‘And Cheefely Now for My Pencyon’: Thomas Churchyard at the Court of Queen Elizabeth I

Abstract

It was Frances Berkeley Young over a century ago who first remarked that Thomas Churchyard’s A Pleasant Conceite ‘celebrates the charms of twelve ladies of Elizabeth’s Court’, and although she goes on to list their titular names, no one seems to have further explored their identities and significance. That is the intention of the present work. Repeatedly during his long career Churchyard had quit the court, bitterly lamenting that his labours had failed to be rewarded with the patronage they warranted. However, with the award of a rare royal pension in 1593, the exhilarated author is frank in owning that he is moved to compose this New Year’s Gift to Queen Elizabeth ‘ … cheefely now for my pencyon’. Having repeatedly despaired of his own lack of originality he delights now in having devised a mode whose ingenuity will do justice to this celebration of royal favour. Glancing at the fabled Zeuxis of classical Greece he imagines himself a painter of these titled ladies with privileged access to the inner recesses of the court. He places each within a townscape that bestows a topographical identity that matches the geography of her titular seat and has pretentions to be a kind of national gazetteer. In truth, the topographies often lack particularity, but all seek to celebrate their essential ‘Englishness’ and so further compliment England’s embodiment, the Queen herself. Emboldened by his newly acquired status, the aged poet adds a flirtatious touch in the persona of the ageless courtly lover, coyly wooing not only these courtly ladies but also the Queen herself.

Notes

1 John Nichols’s The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth I: A New Edition of the Early Modern Sources, eds Elizabeth Goldring, Faith Eales, Elizabeth Clarke and Jayne Elisabeth Archer, 5 vols (Oxford, 2014), vol. III (1579–1595), p. 720. The MS original is lost but its text — with the addition of a concluding section ‘To the Generall Readers’ — was published as A Pleasant conceite penned in verse. Collourably sette out, and humblie presented on New-yeeres day last, to the Queenes Maiestie at Hampton Courte (London, 1593). See also my edition of this poem in, Nichols, New Edition, vol. III, pp. 720-29.

2 John Nichols, The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth, 3 vols (London,1823), vol. I, Preface, p. xlii.

3 Thomas Churchyard, A Pleasant conceite penned in verse Collourably sette out, and humblie presented on New-yeeres day last, to the Queenes Maiestie at Hampton Court (London, 1593), sig. A3r.

4 Churchyard’s writings on royal progresses comprised: Bristol, in The firste parte of Churchyardes chippes contayning twelue seuerall labours (London, 1575), fols 100^r-110^v; Norwich, as A discourse of the Queenes Maiesties entertainement in Suffolk and Norffolk (London, [1578]); and Woodstock, A handeful of gladsome verses, giuen to the Queenes Maiesty at Woodstocke this prograce. 1592 (Oxford, 1592).

5 Churchyard was awarded a royal pension of eighteen pence daily in January 1593. By 1595, it may have been revoked and then renewed at twenty pence daily in 1597 when it was recorded in the State Papers: see Steven W. May, The Elizabethan Courtier Poets: The Poems and Their Contexts (Columbia, MO, 1991), p. 36. However, B.B. Gamzue has produced evidence to suggest that Burghley simply failed to pay what the Queen had initially granted him: B.B. Gamzue, ‘Elizabeth and Literary Patronage’, PMLA: Proceedings of the Modern Language Association 49-4 (1934), pp. 1041-49, p. 1045. For further evidence of Churchyard’s pension in 1593, see also Merrill Harvey Goldwyn, ‘Notes on the Biography of Thomas Churchyard’, Review of English Studies 17 (1966), pp. 1-15, pp. 3-4, and Roger A. Geimer, ‘Spenser’s Rhyme or Churchyard’s Reason: Evidence of Churchyard’s First Pension’, Review of English Studies, 20 (1969), pp. 308-9.

6 The recently published Thomas Churchyard: Pen, Sword, and Ego by Matthew Woodcock (Oxford, 2016) is the first comprehensive literary biography of Churchyard. See also Raphael Lyne, ‘Churchyard, Thomas (1523?–1604)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004); online edn, May 2006 <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/5407, accessed 10 April, 2020>.

