a pun involving the name of the flower and the name of the lady. Given that Haicéad’s poem contains the same three features, admittedly failing with the pun, it seems reasonable to conclude that Charles Best’s poem was his source of inspiration for the first twelve lines of the poem to Máire Tóibín. Furthermore, since Best’s claim to poetical fame stems from his contribution to Francis Davison’s popular volume, A Poetical Rapsodie, a work that underwent four editions between 1602 and 1621, it would seem that any one of these volumes could have been Haicéad’s source. The rest of Haicéad’s poem is a minute description of Máire Tóibín’s beauty, and actually contains some puns that are untranslatable into English, as if in compensation for the earlier pun from English that was untranslatable into Irish. In the last verse the speaker wonders why she should choose such a wretch as him when the best youths of both Gaelic and Old English stock are dying with love for her. The final line, deftly translated by Hartnett as ‘No better than death my life: no richer she that I die’, is most Petrarchan in its conceit and is a fine example of just how easily the whole ethos of courtly love adapted itself to a Gaelic milieu. What is most germane to this particular argument, however, is the fact that we have tracked down Haicéad’s source of inspiration to a popular anthology of English verse that went through four editions in the early seventeenth century.

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Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh, Metamorphoses and William Percy The surnames of our first two Gaelic poets indicate that they were of Old English stock. Our final example, on the other hand, was composed by a poet who belonged to a professional literary Gaelic family. Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh’s echo poem, A mhac-alla dheas, is now the object of our attention. A mhac-alla dheas, O pleasant echo, Duit ós feas a lán. You who knows so much, Créad, a ghlórach ghrinn, What, o precise voice Do-bheir sinn dár gcrádh? – Grádh. Is the cause of our pain? – Love. Grádh, dár ndóich, ní headh; Aithne damsa an gean; Innis damh go fíor Mo shnuadh dhíom cé bhean? – Bean.

Love, indeed, it is not; I know what affection is; Tell me truly. Who deprived me of my appearance? – A woman.

Más bean mar gach mnaoi, If it is a woman like any woman, A Dhé bhí, fo-dear O living God, who is responsible mo chéadfadh do chlódh, For transforming my senses, uch, dár ndóich, ní headh! – Ní Alack, of course, it cannot be! – Cannot headh be. Munab eadh atá bé Do Tuathaibh-dé dom chrádh; Leigheas i ndán damh Innis damh má tá. – Atá. A shíogaí ghlic ghrinn, Friotail rinn go réidh Créad is leaigheas damh; Níor fhionnas ort bréag. – Éag. Más é an t-éag go dimhin Foircheann fire ár bpian É do dhruidim liom Do b’ait liom, dar fia. – Dar fia.

If it cannot be, then it is a maid From the otherworld who is tormenting me; If there’s a cure in store for me Tell me if there is. – There is.

Dar fia féin do b’ait, A ghlac ghlan gan ghó; Gidh eadh, ar do bhás Ná cluineadh Cáit só. – Cad so?

Indeed it would be welcome, O pure maid who lies not; Nevertheless, on your death, Let not Kate hear this – What’s this?

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O wise precise sprite, Tell me truly What is my cure; I have never found you to lie. – To die. If to die for sure Is the final end of my pains, Death’s swift approach I would welcome, indeed. – Indeed.

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Cad so an diabhail ort, What the devil is this, A thrú nár loc bréag, O wretch who never shirked lying; Fáth do mhagaidh can Say why are you mocking Faoi Cháit is glan déad. – Éad! Kate of the white teeth? – Jealousy. Más trí Narcissus tréan If it’s because of valiant Narcissus, Ataoi ag éad ret olc, That you are jealous to your detriment, Beag an díth, dar Duach, No wonder, by God, A dhul uait fán loch. – Och That he entered the lake to avoid you. – Alas. Och is míle mairg Alas and a thousand woes Do-chluinim uait gach laoi; I hear from you every day; Créad atá libh dá luadh, What are you saying A chú chuarta an chaoi? – Caoi. O seeker of the way? – Weeping. Do chaoi Narcissus náir Noble Narcissus wept Do rug bárr gach gnaoi Who surpassed all in comeliness; Cease, and to think that Kate Sguir, is go rud Cáit A bharr so, más fíor. – Is fíor. Surpassed this, if true. – ’Tis true. Beannacht ar do bhéal A blessing on your mouth That did not lie today; Nár chan bréag inniu; Ó taoi ag dul i bhfad But since you are getting tedious, Cuirim leat adieu. – Adieu.28 I wish you Adieu. – Adieu (my translation).29

The story of Narcissus and Echo in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, III, is the locus classicus for the echo device in literature. While Juno wished to spy on her husband Jove’s behaviour with various nymphs on the mountains, Echo’s role was to delay her with long conversations. When Juno realised what was going on, she took revenge on Echo by depriving her of the power of speech, apart from the ability to repeat the last word she had just heard. One day Echo encountered Narcissus and was immediately smitten by him. Because of her impediment, however, she was unable to engage him in conversation and was reduced to echoing his own words. Proud and cold-hearted, Narcissus completely spurned the advances of Echo, who pined away until there remained nothing left of her except her voice. Echo was only one of many would-be lovers rejected by Narcissus. Eventually, one of those failed suitors prayed that Narcissus would suffer 28 O’ Rahilly (ed.), Dánta Grádha, pp. 26–8. 29 Cf. James E. Doan, Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh: An Irish poet in romance and oral tradition (New York, 1990), pp. 160–1.

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from the same fate that he had inflicted on others, namely, that he would fall in love without being loved in return. This plea was heard by the goddess Nemesis. One day when Narcissus knelt by the bank of a lake to quench his thirst, he immediately fell in love with his own shadow on the surface of the waters, failing to understand that the shape he saw was his own reflection. Despite his best efforts, he was unable to make contact with the object of his desire, and like Echo before him, fell into a decline. As Narcissus wasted away Echo arrived once more on the scene, and though still mindful of her former ill-treatment, was moved to pity at Narcissus’s sorry state. Because of her impediment, however, she could only repeat the harrowing cries of the hapless youth. Eventually Narcissus died, but when his relations came to celebrate his funeral rites, nothing remained of him but a white flower. Significant elements of Ovid’s tale are the personification of Echo and the pathetic conversation between Echo and the dying Narcissus. The text itself is full of verbal echoes, culminating in ‘dictoque vale vale inquit et Echo’. Ó Dálaigh’s poem is made up of a conversation between the persona and Echo. Two verses actually make specific references to Narcissus, while the final verbal echo adieu-adieu replicates the vale-vale of the original Latin. The Gaelic text contains a number of significant contributions, however. Far from simply reproducing the same word for the echo effect, Ó Dálaig often reproduces the same sound but with two different meanings. In verse two, for example, bhean is a verb, whereas in the corresponding echo, bean is a common noun meaning ‘woman’. In verse one the phoneme gcrádh, meaning ‘anguish’, finds its reflex with the same sound grádh, but in this case meaning ‘love’. There are a number of instances of this kind of echo throughout the poem, bréag (‘lie’) in verse four echoing with éag (‘death’). In verse seven, Cáit só (‘Kate . . . this’) provides the echo for Cad so (‘what’s this’), while in verse eight déad (‘tooth’) echoes with éad (‘jealously’). In the following verse the word loch (‘lake’) echoes with och (‘alas’), and in verse nine chaoi (‘way’) finds its opposite number in caoi (‘lamentation’). In five of the twelve verses the echo is simply repeated, whereas in the other half, Ó Dálaigh plays on the possibility of the same sound having two different meanings. Furthermore, the echo at the end of each verse also supplies the initial word of the following verse, re-echoing the echo as it were, a pattern that is maintained throughout the poem apart from the final verse. Ó Cearbhall’s innovative approach to the echo technique becomes even clearer in the light of Helen Vendler’s comments on George Herbert’s echo poem Heaven:

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The form in this case is not unique to Herbert: echo poems pre-existed The Temple, both in the classical and modern languages and in English. The form, however, is sufficiently difficult so that poems of undoubted mastery faltered under the test. Sydney’s echo poem in the Arcadia is shocking, by comparison with Herbert’s, in its woodenness, its lack of invention, and its slavish repetition of identical words: Echo, what do I gett yelding my sprite to my grieves? Grieves. What medecin may I finde for a paine that draw’s me to death? Death. O poisonous medecin! What worse to me can be then it? It. In what state was I then, when I took this deadly disease? Ease. And what manner a mind which has to that humour a vaine? Vaine. Sidney may not have chosen to give his best poetry to Philisides, but other echo poems in general seem no better. The echo tends more often than not to repeat without alteration the word said by the voice, or to repeat an etymological variant of the ‘parent’ word (the pairs in Tasso’s Eco include accresca – cresca, m’accieco – cieco, m’appresto – presto, dispera – spera, affida – fida). Once in a while, the verbal invention will find something more ingenious than simple repetition or etymological identity, but such trouvailles are rare and so far as I can see do not form the principle of any echo poem preceding Herbert’s with the possible exception of An Echo from Lord Sterling’s Aurora (1604).30

A fine example of Vendler’s ‘woodenness, lack of invention and slavish repetition of identical words’ is found in the following sonnet by William Percy: What is the Fair, to whom so long I plead? Lead. What is her face, so Angel-like? – Angel-like. Then unto Saints in mind, Sh’is not unlike? – Unlike. What may be hoped of one so evil nat’red? Hatred. O then my woes how shall I hope best? Hope best. Then She is flexible? She is flexible? Fie, no, it is impossible! Possible. About her straight then only our best! You’re best. How must I first her loves to me approve? Prove! How if She say I may not kiss her? Kiss her! For all her bobs I must them bear, or miss her? Yes, sir? Then will She yield at length to Love? To Love! Even so! Even so! By Narcisse is it true? True! Of thine honestie? I Adieu! Adieu!31

Despite the pedestrian nature of Percy’s sonnet, the final two lines merit closer inspection in the light of Ó Dálaigh’s poem. ‘Even so’/‘Even so’ 30 Helen Vendler, The poetry of George Herbert (Cambridge, MA, 1975), p. 223. 31 Elbridge Colby, The Echo device in literature (New York, 1920), p. 8.

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would translate into Gaelic as dar fia/dar fia. A reference to Narcisse follows in the English, while a reference to Narcissus comes soon after the echo dar fia/dar fia in the Gaelic text. Percy follows with the echo ‘is it true?’/‘true’, which is again taken up by Ó Dálaigh with más fíor/is fíor. While ignoring the echo entailed in the final syllable of ‘honestie’ and ‘I’, for his own conclusion the Irishman simply repeats Percy’s final echo adieu/adieu. Even though Ó Dálaigh’s piece is a totally different composition, the juxtaposition of the same echoes in the same order in both poems, interspersed with a reference to Narcissus in each, is compelling evidence to prove that Ó Dálaigh consulted William Percy’s slim volume Sonnets to the fairest Coelia published in London in 1594. While C. S. Lewis may have rightfully dismissed Percy’s twenty sonnets as ‘worthless’, the fifteenth sonnet definitely served as a springboard to Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh’s imaginative powers and stimulated him to produce an echo poem that could hold its own with the best examples in any language.32 Conclusion The lyrics where a specific borrowing this way or that can be established are, and always will be only isolated ones among thousands. For the rest, to attempt to be more ‘exact’ would be inexact. Here exactness is to look more closely at what there is – to bear in mind that there is an elemental attitude to love that is courtois, that there are conventions of expression which overlap as much as the lives of clerc and courtier and common singer overlap (which is a great deal), and that there is an imponderable: poetic imagination – and then again to return and look closely at what there is.33

Peter Dronke’s words of caution were primarily directed at scholars of the medieval love lyric, and should hold equally true for early modern Gaelic love poetry. Nevertheless, our analysis of three of these poems demonstrated that each one of them was indebted to a particular English poem, which served as a starting-off point for the Irishman. Two of our authors were amateur poets of Old English stock, while the third, Ó Dálaigh, was a professional poet of Gaelic origin. It is interesting that each of the poems has a strong Ovidian dimension. This may indicate that the Renaissance interest in the classics was permeating Gaelic circles through English intermediaries, with bilingual Gaelic literati being particularly well placed to facilitate this cultural transmission. The chapter 32 C. S. Lewis, English literature in the sixteenth century (Oxford, 1954), p. 495. 33 Peter Dronke, Medieval Latin and the rise of European love-lyric (second ed., Oxford, 1968), vol. i, p. 285.

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by the Loebers mentioned in the beginning of this chapter draws attention to the rarity of printed books with evidence of ownership by Gaelic and Old English readers in the early modern period.34 Even allowing for the destruction of much of the material evidence of books and libraries in early modern Ireland, it seems to me that the criteria established by the authors are somewhat too rigid. While our own analysis could not provide clear evidence of ownership, it did at least demonstrate evidence both of access to and use of Harington’s Ariosto and Epigrams, Percy’s Sonnets to the fairest Coelia and the anthology A Poetical Rhapsody. The evidence for the circulation of these books in Gaelic literary circles was derived from careful reading of a handful of poems. Further research could well yield further results. Tracing the exact provenance of these books, however, is much more difficult. Given the rudimentary state of both the printing industry and the book trade in early modern Ireland, the demand for books was fed mainly by imports.35 Books were imported to Dublin through Chester while those destined for the southern towns, including Galway, came through Bristol. Harington’s Ariosto, as we have seen, was available in both Dublin and Galway. One could surmise that the same would hold for his Epigrams, though the surname of the translator of Amores II.iv, do Búrc, would indicate an inhabitant of the west of Ireland, suggesting Galway as the source rather than Dublin. As regards the Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh that composed A mhac-alla dheas, James Doan has suggested that there were two Wexford poets of that name in the early seventeenth century, most likely father and son.36 Access to books could have been through Dublin or through some of the southern towns such as Kilkenny, Clonmel, Waterford, Ross, Dungarvan and Cork, all of which imported books from Bristol in the early modern period.37 While we know next to nothing about the first two of our poets, we are on much firmer ground 34 Loeber and Stouthamer-Loeber, ‘Books owned by members of Old English and Gaelic Irish families’. 35 Raymond Gillespie, Reading Ireland: Print, reading and social change in early modern Ireland (Manchester, 2005); Raymond Gillespie, ‘Print Culture, 1550–1700’, in Raymond Gillespie and Andrew Hadfield (eds), The Oxford history of the Irish book, Vol. 3: The Irish book in English, 1550–1800 (Oxford, 2006), pp. 17–33. 36 James Doan, ‘The poetic tradition of Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh’, Éigse 18 (1980), p. 16. Doan draws attention to the confusion that exists due to the conflation of historical, literary and folkloristic figures in the tradition associated with Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh. 37 Raymond Gillespie, ‘The book trade in southern Ireland, 1590–1640’, in Gerard Long (ed.), Books beyond the Pale: Aspects of the provincial book trade in Ireland before 1850 (Dublin, 1996), pp. 1–17.

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when it comes to the career of Pádraigín Haicéad.38 Unfortunately, we are not able to date his poem Dála an nóinín with any certainty. The fact that he hailed from county Tipperary would suggest that his access to books came through one of the southern towns rather than from Dublin, while his links with the Butlers of Dunboyne should not be underestimated. As Raymond Gillespie pointed out, the commercial world of trade was not the only method of circulating books in early modern Ireland, and as other contributors to this volume have noted we should not dismiss the friendship networks of borrowing and lending books.39 While Dublin may well merit the accolade of a Renaissance city of ­literature, it was also an administrative capital that was trying to impose English language, law and custom throughout the land. Though the encounter between the Gaelic and the English worlds was complex, tense and often painful, the evidence of Gaelic love poetry reveals the possibility of a fruitful symbiosis that might have been, but one that, unfortunately, was far too seldom achieved in and beyond Renaissance Dublin.40

38 DIB, s.v. ‘Haicéad (Hackett), Pádraigín (1610s?–1654)’. 39 Gillespie, Reading Ireland, p. 67. 40 Kane, ‘Languages of legitimacy?’, argues that the Irish language did not operate solely on the social margins in the early Stuart Pale, but that it played an important political and social role in Jacobean Ireland.

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Latin oratory in seventeenth-century Dublin Jason Harris In early 1602, as the lord deputy Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy, returned victorious from the battle of Kinsale and the cogs of the victors’ propaganda machine began to turn, an unidentified orator in Trinity College Dublin penned an oration that was to be delivered in the lord deputy’s presence upon his arrival in Dublin. There is no evidence as to whether the oration was actually delivered, but it is known that others were commissioned by the city council to welcome the victorious general upon his arrival in the city, and that such ceremonial orations were customary to mark special occasions of this kind.1 The oration survives in draft form in an unsigned manuscript in the collections of Archbishop Ussher. Although it lacks a title, it might reasonably be construed as Oratio panegyrica in laudem Domini de Mountjoy, serennisimi regis Jacobi in Hibernia locum tenentis (hereafter, Oratio panegyrica).2 Circumstantial evidence for the authorship of the oration has been noted by John Barry in the introduction to his recent translation of the text, though without a firm attribution.3 The tenor of the speech relates to the qualities and achievements of Mountjoy, culminating in his victory at Kinsale. Relatively few concrete details are provided in the text, hence its historical value lies in the testimony it offers as to the outlook of a key institution in early modern Dublin at this key point   1 For a translation of and introduction to the text, see John Barry, ‘A Trinity College Dublin oration for Mountjoy’, in Hiram Morgan (ed.), The battle of Kinsale (Cork, 2004), pp. 415–18. On publicly commissioned oratory in Dublin, see Alan J. Fletcher, Drama, performance and polity in pre-Cromwellian Ireland (Toronto, 2000), pp. 153–8.   2 TCD MS 591, fols 71r–72v. Abbot catalogues the text as a ‘peroratio gratulatoria’, but this is not a customary title for a discrete work and the suggestion that it is a peroration to something else is plausible but speculative: T. K. Abbott, Catalogue of the manuscripts in the Library of Trinity College Dublin (Dublin, 1900), p. 99.   3 Barry, ‘A Trinity College Dublin oration’, p. 415. The handwriting is not Ussher’s, nor that of Luke Challoner, the other candidate considered by John Barry.

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in its early history, and in the indication it provides of the role of Latin in articulating that outlook. A small corpus of Latin oratory survives from early modern Ireland, diverse in character and of sporadic frequency. This chapter will consider a selection of orations from seventeenth-century Dublin that attempt to address public events in a manner that would express the ethos of the city’s learned community and its relationship to the wider culture of Renaissance learning. In particular, the focus of discussion will be a group of orations that were published in Dublin immediately before and after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660.4 These orations endeavoured to channel the social and political aspirations of the learned elite in Dublin into polished Latinity and a mode of expression that was intended to convey both virtuosity and control. To compose such an oration was to try to bring harmony to the troubled flow of events and to identify oneself with a community that valued civility and order. Accordingly, this chapter will offer a stylistic analysis that sets these texts in their historical and literary context as a contribution to understanding Dublin’s profile as a Renaissance city of literature and learning.5 The use of the term ‘Renaissance’ in this context requires some explanation. For the most part the Latin writings of seventeenth-century scholars are composed in a style that aims at competency and clarity rather than literary accomplishment; oratory, however, is a case apart.6 Latin ­orations   4 In particular, I have chosen not to discuss here the orations of James Ussher, since they are mostly of a very different character (with one exception mentioned below) and are the subject of a separate study.   5 On Ireland’s relationship to the Renaissance in this period there is a growing literature, but see in particular Michael Potterton and Thomas Herron (eds), Ireland in the Renaissance, c.1540–1660 (Dublin, 2007); and Thomas Herron and Michael Potterton (eds), Dublin and the Pale in the Renaissance, c.1540–1660 (Dublin, 2011). Especially good on the Gaelic context is Mícheál Mac Craith, ‘Ireland and the Renaissance’, in Glanmor Williams and Robert Owen Jones (eds), The Celts and the Renaissance: Tradition and innovation (Cardiff, 1990), pp. 57–90; and Mícheál Mac Craith, ‘Literature in Irish, c.1550–1690: From the Elizabethan settlement to the Battle of the Boyne’, in Margaret Kelleher and Philip O’Leary (eds), The Cambridge history of Irish literature, 2 vols (Cambridge, 2006), vol. i, pp. 191–231. On early traces of the Renaissance in Ireland as gauged by Latin material, see Diarmuid Ó Catháin, ‘Some reflexes of Latin learning and of the Renaissance in Ireland, c.1450–c.1600’, in Jason Harris and Keith Sidwell (eds), Making Ireland Roman (Cork, 2009), pp. 14–36.   6 For a discussion of the appropriateness of the descriptor ‘Renaissance’ to Irish Latin of this period, see Jason Harris, ‘Renaissance Ireland: Some problems and perspectives’, in Thomas M. Barr (ed.), Italian influences and Irish outcasts: Essays on Torquato Tasso and aspects of the Renaissance in Ireland, Europe and beyond (Coleraine, 2009), pp. 102–18. A brief overview of the characteristics of and terminology relating to early modern Latin can be found in Jozef Ijsewijn and Dirk Sacré, Companion to neo-Latin studies, second edition (Leuven, 1990), vol. i, pp. 27–8, and vol. ii, pp. 377–419. As regards the

