Richard Brathwait The First Lakeland Poet

By John Bowes

Richard Brathwait was a businessman his neighbours would have been wise to treat with sensible caution. He was devout in his faith but worldly in his ambition. His wild and promiscuous behaviour did not cease at the end of his adolescence or with his marriage vows. The author of 'Drunken Barnaby' had more than a passing resemblance to the riotous hero of his most famous poem.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Bowes
• Release date: Nov 12, 2010
• ISBN: 9780955117435

Book preview

FOREWORD

After retiring from full time employment at the end of 2004 I looked around for something positive to do in order to keep my brain busy. I began by engaging in some research on the history of my sixteenth century home. I soon discovered that my house had been occupied for most of the seventeenth century by members of the Brathwait family and that Richard Brathwait, a writer of the Jacobean and Caroline period, may have lived there at some point.

This naturally aroused my curiosity and I set out to discover as much as I could about this poet who may, albeit at a different time, have shared my home.

The obvious first stage was to read his work but, at the outset, I had absolutely no conception of how difficult this was going to be. A visit to the library in Kendal yielded not a single volume of his work. I acquired copies of Barnabee’s Journal, A Strappado For the Divell, Two Lancashire Lovers, and The Penitent Pilgrim via the internet at considerable expense but his other writings proved either completely elusive or well beyond my pocket.

Not to be daunted I paid a second visit to the Kendal library and put in a formal request to obtain The English Gentleman and The English Gentlewoman via the inter library loan scheme. On this occasion I was rather taken aback when the intelligent and obviously well educated young lady at the desk queried the date of the publication and the spelling of the author’s name. Clearly, she had never heard of Richard Brathwait although this most prolific of seventeenth century writers had almost certainly been born only about two miles from where she stood.

The Kendal library proved as helpful as they could but in order to greatly further my enquiries I began to pursue educational establishments across the globe for direct access to his work. This exercise proved largely futile. The problem was that most of Richard Brathwait’s work had been out of print for three hundred years or more. In addition his practice of publishing many of his works anonymously or under pseudonym meant that just identifying the parameters of the task was strewn with pitfalls. I discovered that most of his work was available on the internet but access was limited to academics and students registered at universities and other higher education centres. Fortunately, ProQuest Information and Learning, a global provider of access to online repositories, kindly listened to my special pleading and, as a result, I have now been able to read most of Richard Brathwait’s work.

This modest volume makes no pretensions to being serious literary biography. The merits of Richard Brathwait’s work, and his place in our literary history, can be assessed by others far more expert than me. My interest is in understanding something about the man and his times. Unfortunately, relatively little has been recorded about Richard Brathwait’s life. Even the date and place of his birth has been the subject of some speculation. He left no great mark on public life or any quantity of letters and papers to offer belated revelations about his private dealings. But what we do have are his writings. Often these are openly biographical whilst, at other times, they offer hints and clues about his thinking and behaviour. However, using this material to flesh Richard out is a potentially hazardous undertaking. Judgement is called for and I have no illusions about my own fallibility or any claim to special expertise. At the end of the day the reader will have to judge whether or not I have exercised good judgement.

From my own perspective I have enjoyed following my seventeenth century friend. I can’t claim to know him yet. I probably never will. Like all of us he is capable of showing different faces and changing over time. Human beings are the most complex of creatures and biography is perhaps ultimately the most futile of pursuits. Nevertheless I trust that I have captured at least the odd fleeting glimpse of him even if I have inevitably failed to catch the complete man. In this endeavour I have, as far as possible, used Richard’s own words, and often those of his contemporaries, in order to convey, as accurately as possible, his thinking in the context of his times.

Richard Brathwait was a man of great character and achievement. Although a miscellaneous writer of some repute during his own times his works have had little or no exposure, beyond the academic environment, for several generations. His life and work spanned arguably the most interesting period of our national history but his waspish and satirical contemporary insights have remained largely hidden between the covers of numerous dusty volumes stored in the vaults of our most ancient libraries. Once a famous son of Kendal he now goes unrecognised in the main library of his home town.

This strikes me as a great shame and if this small volume can stir sufficient interest to ensure that Richard Brathwait ceases to be a stranger to his own then my small efforts will have proved worthwhile. In this endeavour I have had much help and support from numerous sources. Special mention should be made of three or four people. Dan Burnstone from ProQuest without whose much needed assistance this task could not have been completed. Wendy Wrigley, a colleague from a former life, who provided

invaluable help with some Latin translation. David Seaman, another former colleague and now an academic, who helped me source some of the more obscure papers for my research. Finally, the librarians at the Kendal library who sometimes looked at me rather oddly when I requested some rather esoteric sounding titles but always did their best to find them for me.