7 A feast full of sad cheere where griefes are all on heape: where sollace is full deere, and sorrowes are good cheape (London,, 1592), sigs. Cv-C4r [pp. 10-15].

8 A light bondell of liuly discourses called Churchyardes charge presented as a Newe yeres gifte to the right honourable, the Earle of Surrie … (London,1580), sig. Ciiiv [fol. 11v].

9 A Pleasant conceite, sig. B2v.

10 Churchyardes farewell [1 sheet], ([London], [1566]).

11 Ra.[lph] Sm.[arte] Great thankes to the welcome, in Churchyard’s behalf (London, 1566).

12 A greatter thanks, for Churchyardes welcome home (London, [1566].

13 A handeful of gladsome verses, giuen to the Queenes Maiesty at Woodstocke this prograce. 1592 (Oxford, 1592), sig. A2.

14 A Pleasant conceite, sig. A3r.

15 Idem.

16 See Pliny the Elder, Historia Naturalis, XXXV, xxxvi, 63-66, Loeb Classical Library, trans. by H. Rackham, 10 vols (London and Cambridge, MA, 1961), vol. IX, pp. 309-11. It was a trope that Churchyard was to use again in 1593 in ‘A Commendation to them that can make gold’ from Churchyards challenge (London, 1593), p. 134.

17 A Pleasant conceite, sig. A4r. His smile might have been broader had he been aware that — with the single exception of Spenser — he would be the only poet during Elizabeth’s reign to have his pension officially recorded in State Papers: Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1595–97 (London, 1869), vol. IV, p. 466. Indeed, Alistair Fox has written of a general ‘decline in the munificence of patrons towards authors’ during the 1590s: John Guy (ed.), The Reign of Elizabeth I: Court and Culture in the Last Decade (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 229-57, p. 238. No evidence has emerged of the process by which Churchyard’s pension was awarded.

18 A musicall consort of heauenly harmonie (compounded out of manie parts of musicke) called Churchyards charitie (London, 1595), sig. A3.

19 A light bondell, sig. Cii [fol. 10r].

20 Idem.

21 Idem.

22 Ibid., sig. 10v.

23 Louis Adrian Montrose, ‘Gifts and Reasons: The Contexts of Peele’s Araygnement of Paris’, English Literary History 47 (1980), pp. 433-61, p. 451.

24 See David Bergeron, ‘The “I” of the Beholder: Thomas Churchyard and the 1578 Norwich Pageant’, in Jayne Elisabeth Archer, Elizabeth Goldring, and Sarah Knight (eds), The Progresses, Pageants & Entertainments of Queen Elizabeth I (Oxford, 2007), pp. 142-59; Ronald Scott Renchler, ‘“Goe thou forth my booke”: Authorial Self-Assertion and Self-Representation in Printings of Renaissance Poetry’, PhD diss. (University of Oregon, 1987), Chapter V <http://www.uoregon.edu/~rbear/renchler/>.

25 Susan Frye, Elizabeth I: The Competition for Representation (New York, NY and Oxford, 1993), p. 106.

26 A Pleasan conceite, sig. A4r.

27 Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Bodley 13a. See Queen Elizabeth’s Book of Oxford, ed. by Louise Durning (Oxford, 2006).

28 A Pleasant conceite, sig. A4r.

29 The worthines of Wales (London, 1587), sigs. K2-K2. Raphael Lyne concludes that ‘ … he must have toured the area in 1586’, Lyne, ‘Churchyard, Thomas (1523?–1604)’.