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were designed to impress upon their audience the eloquence of the orator, both as a compliment to the erudition of the assembled company and as an assertion of the significance of the utterance. To speak Latin in a creative and eloquent fashion implied mastery of ancient learning, such saturation in the language and literature of antiquity as only the finest scholars could manage. Accordingly, it placed the speaker, audience and subject of the discourse in a venerable tradition that tinged them with the dignified sepia of historical significance. Orations that were sent to the press were normally among those deemed in this respect most felicitous. In other words, the corpus of Latin oratory from seventeenth-century Dublin represents instances in which the learned elite chose to engage in the language-game of Renaissance humanism in order to demonstrate the weight and worth of their community. The rationale for deploying Latin in this way was readily perceptible and, though it was subject to critique, not liable to be misunderstood; accordingly, Latin oratory survived in ceremonial contexts within Protestant society despite challenges to the use of Latin in other areas of Reformed culture. Already by the beginning of the seventeenth century, writers in England and Ireland, particularly but not exclusively Protestants, opted with increasing frequency to publish their work in the vernacular.7 To some extent this reflects a decision about their intended readership and, in this respect, participates in the Europe-wide rise of vernacular literature. Many readers and writers also saw Latin as an exclusive, elite language tied to outdated educational ideals. Further, the liturgical reforms of the sixteenth century inspired some Protestant authors to associate Latin with Catholicism, one outcome of which was the adoption not merely of the vernacular but of a hybrid, demotic vernacular idiom overlaid with biblical citations and echoes, the so-called ‘language of Canaan’ (Isaiah 19:18).8 Although most Protestant writers eschewed the excesses use of the term ‘Renaissance’ in relation to Ireland more generally, see Thomas Herron, ‘Introduction: A fragmented Renaissance’, in Potterton and Herron (eds), Ireland in the Renaissance, pp. 19–39.   7 A general survey of the Latin writing of Irish authors may, nevertheless, be found in F. X. Martin, ‘Ireland, the Renaissance and the counter-Reformation’, Topic 13 (1967), pp. 23–33; John J. Silke, ‘Irish scholarship and the Renaissance, 1580–1673’, Studies in the Renaissance 20 (1973), pp. 169–206; Benignus Millet, ‘Irish literature in Latin, 1550–1700’, in T. W. Moody, F. X. Martin and F. J. Byrne (eds), A new history of Ireland, Vol. 3 (Oxford, 1976), pp. 561–86; and Keith Sidwell, ‘A theological literature? The shape of Irish Neo-Latin writing’, in Gerhard Petersmann and Veronika Oberparleiter (eds), The role of Latin in early modern Europe: Texts and contexts. Grazer Beiträge, Supplementband IX (Horn/Wien, 2005), pp. 154–60.   8 On Protestant critiques of Latin, see Françoise Waquet, Latin: Or, the empire of the sign

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of this approach, by the mid-seventeenth century the language politics of the English-speaking world was immersed in the diverging streams of protestant religiosity such that the decision to employ Latin, though far from unusual, presupposed a rather particular context of utterance. Universities were, of course, lingering enclaves of Latinity. Throughout the seventeenth century lectures and examinations were conducted in Latin, and students were expected to be able to converse habitually in the language. In this, Latin was distinguished from the other two languages which were central to the curriculum, Greek and Hebrew. Although composition was undertaken in each of these languages, only Latin was viewed as a customary mode of scholarly expression. The facility and felicity with which students articulated themselves in the language no doubt varied from case to case, but the aspirations of their teachers demanded more of them than the kinds of pidgin discourses that have been identified in some late medieval universities.9 In the post-Renaissance world of learning, the Latin literacy that was expected of university-educated scholars was understood to include the full range of classical morphology and syntax as well as clarity of expression in an idiom appropriate to the language: in short, latinitas. Although the majority of early modern students may never have lived up to the ideals of their teachers (who may, indeed, not have done so themselves), the celebratory and commemorative oratory commissioned for occasions that fell outside the routine ceremonial life of the university aimed at the highest standards, and that which made it into print with official endorsement evidently passed the test of contemporary peer review.10 Anon., Oratio panegyrica (1602) Before examining the orations printed in Dublin between 1658 and 1667, it is worth returning to the oration in honour of Mountjoy that was (London, 2001), pp. 78–9. For discussion of the ‘language of Canaan’, see part one of Mason Lowance, The language of Canaan: Metaphor and symbol in New England from the Puritans to the Transcendentalists (Cambridge, MA, 1980).   9 For a survey of early modern universities, see Hilde de Ridder-Symoens (ed.), A history of the university in Europe, Vol. 2: Universities in early modern Europe (1500–1800) (Cambridge, 1996). For wide-ranging and detailed discussions of the use of Latin, see Waquet, Latin, passim; and Ijsewijn and Sacré, Companion to neo-Latin studies, 2 vols (Leuven, 1990). A particularly insightful treatment of Latin composition at university can be found in John K. Hale, Milton’s Cambridge Latin: Performing in the genres, 1625– 1632 (Tempe, AZ, 2005). 10 For a sceptical assessment of the relationship between the rhetoric and reality of humanist language training, see Anthony Grafton and Lisa Jardine, ‘Humanism and the school of Guarino: A problem of evaluation’, Past and Present 96 (August, 1982), pp. 51–80.

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written in 1602. The text that survives is evidently a draft, being emended and redacted even as it was written down.11 This provides an opportunity to see an orator at work in a manner that shows both the development of his thought process and his concern with latinitas. The structure of the oration is relatively straightforward. The lord deputy is welcomed within the grounds of the new local university (intra hasce domesticas Academiae nostrae parietes) and God is thanked for his safe delivery from the perils of war. The orator then alludes to the good fortune of Ireland in having three recent heroes to steer it through the storm upon its sea of troubles (hibernica ista tempestas in hoc undoso turbarum pelago), but Mountjoy is identified as the greatest of these three and his peculiar combination of martial and intellectual virtues is praised. His indefatigable campaigning since his arrival in Ireland is then recounted, culminating in the day of reckoning (ultimus ille et decretorius dies) at the battle of Kinsale when both England and Ireland were liberated from Spanish servitude (Hispanica servitute). The orator calls upon historians, chronologers, book-lovers and antiquarians (historicos, cronologos, librorum helluones, antiquitatum scrutores) to bear witness to the event. Finally, Mountjoy is entreated by means of a Ciceronian adage to continue adorning the land he has conquered (Spartam quam nactus es hanc orna) and is saluted in Horatian fashion as a patron sprung from ancient kings, my guardian and sweet glory (Maecenas atavis edite regibus / O et praesidium et dulce decus meum. Salve. Salve).12 Although the authorship of this oration has not been ascertained, one possibility demands attention here. In 1617, James Ussher delivered an oration in Trinity College Dublin in the presence of the viceroy, during which he deployed the same sequence of Horatian quotations to address his potential patron, referring to him as a Maecenas of ancient stock (atavis editum de regibus) and, more tellingly because more unusually, exhorting him to continue to adorn this Sparta that he has acquired (Spartam nactus es, eam orna).13 Ussher had delivered a series of orations at the university in 1597 and 1598, but these were student exercises; is it possible that he was asked to deliver the address to Mountjoy a few years later, by which time he was a fellow and had attained his MA? The strongest argument against is palaeographical – the draft is not in Ussher’s 11 Barry, ‘A Trinity College Dublin oration’, p. 415. 12 These final lines are omitted on the reverse page of the manuscript and were omitted from John Barry’s recent translation. The references are to Cicero, Ad Atticum, 4.6, and Horace, Odes 1.1. 13 TCD MS 786, fols 93v–94r.

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usual hand. It is possible that Ussher decided to use an amanuensis or to write in a different script, but either way this would be exceptional for him and it is perhaps easier to believe that he was not the author. If so, it may be a coincidence that he used the same quotations as the earlier orator (they are not terribly recherché) or it may be an instance of reception and imitation, since he was almost certainly present when it was delivered and since we know that at some stage he gained possession of the draft text. However this may be, echoes of this kind are a characteristic feature of the style of this oration as the orator demonstrates both his classical learning and his linguistic inventiveness. For example, at the very beginning of his speech he quotes a poem from the Appendix Vergiliana to the effect that Mountjoy is the kind of man Apollo could scarcely find among all the thousands of men (Qualem vix repperit unum / millibus e cunctis hominum consultus Apollo).14 Close attention to one particular passage may illustrate the method of composition: Tu quo tendis non per alios sed per te ipsum cum excercitu pervenire soles. Tu non domi dormis securus sed de nocte vigilas armatus. Tu non in urbe valida sed in castris habitas. Non te gallorum sed buccinarum cantus exsuscitat. Tu primus aciem astruis, primus in acie pugnas. Tu soles reliquiis hasta cursuque praeesse. Tu soles valido currere primus equo. Sic soles patriam claris ornare tropheis. Sic soles hostes exuperare tuos.15 You always get to where you are going with your army through your own efforts, not through others’. You do not sleep secure at home, but lie awake at night fully armed. You do not live in a powerful city, but in the camp. It is not the cry of the cock that wakes you, but the bugle’s call. You are the first to draw up your battle line, the first to join the fray. You always run ahead of the rest with your lance. You’re always first to charge on your mighty steed. Thus you always adorn your country with illustrious trophies; thus you always overcome your foes.

This description of the general who eschews creature comforts and endures hardship to win great victories is conventional in theme but it has been grafted on to an ancient model, Cicero’s Pro Murena: Vigilas tu de nocte ut tuis consultoribus respondeas, ille ut eo quo intendit mature cum exercitu perveniat; te gallorum, illum bucinarum cantus exsuscitat; tu actionem instituis, ille aciem instruit.16 14 W. V. Clausen et al., Appendix Vergiliana (Oxford, 1966), ‘De institutione viri boni’, ll. 1–2. See also R. P. H. Green (ed.), Ausonii opera (Oxford, 1999), p. 114. 15 TCD MS 591, fol. 71r. All translations are my own. 16 Cicero, Pro Murena, 22.

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You stay awake at night so that you may reply to your advisors, but he does so in order to be able to arrive on time where he is going with his army. The cock’s crow wakes you, the call of the bugle him. You prepare court cases, he draws up his troops for battle.

Minor verbal changes (instruit > adstruis; intendit > tendit) and larger contextual differences in no way obscure the allusion, which is intended to align Mountjoy with the martial virtue of Murena. Yet other elements have also been thrown into the mix. The orator had originally written tu non in urbe habitas sed in castris, but before going on to write the next sentence he changed his mind, inserting valida after urbe and moving habitas to the end of the sentence. This may have been intended merely to provide variation in the sentence structure, which would otherwise match that of the preceding sentence, but the relentless repetitions of the next few lines suggest otherwise. Though the author might have been thinking of rhythm, if so his change in fact replaced a very common Ciceronian clausula (choreus and molossus) with a weaker ending.17 Most likely is that he decided to strengthen the contrast between city and camp and Livy’s use of the phrase urbe valida in his account of the last battle of Romulus came to the orator’s mind.18 Unlike the Ciceronian intertext, this echo is not intended to conjure up a suggestive parallel, but merely demonstrates how composition occurs, consciously or otherwise, when one has learned a language through intensive study of the words and phrases of ancient authors. The language of this oration is not, however, purely classical. Conventional neo-Latin vocabulary is employed to describe the artillery of the English forces (bombardorum regium numerum) and ammunition (globulis et glandibus). With heavy irony, Catholic Ulster is described as the limbo of the damned (damnatorum limbo), while the Spanish troops are referred to as conquestores, surely a hint at the vernacular conquistadores. At times he expresses himself in a particularly lively fashion, as when he invokes the image of a poor mathematician struggling to keep up with the convoluted geometry of Mountjoy’s manoeuvres: Deus bone quis nobis subtilis mathematicus curioso pencillo talem geometricam figuram possit deliniare tot lineis intersertam qua tuos nobis concursus ad vivum exprimeret in hoc regno ad regiae maiestatis sceptrum tuendum.19 17 The extent to which neo-Latin authors were aware of prose rhythm can be seen in Iacobus Ludovicus Strebaeus, De elecutione et oratoria collocatione verborum libri duo, which was printed with Jovita Rapicius, De numero oratorio libri quinque in Cologne, 1582. See especially Strebaeus, De elecutione et oratoria collocatione verborum libri duo, pp. 208–21. 18 Livy, Ab urbe condita, 1. 15. 19 TCD MS 591, fol. 71v.

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Good God, what subtle mathematician could draw for us with his studious pencil a geometrical figure like this, criss-crossed with so many lines, with which he could bring to life for us your battles to protect the sceptre of her royal majesty in this realm!

The most elevated rhetoric is reserved for the triumphalism of the end of the oration where patriotism succumbs to wartime jingoism. Describing the plight of those who opposed Mountjoy in Meath and Leinster in language that echoes the worst of Elizabethan anti-Irish rhetoric, the orator crows that: in eas angustias reducti sint isti proditores, ut partim fame et inedia in angulis marcescant partim dispersi ac dissipati ubi figant pedem nesciant.20 those traitors were reduced to such straits that some of them withered away from hunger and starvation in remote regions and others, dispersed and scattered, knew not where to settle.

Finally, however, it is the Spanish whose fate is gloated over most. The idea of liberation from the threat of Spanish domination is made explicit and, as quoted above, extends to England as well as Ireland. It is this sense of relief and jubilation which animates the entire text as the university turns to Mountjoy and God to express thanks for receiving protection and pride in having won such a glorious victory: Vidit et intellexit gens exotica et nobis inimica non cum calidis et frigidis gallis neque cum veternosis et mulierosis talis, non cum feris et silvestribus Indiis rem se habuisse. ... Venerunt quasi victores victi discesserunt; venerunt armati milites, fugerunt galeati lepores, vivi venerunt, ceciderunt mortui, praeda canibus, et feris bestiis dilanienda cadavera.21 That foreign race, our enemy, saw and understood that they were not dealing with the cool and clever French, nor with the slow, effeminate Italians, nor with wild and savage Indians . . . They came like conquerors, they left conquered. They came as armed soldiers, but fled like hares in helmets. Living they came, dead they fell; their bodies spoils to be torn at by dogs and wild beasts.

Such vigorous rhetoric may be understood to express the depth of concern that had hitherto been felt in the fledgling university, whose first decade was contextualised by the Nine Years’ War, and the exultation that came from the apparent lifting of the threat. That the university was 20 Ibid., fol. 72r. 21 Ibid., fol. 71r.

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thinking very much of its own plight is revealed by a telling revision near the beginning of the oration where Mountjoy, who had been described as devoted to the salvation of the country (pro salute patriae impensus), came to be referred to as devoted to our (i.e. the university’s) salvation (pro salute nostra impensus). That the college orator should sublimate the fate of the nation into the fortunes of the university is at least in part owing to the humanist tendency to regard the state as equivalent to civil society. Caesar Williamson Nearly six decades later, Trinity College found itself in a more vulnerable position. Warfare and instability, both at home and abroad, as well as a chronic lack of funds had resulted in dwindling student numbers and discontent within the professorial body. Around 1655 increased government support began to ameliorate matters, though disagreement over the policies of provost Samuel Winter continued to cause internal turmoil.22 In late 1657, the patronage of Lord Deputy Henry Cromwell bore fruit in the acquisition of Archbishop Ussher’s library collection for the university. Intended to form the basis of a library for a new college of the university, which would be dedicated to Oliver Cromwell, the collection arrived in Dublin in the late summer or early autumn and was placed in storage, where it would remain until after the Restoration.23 As it happens, the arrival of the collection coincided with the death of Oliver Cromwell. Yet the position of Henry Cromwell was actually enhanced at this juncture by the expiration of the term in office of the absentee lord deputy Charles Fleetwood. Thus, on 17 November 1657 Henry was appointed lord deputy of Ireland by his brother Richard. In recognition of this turn of events, and in gratitude for the receipt of Ussher’s library collection, Trinity College employed its orator Caesar Williamson to compose an oration to honour the new lord deputy, the Panegyris in Henricum Crumwellum (Dublin, 1658), within a few weeks of his appointment.24 The official approbation of the publication was granted by William Petty on 23 December 1657 (dated 2 January 1657 old style), but the date of 1658 on the title page indicates that it was at least three months before the 22 T. C. Barnard, Cromwellian Ireland (Oxford, 1975), pp. 198–206; R. B. McDowell and D. A. Webb, Trinity College Dublin, 1592–1952 (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 17–21. 23 T. C. Barnard, ‘The purchase of Archbishop Ussher’s library in 1657’, Long Room 4 (1971), pp. 9–14. 24 Caesar Williamson, Panegyris in Henricum Crumwellum (Dublin, 1658).

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text appeared in print. Petty’s note of approbation gives rather a different impression of the oration from the mere indication of eulogy in the title: Videat orbis augustissimi herois imaginem, ut archetypum tam imitari quam mirari possit. Hinc discant principes regere, parere populus; et doceatur Hibernia quantum colere juxta ac amare suum principum debet.25 The world may see a representation of a most venerable hero so that it may both imitate and marvel at this archetype. From this, princes may learn how to rule, the people how to obey, and Ireland may be taught how much it ought to love and respect its prince.

Petty was secretary and close advisor to Henry Cromwell, to whom he owed his appointment as clerk of the Irish council. He was also an important proponent of the new ‘scientific’ learning in Ireland, albeit that his influence does not appear to have extended to the new college scheme promoted by Henry.26 This high-level support for Williamson’s publication is reinforced by the revelation in the dedicatory epistle that Dudley Loftus (the dedicatee), referred to as a master of chancery, was behind the idea to stage an oration to praise the new lord deputy.27 Although not a proponent of the new learning, Loftus was a humanist scholar of considerable eminence who held a professorship in civil law in Trinity as well as having recently been appointed a master of chancery, and Cromwell had involved him in the committee to establish a new college in the university.28 Thus Williamson’s oration emanates from the midst of a small circle of associates and is designed to depict and reflect their mutual intercourse in an exercise in group self-promotion under the guise of epideictic oratory. Williamson himself was a graduate of Trinity College Cambridge (BA 1632; MA 1635) who had on account of his royalism lost his incumbency in the Church of England. He had become a fellow in Trinity College Dublin in 1644, was raised to a senior fellow in 1654 and had become college orator by the late 1650s. After the Restoration, his quiet but persistent royalism was repaid by appointment as dean of Cashel, a position which he held until 1675. His interests in the mid-1650s may be gauged from a notebook of his which survives in Marsh’s Library and dates from around this time.29 This collection of notes in Latin is predominantly theological in focus, but also includes legal, medical and philosophi25 Caesar Williamson, Panegyris, f. 1v. 26 Barnard, Cromwellian Ireland, p. 210; see also DIB, s.v. ‘Sir William Petty’. 27 Williamson, Panegyris, f. 3r. 28 Barnard, Cromwellian Ireland, p. 209. 29 Marsh’s Library Z.3.5.28.

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cal material. Sustained study appears to have been devoted to Joachim Mynsinger’s commentary In Justiniani institutiones and St Gregory’s commentary Super Ezechielem. Williamson evidently read Catholic authors in some detail, notably controversialists such as Pighius, Bellarmine, Gretser and Eck, as well as the Lutheran Jakob Heilbrunner. This material was undoubtedly ammunition for his own preaching and preparation for religious debate. In that regard, he noted down a passage from Ludovico Vives on the proper manner of conducting religious debates to the effect that one should maintain a modest, respectful manner and avoid contentiousness.30 In addition to digests or rebuttals of the intellectual substance of what he read, Williamson also gathered here and there notes on Latin idioms, and it is worth recording that he quotes both the New Testament and Aristotle in Greek, providing some hint of his humanist pedigree. Nevertheless, there are very few classical quotations in the notebook and on the whole the notes seem more akin to teaching or student notes than to entries in a commonplace book. The clearest evidence of Williamson’s literary and intellectual character is found in his two Latin orations. The Panegyris in Henricum Crumwellum offers a fairly detailed account of its subject’s career in Ireland, celebrating his virtue, popularity and breadth of vision. As a particularly eloquent example of epideictic oratory it might at first seem like a straightforward indication of the flourishing of Renaissance rhetorical modes in the midst of pre-Restoration Dublin. Yet the speech commences with a well-crafted rhetorical ploy that threatens to disrupt the expectations of the reader. Since, Williamson says, there is no more likely and legitimate suspicion than that a storm may arrive in the midst of peace and happiness (in media tranquillitate et laetitia), he wonders whether he should anticipate the event and drown the present festivities with his tears (meisque lachrymis hanc extinguere laetitiam). This unusual and arresting beginning amounts to both a pious nod towards the unpredictability of providence and a cautionary hint at the fragility of the current political situation. Although Henry Cromwell’s appointment as lord deputy is to be celebrated, as is his patronage of the university, the recent sorrow and threat of instability caused by the death of his father is hinted at, though not explicitly named. Yet, for Williamson, this is an opportunity to place in the foreground his own role as orator: Esset hoc novum et inopinatum dicendi genus, si bonum principem cum lachrymis laudarem. Non sic Trajanum suum Plinius, non sic Theodosium 30 Ibid., pp. 444–5.

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Latinus Pacatus, quorum orationes fragoribus atque plausibus laeta auditorum admiratio prosecuta est.31 It would be a new and unexpected kind of oration if I were to praise a good ruler with my tears. Not thus did Pliny praise his Trajan, nor Latinus Pacatus his Theodosius, whose speeches the happy admiration of the listeners adorned with clamorous applause.

