My heart is high above, my body is full of bliss, For I am set in luve as well as I would wiss; I luve my lady pure and she luves me again, I am her serviture, she is my soverane; She is my very heart, I am her hope and heill, 5 She is my joy inwárd, I am her luvar leal; I am her bond and thrall; she is at my command; I am perpetual her man, both foot and hand; The thing that may her please my body shall fulfil; Whatever her disease, it does my body ill. 10 My bird, my bonny ane, my tender babe venust,1 My luve, my life alane, my liking and my lust! Luvers in pain, I pray God send you sic remeid As I have nicht and day, you to defend from deid. Therefore be ever true unto your ladies free, 15 And they will on you rue as mine has done on Cornish or Cornysshe, was a Court musician in the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII. He was connected with the court as early as 1493, and in 1509 he was made Master of the children of the Chapel Royal. 3 Then. 2 Certainly, truly. 1 This is an Elegy addressed to Jane Scroupe, a pupil of the Black nuns at Carrow near Norwich, on the death of her pet sparrow. Dirge is a name given to the church service for the repose of the dead, and the poem is not merely an elegy but a lament in which the solemn words of the Church's requiem for the departed are heard at intervals, and the echoes of distant chants mingle with little Jane Scroupe's childish distress. Thus Placebo, 1. 1, is the initial word of the opening Antiphon (Placebo Domino in regione rirorum). Dileri, 1. 3, is the first word of the Psalm which follows the placebo (Dileri_quoniam exaudit Dominus vocem orationis meam) and Ad Dominum, (1.66) is the opening of the second antiphon Ad Dominum, cum tribularer clamavi. 20 20 25 25 30 30 And if ye stand in doubt Who brought this rime about I purpose to shake out For though my rime be ragged, Rudely rain beaten, If ye talk well therewith For as far as I can see, It is wrong with each degree; Accuseth the spiritualty; The spiritual again Doth grudge and complain Thus each of other blother,2 Laymen say indeed A glumming and a mumming, Scarcely I cast mine eyes Toward the cloudy skies, But when I did behold My Sparrow dead and cold, No creature but that wold Have pitied upon me To behold and see What heaviness did me pange7 As though I had been racked, I sighed, and I sobbed, For that I was robbed 45 They gaspé and they gape 50 All to have promotion; There is their whole devotion, To catch the forked cap, 45 1 In this poem Skelton voices the popular discontent, blames the clergy for the wrongs which the people suffer, and attacks Cardinal Wolsey. The arraignment is put into the mouth of one Colin Clout. Colin euggests a shepherd, or countryman: Clout may mean ragged or patched, hence we may assume that Colin Clout (the patched rustic cr shepherd) was intended to stand for th humbler, or lower classes. 2 Chatter. * Proud. 4 Scarcely. *hoked. 4 Moment. 5 Jest. • Would. 8 Damage. • Chance. 7 Ignorant. Sir John Fortescue d. c. 1476 THE ROYAL POWER IN FRANCE AND (From The Difference Between an Absolute and a if it be a poor coat under their outermost garment, made of great1 canvas, and call it a frock. Their hose be of like canvas, and pass not their knee; wherefore they be gartered and 5 their thighs bare. Their wives and children go barefoot; they may in no otherwise live. For some of them, that was wont to pay to his lord for his tenement, which he hireth by the year, a scute, payeth now to the King, over that There be two kinds of Kingdoms, of the 10 scute, five scutes. Through which they be which that one is a Lordship, called in Latin, Dominium Regale, and that other is called, Dominium Politicum et Regale. And they differ, in that the first may rule his people by forced by necessity, so to watch, labor, and grub in the ground, for their sustenance, that their nature is much wasted, and the kind of them brought to naught. They are gone such laws as he maketh himself; and therefore 15 crooked, and are feeble, not able to fight, nor to defend the realm; nor have they weapons, nor money to buy them weapons withal; but verily they live in the most extreme poverty and misery, and yet they dwell in one of the he may set upon them Talys,' and other impositions, such as he will himself, without their assent. The second may not rule his people, by other laws than such as they assent unto; and therefore he may set upon them no 20 most fertile realms of the world; wherefore the Impositions without their own assent. [After treating of the origin and nature of royal power, and considering why one King rules as an absolute and another as a limited monarch, 25 the author passes on to consider the effects of absolute monarchy ("The fruits of Jus Regale") in France.] French King hath not men of his own realm to defend it, except his nobles, which bear no such Impositions; and therefore they are right likely of their bodies, by which cause the said King is compelled to make his armies, and retenue for the defence of the land, of strangers, as Scots, Spaniards, Arragonars, men of Almaigne, and of other nations, or else his enemies might over-run him. For he hath no defense of his own, except his castles and fortresses. Lo, this is the fruit of his Jus Regale. If the realm of England, which is an isle, and therefore may not lightly get succours from other lands, were ruled under such a law, and under such a Prince, it would be then a prey to all other nations that would conquer, rob, and devour it; which was well proved in the time of the Britons, when the Scots and the Picts so beat and oppressed this land, that the And howso be it, that the French King reigneth goods, for the defence of that land, he took whom they had been tributary. But blessed be God, this land is ruled under a better law, and therefore the people thereof be not in such penury, nor thereby hurt in their persons, but they be wealthy and have all things necessary to the sustenance of nature. Wherefore they be mighty, and able to resist the adversaries of the realm, and to beat other realms, that do or will do them wrong. Lo, this is the fruit of the Jus Politicum et Regale under which we live. Somewhat now I have showed you of the fruits of both laws, Ut ex fructibus eorum cognoscatis eos. 4 Coarse, thick. An old French coin said to have been worth three shillings and sixpence or about eighty cents. See scute, and scudi in Cent. Dict. i. e. The class or order of the common people. |