30 The worthines of Wales, sig. *2v.

31 David Evett, Literature and the Visual Arts in Tudor England (Athens, GA and London, 1990), p. 168.

32 A Pleasant conceite, sig. A4v.

33 Idem.

34 Idem.

35 Ibid., sig. A4v.

36 Quotes taken from Ibid., sig. Br.

37 Ibid., A4v.

38 Quotes taken from Ibid., sig., Br.

39 Ibid., sig. Bv.

40 Ibid., sig. B2r.

41 Ibid., sig. Av.

42 Idem.

43 Ibid., sig. Br.

44 Idem.

45 Ibid., sig. Bv.

46 Ibid., sig. A4v.

47 Ibid., sig. Br.

48 Ibid., sig. A4v.

49 Ibid., sig. B2r.

50 Quotes taken from Ibid., sig. A4v.

51 Ibid., sig. Br.

52 Idem.

53 Ibid., sig. Bv.

54 Quotes taken from Ibid., sig. A4v.

55 Quotes taken from Ibid. sig. Br.

56 Quotes taken from Ibid., sig. A4v.

57 Ibid., sig. Bv.

58 At the time of A Pleasant Conceite she was married to Sir Thomas Gorges (1536–1610) but she retained the title marchioness of Northampton from her first husband, William Parr, marquess of Northampton (1513–1571) and was known as such as chief mourner at Queen Elizabeth’s funeral in 1603: Titled Elizabethans, A Directory of Elizabethan Court, State, and Church Officers, 1558–1603, expanded edition: eds Arthur F. Kinney and Jane A. Lawson (London, 2014), p. 252.

59 The hawthorn is a native Irish tree; in ancient times it was the symbol of fertility and marriage; supposedly loved by the fairies, it figures in much Irish folk lore. It was also regarded as sacred since it was believed to have been the tree from which Christ’s cross and the crown of thorns were made.

60 Idem. Quotes taken from A Pleasant conceite, sig. Bv.

61 Nichols, New Edition, III, p. 721. It should be remembered that although the titles of the British nobility in Tudor England bear geographical identities these carry no corresponding territorial designation.

62 A Pleasant conceite, sig. B2v.

63 A Pleasant conceite, sig. A3r.

64 Ibid., sigs. A3r-A3v.

65 Edwin Haviland Miller, The Professional Writer in Elizabethan England: A Study of Nondramatic Literature (Cambridge, MA, 1959), p. 222.

66 A Pleasant conceite, sig. B2v.

67 Roger Geimer notes that ‘Following the official recording of the pension in 1597, a change in the poet’s attitude is again evident. A Wished Reformation of Wicked Rebellion, his next work to appear, is dedicated to “all the right noble of birth or mind, with the true hartted Gentlemen and loyall subiects of England”, instead of to any individual, indicating that the poet no longer felt a need to flatter prospective patrons’, Geimer, ‘Spenser’s Rhyme or Churchyard’s Reason’, p. 309.

68 The honor of the lawe. Written by Thomas Churchyard Gent (London, 1596), sig. A1.

69 See n. 5 above.

70 A feast full of sad cheere (London, 1592), sigs B1-B1.

71 A Rebuke to Rebellion is listed among Churchyard’s works in Churchyards Challenge, sig. 1*, where the dedication is referred to.

72 From Churchyard’s dedication to ‘the right Honorable the Lord HARRY SEAMER, second sonne to the last Duke of Sommerset’ in The Fortunate Farewel to the Most Forward and Noble Earle of Essex (London, 1599), sig. Alv. When addressing Henry’s elder brother Edward, earl of Hertford in 1602, Churchyard similarly mentions ‘manifold favours’ made by Somerset during Edward VI’s reign, and a consequent inclination to feel ‘much bound to all his most noble house and familie’, A true discourse historicall, of the succeeding gouernours in the Netherlands … (London, 1602), sig. A2r.

73 The firste parte of Churchyardes chippes contayning twelue seuerall labours (London, 1575), fol. 27-38. See W. M. Schutte, ‘Thomas Churchyard's “Doleful discourse” and the death of Lady Katherine Grey’, Sixteenth Century Journal 15 (1984), pp. 471–87.

74 See Lyne, ‘Churchyard, Thomas (1523?–1604)’.

75 Dedication to A True Discourse Historical of the Succeeding Governours in the Netherlands (London, 1602), sig. A2r.

76 Frye, Elizabeth I: The Competition for Representation, p. 104.

77 See Elizabeth Brown, ‘“Companion Me with My Mistress”: Cleopatra, Elizabeth I, and Their Waiting Women’, in Susan Frye and Karen Robertson (eds), Maids and Mistresses, Cousins and Queens: Women’s Alliances in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1999), pp. 131-46, p. 132.