He claims that as a mere mortal addressing mortals, his subject matter might seem to afford him ample opportunity to satisfy the desires of his audience, but in the face of the divine (in expectatione coelestium) who could hope to complete their task successfully? Thus, while hinting at the immediate context of political uncertainty, Williamson also more generally questions the viability of panegyric as a genre for writers of properly Christian outlook. Nevertheless, in doing so he establishes ancient intertexts for his oration, which he positions in relation to an illustrious, albeit problematic, tradition of epideictic oratory. Further, the exceptional character of his prince places him, he says, in an advantageous position but carries with it some obligations: Quoniam illud me potissimum ad dicendum impulit, quod ut dicerem, nullus adigebat, cumque laudaturus sum principem qui laudari non desiderat, de quo dicentibus tam honestum est vera praedicare quam alios laudantibus periculosum est non falsa dicere, libet vela dare et, quacunque flatus ostenditur, peritclitari cursum, non quae dici possint omnia explicando sed quae praeteriri nullo modo possint. . . . Primum mihi renitendum est ut nihil de deputato nostro ita dicam ut idem illud de alio dici potuisse videatur.32 Since, on the one hand, the one thing above all that impels me to speak is the fact that no one is compelling me to do so, and, on the other hand, I am about to praise a prince who does not want to be praised and about whom to tell the truth is just as honourable for those speaking as it is dangerous for those who praise others to say things that are not false, I will set sail and risk the journey, whichever way the wind blows, not by expounding everything that might be said but rather that which can by no means be passed over. . . . Above all I must strive not to say anything about our lord deputy that it seems could equally well be said about another.

In some respects this is, of course, a conventional disavowal of flattery and rhetorical embellishment, merely an elaborately composed captatio benevolentiae. The content of the remainder of the speech further belies the earnestness of Williamson’s claim to disavow the commonplaces of 31 Williamson, Panegyris, pp. 1–2. 32 Ibid., pp. 2–3.

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eulogy and only to articulate that which is uniquely characteristic of Cromwell. Indeed, lest we forget that he has suggested a parallel between his own oratory and that of his predecessors, he proceeds to quote Pacatus’s panegyric for Theodosius, offering the excuse that Cromwell is too humble to allow such language to be applied directly to himself.33 Yet this second allusion to Pacatus merely makes explicit the kind of ventriloquism that animates the entire opening of Williamson’s speech. In characteristically playful fashion, he has employed the words of ancient orators to express his distance from them. Thus, in the passage quoted above, his statement that he is free from coercion is a direct quotation from Pacatus, who writes: Quin et illud me impulit ad dicendum, quod ut dicerem nullus adigebat.34 But this, too, impels me to speak – the fact that no one has forced me to speak.

The subsequent reference to the difficulty of praising someone who is too modest to endure praise is perhaps the most widely used commonplace in epideictic oratory and dedicatory epistles. The statement of intent that follows is a direct quotation from book two of Cicero’s De oratore, where Crassus is explaining how he crafts his speech to manipulate the emotions of his audience: ad id, unde aliquis flatus ostenditur, vela do.35 I set sail for wherever the wind blows.

Cicero is also the source for Williamson’s subsequent phrasing of the commonplace that of all the things he could have said he has only included that which cannot possibly be omitted: Nam et multae res adferri possunt, et una quaeque earum multis cum argumentis dici potest. Verum ego quod invitus ac necessario facio neque diu neque diligenter facere possum. Quae praeteriri nullo modo poterant, ea leviter, iudices, attigi.36 For many matters can be adduced and each of them can be discussed with many arguments. But I cannot for long nor diligently do something unwillingly or by compulsion. I have, judges, touched lightly upon those things which can by no means be passed over. 33 Ibid., p. 4. 34 Latinus Pacatus, Panegyricus Theodosio augusto dictus, para. 2. 35 Cicero, De oratore, 2.187. 36 Cicero, Pro Sexto Roscio Amerino, para. 123.

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Finally, Williamson’s claim that he will only say about Cromwell what could not be said about anyone else is parroted from the other intertext he has already explicitly invoked, Pliny’s Panegyricus Trajano imperatore dictus: Equidem non consuli modo sed omnibus civibus enitendum reor ne quid de principe nostro ita dicant ut idem illud de alio dici potuisse videatur.37 And indeed I think not only the consul but also every citizen ought to strive not to say anything about our prince that it seems could equally well be said about another.

The point that Williamson is making, aside from demonstrating his own wit, is that even when it treats the exceptional or singular the language of praise and blame is implicitly referential and comparative, especially in so far as it strives to adopt a register appropriate to the dignity of what it describes. This is perspicuously the case in the post-Renaissance period when the language employed is Latin because to be sure of attaining dignity of expression one almost inevitably had to employ the phrasing and vocabulary of the most admired ancient authors. This results in a kind of cultural ventriloquism whose ironies could be deftly exploited, especially for the benefit of the kind of coterie audience that Williamson appears to have been addressing. This is not to say that Williamson was unable to compose eloquent Latin with any originality; on the contrary, his writing is lively and imaginative. At times his most striking expressions derive from rewriting ancient sources, as when, adapting a pithy remark of Publilius Syrus about fortune, he asks quid clementia sine fidelitate? Quid? nisi vitrum quod cum maxime splendet frangitur.38 What is clemency without faithfulness? What but glass, which shatters when it shines most.

Yet he is also prone to coining witty aphorisms of his own, as when he remarks that Cromwell’s clemency is a mark of God’s providence which ensures that the towns are not filled with refugees and private households with the bereft and bereaved, or, finally, that the prisons are not more packed than the churches (ne denique pleniores carceres quam Ecclesiae).39 37 Pliny, Panegyricus Trajano imperatore dictus, para. 2. 38 Publilius Syrus, Sententiae (Teubner, 1880), p. 31; Williamson, Panegyris, p. 11. 39 Williamson, Panegyris, p. 11.

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Similarly, with some irony he observes that the pleasure of having a good prince is offset by the stress of continually worrying about his well-being: Neque enim deputatus in periculo est, sed nos in metu: tam non possumus non timere, quam non potest ille non esse mortalis, non possunt esse malevoli, esse audaces, esse Jesuitae.40 And it is not that the lord deputy is in danger, but that we are in a panic. We are as little able to relax as he is able to be immortal or as it is possible for there to be no bad or brazen people in the world. Or no Jesuits.

Williamson is particularly effective at employing humour to lighten the tone in order to avoid appearing obsequious, a strategy which, though of general application, is safest and most sure of its target when the person eulogised is familiar with the orator and confident that he is not being satirised. One example may suffice to illustrate the point. Williamson records the widespread popularity of Cromwell among the wider public, citing as evidence the crowds and adulation that greet him as he travels round the country, but rather than risk the charge of sycophancy he adopts a jocular tone to elaborate upon his point: Non venis ad Ecclesiam? aut domi teneris incommoda valetudine? Nescis, ah nescis, quanta trepidatio pietatis nostrae per mille suspiciones errantis. Tunc occursat animis furialis imago pugionis illius Gallici, quid in Henrico quarto tentatum, quid in Elisabetha nostra, quid in Jacobo Rege, quid denique in Augustissimo patre tuo, suspiciosa pietate volutamus: nec metueremus pessima nisi in optimo. Et donec certiores facti, non esse vulnus, non esse venenum, aegre nos recolligimus a metu, aegre solatium admittimus. Adeo bonus Princeps non major publicae laetitiae, quam publicae sollicitudinis causa est.41 You miss church? Or you are kept at home by some troublesome ailment? You have no idea, ah! no idea how greatly our devoted minds fret, going through a thousand suspicions. Then in a rush comes the dreadful image of that French blade, of what happened to Henry IV – or to our Elizabeth, or to King James, or, finally, to your most venerable father. We toss and turn with fretful devotion. Nor would we fear the worst if you were not the best. And until we hear news that you are not wounded, not poisoned, we can scarcely keep ourselves from panicking, scarcely find any peace. Thus a good prince is no greater cause of public happiness than of public concern.

40 Williamson, Panegyris, p. 17. 41 Ibid., pp. 15–16.

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The ironies with which Williamson spices his dish are found even at the key points of his oration when it is his task to acknowledge and express profound gratitude for the beneficence of the lord deputy towards the university. Thus, when he thanks Cromwell for bestowing Ussher’s library upon the institution, he does so by joking about the role of the army which was induced to buy the books and donate them to the college: Caeteri exercitus omnes contenti vincere fuerunt: nostri milites deputati auspiciis ultra progressi sunt, quaeque rara est in castrensi disciplina gloria, non tam vincere quam sapere didicerunt. . . . Si docti, si eruditi esse volumus, induamus arma, in castrisque versemur. Optima schola est exercitus: milites nobis pro magistris, milites pro doctoribus erunt; quos deputatus docuit primum armorum usum, deinde librorum.42 All other armies have been content to win wars; under the auspices of the lord deputy, our soldiers have progressed further and – which is a rare attainment in military training – they have learnt rather to win wisdom than wars . . . If we wish to become learned, let us take up arms and frequent the camps. The best school is the army. The troops will be our teachers, the troops our lecturers, those whom the lord deputy taught first the use of arms, then of books.

The playfulness and self-assurance of this oration attests to the vibrancy of the Latin literary culture from which it emanates; such writing requires not only a talented author but a well-attuned audience. Four years later, Williamson published a second oration, this time devoted to the coronation of Charles II, but again prefaced by a dedicatory epistle to Dudley Loftus, now vicar general of Ireland.43 Although the coronation took place in April 1661, the Oratio in suscepti diadematis diem Carolo II did not appear in print until almost a year later. In the dedicatory epistle Williamson indicates that anxiety about its quality was the reason for the delay. It is not difficult to imagine why a former eulogist of Henry Cromwell might be anxious to strike the right tone in composing an oration for the newly restored monarch. Nevertheless, the topos of modesty is somewhat undercut by the whimsy of the dedicatory epistle in which Williamson jokes with Loftus about why Ireland might have wept rain in the inclement weather on the day of Charles’s coronation.44 On the whole, this speech is less mischievous and more solemn than the speech for Cromwell. Williamson may have felt that his youthful royal42 Ibid., p. 18. 43 Caesar Williamson, Oratio in suscepti diadematis diem Caroli II (Dublin, 1662). 44 Ibid., pp. A3–A6.

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ism had been occluded by his more recent associations, but at any rate the enclosed coterie for which he had previously been writing was now opened up to less intimate, if not necessarily unsympathetic, eyes. Deaths and entrances Williamson published no further compositions in the following years, but on two key occasions Latin orations emanated from his circle, marking the deaths of two men who had produced or patronised learning on a grand scale in previous decades. The first of these was a funerary oration by Dudley Loftus for the archbishop of Armagh John Bramhall; the second was a graveside eulogy by John Jones delivered at the funeral of Maurice Eustace, who had been part of the circle involved in trying to create a second college of Dublin University under Henry Cromwell, yet whose royalist credentials and other accomplishments earned him appointment as lord chancellor after the Restoration.45 Eulogies of both these men were delivered, and subsequently published, in English (by William Sheridan and Jeremy Taylor, respectively).46 The Latin orations must be understood specifically as the offerings of the learned community to mark the passing of their own. The consequence of this bilingual commemoration was that, for example, at the funeral of John Bramhall, which was held in Christ Church on 6 July 1663, the mourners would have had to listen to a discourse in English by Jeremey Taylor, amounting to forty-four pages in print, and an equally lengthy speech in Latin by Loftus, which amounted to thirty-eight pages in print. Loftus was closely acquainted with Bramhall and accordingly was able to provide a richly detailed account of the life of the deceased, tempered with emotional interjections and reflections on the state of the nation that show continuity with the thematic concerns in the orations emanating from Trinity College. Yet much of the content of his speech inevitably overlapped with that delivered by Taylor. Even assuming these speeches were augmented for the press, the willingness of those who made these arrangements to endure the inconvenience of the duplication attests to the sense of importance attached to the idea of delivering the (otherwise dispensable) 45 Dudley Loftus, Oratio Funebris (Dublin, 1663); John Jones, Oratio Funebris (Dublin, 1665). 46 Jeremy Taylor, A sermon preached in Christ-Church Dublin, July 16. 1663. At the funeral of the Most Reverend Father in God, John, Late Lord Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland (London, 1663); William Sheridan, A sermon preach’d at the funeral of the Right Honorable, Sir Maurice Eustace (Dublin, 1665).

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Latin oration.47 The same may be said to apply to the funeral of Maurice Eustace, albeit to a lesser degree since the speeches were shorter. Indeed, the sense of propriety attached to the learned tradition of Latin eulogy is alluded to directly at the opening of Jones’s oration: Frequens hoc dicendi genus (Auditores) Solitaque haec perorandi consuetudo, et innocua haec cum Manibus colloquia, una cum ipsis creverunt saeculis, temporique coaeva sunt; adeo ut ne ipsa quidem mors (inter Heroas velim) magis familiaris sit, quam funerum solennitas: id enim privilegii semper habuerunt viri Illustriores ut facunde expirarent, et quas hauserunt animas inter Oratores ponerent, eas (in exitu saltem) ex Harmonia compositas probaturi, faeliciori, in hoc, fato functi, quod eorum vel exequia inter delicias numerarentur.48 Friends, this kind of speech occurs often, this custom of delivering a summation is widely practised, and this colloquy with the dead bodes no ill; these things increase in number as the years pass and they are as old as time. So much so that not even death itself (that is, among heroes) is more familiar than the solemnity of funeral rites. For the more illustrious have always considered it their privilege to breathe their last with some eloquence, to set among the orators the spirits that they have breathed, en route to proving that they were, in death at least, harmoniously composed, discharging thereby a more happy death because their funeral rites, at least, may be numbered among life’s pleasures.

Ironically, Jones’s remarks about the customary character of Latin eulogy attest to a transition from the tacit to the moot or from the performative to the constative, whereby the phenomenon of Latin graveside oratory is something to explain, though not yet something to defend. It is tempting to see in these Latin rites the eloquent last breaths of a literary culture that began to pass away in the first years after the Restoration, but in fact Latin oratory resurfaced in Ireland in fits and starts down into the twenty-first century. The last example that I will mention here, however, is an inaugural oration delivered in 1667 in Trinity College by Peter Butler on the occasion of his graduation to become a bachelor in theology.49 Following convention, Butler praises the theological faculty of the university, commenting on how it displays the ideal combination of learning and virtue 47 The extent to which the speeches were augmented for print may be doubted, especially since a third edition of Taylor’s sermon distinguished itself on the front cover by the fact that it was augmented. 48 John Jones, Oratio funebris (Dublin, 1665), p. 1. 49 Peter Butler, Oratio in inauguratione D. Petri Butler (Dublin, 1667).

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that results in wisdom. Brief but inventive, Butler’s oration switches from prose to verse on the second page, then, after twenty-four lines of hexameter, reverts to prose, eloquently demonstrating the orator’s point that not all learning and literary attainment has been relegated to the past. His confidence and verve resemble those of Williamson, though this is much more the virtuoso performance of a young scholar who needs to impress. With the enthusiasm of the newly qualified, he writes: plerumque neque virtutis gustum habeant qui literas non gustarunt, et divinarum rerum suavitate sese facilius capi sentiant, qui musarum suavitate alliciuntur.50 For the most part those who have not savoured literary studies have no taste for virtue, and those who are drawn to the sweetness of the muses feel themselves more easily seized by the sweetness of religious material.

Butler’s asseveration of the value of a literary education for those who wish to pursue a religious calling was evidently in part a plaidoyer for his own avocation, as his subsequent lapse into verse suggests. In the quarrel of the ‘ancients’ and the ‘moderns’, his commitment was to the former, in so far as he described the achievements of modern culture in terms of the emulation of ancient values, and demonstrated this through his command of latinitas: Vetularum somnium est dicere jam vetulam et effoetam naturam, vel nihil, vel monstra parere; ingenii vim ad haec ultima tempora nobis conservare non potuisse; qui vos (sapientissimi viri) vel norunt, satis norunt perennem illius esse foecunditatem et aeternam, omnique aevo nasci aliquos antiquis moribus sapientes.51 It is only a fancy of old women to say that nature, now decrepit and enfeebled, produces either nothing or mere monstrosities, or that we have not been able to retain down to the present age the power of invention. Those who know you, wisest of men, know well enough that the fecundity of nature is everlasting and eternal, and that in every age are born some men wise in the ways of the ancients.

Conclusion The brief efflorescence in print of Latin oratory from Dublin in the decade of Trinity College’s resurgence after its deep decline during the 50 Ibid., p. 7. 51 Ibid., p. 4.

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early Commonwealth period suggests that Butler’s narrative of eternal fecundity, the hardy perennial of the classical tradition, needs to be modified and yet understood as a self-promoting fiction. As a contribution to the culture of Dublin’s urban elite, it participated in the mythologising discourse that characterised all Renaissance cities which looked to provide a narrative of their own historicity, positioning themselves in relation to the rise and fall of learning and civility more generally. Not all Renaissance cities had universities to adorn them, but those that did endeavoured to cultivate the broader humanistic aspects of university education that might serve a civic purpose.52 One such purpose was the production of Latin oratory that might mark key events in the community and express the educational aspirations of the urban gentry. The value of such orations was not only the detail of the message, which could be grasped by a relatively small portion of the city’s population, but the performative act of delivering such a pure embodiment of civility as an eloquent Latin oration. Indeed, oratory was in many ways the most characteristic Latin genre of the Renaissance as it reflected the ideal of the scholar steeped in ancient mores yet engaging in public life. Ironically, no better exemplification could be given of that other aspect of public life in the Renaissance, the fact that this was, in some respects, an isolated elite talking to itself. Whereas other kinds of Renaissance literary and artistic output could convey a detailed message to the uneducated populace, Latin oratory merely cultivated a form of reverent solemnity that demarcated the boundaries within as well as around the urban community. Taken together, this cluster of orations provides an introduction to the literary and cultural dynamics at work among Dublin’s Protestant elite at a decisive moment in the community’s history. The survival and selfpromotion of a small coterie of patrons and scholars whose interests were disparate but intersecting provided the occasion for a last vibrant fanfare of Irish Latin literature steeped in the values of the vanishing Renaissance. In their quiet framing of this narrative against the background of the city itself, they helped to consolidate a myth that had already come to the fore in reformist writings – that Dublin was the fons et origo of all civility in Ireland. It may therefore be fitting to end with a fragment of the eloquent paean that Peter Butler addressed to the unconquered warriors, hearts inspired by Apollo, who have drunk deep of the waters of Dublin 52 On how this situation emerged, see Erika Rummel, The humanist-scholastic debate in the Renaissance and Reformation (Cambridge, MA, 1995).

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(invicti pugiles, afflataque Phoebo / pectora ... qui Dublinensi largos de fonte liquores ducitis) as he celebrated his first academic rite of passage: Quid juvat antiquos semper celebrare triumphos, Tristia quos dudum mersere silentia letho, Majoresque fide nonnunquam fabula fingit: Clara celebremus nostri miracula saecli, Et propria huic aevo non invideamus honorem.53 What good is it always to celebrate the triumphs of the ancients which mournful silence has long since sunken in Lethe, and which, the story goes, were greater in faith? Let us celebrate the great miracles of our own time and not begrudge this age its proper honour.

53 Ibid., p. 4.

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Anglo-Irish drama? Writing for the stage in Restoration Dublin Stephen Austin Kelly The subject of this chapter is the drama written for the Dublin stage in the reign of Charles II (1660–85).1 Dublin during the Restoration was a city that enjoyed unprecedented growth and prosperity. It was a hub of social and cultural activity and had a vibrant literary life. Poetry and letters circulated in manuscript form and the city’s printers and booksellers supplied literature in print. For those who wished to see literature in performance, however, the city’s playhouse, the Theatre Royal at Smock Alley, provided for the full staging of plays. The literature of Restoration Dublin was Renaissance in character – heavily influenced by the humanistic values of continental Europe with its keen interest in the civilisation of ancient Rome. A strong cultural connection with the Continent, particularly France, was ensured through the inclinations and interests of prominent figures in Ireland at the time such as Roger Boyle, first earl of Orrery, and James Butler, first duke of Ormond. As a young man, Boyle had toured France and Italy under the tutelage of Isaac Marcombes, a French Protestant. This introduction to continental culture influenced his taste in literature and architecture.2 Butler spent a considerably longer time on the Continent than Boyle. He lived as an exile in France and Flanders during the 1650s, where his taste and outlook became more international.3 The French stamp of Butler’s best-known legacy, the Royal Hospital at Kilmainham, illustrates the influence of continental culture on Ireland in the late seventeenth century. As we will see, this influence also extended to the literature consumed by the social elite. Dublin was not just a city where literature was read and heard, but also   1 The chapter draws on work I conducted while researching ‘Theatre and colonization in Restoration Dublin, 1660–1685’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University College Dublin, 2012).   2 Toby Barnard, ‘Boyle, Roger’, ODNB, p. 109.  3 Ibid.