78 Idem.

79 Ibid., p. 134.

80 Ibid., p. 133.

81 The New Year’s gift roll for 1588–9 records that all of the countesses alluded to by Churchyard offered gifts to the Queen with the exception of those of Kildare, Worcester and Oxford. In the case of the countess of Lincoln, however, the giver is designated ‘widdowe’ and refers to Elizabeth Fiennes de Clinton (née Lady Elizabeth Fitzgerald), whose husband had died in 1585 and was herself to die the following year.

82 Her second marriage had taken place about 1576 to Sir Thomas Gorges (1536–1610).

83 Charles Angell Bradford, Helena, Marchioness of Northampton (London, 1936), p. 14.

84 Quoted in Bradford, Helena, Marchioness of Northampton, p. 59. Bradford also quotes from the draft of a letter dated 26 September 1596 written in Sir Robert Cecil’s hand on the Queen’s behalf in which the Marchioness is said to be ‘well favoured by us’: Bradford, Helena, Marchioness of Northampton, p. 146; she cites State Papers Domestic, 1596, Cal., p. 282.

85 Nichols, New Edition, vol. IV, p. 525.

86 Bradford, Helena, Marchioness of Northampton, p. 68. See also Lawson, Gift Exchanges, 1578, Ref. 78.226.

87 See Nichols, New Edition, vol. III, p. 485 (1588–1589) and vol. IV, p. 95 (1599–1600).

88 Paul Harrington, ‘Gorges, Helena, Lady Gorges [other married name Helena Parr, marchioness of Northampton] (1548–1635)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/69751, accessed 11 April, 2020>.

89 The National Archives, Kew [hereafter NA], State Papers 12/254/54: quoted in May, The Elizabethan Courtier Poets, p. 21. The letter is also reproduced and transcribed in Helen Ostovich and Elizabeth Sauer (eds). Reading Early Modern Women: An Anthology of Texts in Manuscript and Print, 1550–1700 (New York, NY and London, 2004), pp. 205-7. For the Queen’s favours to Frances Howard, see Violet A. Wilson, Queen Elizabeth’s Maids of Honour and Ladies of the Privy Chamber (London, 1922), pp. 176-86.

90 Frances Howard was the cousin of Elizabeth’s mother, Anne Boleyn, while Frances’s own mother, Margaret, had been appointed a gentlewoman of the Privy Chamber at the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign. Frances herself became a gentlewoman in 1568 when she was only fourteen, receiving wages for the post until her death in 1598.

91 See Nichols, New Edition, vol. III, p 486; for 1594 see Lawson, Gift Exchanges, Ref. 94.208.

92 Churchyard depicts the discomforts and dangers of sea travel that include violent seasickness, meagre diet and physical hazards both natural and those occasioned by ‘brawles and bloudy broyles’ in a passage of unusual vividness in ‘A matter touching the Iourney of Sir Humfrey Gilbarte’ from A discourse of the Queenes Maiesties entertainement in Suffolk and Norffolk … Wherevnto is adioyned a commendation of Sir Humfrey Gilberts ventrous iourney (London, 1578), sigs. H.2r-K.3r (sigs K2r-K2v).

93 John Sandford, Apollinis et Musarum Euktika eidullia, in serenissimæ reginæ Elizabethæ auspicatissimum Oxoniam aduentum, decimo die Calend. Octobris, An: M.D.LXXXXII.Oxford (1592), sig. Cr: ‘Post hunc insequiter clara de stirpe Dynasta luresuo diues quem South-Hamptonia magnum Vendicat heroem … ’ [After him (i.e. Robert Devereux, second earl of Essex [1566–1601]) there follows a hereditary Prince of illustrious heritage, to whom as a great hero the rich House of Southampton lawfully lays claim as one of its own].

94 Edmund Spenser was to try to gain preferment at court in the winter of 1595–6 by cultivating the countess of Warwick, to whom he dedicated Fowre hymnes (London: 1596).