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where it was written and, on occasion, exported to London. While, as one might expect, the drama in the Irish capital consisted overwhelmingly of plays from the London playhouses, there were a small number staged in Dublin during the period that had a particular connection to Ireland. In this chapter, I examine these plays and the personalities that wrote them and assess the degree to which the works can be considered as AngloIrish literature. The playwrights were either of English birth or English heritage but resident in Ireland and I argue that their output falls somewhere between English literature and Anglo-Irish literature; the writers’ identification with the Irish nation or kingdom was either equivocal or non-existent but, in spite of this, the works were still touched by their authors’ Irish experience and form part of the same broad body of literature, generally identified as Anglo-Irish, that includes works by later Irish writers such as Swift and Goldsmith and that is clearly part of the literary heritage of Ireland. Broadly, however, the drama of Restoration Dublin is notable for its lack of a distinctly Irish character. Those responsible for staging plays for the city and the vice-regal court of Dublin Castle seemed determined to recreate the theatrical life of the English capital as far as possible. The keenness of the Smock Alley theatre management to replicate the drama of the London theatres royal can be seen in the so-called Smock Alley prompt-books, Third Folio editions of plays by Shakespeare, published earlier in the century; they were carefully edited by hand to conform to the latest versions of the plays by contemporary playwrights such as William Davenant and Nahum Tate.4 Because of the survival of the Smock Alley prompt-books, a disproportionately high number of Shakespeare’s plays are recorded as having been staged. Apart from these promptbooks, evidence for which plays were performed survives in the form of references to the playhouse in personal letters, diaries and journals and through the survival of prologues, in manuscript form, written specifically for Smock Alley productions.5 There is a danger that this record of works may actually distort our view of Irish Restoration drama, as it is almost certainly an unrepresentative sample of all the plays that were performed. While most Smock Alley plays were imported directly from the London stage, there were a handful of Restoration plays with a clear connection to Ireland.   4 These prompt-books have been edited and published by G. Blakemore Evans.   5 The prologues, preserved in Harvard University, have been edited and published by Pierre Danchin.

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Katherine Philips: addressing trauma The first such Irish play with an English author is Pompey (1663) by Katherine Philips, a translation of Corneille’s Le Mort de Pompeé (1644). We know from her personal correspondence that Philips was working on Pompey in Dublin in the summer of 1662, soon after her arrival in Ireland. She had rendered the whole of Act III into English by the end of August. While the work is a translation of a French play by an English writer, the location of its completion is significant and must have had some impact on the final product – either through the author’s increased consciousness of recent political events in Ireland or through the influence of the personalities Philips encountered in Dublin society. In a letter to her friend, Sir Charles Cotterell, she relates how Roger Boyle, first earl of Orrery, had encouraged her to persist with the work and that he had given her a copy of the French original.6 Boyle, a prominent politician and military commander, was also, as we will see, a keen dramatist. His encouragement of Philips in this undertaking shows how the playwright’s geographical location impacted upon her work through the influence of the people she encountered. In a later letter, Philips records that she attended a performance, in the city’s newly constructed playhouse, of John Fletcher’s Wit Without Money. It took place in October of the same year.7 It appears that the theatre still had no scenery at that time, so this was almost certainly Smock Alley’s inaugural performance. Philips was clearly taking an active interest in the medium of theatre during her time in the Irish capital. The following month, she saw another revival, Shakespeare’s Othello, also at Smock Alley. Her observation, also in a letter to Cotterell, on the unintentionally comical appearance of the Doge and the senators (owing to the feathers in their hats) affords us an insight into audience reception of drama at this time.8 Philips was critically evaluating the impact of the performance and must have learnt lessons that she could apply to her own work as a dramatist. Clearly, Cotterell was supportive of Philips with her translation of Pompey, as she frequently acknowledges this in her letters. Her work as a playwright in Dublin was carried out with the informal support and encouragement of people interested in the art form; thus, Pompey was a product of the geographical location of its writing and the social context of its author. Early in   6 Katherine Philips, Printed publications, 1651–1664, ed. Paula Loscococco (Aldershot, 2007), p. 47.   7 Ibid., p. 54.   8 Ibid., p. 63.

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1663, Philips modestly protests her reluctance to have her play staged in Dublin, but acknowledges that many of her new friends at the vice-regal court were keen to see it in performance.9 Perhaps the work began as a literary exercise but, owing to Philips’s presence in Dublin, the opportunity of having it staged presented itself. Its staging, therefore, was to some degree a response to public demand. The performance duly took place in February; Wentworth Dillon, fourth earl of Roscommon, wrote the prologue and Sir Edward Dering wrote the epilogue. This involvement of members of the Dublin Castle elite gives the work a special connection to the city and to the audience for which it was intended. Boyle also contributed to the production by donating £100 towards the purchase of Roman and Egyptian costumes. Philips’s stay in Dublin lasted over a year from June 1662.10 As a visitor to Ireland, rather than part of the kingdom’s resident colonial society, she was unequivocally English; her political and cultural loyalties were firmly with the new colonial order. Politically, however, her contacts crossed the royalist/republican divide. Her husband, James Philips, was an MP and supporter of the Cromwellian administration, but was regarded as a moderate and she had close friends who were royalists. Her father appears to have been among the Cromwellian adventurers, though this fact does not preclude him from being a monarchist.11 The civil wars had a great effect on her life and she mourned the division that they caused. Although a visitor, she quickly developed strong connections with prominent figures in Dublin and promoted an interest in poetry and Platonic philosophy. Her ability to have Pompey staged at the recently completed theatre is an indication of the force of her personality and her reputation as a writer. Having spent most of her life at her husband’s house in Wales, she died in London of smallpox at the age of 32, cutting short a blossoming literary career and ending any possibility of a return visit to Dublin. Notwithstanding her identity as an English playwright, her Dublin play had a particular significance in an Irish context. The setting of Pompey is Egypt in 48 bc, directly after a decisive and bloody civil war battle. Following the disintegration of the First Triumvirate, Julius Caesar has defeated Pompey and is now master of the Roman world. The location of the play is of particular relevance to its reading in an Anglo-Irish context: Egypt is a client kingdom of Rome that later became a colony. It would be easy for Dubliners to detect p ­ arallels   9 Ibid., pp. 74–5. 10 Warren Chernaik, ‘Philips, Katherine’, ODNB, s.v. 11 Karl S. Bottigheimer, English money and Irish land (Oxford, 1971), p. 181.

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between Egypt and Ireland, with Britain, like Rome, as the dominant regional power. Thus, Ptolemy, the play’s antihero, could be seen as representing the Old English Catholics associated with the Confederation of Kilkenny. Historically of Macedonian descent, Ptolemy, as King of Egypt, represents a mixed-ethnic element in the story. This GraecoEgyptian’s duplicity, political impotence and bloodthirstiness contrast with the nobility and power of the main Roman characters. The Catholic Confederates had protested loyalty to the King of England, even though they were associated, in the Protestant mind, with attacks on English and Scottish settlers. Ptolemy kills Pompey in order to curry favour with Caesar. Caesar, however, sees through him, saying: ‘You do adore the Conquerour, not me.’12 This sentiment implies the bona fides of Ireland’s Catholics as loyal supporters of the House of Stuart should be questioned. If Ptolemy represents the Catholic Confederates, then his sister Cleopatra may represent the land of Ireland or its population. Ptolemy is killed, leaving Cleopatra to rule on her own. However, a romantic attachment between her and Caesar is apparent: clearly, Egypt is now a Roman protectorate. Rome’s involvement in Egyptian affairs is not really questioned. Rome, once divided by civil war, is now united under a strong but conciliatory leader, with a once-fragmented Egypt enjoying political unity under Rome’s stewardship. Gray has argued that this reconciling vision of Ireland’s future places it in a central role in the cohesion of the recently restored Stuart state.13 Her argument is convincing. Through emphasising Egypt’s impact on the course of Roman history, Pompey implies a key role for the Anglo-Irish elite at the centre of the English court. The resolution of the conflicts besetting Ireland would assist the process of political settlement in the Three Kingdoms. The impact of this message would have inspired the Dublin audience with confidence in the stability of the restored monarchy and in their own position in the wider British state. They could now look forward to an era of welcome peace and prosperity, putting the traumatic events of the preceding decades behind them. In this interpretation, the audience would have undergone the process of catharsis, with the trauma in focus successfully addressed and resolved. However, Rankin has offered an alternative view, suggesting that catharsis is incomplete and that the trauma remains unresolved. She argues that the closing scene ‘is merely a temporary respite’ as we know that the historical Caesar’s 12 Act III, Scene 2. 13 Catharine Gray, ‘Katherine Philips in Ireland’, English Literary Renaissance 39:3 (2009), pp. 557–85, at p. 570.

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association with Cleopatra contributed, ultimately, to his downfall.14 While the tragedy ends neatly with the resolution of the plot’s crisis, an element of foreboding subverts the full cathartic effect when the lives and fates of the play’s leading personalities after its conclusion are considered. Nevertheless, the trauma of the wars of the seventeenth century is clearly addressed and some level of catharsis on the part of the audience can reasonably be assumed. Uncertainty about the lives and destinies of the main characters in their post-play existence in a tragedy need not preclude catharsis. The work was clearly informed by its author’s consciousness of the Irish situation and was conceived with a Dublin audience in mind. Even if we accept that catharsis is somewhat offset by the sense of uncertainty that Rankin suggests, it is still achieved through the exploration of the kind of collective trauma pertinent to its first audience. Pompey’s first performance was attended by leading figures from among the Dublin Castle elite, some of whom, as we have seen, were directly involved in its production. The play’s premiere was an important social event, illustrating the prominence that drama enjoyed in the cultural life of the city. This prominence, in the restored Stuart state, of an art form suppressed during the Interregnum established a cultural continuity with the pre-civil war Stuart administration. Thus, theatre in Restoration Dublin helped to bridge the gap between the 1660s and 1630s, thereby emphasising the political authority and validity of the restored monarchy. It also served to narrow the gap between Dublin and London; in the early 1660s, theatre was enjoying a vibrant resurgence in the English metropolis with enthusiastic support from Charles II and his most prominent subjects. Similar support for the medium in Dublin established a closer cultural link with London. Roger Boyle: explaining past conduct The interest in drama among the political elite in Restoration England and Ireland can be seen clearly in the person of Philips’s friend, Roger Boyle (Baron Broghill and first earl of Orrery). The best-known Irish playwright of the period, Boyle was the son of the first earl of Cork and brother of the distinguished physicist, Robert Boyle.15 His grand tour 14 Deana Rankin, ‘“If Egypt now enslav’d or free A Kingdom or a province be”: translating Corneille in Restoration Dublin’, in Sarah Alyn Stacey and Véronique Desnain (eds), Culture and conflict in 17th century France and Ireland (Dublin, 2004), pp. 194–209, at p. 204. 15 Barnard, ‘Boyle, Roger’, ODNB, s.v.

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of Europe as a youth, an experience that exposed him to contemporary European culture, marks him out as someone who represents a tangible cultural link between theatre in Dublin and in continental Europe.16 After this extended tour, he started on a military career in England and at the outbreak of the Irish Rebellion of 1641, served in Munster under Lord Inchiquin.17 In 1649 he joined the Parliamentarians and became an influential figure in the Cromwellian administration.18 Following the Restoration, Boyle retained his political influence; he was granted the title Earl of Orrery and was made Lord President of Munster and a lord justice of Ireland.19 His ability to have a successful political career before, during and after the Interregnum shows great adaptability. His life and career straddled Britain and Ireland, affording him a kind of dual identity as an Irish colonial and English courtier. The fact that he held high office under the Cromwellian administration must have been a source of embarrassment after 1660. In spite of his tarnished past, he became an intimate friend of Charles II, whose enthusiasm for the theatre he shared. It was the King himself who asked Boyle to write a play in the French style, the result of this request being The Generall.20 Although his plays are not highly regarded today, he was one of the most influential playwrights of the 1660s, bringing into fashion the genre of heroic drama. Boyle’s prominent political position gave him the influence to have his plays staged and, in turn, his dramatic career helped him to gain favour with the King. Although Boyle was born in Ireland, describing him as an Irish playwright is misleading as it implies a greater cultural connection with his fellow Irish subjects than was the case. Nevertheless, the biographer, John Aubrey, includes the following intriguing detail about the early childhood of his brother, Robert: He [Robert Boyle] was nursed by an Irish Nurse, after the Irish manner, wher they putt the child into a pendulous Satchell instead of a Cradle, with a slitt for the Child’s head to peepe out.21

This historical vignette – if we take it seriously – allows us to entertain the possibility that the Gaelic influence on the young sons of the Great Earl of Cork was stronger than we might have imagined. If English settlers 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid. 20 Christopher Morash, A history of Irish theatre (Cambridge, 2002), p. 14. 21 John Aubrey, Brief lives, ed. John Buchanan-Brown (London, 2000), pp. 52–3.

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were adopting Gaelic customs in nursing infants, then they may also have adopted other native Irish customs and cultural practices, as Edmund Spenser had feared. Nevertheless, Boyle was a second-generation colonist from a family that had recently established a highly prominent social status that must have attracted jealousy on the part of other planters and deep resentment on the part of the dispossessed Mere Irish.22 His father was a ruthless and predatory opportunist who amassed a fortune at the expense of victims of the colonial regime. Boyle’s lack of empathy with Catholic Ireland can be understood better in the context of this background. His taking up with the Cromwellians, in spite of his brothers’ exile, shows a ruthless opportunism, but may have been influenced by a deep distrust of Catholicism. His interest in the exotic that shows in his plays may well have been inspired by his travels in his youth. Kerrigan has succinctly summarised his character by observing that he was ‘unique in the mixture of piety, opportunism, physical courage, erudition, low avarice, and high imagination which made up his mental world’.23 He continued to make his presence felt at the theatre and in political life throughout the Restoration. Written in 1661, Boyle’s The Generall can be read as an apology or confession of the playwright’s past. Maguire has followed Simms in emphasising its psychotherapeutic function:24 Boyle was working through the events of his life in order to come to terms with his guilt.25 A public confession of his collaboration with the Puritan administration could put his civil war ghosts to rest. However, a more urgent and obvious function of the play is that of political rehabilitation, a point emphasised by Cronin.26 By representing the state of mind and experiences of a military leader caught up in circumstances beyond his control, Boyle hoped that the King would understand and therefore forgive his and others’ past 22 The term ‘Mere Irish’ was not, as it is sometimes supposed, a pejorative term. ‘Mere’ in this context means ‘pure-blooded’ or ‘whole’ and was used to distinguish the Gaelic Irish from the English-Irish or Old English. The dismissive connotation of ‘mere’ in the contemporary sense (as in, for example, the phrase ‘a mere child’) did not exist in the early modern period. 23 John Kerrigan, ‘Boyle’s Ireland and the British problem, 1641–1679’, in David J. Baker and Willy Maley (eds), British identities and English Renaissance literature (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 197–225, at p. 199. 24 J. G. Simms, ‘The Restoration, 1660–1685’, in T. W. Moody, F. X. Martin and F. J. Byrne (eds), A new history of Ireland, Vol. 3 (Oxford, 1976), pp. 420–53, at p. 451. 25 Nancy Klein Maguire, Regicide and Restoration (Cambridge, 2005), p. 164. 26 John Cronin, ‘A play supposedly fitter for the fire than for the stage: The fiction of Roger Boyle, first earl of Orrery and the re-casting of history’, in Coleman A. Dennehy (ed.), Restoration Ireland (Aldershot, 2008), pp. 69–84, at p. 76.

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­ isloyalty. Clorimum, the protagonist, is a Sicilian general who is fighting d for his king against some rebels. The unnamed king, however, is a usurper and clearly symbolises Cromwell or the Cromwellian administration. Clorimum, perhaps, represents Boyle or the many subjects like him who, though essentially royalists, found themselves serving the Lord Protector. Cronin, however, argues that Clorimum is more probably George Monck (the general whose entry into London in 1660 heralded the return of the Stuarts) and that the playwright himself is represented by more minor characters such as Thrasolin, Filadin, Monasin and Cratoner.27 This interpretation makes sense historically, as well as allowing Boyle to share the burden of his guilt about his disloyalty among other political figures that were in a similar position. Like Cronin, Kerrigan has also argued that Boyle’s motives for writing The Generall are calculating, rather than guiltridden or royalist, being an attempt to rehabilitate his own reputation by altering the public memory of recent political events.28 Furthermore, even the details of the resolution of the plot appear to favour Boyle’s particular response to the political circumstances of the late 1650s: Thrasolin, an officer working for the usurper, as Broghill [Boyle] did for the Protectorate, proves more useful to Melizer (i.e. Charles II) than those who are frankly rebellious because he can orchestrate unrest in the army, and persuade the usurper to recall the general.29

I agree here with Kerrigan’s position. It is worth noting that royalist collaborators with the Puritan regime did not automatically see themselves as traitors. Some cooperated with the republican authorities, apparently, out of a moral principle that argued that one should not resist the power of one’s ruler, even if the ruler was a usurper.30 Cronin addresses this question in the context of The Generall by drawing attention to Thrasolin’s reasoning for his continued support for the usurper in spite of Clorimum’s entreaties to throw in his lot with the other side: the usurper commands Thrasolin’s loyalty simply because he is king now.31 Thrasolin’s position is informed, morally, by a belief in supporting the status quo. However, the justice of supporting Melizer, the true king, becomes obvious during the course of the play as the usurper’s tyrannical – and therefore unkingly – behaviour shows him to be unworthy of the crown. 27 28 29 30 31

Ibid., p. 73. Kerrigan, ‘Boyle’s Ireland and the British problem, 1641–1679’, p. 209. Ibid., p. 209. Julian H. Franklin, John Locke and the theory of sovereignty (Cambridge, 1978), p. 62. Cronin, ‘A play supposedly fitter for the fire than for the stage’, p. 79.

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The inclusion of a love theme in an otherwise military play serves to complicate the plot. Altemera is beloved by three men – the usurper king, Clorimum and Lucidor. This last is one of the rebel soldiers and his love is reciprocated. Clorimum’s release of Lucidor as a favour to Altemera is an act of open defiance to the usurper king and brings the two men into conflict. Over the course of the action, Clorimum’s confused and contradictory state of mind is revealed. He recognises that Melizer alone has the right to be king, but serves the usurper out of a sense of obligation. The rationale for his entering into the service of the usurper in the first place remains muddled and obscure, perhaps conveniently for Boyle and his fellow-travellers. The usurper king’s tyrannical and unreasonable demands provoke a rift with his general and precipitate his downfall. Altemera takes poison rather than submitting to be raped by the tyrant. However, the poison turns out to be a sleeping potion so she does not die after all. The play ends happily with the death of the usurper, the usurper’s son Altimast and Altimast’s lover. Clorimum and Lucidor, once rivals, are reconciled and Altemera and Lucidor are free to marry. The true king, Melizer, is restored to the throne and forgives those who served the usurper with the words: Past faults I’lle never to Remembrance bring, For which the word I give you of your king.32

This promise is reminiscent of Charles II’s Declaration of Breda in that the new king’s subjects are assured of being forgiven for their lapse in loyalty to the legitimate royal house. Clorimum’s compensation for the loss of Altemera is the command of a campaign against the invading Apulians, a post he enthusiastically accepts. Kerrigan has argued that the Apulians represent the forces of Catholic Europe, which, for Boyle, posed such a threat to stability in both England and Ireland, while the rebels in Sicily itself, in their Irish-sounding base, Mora, represent their allies, the Catholic Confederates.33 This is a convincing interpretation; while the internal constitutional conflict has been resolved, the activities of the state’s enemies within and without its borders require continued vigilance and resolve. The play ends with the state still on a war footing, significantly with the protagonist as a professional soldier, rather than courtier or governor.34 32 Act V, Scene 1. 33 Kerrigan, ‘Boyle’s Ireland and the British problem, 1641–1679’, p. 210. 34 Boyle’s publication, in 1677, of The art of war (a treatise on military organisation and warfare) and his involvement in the design of Charles Fort near Kinsale, suggest that he considered himself to be an expert in military affairs.

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Throughout the play, human nature is broadly depicted in a simplistic and elevated way. As Clark observes, the play features only the serious, high-born characters of tragedy: They [Altemera and her suitors] act in accordance with an extravagant and rigid code of honour in the service of love – a code which smacks strongly of the hyperbolic idealism of the Platonic love cult that in diluted form ‘Orinda’ Philips introduced to Dublin through her Society of Friendship.35

The play’s being partly the product of the literary and philosophical ambience that Philips had propagated in Dublin illustrates its connection with the cultural conditions of the Irish capital in the early 1660s. Like Pompey, The Generall owes much of its character to conditions particular to a certain time and place, with the substantial influence of a social fashion specific to Dublin in evidence. The Society of Friendship was a literary and philosophical group among the kingdom’s socio-economic elite that cultivated a refinement of manners and artistic sophistication. Its members sought to live out Plato’s theories of love and friendship in their daily lives attempting, through intense friendships with one another, to achieve a kind of spiritual awakening. Plato’s theory, set out in his Phaedrus, identifies a kind of intense romantic love in which the sexual impulse is elided in the interests of higher thought and feeling. On the stage, Boyle represented an idealised version of the friendships that the members of Philips’s circle sought. The political resolution of the drama is also tidied up and simplified. With the rightful king restored, Sicily can look forward to a future free of internecine conflict at home and ready to meet the threat from the Italian mainland. Richard Head: a view of life in Dublin A very different, but equally intriguing, literary personality of the era is the Irish-born Richard Head (c.1637–86?), the author of the privately performed Hic et ubique; or, the humors of Dublin. He was the son of a Church of England clergyman who settled in Carrickfergus. After Head’s father was murdered in the 1641 rebellion, the family fled back to England.36 Head studied at Oxford for a time but left for lack of money and became a bookseller in London. However, a gambling habit led to financial ruin and he moved to Dublin until his return to London in 1663, 35 William Smith Clark, The early Irish stage (Oxford, 1955), p. 59. 36 Jonathan Pritchard, ‘Head, Richard’, ODNB, s.v.