95 A reuyuing of the deade (London, 1591), sigs B1r-B1v.

96 Brown, ‘“Companion me with my mistress”’, p. 133.

97 Simon Adams, Leicester and the Court: Essays on Elizabethan Politics (Manchester, 2002), p. 227.

98 The Sidney Papers are the property of Viscount De L’Isle and are held at the Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone: classification U1475, C12/259, 12 July 1600.

99 A Pleasant conceite, sig. Br.

100 Idem.

101 May, The Elizabethan Courtier Poets, p. 154. See also Robert W. Kenny, Elizabeth’s Admiral: The Political Career of Charles Howard, Earl of Nottingham, 1536–1624 (Baltimore MD, 1970), pp. 94, 252; S.P. Cerasano and Marion Wynne-Davies, Readings in Renaissance Women’s Drama: Criticism, History and Performance (London, 1998), p. 48.

102 By indenture of 2 February 1601. See Christopher Comber, ‘The Anglo-Irish Coinage of Elizabeth I’: http://www.mernick.org.uk/Bexley/article1.htm [accessed 12 April 2020]. For a technical account see Henry Symonds, The Numismatic Chronicle and Journal of the Royal Numismatic Society, Fourth Series, vol. 17 (1917), pp. 97-125.

103 Calendar of State Papers (Ireland), 1601–3 (London, 1912), p. 638.

104 See also Carole Levin, Anna Riehl Bertolet and Jo Eldridge Carey (eds), A Biographical Encyclopedia of Early Modern Englishwomen: Exemplary Lives and Memorable Acts, 1500–1650 (London and New York, 2017), p. 497.

105 A Pleasant conceite, sig. Bv.

106 Cerasano and Wynne-Davies, Readings in Renaissance Women’s Drama, p. 48. See also Salisbury MS 12:43, which alludes to the Countess’s ‘service’ to the Queen.

107 A Pleasant conceite, sig. Br.

108 See Natalie Mears, ‘Politics in the Elizabethan Privy Chamber: Lady Mary Sidney and Kat Ashley’, in James Daybell (ed.), Women and Politics in Early Modern England, 1450–1700 (Aldershot, 2004), p. 72.

109 decors: graces; honours.

110 A Pleasanr conceite, sig. B2r.

111 On the subsidy roll of 10 November 1590, see Alan H. Nelson, Monstrous Adversary: The Life of Edward de Vere, 17^th Earl of Oxford (Liverpool, 2003), p. 336.

112 NA, E179/266/13/. Subsidy roll entry dated 23 November 1592: See Nelson, Monstrous Adversary, p. 336.

113 See Nelson, Monstrous Adversary, pp. 328-30.

114 See Wilson, Queen Elizabeth’s Maids of Honour and Ladies of the Privy Chamber, pp. 188-92. On the cultural exchange of children with particular reference to the Manners (earls of Rutland), the Russells (earls of Bedford), the Hastings (earls of Huntingdon), the Herberts (earls of Pembroke), and the Sidneys (knights), see Patricia Fumerton, ‘Exchanging Gifts: The Elizabethan Currency of Children and Poetry’, English Literary History 53-2 (1986), pp. 241-78.

115 On Robert Tyrrwhit and Bridget Manners, see Wilson, Queen Elizabeth’s Maids of Honour and Ladies of the Privy Chamber, pp. 194 and 187-8, respectively.

116 A Pleasant conceite, sig. Bv.

117 Idem.

118 Guy (ed.), The Reign of Elizabeth I, p. 231.

119 Idem.

120 Her closeness to the Queen may be judged from the extent to which they exchanged gifts at New Year. Nichols records only gifts made to the Queen; for the Queen’s reciprocal gift-giving see Jane A. Lawson (ed), The Elizabethan new year's gift exchanges, 1559–1603 ([London], 2015).

121 David C. Price, ‘Gilbert Talbot, Seventh Earl of Shrewsbury: An Elizabethan Courtier and His Music’, Music & Letters 57-2 (1976), pp. 144-151, p. 148.

122 A Pleasant conceite, sig. B2r.

123 Ibid., sig. A4r.

124 It is pertinent that ‘nature’ — particularly when intensified by ‘secrete’ — is an obsolete term (still current in the sixteenth century) for both sexual desire and the female genitals [OED].