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where he continued to work as a bookseller and writer.37 While Head’s time in Dublin was relatively short, his play is significant for its portrayal of the city in the early 1660s. It seems that, like many of the characters in Hic et ubique, Head’s reason for being in Dublin was to avoid his debtors. He does not appear to have been fond of Ireland, returning to England as soon as he could and painting a rather unflattering picture of the country in his play. Like many of the other playwrights who had an Irish association, Head’s relationship with the country of his birth was complicated. Hic et ubique was published by the author in London in 1663 and appears to have been performed privately in Dublin, rather than at Smock Alley. A range of character-types in Dublin feature in Head’s play, which provides a fascinating insight into the atmosphere of the city in the early 1660s; it is depicted as a kind of frontier town awash with chancers and bankrupts recently arrived from London in flight from their creditors, living on their wits and in search of an easy living in a land of opportunity, albeit one that they find disappointing and unattractive. Social fragmentation, partly caused by large-scale migration, was a feature of seventeenth-century Ireland.38 In Act I, Scene 1, well-known Dublin inns are mentioned – The Plume of Feathers on Castle Street and The London Tavern on Fishamble Street – as are the famous oysters from Poolbeg. The title of the play itself suggests the damp, unhealthy climate that some of the characters associate with Ireland. The play describes the fortunes of a handful of English immigrants from the time they step off the boat at the quays to the resolution of the various problems that beset them, or at least a breakthrough in self-awareness that will lead to a more satisfactory lifestyle. One of the worthier settlers, Peregrine, has the good fortune to win the hand in marriage of the only daughter of a prosperous vintner, Alderman Thrive-well. Thrive-well, also a Londoner, had arrived in Dublin bankrupt some years before. It is hinted, however, that he owed his initial success to his wife’s working as a prostitute without his knowledge.39 Thus, colonial Dublin society is represented as possessing a sordid undercurrent that respectable prosperity seeks to disguise. Almost all of the English settlers are reluctant migrants who are forced to Dublin through economic necessity, but find the opportunities disappointing, as this exchange, between two of the characters, Bankrupt and Trustall, illustrates: 37 Ibid. 38 Raymond Gillespie, Seventeenth-century Ireland (Dublin, 2006), p. 20. 39 Act I, Scene 5.

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Bank: But what d’ye resolve on for a livelyhood? Trust: I know not, imployments being so difficult in their obtaining. Bank: ’Tis true, though whole ships of fooles daily arriving Imagin the contrary. Trust: Had I known so much before, the Indies sh’d sooner have been my refuge.40

Trustall’s bankruptcy in London has been caused by his being too trusting in business. Both he and Bankrupt, formerly a colourman in London, are patently inept and unsuited to commercial life.41 If Dublin is a place for failed London merchants, then there is a sense that the city is second-rate, betraying a pessimistic and cynical view of the city’s worth and, therefore, questioning the value of the colonial process. Even the successful Thrivewell would rather be in London; he clearly misses it, and asks the more recent immigrants for news of his old city. The Londoners report high property prices in the English capital, making trade difficult. In fact, there is a sense that the English characters have been forced out of their home country through a lack of opportunities – their old country has, therefore, failed them. In leaving England and coming to Ireland, they have, necessarily, taken on a new identity – not, of course, Irish, but not fully English either. They are reluctant exiles, disillusioned with the old country but unhappy with the new one. Ultimately, however, all the new arrivals seem reconciled to the land they have come to reluctantly, and show no sign of planning to return to England at the end of the play. Furthermore, their moral right to settle in Ireland is never questioned. Peregrine, a former landowner, points out: ‘My great Grand-father Adam, (Emperor of the whole world) left me / something everywhere, and I find it truly paid me where e’er I come.’42 This observation encapsulates the essence of the argument that morally supports colonisation – as we are all descendants of Adam, we are entitled to live and prosper in any land we choose. Nevertheless, the native Irish population does feature. Colonel Kiltory, a more long-standing resident of the city, and a veteran of the wars of the 1640s, has a servant, Patrick, who is the only Irish character in the play. Kil-tory’s name is a clear allusion to his role in the conflict, ‘tory’ being a pejorative term for Irish rebels and outlaws (from the Gaelic tóraí, meaning ‘bandit’43). Patrick, the Irish servant, is morose, excitable and rather inept. He is distinguished from the others by his HibernoEnglish pronunciation, such as ‘de’ for ‘the’ and ‘fuat’ for ‘what’.44 He 40 Act III, Scene 3. 41 Act I, Scene 3. 42 Ibid. 43 Niall Ó Dónaill, Foclóir Gaeilge-Béarla (Baile Átha Cliath, 1977), p. 1255. 44 Act I, Scene 2.

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also uses occasional Gaelic phrases such as ‘achree’ (‘dear heart’), ‘arra’ (‘well’ or ‘sure’) and ‘sha’ (‘yes’),45 as well as the exclamation ‘Fuillilaloo!’ (‘Halloo!’).46 ‘Fuillilaloo’ is clearly a variation, or Head’s garbled rendering, of fuililiú or fuilibiliú, translated by Ó Dónaill as ‘halloo’, either a hunting cry or an interjection expressing surprise or consternation and meaning something like ‘Good heavens!’ or ‘Lord above!’.47 Patrick’s poor command of English makes him mildly ridiculous. In the first act, he comes to his master in a distressed state after discovering a man (one of the play’s English characters) in bed with his wife. In his excitement, he uses language that is inappropriately vulgar while telling the story: ‘Fuy by St. Patrick agra, he put de fuckation upon my weef ’ (Fie! By avenging Saint Patrick, he fucked my wife’).48 He also struggles with the word ‘constable’ with comic effect. In the text, a pause after the first syllable is carefully indicated so that the reader can see the joke: and I did make sharge for him in the Kings name, thou know’st, to stay dere til I fetch the Cunt---stable; but before I came, this chvereeh crave Rauge make run away for himshelf49 And I charged him in the King’s name, I’ll have you know, to stay there till I fetched the cunt. . .stable; but before I came back, the sneaky[?]50, craven rogue had run away!

Patrick is not only cuckolded without exacting retribution but is incapable of fighting with a sword, although he protests that he can fight with his fists or with the ‘skean’, the Gaelic dagger.51 Thus, the Irish are depicted as being inept when it comes to combat using modern, conventional weapons but capable in combat that is primitive or barbaric. His charging of the interloper in the king’s name is significant when we consider that, earlier in the century, Ireland’s Catholics frequently appealed to the English monarchy to be their protector against the burgeoning power of the New English Protestants and the English Parliament. The Old English 45 Ibid. 46 Act I, Scene 6. 47 Ó Dónaill, Foclóir Gaeilge-Béarla, p. 591. 48 According to Ó Dónaill (Foclóir Gaeilge-Béarla, pp. 11 and 13), agra is a variation of agairt, a verbal noun meaning ‘retribution’, so the translating of ‘by St. Patrick agra’ as ‘by avenging Saint Patrick’ seems reasonable. The sense, broadly, is swearing by or appealing to the patron saint. 49 Act I, Scene 6. 50 The meaning of ‘chvereeh’ is unclear, but it may be a corruption of the Gaelic speireadh, meaning a lanky youth (Ó Dónaill, p. 1142). In any case, it is clearly an abusive adjective of some kind. Judging by the context of this scene, ‘sneaky’ is a reasonable guess. 51 Act II, Scene 4.

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Catholics emphasised their loyalty to the House of Stuart and sought to preserve his royal prerogative in Ireland in order to check the influence of the English House of Commons.52 Patrick’s appeal to the power of the king in correcting the injustice he is suffering at the hands of an English settler illustrates the complexity of the relationship between the native Irish and the English monarchy. While Kil-tory dismisses him as a ‘Bogtrotting, Beetlehead’,53 Patrick is wily enough to warn his employer when he sees that he is about to be swindled and later observes ‘de English vid put de sheat pon efry podyes’ (‘the English would cheat anybody’).54 This last observation gives voice to the concerns of the indigenous population of Ireland and allows them to protest at the avaricious and predatory behaviour of many seventeenth-century English settlers. It also challenges Tuite’s contention that such Restoration comedies depicted the Gaelic Irish as ‘happily domesticated rustics who willingly submit to Ireland’s benevolent authorities’.55 Patrick is defiant and conscious of the injustice of his situation. Perhaps, at some level, Head is recognising the questionable moral position of the colonial process by allowing a native voice of dissent. As a play of and about Dublin, Hic et ubique can clearly be identified as an Anglo-Irish work in the sense that it identifies strongly with Ireland’s English settlers, describing their experience and sympathising with their point of view. In this work, we can see the emergence of a dramatic literature that was specifically Irish, as its appreciation and understanding required familiarity with the Irish situation. John Dancer: kings, campaigns and pretenders Another Restoration playwright with an Irish connection, John Dancer, was an Englishman who came to Ireland as a trooper in the service of James Butler. One of his plays, Agrippa, King of Alba: or the False Tiberinus (London, 1675), is a translation of the French tragedy, Agrippa roy d’Albe: ou Le faux Tiberinus (1663) by Philippe Quinault; Dancer’s version is dedicated to Butler’s daughter, Lady Mary Cavendish. It was clearly popular at Smock Alley, as the title page of the play presents the text ‘As it was several times Acted with great Applause before his Grace the Duke of Ormond the 52 Aidan Clarke, The Old English in Ireland (Dublin, 2000), p. 234. 53 Act IV, Scene 3. 54 Act V, Scene 2. 55 Patrick Tuite, Theatre of crisis: The performance of power in the Kingdom of Ireland, 1662–92 (Selinsgrove, 2010), p. 101.

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Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, at the Theatre Royal in Dublin’.56 The subject of the work is the accession to the throne of Agrippa, one of the legendary kings of Alba Longa in pre-Roman Latium, recorded by the Roman historian Livy. The theme of military expansion in the early history of a region that came to amass a large empire implies approval for England’s strengthening control of Ireland. The action of the play is precipitated by the drowning, in battle, of Tiberinus, King of Alba. It happens that another Alban fighting in the same campaign, Agrippa, bears an identical resemblance to the recently deceased Tiberinus. Agrippa’s father, Tyrhenus, recognises an opportunity to seize power and pressures his son to pose as the king, thereby taking the crown by deceit. Agrippa, consequently, returns from the victorious campaign against the neighbouring Rutuli claiming to be Tiberinus. Tyrhenus does not have the sympathy of the audience, yet his son is the heroic protagonist of the drama. In a seventeenth-century Irish context, transfer of land and power from Catholics to Protestants, patently unfair and unprecedented in its scale, was hard to justify morally or legally. Agrippa’s illegal and unconstitutional challenge to the authority of the rightful ruler reminds the audience to be legally flexible in such matters. The strategic necessity of conquering a neighbouring people, the Rutuli, is not questioned – an implicit endorsement of England’s conquest of Ireland. His father puts round a story that Agrippa has been murdered under Tiberinus’s orders. As a result, Agrippa, a reluctant usurper, returns to face public odium for his own murder. The plot is complicated by a number of love interests. Albina, Agrippa’s sister, had been in love with Tiberinus but withdraws her affections when she comes to believe that he has murdered her brother. This is just as well as, of course, the real Tiberinus is dead and the man she believes to be Tiberinus is, in fact, her brother, Agrippa. The legitimate heir to the throne is Tiberinus’s nephew, Mezentius, who is in love with a princess of the royal Latin house, Lavinia (presumably a relative of his). She does not return his love but is, instead, in love with Agrippa, whom she now believes is dead. Agrippa is also in love with her, but Tyrhenus callously orders his son to give her up in order to keep the throne. Although he occupies the throne, Agrippa finds himself in a difficult position. His own sister hates him as she takes him for her brother’s murderer and his beloved, Lavinia, decides to avenge the apparent murder. Thus, Agrippa’s illegal usurpation of power appears not to be paying, causing distress and anxiety to the protagonist and others. The conspirators (including Mezentius, Tiberinus’s rightful heir, who had 56 Title page.

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agreed to take part in the planned regicide because of his love for Lavinia) find that, rather than killing a tyrant, it seems that they have killed Agrippa. Fortunately, however, in an extraordinary twist, it is revealed that Agrippa has not died after all, although Mezentius has killed himself rather than be captured by the guard. With Mezentius gone, his relative, Lavinia, now inherits the crown. She, in turn, presents the crown to her beloved Agrippa who can now rule as a real king. A transfer of power that was initially illegal is resolved into a constitutional accession to the satisfaction of the surviving characters. With its themes of conquest and accession, Agrippa was a topical work for its Dublin audience. Having passed through a period of uncertainty and confusion, the audience is urged to support the new order; in the context of Restoration Dublin, this new order is Stuart, English and, in terms of its religious allegiance, Anglican. Another French translation by Dancer is Nicomede (1670), which was translated from Pierre Corneille’s Nicomède (1651); it is dedicated to another of James Butler’s children, Thomas Butler, sixth earl of Ossory. This further connection of Dancer with the Butler family also implies that the play may have been written with performance at Smock Alley in mind. It is significant that Agrippa and Nicomede are both from French works and are both dedicated to children of Butler. Clearly, Butler, who must have been something of a literary patron to Dancer, had a great influence on literary taste in Dublin and, like Boyle, succeeded in bringing Dublin more closely into the cultural orbit of continental Europe. The action of Nicomede is set in Nicomedia, the capital of the Hellenistic kingdom of Bithynia, on the edge of the expanding Roman Empire in Asia Minor. The time is the reign of King Prusias in the second century bc and the Carthaginian general, Hannibal, has recently died, having taken his own life after being betrayed to the Romans by his Bithynian hosts. Hannibal and Prusias are not the only historical figures referred to in the play: the Roman senator and diplomat, Titus Quinctius Flaminius, features as a mischievous anti-hero who is trying to further Rome’s influence in the region. The wife of King Prusias is called Arsinoe and they have a son, Attalus, who has been educated in Rome under the guardianship of the Senate as a kind of hostage.57 The Romans seem to be hoping that the young prince will succeed Prusias as king, thus ensuring that Bithynia will be a pro-Roman state in the future. However, Prusias also has an older son from a previous marriage, Nicomede, who has proved his worth 57 The parallel with James Butler’s upbringing is striking as he was, in his youth, removed from his Catholic family and educated as a royal ward in the household of the Protestant archbishop of Canterbury, George Abbot: Barnard, ‘Butler, James’, ODNB, s.v.

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as a skilled military leader. Not only is Nicomede Attalus’s senior, but his martial prowess makes him the more suited to being Prusias’s heir apparent. As a successful general, Nicomede should be a source of pride to his father. Instead, the old king becomes jealous and suspects his son’s intentions. Even though Nicomede is the rightful heir apparent, Arsinoe is hoping to put her own son on the throne. The competition between Nicomede and his half-brother is heightened by a love interest: Nicomede and Laodice, Queen of Armenia, are in love and wish to marry. However, egged on by his mother, Atallus also claims to be in love with the Armenian queen. Prusias gives Nicomede a choice between the throne or Laodice; when Nicomede opts for the latter, Prusias is furious and changes his mind. Instead, he decides to hand his son over to the Romans. However, the dramatic intervention of the urban mob of Nicomedia reflects a change in the fortunes of Arsinoe’s cabal. Then, when the wily Roman diplomat, Flaminius, forbids Attalus to pursue Laodice, the young prince decides to defy Rome and help his elder brother. The play ends with a general reconciliation. Nicomede is allowed to marry his beloved Laodice and Attalus becomes heir apparent of the Bithynian throne. Nicomede, we must presume, goes to Armenia to govern justly with his new queen. Roman involvement in Bithynia is represented as essentially negative, while Bithynia’s annexation of neighbouring states within Asia Minor is depicted as worthwhile and morally just. As a commentary on colonial expansion in the context of Restoration Ireland, it might imply that the consolidation of a strong state of its power within its natural sphere of influence is acceptable and desirable. Thus, England’s establishment of firm control over its neighbouring kingdoms within the British Isles, as a natural geo-political unit, is to be encouraged. In Bithynia’s three subject-kingdoms of Pontus, Galatia and Cappadocia, we can see a parallel with Scotland, Ireland and Wales, which might have been seen as forming a natural political unit with England at the helm. In the context of this analogy, the interference of foreign continental powers in British and Irish affairs seems insidious and destructive. Perhaps Flaminius represents agents of the Catholic continental powers; while their political influence is unwelcome, their cultural superiority is freely acknowledged. While Dancer was of English birth, his participation in the Irish colonial enterprise affords his work a particularly Irish identity. Furthermore, the themes of power transfer and colonial expansion are pertinent to the experience of a seventeenth-century Dublin audience. With Agrippa and Nicomede, Dancer affirmed Dublin’s identity as a modern, late Renaissance city with a French cultural influence. These translations,

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along with Philips’s earlier Pompey, simultaneously represent the burgeoning of both English culture and French culture in Ireland. Dublin, therefore, is not simply going through a process of anglicisation but also of modernisation through its exposure to culture from the European continent. Nevertheless, Dancer’s plays also provided a commentary on, and interpretation of, historical events and a political context that had a significance particular to Ireland. John Wilson: diabolical dishonesty Another English poet and playwright, John Wilson (bap. 1626, d. 1695?), also a protégé of Butler’s, lived in Ireland for a longer period; he became Recorder of Londonderry, a senior judicial appointment, in December 1666 and appears to have left Ireland late in 1682 as a result of conflict with the citizens of that city.58 His tragicomedy, Belphegor, premiered at Smock Alley in the late 1670s or early 1680s.59 Wilson, a career lawyer, was a royalist and it appears that his loyalty to the House of Stuart was rewarded in the Restoration with favourable career opportunities in London and, subsequently, with the Recordership of Londonderry. However, having a Stuart loyalist in such a key judicial role in Londonderry was also important to offset the influence of the Scottish Presbyterians who dominated the commercial and civic life of the city, and whose loyalty to the king was thought by many to be equivocal. The Presbyterians posed a real threat to Charles II’s vision of how the monarchy should function, favouring a covenanted kingdom that involved greater consent between ruler and ruled.60 Interestingly, Wilson’s play, The Cheats, was temporarily banned by Charles II shortly after its first performance at Vere Street in 1663, the result, Lesko has suggested, of its satirical depiction of a Nonconformist minister.61 This illustrates an initial wariness, on the part of the newly restored regime, of antagonising a public that still had Nonconformist sympathies. His career does not appear to have suffered from his brush with the censors, however, and his position in Ireland was that of an agent of the state in good standing. In January 1667, he was called to the Irish bar, membership of which was probably necessary for him to hold 58 Kathleen Menzie Lesko, ‘Wilson, John’, ODNB, s.v. 59 Lesko, ‘Wilson, John’, ODNB, s.v. 60 Dougal Shaw, ‘Restoration through ritual in Ireland: the celebration of 1661’, in Thomas Herron and Michael Potterton (eds), Ireland in the Renaissance (Dublin, 2007), pp. 325–36, at p. 330. 61 Lesko, ‘Wilson, John’, ODNB, s.v.

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the post of recorder in the Irish judiciary. However, his career in Ireland began to flounder with his impeachment by Londonderry Puritans in 1680 and he left the country two or three years later.62 As Belphegor is set in Genoa, Nonconformists do not feature directly. However, the problem of humanity’s intrinsic dishonesty features prominently in the play, a fact that reflects Wilson’s experience of the citizens of Londonderry. It is a dramatic rendering of Machiavelli’s novella Belfagor arcidiavolo that became available in translation in London from 1670.63 The corrupt and perfidious citizens of Genoa would most obviously have been identified with the tradesmen and merchants in the cities of the Three Kingdoms whose burgeoning power increasingly rivalled that of the landowners and who were identified as being Nonconformist in inclination. Clark suggests that the play was a failure in Dublin, citing a satirical poem lampooning the work, but was subsequently well received in London. Perhaps it was too experimental for the Dublin public, suggesting a tendency to conservatism in Irish literary tastes. It is also probable that the Smock Alley audience was generally more disposed to receive a play well that they knew to have succeeded in London. This is consistent with the mindset of a regional city that is in thrall to the fashions and tastes of the metropolis. Clearly, the decision on the part of the management to stage a work that was untested, and so unusual in its subject matter and form, was a departure from their characteristic cautiousness; this suggests that the choice of title was, at least partly, a response to a request by Wilson’s patron, James Butler, or the latter’s son, Richard Butler, first earl of Arran.64 While, as we have seen, Smock Alley did initially stage original and experimental work, such as Philips’s Pompey, the theatre’s management was, overall, quite conservative throughout the Restoration and normally took its lead from its London counterparts. The survival of a manuscript version of the play, used as a prompt-book for the Dublin production, has provided theatre historians with fascinating details of the staging and the identity of the actors.65 Belphegor can certainly be classed 62 Ibid. 63 Clark, The early Irish stage, p. 81. 64 Arran interceded to his father on Wilson’s behalf in 1682 (Lesko, ‘Wilson, John’, ODNB, s.v.), suggesting Wilson may have been under the protection of Richard Butler more than his father, the duke. 65 The manuscript is preserved in the Folger Library as MS 827.1. Clark has reproduced photographs of two pages from the document (Clark, Plate III A and B). Corrections and additions to the script are evident in a hand that Clark identifies as that of Wilson himself (Clark, The early Irish stage, p. 82); this suggests the playwright’s direct involvement in the production.

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as an Irish play, drawing as it did on its English author’s experience of life in an Irish city. Like the French translations by Philips and Dancer, Wilson’s dramatisation of an Italian work connects Dublin more fully with the centre of Renaissance Europe. However, this experimental work was conceived, initially, for a domestic Irish audience. The existence of plays intended for domestic consumption in the first instance illustrates the strength of the medium in Dublin and the cultural confidence of Irish colonial society. Furthermore, Belphegor, like Boyle’s The Generall, was later staged in London and, therefore, represents an example of the export of (Anglo-)Irish culture to England. Cultural exchange between Dublin and London was a dynamic process rather than a one-way transfer from metropolis to satellite. Anglo-Irish drama: a new lineage In this chapter, we have seen how the drama in Dublin, although heavily influenced by literary trends in London, had, in a small way, an identity of its own. With a strong influence from the French theatre, dramatic literature was created in Dublin for domestic consumption as well as for export to the English capital. Drama was a significant element in Restoration Dublin’s literary life and helped to establish the city’s reputation as a cultural centre. Furthermore, through resuming patterns set during the reign of Charles I earlier in the century, drama written in Dublin helped to establish a sense of continuity with the political administration before the Interregnum. Just as Shaw has argued that the coronation rituals staged in Dublin in 1661 signified an attempt by the authorities in Ireland to carry on their pre-civil war agenda, there is a sense that, in terms of its artistic development, drama in both Dublin and London carried on from where it left off as soon as suppression of the art form began to weaken in the latter years of the Protectorate.66 Thus, drama in Dublin had a unifying effect in both temporal and spatial terms: it united the reign of Charles II with that of his father through establishing a sense of cultural continuity and united Dublin with London through increased cultural homogenisation. While the plays we have considered in this chapter are products of the particular historical and political circumstances of Dublin and Ireland, they remain culturally English rather than Irish. Although they had an Irish connection, the playwrights Philips, Boyle, Head and Dancer were all, essentially, English in their culture and outlook, even 66 Shaw, ‘Restoration through ritual in Ireland: the celebration of 1661’, p. 326.

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though Boyle and Head were born in Ireland (albeit to English parents). The labelling of their work as Anglo-Irish drama, therefore, seems hardly appropriate. It can most accurately be described as English drama written in Ireland with elements that had a particular significance for an AngloIrish colonial audience. For the most part, Restoration drama in Dublin was indistinguishable from that in London, but this handful of what might be described as proto-Anglo-Irish plays represent the germ of a tradition that found a fuller expression in Francis Dobbs’ The patriot King (1774) and culminated in the drama of the Irish Literary Revival in the late nineteenth century.

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11

Peripheral print cultures in Renaissance Europe Alexander S. Wilkinson My first introduction to book history and indeed Irish literature came in a second-year undergraduate English course at the University of St Andrews. We read Seamus Heaney’s collection The haw lantern (1987), and reflected on the poem ‘Terminus’, named after the admittedly rather obscure Roman god of boundary markers. In ‘Terminus’, Heaney offers a powerful image of a poet feeling his way through the seemingly irreconcilable demarcations in Ireland between unionist and nationalist, Anglo and Irish, and north and south.1 As students, we were invited to debate the significance, if any, of the imprint on the collection – London, Faber and Faber – particularly in light of the poet’s well-known objection to being included in a British anthology of poetry: But don’t be surprised, If I demur, for be advised My passport’s green. No glass of ours was ever raised to toast the Queen.2

It was perfectly clear, of course, why Faber and Faber had been selected as the publishing house of choice – the far greater prestige such endorsement conferred compared with its Irish rivals, the reach of the publisher, to say nothing of commercial lures. Yet, rightly or wrongly, it was difficult to escape the somewhat uncomfortable sense of incongruity. The significance of where items were published engages the interest of book historians of all periods, and can have a profound influence on   1 Seamus Heaney, The haw lantern (London, 1987).   2 Heaney’s rebuke to Blake Morrison and Andrew Motion was made in an ‘Open letter’, Field day pamphlet, no. 2 (Derry, 1983), p. 9. He objected to the inclusion of his poetry in The Penguin book of contemporary British poetry (London, 1982).

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the way in which cultures are considered and assessed. The particular choices of authors or publishers can be both fascinating and revealing in their own right. On a macroscopic level, the broader geography of book production can give an important sense of the intensity and character of cultural activity in different regions and countries. However, as in the case of Heaney, there are obvious problems with any regionally grounded perspective. In the most recent survey of the Irish book, an awkward but entirely understandable justification is made for looking beyond domestic production and including at least some works by Irish authors published abroad.3 There is also another more obvious issue – the extent to which the vibrancy and character of print cultures can be inferred from what was produced in a given location without taking into account what was consumed. Such issues are as pertinent for scholars of the Renaissance book as for scholars of twentieth-century publishing. Over the past two decades, our capacity to establish the contours of European print production before 1601 has advanced enormously. Ambitious bibliographical projects have covered the major print domains, replacing a patchwork of earlier surveys of individual printing centres. 2011 saw the online launch of a project most scholars would have considered impossible even five years ago – the Universal short title catalogue.4 This has brought together existing catalogues, such as those compiled by the German VD16, Italian Edit16 and English Short-Title Catalogue projects, plugged gaps in that coverage, and created or significantly updated resources for France, the Low Countries, Spain, Portugal, Eastern Europe and Scandinavia. Although still in its infancy, with items to be added and some bibliographic ghosts to be eradicated, the Universal short title catalogue has given the scholarly community a well-defined map of the book world of Renaissance Europe. In the process, it has opened up a thrilling new world of research possibilities, not least the opportunity afforded for comparative and transnational study. From the vast amount of information accumulated to date, it is possible to identify various intensities of European publishing activity. Firstly, there were the core regions of the book industry: Germany, Italy, France and the Low Countries. These are distinguished by the quantity   3 Clare Hutton and Patrick Walsh (eds), The Oxford history of the Irish book, Vol. 5: The Irish book in English, 1891–2000 (Oxford, 2011), pp. 3–4.  4 The Universal short title catalogue is the product of a project based at the University of St Andrews with partners in University College Dublin and is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. It is available online at http://www.ustc.ac.uk.

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of ­editions produced; they catered to a vibrant and large domestic vernacular trade which in turn could support more ambitious projects. The very high proportion of works in Latin compared to the vernacular in these countries testifies to the outward-looking attention they devoted to international markets. In Germany, over 60 per cent of output before 1601 was in Latin.5 In Italy and the Low Countries, that figure was 45 per cent, while in France scholarly publishing represented 43 per cent of total production. Then there was a second tier of print domains, principal among them Spain and England. These countries produced relatively modest quantities of books in real terms, but when adjusted for population size, boasted incredibly vibrant vernacular cultures. Emerging data on these print domains gathered from the Universal short title catalogue is yielding many interesting correctives to the standard historical narrative. For instance, Spain is often seen as a publishing backwater.6 However, if we take into account population size when looking at the production statistics, and also the number of sheets used to print each book, France produced 37,088 vernacular sheets per million of population before 1601 compared with Spain’s 66,700 sheets per million.7 In terms of items, France produced 2,267.2 per million compared with Spain’s 1,775.3. To put it more clearly, France produced a vast number of vernacular items, but these tended to be much shorter books than generally appeared in the Spanish market; relatively speaking, Spain had a far more active vernacular publishing industry. While vernacular publishing in these second-tier  5 See Andrew Pettegree, ‘North and south: Cultural transmission in the sixteenth-­ century European book world’, in Alexander S. Wilkinson (ed.), Exploring the print world of early-modern Iberia, a special edition of Bulletin of Spanish Studies 89:4 (2012), pp. 507–20.   6 Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin, The coming of the book, trans. David Gerard (London, 1997), pp. 190–1. This was first published as L’Apparition du Livre (Paris, 1958).   7 The counting of the number of sheets required to produce a book can offer a more important indicator of the productivity of the presses than simply quantifying the number of books. Simply counting books does not distinguish between a large folio item, which could take many months to roll off a press, and a broadsheet. The information on sheets noted here is based on an analysis of the most recent bibliographies for Spain and France, taking into account the different proportions of records in the catalogues which lend themselves to this form of analysis: Alexander S. Wilkinson (ed.), Iberian books. Libros Ibéricos. Books published in Spanish or Portuguese or on the Iberian Peninsula before 1601. Libros publicados en español o portugués (Leiden, 2010) [hereafter IB], and Andrew Pettegree, Malcolm Walsby and Alexander S. Wilkinson (eds), French vernacular books/Livres vernaculaires français, 2 vols (Leiden, 2007). For a discussion of analysis by sheets, see Alexander S. Wilkinson, ‘Bum fodder and kindling: Cheap print in Renaissance Spain’, in Bulletin of Spanish Studies 90:4–5 (2013), pp. 871–93.

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regions was certainly strong, we see a far smaller engagement with scholarly publishing. In the case of England, only 14 per cent of production was in Latin, while Spain fared a little better with a figure of 30 per cent. With the notable exception of the Low Countries, countries with small domestic markets found it more difficult to develop the expertise or deploy the capital investment necessary to compete on the international stage. There was also a third tier of publishing nations – the focus of this chapter – countries which lay on the very fringes of the European book world. These regions, including Portugal, Scotland, Ireland, Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, exhibited markedly low levels of production either in Latin or in vernacular languages – even when adjusted for the size of their populations. As a result, scholars have been somewhat negative, even dismissive, in their characterisation of the intellectual vitality of these regions. After all, given that the invention of printing in Mainz around 1450 is seen as one of the true liminal markers of the Renaissance, an active outward-looking publishing industry is held to be a crucial symbol of modernity, signalling the transition of a nation from the medieval into the modern world. One consequence of this way of conceptualising the importance of the book has been to depict European print cultures in terms of winners and losers on the journey towards cultural progress, with some nations, and indeed some areas within those nations, moving at a faster pace than others.8 Although rather crude, there is undoubtedly a great deal of truth to these assumptions. Yet an examination of the periphery of the European book world does suggest some important issues which ought to be borne in mind. Before we take a closer look at the patterns of production in these peripheral regions, and the extent to which they can reveal cultures of print, it might be useful to turn in the first instance to Spain, and to two particular regions which really ought to have been on the fringes of the European book world but were not – Catalonia and the Kingdom of Valencia.9 These regions had a combined population of around 760,000.   8 For evidence of this see Febvre and Martin, The coming of the book, passim. An example of the way in which scholars have underestimated book markets within particular regions of otherwise buoyant print domains can be found in Alain Croix, L’âge d’or de la Bretagne 1532–1675 (Rennes, 1993), pp. 443–4, where he describes Breton printing as being ‘faible, presque marginale’ due to a lack of ‘foyer intellectuel digne de ce nom’; cited in Malcolm Walsby, The printed book in Brittany 1486–1600 (Leiden, 2011), p. 162.   9 For a fuller discussion of the development of print in these regions, see Alexander S. Wilkinson and Marinela García Sempere, ‘La producció impresa en català durant els segles XV i XVI: Observacions sobre la història de la impremta a través de l’estudi dels catàlegs’, Caplletra: Revista Internacional de Filologia 51 (2011), pp. 51–80.

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Table 1  Levels of vernacular production in Europe before 1601 Region

Ireland

Number of items published in vernacular languages 9

Estimated population in 1600 1 million

Scotland

279

800,000

Sweden

380

800,000

Poland

1,298

2.5 million

Portugal

Figure per million of population 9 348.8 475 519.2

1,150

1.5 million

766.7

Spain

11,717

6.6 million

1,775.3

France

45,344

20 million

2,267.2

760,000

2,656.7 2,719.3

Catalonia and Valencia

1,950

England

11,965

4.4 million

Italy

48,400

13.3 million

The Low Countries

17,242

3 million

3,639 5,747.3

Source: Universal Short Title Catalogue

Printing had arrived in Barcelona and Valencia in 1473, a year after the German printer Johannes Parix published the first known book on the Peninsula – in Segovia. Printing continued to develop, albeit somewhat erratically, as we see from Figure 1, Figure 2 and Figure 3. Before 1601, Barcelona and Valencia together accounted for around one-fifth of items printed in Spain where the place of publication is known.10 Why this is so remarkable is that the spoken language in these regions was Catalán. In fact, for Catalonia and Valencia to share in the cultural and commercial opportunities presented by the broader world of the Iberian book, they had to do so at the expense of their own l­anguage. In terms of oral culture, Castilian came to enjoy increasing prestige – amongst the influential and educated at least. This can be seen especially in Valencia. The 1520s witnessed the quickening of a trend towards Castilian that had already been prevalent since the beginnings of the publishing industry in the region. Its acceleration in the 1520s was a consequence of the impact of the Guerra de las Germanías (1519–23), the Valencian counterpart of the Revolt of the Communeros. Of ­particular 10 Total production printed in Barcelona was around 1,267 items, and in Valencia around 1,689 items. There are around 14,905 items record in Iberian books for Spain, where place of publication is known.

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Latin Catalan Castilian

Figure 1  Output of the Barcelonan presses, 1473–1600

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Figure 2  Output of the Valencian presses, 1473–1600

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importance was the arrival in 1523 of the viceroy Germana de Foix (1488–1538), second wife of Ferdinand II of Aragón. Germana de Foix transferred her court to the city of Valencia, and in so doing fundamentally transformed the culture of the city and of perceptions of the value of Castilian over Catalán. The nobility, eager to please and to distance themselves from the rebellion, began speaking in Castilian and also reading in Castilian.11 While the erosion of the Catalán language may not have formed part of any formalised policy of Castilianisation, it is clear that commercial pressures from below were heightened by more formal exertions of influence from above.12 If Catalán remained steadfast as the language spoken by the vast majority of the population in these regions, transformation from Catalán to Castilian in literary culture was rapid and virtually complete; Castilian dominated the presses in Valencia by the first decade of the sixteenth century and in Barcelona by the 1560s. These regions stand as a truly intriguing case study where, for many centuries, the language of the everyday and the language of published vernacular discourse were quite different. Scholars of Catalán culture, from the sixteenth century to the present day, have, perhaps rightly, adopted a somewhat ambiguous attitude to the coming of the book. Essentially, though, the direction taken by publishers and printers in the region was very much a commercial one, appealing to the tastes of the social elites: the nobility, clergy, bourgeoisie and wealthy merchants, as well as to the wider market beyond Valencia and Catalonia. Ultimately, the printing industry in these regions reaped the rewards of their gamble. By the second half of the century, Barcelona and Valencia were fully integrated into the national market of Spanish book production. Unlike in England, or in France, Spanish book production in this period was characterized by a large number of printing centres; these were able to respond efficiently to changes in demand and supply.13 While the fortunes of individual centres ebbed and flowed, and some areas began specialising in different types of works, other centres would compensate. Although production levels rose significantly, there was very little difference in the proportion of different types of books consumed in Spain between the first two decades of the sixteenth century and final two 11 Ricardo García Cárcel, La revolta de les Germanies (València, 1981), p. 103. 12 See James Casey, The Kingdom of Valencia in the seventeenth century (Cambridge, 1979), p. 247. 13 More information on broader patterns of book production in Spain can be found in the introduction to IB.

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Other 10%

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Figure 3  Classification of the output of the Barcelonan and Valencian presses before 1601

decades. Yet, this stability was underpinned by very profound changes at the local level. Effectively, a large number of geographically dispersed producers encouraged responsiveness to national consumer demand. Catalonia and Valencia remained a full part of these shifting dynamics. The experience of Portugal offers a striking contrast to that of the east and north-east of Spain, and it is here that our survey of peripheral printing begins. Figure 4 maps book production in fifteenth- and sixteenthcentury Portugal. What is striking is the very low output of the nation’s presses. Portugal had a population of around 1.5 million in 1600.14 14 Estimates range from between 1.1 and two million. See Paul Bairoch, Cities and economic development: From the dawn of history to the present (Chicago, 1991), p. 180. See also Nuno Valério, ‘Portuguese economic performance 1250–2000’, paper presented at section 36 of the 13th International Congress of Economic History, Buenos Aires, 2002. For the figure of two million, see Carla Rahn Phillips, ‘Economy and society in the Iberian Atlantic’, in Steven G. Reinhardt and Dennis Reinhartz (eds), Transatlantic history (College Station, TX, 2006), p. 26.

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Statistics for levels of urbanisation in Portugal are hard to come by, but it is worth pointing out that in addition to the major cities of Coimbra, Évora and Oporto, the capital Lisbon was one of the most heavily populated in Europe, with 50,000 inhabitants in 1500 rising to 100,000 by 1600.15 There was a university in Lisbon, founded in 1290, although this moved several times, ultimately settling in Coimbra in 1537. Far less work has been undertaken on literacy levels in Portugal than on those in Spain, but despite some exaggerated claims of backwardness in older historical surveys, there is little reason to suppose that there was any significant difference between the two countries. Printing arrived relatively late in Portugal, in 1487, around fifteen years later than in its neighbour, when the Pentateuco – in Hebrew – was printed in the southern Portuguese town of Faro by Samuel Gacon.16 The relatively late appearance of sustained printing activity seems to be a characteristic of peripheral print cultures; modest populations, it seems, were not a particularly attractive proposition for budding publishing entrepreneurs. Figure 4 shows that the Portuguese printing industry did mature, especially from the 1520s, producing a total of around 1,625 items before 1601. There was a steady increase in production each decade until the 1570s, when we see something of a decline before a recovery in the last two decades of the century. In terms of place of publication, Lisbon is dominant, printing 60 per cent of all items. Lisbon was followed by Coimbra with a 24 per cent share, Évora with a 6 per cent share, and a scattering of publishing elsewhere in places such as Porto and Braga. Figure 5 illustrates the proportion of different broad categories of books published. Clearly, a very full range of books were produced – including histories, science books, newsbooks, music, medical literature, prognostications and philosophy; it is just that they were printed in lower quantities than might have been expected given the size of the population. Of particular note are the especially high levels of theological and liturgical texts – 43 per cent of production compared with 37 per cent of Spanish production. Also worth signalling are the small quantities of literature printed in Portugal, equating to only 11 per cent of production, compared to the equivalent proportion in Spain of 16 per cent. Despite a reasonably prosperous, literate society, Portugal had low rates of production. One of the main explanations for this was that, as we 15 Valério, ‘Portuguese economic performance 1250–2000’, table A.3. 16 Pentateuco (Faro, para Samuel Gacon, 1487), 2o. IB 1965. The only known copy of this work is preserved in the British Library, C.49.c.1.

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Figure 4  Portuguese production before 1601

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Other 21% Religious 43% News 3% Classical Authors 3% Histories 5% Literature 10% Official Print 15% Figure 5  Types of works published in Portugal before 1601

have seen in Catalonia, there was a willingness by the population, especially amongst the social elites, to read in another vernacular. Spanish had a relatively high status in Portugal, with Portuguese-Castilian bilingualism especially prevalent from the mid-fifteenth century until around the Restoration in 1640. This seems to have been an asymmetrical relationship; the Portuguese could understand Spanish better than the Spanish could understand Portuguese. Portuguese authors sought to have their books published across Europe, but the vernacular language of choice was Spanish.17 Moreover, two of the most published authors in Portugal were Spanish – Luis de Granada and Martín de Azpilcueta. They were, though, followed closely by Portuguese authors such as Heitor Pinto, Jerónimo Cardoso and André de Resende. This is not to diminish in any way the pride felt by the Portuguese in their own language.18 Indeed, unlike in 17 Domingo Garcia Péres, Catálogo razonado biográfico y bibliográfico de los autores portugueses que escribieron en castellano (Madrid: Impr. del Colegio nacional de sordo-mudos y de ciegos, 1890); Martínez Almoyna and Vieira de Lemos, La lengua española en la literatura portuguesa (Madrid, 1968). 18 See, for instance, Fernando Oliveira’s Grammatica da lingoagem portuguesa (Lisbon, 1536), 4o; João de Barros’s Grammatica da lingua portuguesa (Lisbon, 1540), 4o.; Duarte Núñez de León’s Orthographia da lingoa portuguesa, obra util, & necessaria, assi pera

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Catalonia and Valencia, 55 per cent of all books published in Portugal were in Portuguese. Importantly, however, 15 per cent of total production was in Spanish. Given the low production rates in the vernacular, of around 766 items per million (based on a population estimate of 1.5 million), it is likely that Portugal remained a net importer, or at least a significant importer, of vernacular works. The scholarly market for books was, of course, international. Even nations in the heartland of Europe’s book trade that produced large quantities of Latin books also imported vast quantities of Latin titles. What is so interesting about some peripheral print cultures is that they – sometimes at least – imported very large volumes of vernacular material. Let us now turn our attention away from the Iberian Peninsula and northwards to more familiar territory – to Scotland and then to Ireland. Excluding false imprints printed in France but carrying Edinburgh as the stated place of publication, there were a lowly 347 items published in Scotland over the course of the sixteenth century for an estimated population of around 800,000; that equates to 433 items per million inhabitants, with a vernacular figure of 360 items per million.19 In short, vernacular print production in Scotland was under half that of Portugal in comparative terms. Seventeen per cent of works produced were in Latin. The remaining 83 per cent were published in the vernacular: in Scots and English – with a single item in Gaelic. By about 1600, anglicised Scots texts outnumbered those printed in broad Scots by a ratio of two to one.20 This anglicisation, at least in part, indicates a desire to expand the market for Scottish vernacular publishing beyond Scotland’s borders, and there is evidence of some success in this regard. Britain’s first printed bibliographical catalogue, produced in 1595 by the London bem screver a lingoa hespanhol, como a latina, & quaesquer outras (Lisbon, 1576); and Pedro de Magalhães Gândavo’s Regras que ensinam a maneira de escrever a orthographia da lingua portuguesa, com hum dialogo que adiante se segue em defensam da mesma lingua (Lisbon, 1574), (Lisbon, 1590) and (Lisbon, 1592), 4o. 19 These figures have been extracted from the English short title catalogue. 20 M. A. Bald, ‘Anglicisation of Scottish printing’, Scottish Historical Review 23 (1926), pp. 106–15. Even James VI’s Basilikon Doron, penned in Middle Scots, was ultimately published in an anglicised version; see Jenny Wormald, ‘James VI and I, Basilikon Doron and the Trew Law of Free Monarchies: The Scottish context and the English translation’, in Linday Levy Peck (ed.), The mental world of the Jacobean court (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 36–54. Problematically, the ESTC makes little attempt to distinguish between books published in Scots and those in English. For instance, limiting works to Scots and searching for William Dunbar’s Tretis of the Twa Marit wemen and the Wedo (Edinburgh, 1508) yields no results.