125 Quotes taken from A Pleasant conceite, sig. A4r.

126 In the entertainment given to the Queen at Woodstock (1575) George Gascoigne had written, ‘If God wolde deigne to make a Petrarke’s heire of me, / The coomlyest Quene that ever was my Lawra nedes must be’ (Nichols, New Edition, II, p. 401); Ralegh’s commendatory sonnet accompanying the first edition of The Faerie Queene (1590) had envisaged ‘faire loue’ and ‘fairer vertue’ leaving Laura’s grave, ‘For they this Queene attended’, Edmund Spenser, The faerie qveene disposed into twelue books [i.e. Books 1-3] (London, 1590), p. 596.

127 A handeful of gladsome verse, sig. C2r.

128 May, The Elizabethan Courtier Poets, pp. 36-7.

129 In writing to the painted portrait of his beloved Laura, Petrarch had specifically addressed the tension between Poet and Painter in sonnets 77 and 78 of his Rime sparse (1372): see Petrarch’s Lyric Poems: The ‘Rime sparse’ and Other Lyrics, ed. and trans. by Robert M. Durling (Cambridge, MA and London, 1976), pp. 176-8.

130 Churchyards challenge, sig. Dd4v [p. 198].

131 Quotes taken from A Pleasant conceite, sig. B2r.

132 The worthines of Wales, sig. H1v. Another possible influence for this genre of courtly compliment may be Surrey’s ‘That petrark cannot be passed but notwithstanding that Lawra is far surpassed’: British Library [hereafter BL], MS. Add. 28635; Tottel’s Miscellany (1557), fol. 74.

133 Skeat, Walter W. (ed), The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, 7 vols (Oxford, 1894), IV, p. 492 (l. 1072); Chaucer uses the same phrase when, the rocks having been submerged, Aurelius addresses his lady: ‘With dredful herte and with ful humble chere / Salewed hath his sovereyn lady dere’, ibid., p. 499 (l. 1310).

134 Ibid., p. 492 (l. 1081).

135 A Pleasant conceite, sig. B2r.

136 Idem.

137 Idem. Usually there would have been six maids of honour.

138 Frye, The Competition for Representation, p. 106.

139 My capitalisation, to suggest the merging of person and space referenced above [L.G.].

140 Linda Gregerson, The Reformation of the Subject: Spenser, Milton and the English Protestant Epic (Cambridge, 1995), p. 127.

141 A Pleasant conceite, sig. A4r.

142 Ibid., sig, B2r.

143 Ibid., sig. B2v.

144 Idem.

145 Idem.

146 The Elizabeth-Diana topos was, of course, a commonplace of the iconography of the Virgin Queen. See, for example, Elkin Calhoun Wilson, England’s Eliza (New York, 1966), pp. 167-229.

147 The thre first bookes of Ouids De tristibus, translated into Englishe (London: by Thomas Marshe [1572]), fol. 12r.

148 BL, MS Cotton, Vespasian, E.viii, fols 169-178 (fol. 171).

149 Hannah Betts, ‘“The Image of this Queene so quaynt”: The Pornographic Blazon 1588–1603’, in Julia M. Walker (ed), Dissing Elizabeth: Negative Representations of Gloriana (Durham, NC, 1998), pp. 153-83, p. 159.

150 Idem.

151 A Pleasant conceite, sig. A3r.

152 George Sandys, Ouids Metamorphosis Englished, mythologiz’d, and represented in figures (Oxford [and London], 1632), p. 100.

153 Leonard Barkan, ‘Diana and Actaeon: The Myth as Synthesis’, English Literary Renaissance 10 (1980), pp. 317-59, p. 328.

154 A Pleasant conceite, sig. B2r.

155 Ibid., sig. B2v.

156 A handeful of gladsome verses, sig. A2v.

157 Idem.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lawrence Green

Lawrence Green

Lawrence Green is Honorary Research Fellow in the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance at Warwick University. He has contributed significantly to a new edition of John Nichols’s Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth I, 5 vols (Oxford, 2014).