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Figure 6  The development of Scottish printing before 1601

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Figure 7  Output of the Scottish presses

bookseller Andrew Maunsell, shows that a scattering of editions from the Edinburgh presses of Lekpreuik, Vautrollier and Waldegrave were available in London.21 As we can see from Figure 6 and Figure 7, although there is continuous printing in Scotland from 1508, the industry does not reach anything approaching healthy levels of capacity until the 1560s. All chronological graphs appear erratic when looked at on a year-by-year basis; however, when we look at Scottish output by decade, which should be more consistent, we find very significant undulations – production falls by more than half between the 1570s and 1580s, and then trebles in the last decade of the century. Figure 7 indicates publishing trends. This reveals a far less marked preference for religious and devotional works than in Portugal and a more pronounced interest in literature, especially poetry. It is also worth noting that, on average, books printed in Scotland were much shorter than those printed in England.22 21 Andrew Maunsell: Three Part Catalogue of English Printed Books (1595), ed. D. F. Foxon (facsimile, London, 1965), cited in Alastair Mann, ‘The anatomy of the printed book in early modern Scotland’, in Scottish Historical Review 80:2, no. 210 (2001), p. 190. 22 The average number of sheets of all books printed in Scotland in this period was 11.2, compared with a figure of 17.5 sheets in England. In Portugal, the average number of sheets was 37, and in Spain 39. These figures are derived from data in the ESTC and IB.

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By the sixteenth century, Scotland could already boast three universities: St Andrews (1412), Glasgow (1451) and Aberdeen (1495), with Edinburgh joining their number in 1583. It had towns of good size. There is no compelling reason to suspect that sixteenth-century literacy rates in Lowland Scotland were significantly weaker than anywhere else in Europe, although our evidence is thin. And yet the first known printed books there did not appear until 1508, the products of the press of Walter Chepman and Andro Myllar, who had been granted a patent by James IV on 15 September 1507.23 The introduction of printing into Scotland had been motivated by commercial opportunism, but it had also been driven by national pride; the products off the press were works of Scots poetry from the likes of Robert Henryson, William Dunbar and Walter Kennedy. One important reason for the relatively low-output publishing culture in Scotland is fairly obvious. Perhaps as much as half the Scottish population were monoglot Gaelic speakers. Moreover, that Highland culture, the Gaeltacht, had incredibly high levels of illiteracy. Of 22,501 people who lived in seven west Highland parishes at the beginning of the nineteenth century, 86 per cent could read neither Gaelic nor English.24 The Gaeltacht is even more problematic, for even if literacy levels had been higher, and there had been no political and cultural obstacles to the development of an all-embracing Scottish print culture, there was also a linguistic barrier. Unlike Portuguese and Castilian, the boundary between Gaelic and Scots is hard, not porous. In general narratives of the development of the book in Britain, Scotland has been treated dismissively. In response, some recent commentators have been putting the case for the defence. In an excellent article on the anatomy of the Scottish book trade, Alastair Mann has urged scholars to move beyond the ‘surprisingly late’ and ‘surprisingly small’ generalisations.25 He has pointed to high loss rates of books, significant developments in succeeding centuries, ready access to imports from the Continent,26 the fact that many Scots published elsewhere and the 23 National Archives of Scotland, PS.1.3, f. 129. 24 R. A. Houston, Scottish literacy and the Scottish identity (Cambridge, 2002), p. 72. 25 This historiography is discussed in Alastair J. Mann, ‘The anatomy of the printed book in early modern Scotland’, pp. 181–200. See also Alastair J. Mann, The Scottish book trade 1500–1720: Print commerce and print control in early modern Scotland (East Linton, 2000). 26 Ibid. See also Jonquil Bevan, ‘Scotland’, in John Barnard, D. F. McKenzie and Maureen Bell (eds), Cambridge history of the book in Britain, Vol. 4 (Cambridge, 2002), p. 689.

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impact rather than quantity of what was produced in Scotland.27 With his outstanding monograph, Mann has succeeded in transforming the way in which we approach the Scottish book trade. Nonetheless, it is difficult to escape the fact that even if we focus only on the Lowlands of Scotland, and assume a population of around 400,000, print production was very low by English and European standards. If the Scottish Lowlands had a vernacular production rate of 720 items per million, the equivalent figure in England was 2,767 items per million. From a recent analysis undertaken on the size of books printed in Britain based on sheets, it is clear that London was churning out a very large number of titles, but they were often far shorter than their continental counterparts.28 Counting only items and ignoring whether they were large books or small pamphlets has had the tendency to exaggerate the rate of English vernacular production. However, the most obvious explanation for the conundrum of both low Scottish production figures (even when we exclude the Gaelic population from our figures) and extraordinarily high English production figures is that Scotland must surely have been importing substantial quantities of vernacular material from England. This is not to deny that some French-language material is also likely to have been read in the country, given the political landscape for a good part of this period. The trade in vernacular books with England is skimmed over in Mann’s study, and the situation is further confused by Margaret Lane Ford’s conclusion from her survey of books printed with known Scottish ownership that – with the exception of two English Bibles printed in 1551 and 1553 – there was little evidence of the importation of English books into Scotland before 1557.29 Little evidence perhaps, but the conclusion drawn is highly doubtful. Surviving evidence from libraries, post-mortem inventories of private individuals and booksellers,30 can only ever give us a very fragmentary and skewed glimpse into the book trade. Indeed, one is often 27 For a discussion of the interest in Scottish poetry in England, see Priscilla Bawcutt, ‘Crossing the border: Scottish poetry and English readers in the sixteenth century’, in Sally Mapstone and Juliette Wood (eds), The rose and the thistle: Essays on the culture of late medieval and Renaissance Scotland (East Linton, 1998), pp. 59–76. 28 See Alexander S. Wilkinson, ‘Bum fodder and kindling: cheap print in Renaissance Spain’, Bulletin of Spanish Studies 90:4–5 (2013), pp. 871–893. 29 Margaret Lane Ford, ‘The importation of books into England and Scotland’, in Lotte Hellinga and J. B. Trapp (eds), The Cambridge history of the book in Britain, Vol. 3: 1400– 1557 (Cambridge, 1999), p. 195. 30 John Durkan and Anthony Ross, Early Scottish libraries (Glasgow, 1961); M. A. Bald, ‘Vernacular books imported into Scotland’, Scottish Historical Review 23:92 (1926), pp. 254–67.

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hard pressed to find English-language books in English inventories. In Cambridge in 1545, Nicholas Pilgrim apparently had in stock only three titles in English out of 382 items.31 Moreover, from the second half of the century, we only have slightly more evidence of the importing of English books into Scotland through wills, catalogues of private libraries, and occasional references in Privy Council documents and other state papers.32 Finally, we come to Ireland. It is fair to suggest that one would be hard pressed to find a more peripheral print culture in the sixteenth century – and even in the seventeenth – if, that is, we looked at production statistics alone. To say that printing arrived in Ireland late is, as other contributors to this volume have noted, something of an understatement. Indeed, by the time the first book was produced on those shores, a printing press had been in operation in Mexico for eleven years and had published thirty-two items. 1550 is the seminal date, when a London printer and bookseller Humphrey Powell was granted £20 by Act of Privy Council to set up a printing office in Dublin.33 A year later he printed the first known book, The Boke of Common Praier – the only substantial publication produced in Ireland in the sixteenth century.34 Powell must have been regarded as something of a safe pair of hands; he had, after all, been responsible for a number of anti-popish tracts in London, including titles such as THE WYLL OF THE DEVYLL AND LAST TESTAMENT and The practice practised by the Pope and his prelates which they haue vsed synce they came to their estates.35 Printing in Renaissance Ireland was a statedriven activity, sponsored for the sole purpose of furthering Tudor government and the Protestant faith. It was not commercially driven. There was no continuous printing until the turn of the seventeenth century and the arrival of John Franckton; before this, a grand total of nine items are 31 E. S. Leedham-Green, Books in Cambridge inventories: Book-lists from Vice-Chancellor’s Court probate inventories in the Tudor and Stuart periods (Cambridge, 1986), nos 25, 142, 163 and 167. 32 Bald, ‘Vernacular books’, p. 265. 33 On Humphrey Powell, see E. R. McClintock Dix, ‘Humphrey Powell, the first Dublin printer’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 27 C (1908), pp. 213–16. The details of the relationship between the Tudor government and the Irish printers between 1550 and 1573 are summarised in D. B. Quinn, ‘Information about Dublin printers, 1556–1573, in English financial records’, Irish Book Lover 28 (1941–2), pp. 112–15. See also E. R. McClintock Dix, Printing in Dublin prior to 1601 (Dublin, 1932). 34 The boke of the common praier and administracion of the sacramentes, and other rites and ceremonies of the church: after the use of the Churche of England (Dublin, 1551), 2o, ff. [10] 140. 35 THE WYLL OF THE DEVYLL AND LAST TESTAMENT (London, [1548]), p. 24; The practice practised by the Pope and his prelates which they haue vsed synce they came to their estates (London, [1550]), p. [8].

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known to have been produced, if we include a literary broadsheet entitled The Destrouction of Troye,36 last seen in 1934, a work which seems rather out of character for the Powell press which was engaged primarily in producing official proclamations and two Protestant works in Gaelic. Of course, many more items were published than have survived, virtually all of which are likely to have been ephemeral in nature. There is, for instance, a payment in 1565 by the Dublin corporation for £6 to print a table of assize for the city bakers.37 Yet, to some extent at least, rudimentary domestic production in Ireland has become something of a distraction. Gaelic was the sole language of the overwhelming majority of the country’s population of one million – many members of the aristocracy included. Christopher Morash, in his History of the media in Ireland (1999), asks why there was no Gaelic printing, particularly given that royal control was weaker outside the Dublin Pale.38 The answer, simply, is that there was too small a market for such books. Even if the presses in the Gaeltacht had been established, and had published in English, it is unlikely they would have been able to engage with the British trade in the same way that Catalonia and Valencia were able to do within Spain given other political, religious and cultural considerations, together with the protectionist policies of the Stationers’ Company. We have, of course, to remember that print culture is not the same as print production, and within English-speaking areas of the country, where we can assume that literacy levels were broadly comparable to other parts of England and of Europe, people read books.39 As with Scotland, 36 Francis Edderman, A most pithi and plesant history whear in is the destrouction of Troye gethered togethere of all the chyfeste autores turned vnto Englyshe myttere (Dublin, [c.1558]), 4o. The verse begins ‘The Griekes to winn the flise of golde To Colchos toke the waye: But on thyer Iornye very soare, waere tossede in the see’. 37 Dublin City Archives, MS MR/35, ‘Account Book of Dublin, 1540–1613’, p. 202. The ESTC is one of the most respected and advanced bibliographic projects in the world. It is unfortunate, however, that it does not include references to books known to have existed, but which are now lost. On the importance of understanding levels of survival and loss to our sense of the contours of print cultures, albeit in different contexts, see Alexander S. Wilkinson, ‘Lost books printed in French before 1601’, The Library 10:2 (2009), pp. 188–205, and Jonathan Green, Frank McIntyre and Paul Needham, ‘The shape of incunable survival and statistical estimation of lost editions’, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 105:2 (2011), pp. 141–75. 38 Christopher Morash, A history of the media in Ireland (Cambridge, 1999). 39 For a sense of Ireland’s engagement with the Renaissance, see Thomas Herron and Michael Potterton (eds), Ireland in the Renaissance c.1540–1660 (Dublin, 2007), and Michael Potterton and Thomas Herron (eds), Dublin and the Pale in the Renaissance c.1540–1660 (Dublin, 2011).

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we have only a smattering of evidence of this trade, which offers a wholly inadequate means by which to reconstruct that culture. We know that, as early as 1534, Thomas Berthelet, the king’s printer, had been commissioned to produce ordinances to be circulated amongst the Anglo-Irish population.40 That in 1545, John Dartas purchased books from a London bookseller, including primers, liturgical books, romance literature and ballads.41 There is evidence for the significant importation of Bibles and service books.42 We can look at the port records of places like Chester or Bristol; from the latter, we know that there was a steady increase in the number of books being shipped into the country, from 553 in 1592 to 2,675 in 1612 – mainly schoolbooks.43 These ended up across Ireland in places like Wexford, Limerick and Galway, and inland to Cashel and Kilkenny. 44 We can probably infer from seventeenth-century evidence that Catholic books were also making their way into the country, either directly from the Continent or surreptitiously via English ports such as Newhaven in Sussex. We can also look to inventories, or to catalogues of libraries such as that of the ninth earl of Kildare, Gerald FitzGerald, where we find references to Thomas de Littleton’s Tenures, or Thomas More’s Utopia.45 All of this is very interesting, but it should not obscure the fact that our knowledge of what precisely was imported and in what quantities is circumscribed in the extreme. Our examination of countries on the periphery of European book 40 David B. Quinn, ‘Government Print and the Printing of the Irish Statutes’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 49 C (1943–44), p. 48; see also Raymond Gillespie, ‘Print Culture 1550–1700’, in Raymond Gillespie and Andrew Hadfield (eds), Oxford history of the Irish book, Vol. 3: The Book in English 1550–1800 (Oxford, 2006), p. 18. 41 Mary Pollard, A dictionary of members of the Dublin book trade, 1550–1800 (Oxford, 2000), pp. 143–4; Colm Lennon, ‘The print trade, 1550–1700’, in Raymond Gillespie and Andrew Hadfield (eds.), The Irish book in English, 1550–1800, Vol. 3 (Oxford, 2006), p. 63. 42 In the history compiled by Dudley Loftus (1619–95), he records under the entry for the year 1559 that ‘it appeared by the accompts of John Dale bookseller for the stationers of London that within twoe yeares ther wer sould in Dublin 7000 Bibles’; Newport B. White (ed.), ‘The Annals of Dudley Loftus’, Analecta Hibernica 10 (1941), p. 236. This must surely have been an exaggeration. See also Quinn, ‘Information about Dublin printers’, p. 113. 43 Raymond Gillespie, ‘The book trade in southern Ireland, 1590–1640’, in Gerard Long (ed.), Books beyond the Pale: Aspects of the provincial book trade in Ireland before 1850 (Dublin, 1996), pp. 1–17. 44 Mary Pollard, Dublin’s trade in books 1550–1800 (Oxford, 1989). 45 Donough Bryan, Gerald Fitzgerald, the great earl of Kildare (1456–1513) (Dublin and Cork, 1933), pp. 268–70; Elizabethanne Boran, ‘Libraries and Cataloguing, 1550–1700’, in Raymond Gillespie and Andrew Hadfield (eds), Oxford history of the Irish book, Vol. 3: The book in English 1550–1800 (Oxford, 2006), pp. 91–110, at p. 97.

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­ roduction serves to magnify a wider issue which, perhaps, is often p loosely glossed over in discussions of all national print cultures: the book market in the early modern period was in large measure a transnational one. While the extent of that market cannot be underestimated, neither can it be reconstructed – except in a very fragmented and unsatisfactory way. For even when we have large numbers of post-mortem inventories, as in Barcelona,46 or substantial booksellers’ inventories, all that we can ascertain with any certainty is that Latin books were imported in significant quantities – originating mainly from the core printing regions such as Italy, Germany, France and the Netherlands. General trade routes and relationships between booksellers can be identified, individual contracts examined, particular cargos listed,47 but overall we know remarkably little about what scholarly books ended up where in the sixteenth century. We do know, though, that they did circulate widely. Reconstructing national scholarly cultures of print is incredibly difficult. National short-title catalogues are wonderfully useful resources, but can often blind scholars to the broader environment of intellectual exchange. The great doyen of Elizabethan religious culture, Patrick Collinson, remarked that the English short title catalogue had done much to impede a full understanding of the period ‘since it tended to divert attention away from the fact that the bulk of the books owned and read in England by the literate and learned . . . had their origins in that supposedly alien continent’.48 This is something scholars of all print domains need to be more conscious of – even those of regions that produced vast mountains of scholarly books. Literary scholars and historians have, of course, been on surer ground with vernacular print cultures. In broad terms, and with good reason, they have assumed that the records of national vernacular production for countries such as France, Germany, Italy, Spain and England broadly reflect national vernacular consumption. In some cases, of course, they remain cognisant of linguistic regions rather than simply national bor46 Manuel Peña Díaz has systematically exploited post-mortem inventories, a much under-used resource, to reveal an enormous amount about the circulation of books in sixteenth-century Barcelona. In particular, see his ‘La circulació del llibre a Barcelona en el segle XVI’, L’Avenç: Revista de història i cultura, 199 (1996), pp. 28–31 and Cataluña en el Renacimiento:libros y lenguas (Barcelona, 1473–1600) (Lleida, 1996). 47 Paul Needham, ‘The customs rolls as documents for the printed-book trade in England’, in Lotte Hellinga and Joseph Burney Trapp (eds), The Cambridge history of the book in Britain, Vol. 3: 1400–1557 (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 148–63. 48 Patrick Collinson, ‘The fog in the Channel clears: The rediscovery of the continental dimension to the British Reformations’, in Polly Ha and Patrick Collinson (eds), The reception of continental Reformation in Britain (Oxford, 2010), p. xxxv.

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ders.49 Nonetheless, we run into far greater difficulty when investigating vernacular print on the periphery of the European book world, even in those countries that published editions domestically in ever-increasing numbers. Vernacular consumption in these regions presents a very particular set of problems. Norwegians would have read a substantial proportion of their vernacular literature in Danish well into the seventeenth century if not beyond.50 A large proportion of vernacular literature consumed in Portugal was probably imported from Spain. A significant proportion of vernacular books read in Scotland – indeed, perhaps the majority – were almost certainly imported. We can learn a great deal from bibliographies about what was produced, but we have to be just as conscious of the broader patterns of consumption which could involve reading large quantities of material published elsewhere, sometimes in a different language. Book production can only reveal so much about the book market. This is not to suggest, of course, that in terms of vernacular reading trends, those countries with very low book production levels remained the passive cultural sponges of neighbouring nations. Even if, as is suspected, the largest proportion of vernacular literature consumed in Renaissance Dublin or Edinburgh was published in London in this period and beyond, reading is always a process of negotiation. England may have produced the educational books used in Ireland’s schools, but, as a report from the bishop of Cork and Ross dated 6 July 1596 indicated, Elizabeth’s name and title as Queen of England, France and Ireland and as Defender of the Faith was duly torn from the front covers.51 England may have produced a good many of the books consumed in the vernacular in Scotland, but it was John Barbour’s The Bruce and other such works that Scottish readers cherished and thought worthy of inclusion in their wills. Much work still remains to be done on how these cultures negotiated their situation. The British Isles in particular is an example of a very complex collective environment, in which we need to be aware of both the pluralism and the shared experience of the past – in, and beyond, Renaissance Dublin. 49 Any survey of French vernacular print culture would be foolish, for instance, to ignore the impact of Genevan publishing. 50 On Norwegian print culture, see Gina Dahl, Books in early modern Norway (Leiden, 2011). 51 ‘I found to my great grief Her Majesty’s style and title torn out of all the grammars, to the number of 74 in one school; the leaf in the grammar quite torn out, which containeth in it, Elizabeth by the grace of God, Queen of England, France and Ireland’, Calendar of State Papers, Ireland, July 1596–December 1597, p. 17.

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Index

Antwerp 148 Ariosto, Ludovico 160 Aristotle 195 Armenian language 143 Arnold, Nicholas, lord justice of Ireland 80–1, 94 Arthurian legends 161 Ascham, Roger 146 Astley, Sir John 150 Aubrey, John 212 autobiography 139, 148 Babylon 150 Bandello, Matteo 45 Barbour, John 249 Barry, James 136 Barry, John 185 Bayly, Lewis 43–4 Bedell, William, bishop of Kilmore 141, 151–6 Bellarmine, Robert SJ 195 Bellewe, Nicholas 17 Bellings, Richard 10, 13, 46, 47, 53, 101–7, 109, 117 Bermingham, John 113, 114 Bermingham, William 80 Berthelet, Thomas 247 Best, Charles 159, 172–7 Bialo, Caralyn 31–2 Bible 244, 247 Authorised Version 155 original languages 43, 195 Septuagint 155 translation into Irish 14, 129, 136, 141, 143, 151–6 Vulgate 155 see also Greek; Hebrew; Latin Bingham, Richard 84, 89, 94

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Bladen, William 42, 135 Blount, Charles, eighth baron Mountjoy and earl of Devonshire 185, 188, 191 Boccaccio, Giovanni 146 Boece, Hector 42, 53 Bone, Richard 30 Book of Common Prayer 143 Book of Howth 6, 37, 42, 48, 49 Boran, Elizabethanne 4, 8 Bourke, Hugh OFM 133 Boyle, Richard, first earl of Cork 89 Boyle, Robert 156, 211 Boyle, Roger, first earl of Orrery 206, 211 Bradshaw, Brendan 140 Brady, Ciaran 77 Bramhall, John, archbishop of Armagh 201 Brehon law 59–60 see also legal writing Brigid 24 Bristol 42, 62, 160, 183, 247 Bryskett, Lodowick 11, 14, 32, 45, 50, 58, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 71, 99, 141, 144–6 Bulkeley, Lancelot, archbishop of Dublin 122, 123 Burkhead, Henry 109 Burnell, Eleanor 113 Burnell, Henry 45, 101, 112–15, 117 Burner, Saudia 109 Butler, James, fourth earl of Ormond 18, 36, 39 Butler, James, first duke of Ormond 38, 206, 220, 225 Butler, Peter 202, 203 Butler, Richard, first earl of Arran 225 Butler, Thomas, fourth earl of Ormond 23 Butler, Thomas, tenth earl of Ormond 105, 106

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Butler, Thomas, sixth earl of Ossory 222 Butler, Walter, eleventh earl of Ormond 101 Byfield, Nicholas 43–4 Caball, Marc 151, 153 Caen 128 Cambridge 39, 50, 63, 152, 169, 194, 245 Camden, William 136 Campion, Edmund SJ 42, 49, 129 Carew, Sir George 36, 37, 45 Carey, Vincent 102 Carleill, Christopher 67, 99 Carpenter, Andrew 4, 11, 142 Carrickfergus 40, 99, 216 Carroll, Clare 140, 158, 162 cartography 2, 19 see also Speed, John Cary, Elizabeth, viscountess Falkland 101, 103 Cary, Henry, first viscount Falkland, lord deputy 101 Cashel 247 Cashel Psalter 131 Castiglione, Baldassare 146 Castleknock 46 Catholicism 62, 65, 101, 102, 124, 131, 150, 154, 187, 191, 220, 247 Cavanagh, Daniel, bishop of Leighlin 95 Cavendish, Lady Mary 220 Cecil, Robert, first earl of Salisbury 149 Cecil, William, baron Burghley and first earl of Exeter 65, 73, 74, 81, 82, 87, 90, 97 Challoner, John 66 Challoner, Luke 43 Charles I 101, 109, 112, 115, 154, 226 Charles II 186, 194, 200, 206, 211, 212, 215, 224 Chaucer, Geoffrey 17, 103 Chester 42, 135, 160, 183, 247 Chile 45 Cicero 47, 189, 190, 191, 197 Cinzio, Giambattista Battita Giraldi 32, 45, 66, 69, 99, 141, 144, 145, 146, 147, 149 Clark, William Smith 216 Clarke, Howard B. 2 Clonmel 183 Coleraine 99 Collinson, Patrick 248 Columba 24 Comerford, Patrick 133 Compostela 16, 21, 22

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Constance, Council of 21 Cooke, Anne 146 Coolahan, Marie-Louise 11, 13 Cooper, Andrew 109, 110 Cork 91, 183 Cotton, Sir Robert 43, 125 Cowyk, Roland 58 Craig, Maurice 38 Crawford, Jon 77 Cromwell, Henry, lord lieutenant of Ireland 193, 194, 200, 201 Cromwell, Oliver, lord protector 133, 193, 197, 198, 199 Cromwell, Richard, lord protector 193 Cronin, John 213, 214 Crooke, John 135 Cunningham, Bernadette 133 Dancer, John 220–4, 226 Daniel, William see Ó Domhnuill, Uilliam Dante 23 Darcy, William 79 Dartas, James 42 Dartas, John 247 Davenant, William 111, 207 Davies, Sir John 45–6, 51, 130 Davison, Francis 177 Dawtrey, Nicholas 100 de Beleforest, Francois 45 de Ercilla y Zuniga, Alonso 45 de Littleton, Thomas 247 de Perellós, Ramón 27 Delehaye, Hippolyte 32 Dempster, Thomas 137 Denmark 8, 122, 229, 231, 249 Derricke, John 62 Devereux, Robert, second earl of Essex 83, 94, 160, 161 Dillon, Charlie 141 Dillon, Lady Frances 113 Dillon, Sir Robert 50, 67, 83, 84, 85, 88, 99 Diodati, Giovanni 153, 155 do Búrc, Riocard 12, 160–72, 183 Doan, James 183 Dobbs, Francis 227 Dobor, Bosnia 21 Doddenale, Simon 30, 33 Donne, John 164 Dormer, George 67, 100 Dormer, Sir William 67 Dovedall, Luke 30

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252 Dowdall, George, archbishop of Armagh 80, 142 Dowling, Thady 126 Downes, Bartholomew 135 Downham, George 130, 137 Downpatrick 24 Drake, John 30 drama 11, 14, 206–27 see also Dublin, theatre Dromiskin 29 Dronke, Peter 182 Dublin aldermen 63 archaeology 6 archbishops 122 architecture 2, 6, 38, 140, 158 bailiffs 22, 30 book trade 42 Bridge Street 31 Castle 56, 57, 62, 63, 75, 82, 86, 90, 93 Castle Street 217 Chancery 59, 60, 63, 65 Christ Church Cathedral 43, 49, 52, 63, 122, 125, 201 Church of the Holy Trinity 22 city chronicle 53 corporation 39, 40, 50, 63 Court of Exchequer 59 Cow Lane 31 culture 63 Fishamble Street 63, 217 Gardener’s Inn 31 health 10, 62, 63 High Street 63 history of 138 mayor 22, 30, 41, 44, 63 merchants 62 Merchants Quay 17 monuments 39 printing 7, 41, 47, 104, 132, 141, 245–7 Provostship 23 St Catherine’s Priory 82 St Mary’s Abbey 124 St Patrick’s Cathedral 30, 49, 63, 122, 123, 125 St Werburgh’s Church 119, 129 Ship Street 63 Smock Alley theatre 109, 206, 207, 217, 220, 222, 224, 225 Star Chamber 61 Steine 22 theatre 10, 63 Vere Street theatre 224

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Index Werburgh Street theatre 5, 63, 108, 111, 112 Winetavern Street 31, 63 Dudley, Robert, earl of Leicester 80, 81 Dunbar, William 243 Dungarvan 183 Eck, Johann 195 Edderman, Francis 143 Edgecomb, Sir Richard 126–7 Edinburgh 47, 71, 249 education 49, 50, 51 Elizabeth I 4, 46, 75, 82, 87, 93, 95, 121, 136, 151, 161, 199, 249 Empey, Mark 9, 13 English language 36, 49, 119, 140, 219, 240, 245 Erasmus 50 Eusebius 142 Eustace, James, viscount Baltinglass 56, 71, 76 Exeter 62 Fabian, Robert 42 Featley, Daniel 44 Fenton, Sir Geoffrey 45, 65, 142, 145, 146 Ferrara 146 Finglas, Patrick 79 FitzGerald, George, sixteenth earl of Kildare 108 see also Kildare, library of the earls of FitzGerald, Gerald, fourteenth earl of Desmond 55, 76, 79, 82, 87, 88, 99 FitzRalph, Richard 17 FitzWilliam, William 17 Fitzwilliam, Sir William, lord deputy 73, 74, 84, 90, 97 Flaccus, Valerius 143 Fleetwood, Charles 193 Fleming, Nicholas, archbishop of Armagh 21, 23, 29, 35 Fletcher, Alan 108, 111, 115 Florence 23 Flower, Robin 161 Fogarty, Ann 46, 100 Ford, Alan 3, 124 Ford, Margaret Lane 244 France 229, 230, 248 Franckton, John 245 Frankfurt book fair 53, 135 French language 42, 43, 45, 141, 142, 143, 206, 221, 223, 226 friendship networks 9, 11

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Index

Gaelic, Scots 240, 243 see also Irish language Galway 133, 160, 183, 247 Gardener, Robert 82, 85, 92, 93 Genoa 146, 147 Germany 229, 230, 248 Gerrard, William 81 Gilbert, J. T. 138 Gillespie, Raymond 4, 6, 7, 8, 13, 133, 135, 184 Giraldus Cambrensis 18, 24–5, 37, 122, 130 Glenmalure 56, 97 Golden Fleece 142 Goldsmith, Oliver 207 Gray, Catharine 210 Greek 31, 39, 43, 68, 142, 149, 188, 195 Green, Peter 166 Gretser, Jacob 195 Grey, Arthur, baron Grey of Wilton 13, 55–6, 58, 59, 66, 67, 90, 94, 96, 106, 144, 149 Griffith, Eva 5 Grissaphan, George 21, 27–8 Guazzo, Stefano 149 Guicciardini, Lodovico 45, 142, 145, 146, 149 H. of Saltrey 20, 28 Hadfield, Andrew 4, 10, 13, 106 Hadsor, Richard 51 Haicéad, Pádraigín 172–7 Hall, Edward 42 Hamilton, Lady Anne 43, 52 Hanmer, Meredith 142 Harington, John 159, 160–72, 183 Harpsfield, Nicholas 136 Harris, Jason 12, 14, 140 Harris, Walter 120 Harvey, Gabriel 57 Head, Richard 216–20, 226, 227 Heaney, Seamus 228–9 Hebrew 31, 154, 155, 188, 237 Heffernan, David 13 Heilbrunner, Jakob 195 Helen of Troy 167 Henry IV 21, 24, 35 Henry V 35 Henry VII 121, 126 Henry VIII 78, 85, 94 Henryson, Robert 243 Herbert, George 180 Herron, Thomas 4–5, 69, 74, 106, 137, 140, 158

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Hibernicus, Thomas 135 Higden, Randulf 42 historical writing 42, 52, 120 Hoby, Sir Thomas 146 Holinshed, Raphael 129 Homer 110 Horace 189 Hovenden, Roger 42 Hutchinson, Mark 4 Ingoll, John 30 Inns of Court, London 46 Irish language 5, 11, 12, 14, 46, 47, 48, 49, 53, 70, 103, 104–5, 110, 119, 129, 133, 134, 136, 140, 141, 143, 154, 158–84, 218, 246 see also Gaelic, Scots Irish Post-Medieval Archaeology Group 3 Italian language 42, 45, 46, 144–6 Italy 229, 230, 248 James VI/I 199 Jerome, Stephen 7, 135 Jones, John 201–2 Jonson, Ben 108, 110, 113, 114 Jordan, Thomas 109 Juvenal 47 Kane, Brendan 5, 102, 159 Kearney, John 151 Kelly, Stephen Austin 14 Kennedy, Walter 243 Kerrigan, John 115, 213, 214, 215 Kilcolman 55, 57 Kildare, library of the earls of 47, 54, 140 Kildare rebellion 79 Kilkenny 40, 50, 140, 183, 247 Kilkenny Confederation 210, 215 Kilkenny, Statutes of 18 King, John 136 King, Murtagh 136 Kinsale 185 Knockdoe, battle of 48 La Coruña 22 Lantos, Sebestyén Tinódi 32 Latin 10, 11, 12, 31, 36, 47, 53, 113, 119, 143, 144, 166, 185–205, 230, 231, 240, 248 Lee, Thomas 56, 83, 84, 90 legal writing 42, 57, 61, 70, 79 see also Brehon law Legge, Robert 73, 74, 78, 83, 85, 89, 90, 95

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Index

Leiden 142 Lennon, Colm 2, 140 Lewis, C. S. 55, 182 Lewkenor, Lewis 150 libraries 9, 52, 140, 200, 247 see also Kildare, library of the earls of Limerick 247 Lincoln’s Inn, London 101 Livy 191, 221 Loeber, Rolf 159, 160, 183 Loftus, Adam, archbishop of Dublin 39, 58, 73, 83, 89, 94, 95, 96 Loftus, Dudley 143, 194, 200, 201 Loftus, Nicholas 136 London 10, 19, 30, 42, 43, 44–5, 47, 56, 70, 71, 93, 103, 104, 108, 109, 128, 133, 135, 141, 142, 143, 157, 211, 226, 227, 228, 249 Londonderry 224, 225 Long, John, archbishop of Armagh 67, 99 Louvain 141, 158 Lovell, Thomas 90 Luck, Georg 165 Luther, Martin 146 Luttrell, Thomas 79 Lydgate, John 6 Lyttleton, James 158 Lytyll, John 30 McCabe, Richard 106, 159 McCaughey, Terence 154 Mac Craith, Mícheál 12, 14, 140 MacCulloch, Diarmaid 119 Mac Fhirbhisigh, Dubhaltach 121, 133, 134 McGowan-Doyle, Valerie 6 Machiavelli 142 Mc Murrgh Roe, Brien 131 MacWilliam Burkes 94 Mageoghegan, Conall 131 Maguire, Nancy Kline 213 Mainz 231 Malby, Nicholas 94, 95 Maley, Willy 5 Major, John 42, 53 Mann, Alastair 243–4 Mannini, Antonio 23, 24, 29–30 Marlowe, Christopher 169 Marseille 146 Marsh, Narcissus 156 Maynooth 42 see also Kildare, library of the earls of medical writing 143 Messingham, Thomas 135, 136

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Mexico 245 Micanzio, Fulgenzio 154 Monck, George 214 Morash, Christopher 146 More, Thomas 47, 247 Mornay, Du Plessis 153 Moryson, Fynes 136 music 158 Mynsinger, Joachim 195 Newcastle 62 New English community 49, 51, 53, 84, 94, 100, 103, 131, 219 Newhaven 247 Ní Chuilleanáin, Eiléan 11–12, 14 Nine Years’ War 70, 77, 92, 192 Norris, Sir John 67, 148 Norris, Sir Thomas 67, 99 Norway 8, 122, 229, 231, 248 Norwich 62 Nugent, Christopher, baron of Delvin 83, 87–8 Nugent, Richard 10 Nugent, Richard 46, 115 Nugent rebellion 99–100 O’Birne, Brien 131 O’Brien, Donough, fourth earl of Thomond 5, 159 O’Byrne, Emmet 158 O’Byrne, Theresa 10, 13 Ochino, Bernardo 146 Ó Cléirigh, Lughaidh 137, 159 Ó Cruitin, Edmund 131 Ó Dálaigh, Cearbhall 178–82, 183 Ó Domhnuill, Uilliam 152, 153 O’Donnellan, Nehemiah, archbishop of Tuam 151, 152 Ó Donnghaile, Eoghan 161 Ogilby, John 109 Ó hEodhasa, Bonaventure 46 Old English communities 51, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 112, 113, 116, 144, 178, 210 Ó Loinsigh, Uilliam 162 O’Neill, Hugh 160 O’Neill, Shane 96 Opmersensis, Petri 135 O’Sullivan Beare, Philip 136 O’Toole, Laurence, archbishop of Dublin 122 Ó Tuama, Seán 164 Ovid 14, 47, 159, 162, 164, 165, 166 Owen, John 136

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Index

Owens, Judith 106 Oxford 10, 51, 142 Padua 149, 150 Pale 14, 40, 49, 63, 80, 87, 88, 89 Papal Schism (of 1378–1417) 35 Paris 128 Parker, John 80 Parker, Matthew, archbishop of Canterbury 136 Parry, Edward, bishop of Killaloe 130, 136, 137 Passavaunt, Richard 30 Pászthó, Hungary 16 Patrick 22, 24, 36, 111 Paul V, Pope 153 Pelham, Sir William 67 Percy, William 159, 178–82, 183 Perers, Ismaia 17 Perrot, Sir James 52 Perrot, John 94, 96, 97 Petty, Sir William 193–4 Philips, Katherine 115, 225, 226 philosophy 68 Piccolomini, Alessandro 149 Pighius, Albert 195 Piers Plowman 17 Pipho, Robert 95 Plato 216 Pliny 198 Plunkett, Patrick, lord Dunsany 142 Poland 137 Portugal 8, 229, 231, 236–40, 249 Potterton, Michael 4–5, 140, 158 Powell, Humphrey 8, 41, 245 Powerscourt 128 Prague 141 Prick of conscience 17 Protestantism 62, 123, 131, 145, 149, 150, 152, 187, 219, 224, 245 Purgatory of St Patrick, Donegal 10, 16–37 Quarles, Frances 116, 117 Radclyffe, Thomas, third earl of Sussex 80, 83, 94 Raleigh, Sir Walter 56, 69 Rankin, Deana 101, 108, 113, 115, 210–11 Rathold, Laurence 16, 19 Reading 1 Rich, Barnaby 42, 74, 83, 89, 95, 96, 116 Richard II 23 Rocque, John 2–3

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Rolle, Richard 17 Rome 140, 146, 150, 158, 169 Ross 183 Rosyer, Robert 88 Rothe, David, bishop of Ossory 131, 133, 137 Rothe, Robert 131 Royal Hospital, Kilmainham 38, 206 Rustichi, Corso di Giovanni 24, 30 Ryan, Salvador 158 St Leger, Warham 67, 99 St Loe, William 80 Sandys, Sir Edwin 154 Sarpi, Paolo 153, 154 Scattergood, John 142 Scotland 8, 137, 143, 224, 231, 240–5, 248 Scots language 240, 243 Selden, John 136 Serjeant, John 30 sermons 7 Shakespeare, William 146, 207 Sheridan, William 201 Sherlock, James 80 Shirley, James 5, 10, 101, 108–12, 117 Sidney, Sir Henry 5–6, 45, 58, 61, 62, 65, 94, 96, 143, 144 Sidney, Philip 46, 65, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 107, 108, 117, 147, 150 Sidwell, Keith 140 Sigismund I 19, 21, 22, 35 Simms, J. G. 213 Smerwick 56, 144 Smith, Christopher 158 Smith, John 130, 136 Smith, Thomas 67, 100 Smith, Sir Thomas 149 Smith, William 109 Society of Friendship 216 Spain 56, 191, 229, 230, 231–6, 246, 249 Spark, Thomas 30 Speed, John 2, 57, 62 see also cartography Spelman, Henry 130 Spenser, Edmund 4, 10, 13, 18, 55–72, 74, 99, 104, 105, 107, 110, 113, 117, 144, 147, 149, 213 Amoretti 66 Colin Clouts come home again 65, 66 Faerie Queene, The 55, 56, 61, 64, 68, 69, 99, 103, 144 Mother Hubberd’s tale 75 View of the present state of Ireland, A 18, 54, 55, 57, 60, 61, 69, 70

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Index

Stafford, John 30 Stanford, W. B. 143 Stanihurst, James 50 Stanihurst, Richard 5, 10, 13, 42, 44, 48, 49, 70, 71, 74, 102, 103, 104, 129, 141, 144 Stouthamer-Loeber, Magda 159, 160, 183 Strange, Thomas OFM 131, 132, 133, 136 Sutton, David 79 Sweden 137 Swift, Jonathan 207 Syrus, Publilius 198 Tar, Hungary 16, 28 Tate, Nahum 207 Taylor, Jeremy 201 Terence 47 theology 51, 149 Thomas of Lancaster 23 translation 11, 12, 14, 139–57, 158–84 Trinity College Dublin 12, 13, 14, 39, 43, 51, 53, 58, 122, 142, 151, 154, 156, 185–205 Trollope, Andrew 84, 88 Twysden, Sir Roger 125 Tyrrye, Edmund 85, 90 Ussher, James 3, 8, 9, 43, 47, 117, 124, 129, 130, 131, 137, 140, 185, 189, 190, 193, 200 Vendler, Helen 180, 181 Venice 147, 149–51, 152–4, 157 Ventry, battle of 48 Virgil 5, 43, 47, 142, 144 Vives, Ludovico 195 Wadding, Luke OFM 131, 132, 137 Wales 41

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Walleys, Thomas 30 Wallop, Sir Henry 56, 58, 61, 93 Walsh, Nicholas, bishop of Ossory 87, 151 Walsingham, Francis 56, 97, 149 Walton, Brian, bishop of Chester 156 Ware, Sir James 9, 13, 37, 43, 53, 54, 119–28, 137 Ware, John 136, 137 Ware, Joseph 136 Ware, Robert 120 Warren, Sir William 160 Waterford 26, 183 Watson, Thomas 175, 176, 177 Wentworth, Thomas, first earl of Strafford 38, 109, 113, 115, 130 Wexford 80, 183, 247 White, Nicolas 82, 84, 85, 87 White, Peter 50, 140 Whyte, Sir Nicholas 143 Wilbraham, Roger 83, 84, 91 Wilkinson, Alexander S. 7, 8, 14–15 Williamson, Caesar 193–201 Willot, Henricus 135 Wilson, John 224–6 Wilson, Philip 121 Winter, Samuel 193 Wither, George 136 Woolf, D. R. 53 Wotton, Sir Henry 151, 152, 153 Wrothe, Thomas 80 Yonge, Edmund 17 Yonge, James 10, 13, 16–37 Yonge, John 30 York 62 Youghal 140

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