John Bowes

CONTENTS

Within that native place where I was born 3

I knewe what sinne it was to solicit a maid into lightnesse 10

Since the jarring strings of discord be reduced to so pleasant

harmony 20

Chast was my choice; so choice, as ne’re was bred 28

For as I would not have gentlemen libertines, so I would not

have them hermits 45

It will become her to tip her tongue with silence 64

I hold no eloquence so strong as when it falls from a calme

womans tongue 78

So choice and well-cultvated a soyle, soyled with perfidious

feet, and made a wilde forrest for rationall brutes 89

Nought but fire and fury: yet such was their folly, as none

knew well what they fought for 100

The only way to live peaceably, is to suffer patiently: and

with a pleasing smile 115

Our seas grown calme; our ayre refin’d, and clear 130

Thou are a shadow, God the substance is 145

Those curiously shaded, beauteously tufted, naturally

fortifide, and impregnably seated islands in every part of

the mere interveined 158

Within that native place where I was borne

Richard Brathwait was almost certainly born at Burneside, just two miles from Kendal, sometime during 1588. He broke his first cry onto the world as the Spanish armada threatened English shores and literary genius flooded the London stage. The defeat of the armada settled the fate of English catholicism for a century and the first performances of Richard III and Doctor Faustus announced the great epoch of English Literature. (1) Richard had been born into an era of profound religious and political disunity and a period of literary creative achievement unmatched either before or since. It was to be a suitable backdrop to a fascinating life.

The uncertainty surrounding his place and date of birth is as a result of the absence of any entries in the Kendal parish records for a three year period between 1588 and 1590 possibly due to an outbreak to the plague. (2) The resultant uncertainty about Richard’s precise geographical origin was subsequently compounded by a reference to Northumberland in the Oriel College register. (3) His father owned a substantial estate at Warcop, as well as land and property in Yorkshire, and it is quite conceivable that Richard’s birth took place away from the established family home at Burneside. However, it was Richard who confirmed himself as a Kendal man in a poem addressed ‘to the truly worthy, the Alderman of Kendall and his brethren’ in which he laments the ‘swinish use of drunkennesse’:

‘A vice in great request (for all receive it)

And being once train’d in’t there’s few can leave it;

How happie should I in my wishes be,

If I this vice out of request could see,

Within that native place where I was borne,

It lies in you, deere Townes-men to reforme’. (4)

It was Richard’s good fortune to be born into a prominent Westmorland family whose wealth and reputation had been growing for at least three generations. The family had ‘risen on the great wave of the woollen trade, and its members were intermarrying with other rich trading families, and acquiring freeholds and coats of arms’. (5)

Richard was a direct descendant of Richard Brathwait of Ambleside whose son Robert purchased the manor of Burneshead from the Machell family during the sixteenth century. (6) When Robert died James, his second son, inherited Ambleside which was ‘called a Hall only from the goodness of it, exceeding the common form of building but never was a manor house’. (7) Thomas Brathwait, the elder son, inherited Burneshead.

Thomas was the Recorder of Kendal from 1576 until his death in 1610. (8) In this highly influential position he would have overseen the Court of Records, which dealt with civil actions, and advised the council in the execution of its duties. (9) Sir Thomas, who was granted arms in 1591, acquired the manor of Warcop and also owned the manors of Staveley and Winderwath. (10) He married Dorothy, the daughter of Robert Byndlose of Helsington, by whom he had two sons and five daughters. Richard Brathwait was his second son. (11)

Relatively little is known about Richard’s childhood. Relationships between wealthy parents and their offspring in the sixteenth century were probably remote by twenty-first century standards. The high rate of infant mortality acted as a deterrent to the investment of too much emotional capital in the very young. In the late Elizabethan period in excess of 25% of children died before reaching the age of fifteen. In addition, the babies were often fostered out to wet nurses and, as a result, their parents saw relatively little of them during the first eighteen months of their lives. (12) Richard refers to being ‘weaned from my Nurses milk’ and therefore it is reasonable to suppose he spent considerable time away from his mother during the earliest part of his life.(13)

Thomas and Dorothy certainly suffered the distress of seeing some of their offspring die young. Their son Robert, born in 1577, lived for only eighteen months and James, born in 1582, fared even worse and expired after only three months. Whether these experiences contributed to any emotional distancing from their youngest son it is impossible to say. Paradoxically they may have had the opposite effect. Richard’s survival into a robust childhood may have unleashed their stifled affections. Certainly Richard only ever spoke well of his father and subsequent developments suggest that he occupied the status of a favoured child.

He grew up at Burneside Hall which has a history which can be traced back to 1275. The Reverend Thomas Machell, chaplain to King Charles II, recorded his visit to Burneside during a horseback journey around the barony of Kendal in 1692. Machell’s description offers us an almost contemporary account of the home in which Richard spent his early years and much of his subsequent life:

‘Hence, over a bridge, we passed to Burneside Hall, a pleasant seat upon a plain at the foot of a hill .which rises with an east ascent, like a woman’s breast. And has…. (been) called Burnay from the Burne or Brooke that runs by it (called Sleddal or Spret) and the place Burneside from being situated at the side of it.

There is a court with a lodge and battlements, through which you ascend into the Hall, by a tower on your right, where I met some coats of arms and ….more in the dining room and parlour, but most in the gallery. Before the court is a large pond stored with tench, trout and eels, intercepted with a passage or causeway up to the gate and on either side is a little island with plane trees planted on it.’ (14)

With its 14th century pele tower and its ‘barmykyn’ Burneside Hall must have been a stimulating playground for a bright young boy. (15) Situated adjacent to the river, and on the fringes of the Lakeland fells, it cannot have failed to fire Richard’s imagination.

His own brief account of his childhood is characteristically candid. He ‘was seldom contented, by being seated in that place where I was: nor with that sport I last affected. When I was in my fathers house, my desire was to be in the field; when I was in the field I longed to be at home’. Like any other perfectly normal child his immediate ambitions were modest, his desires being ‘easie and narrow…they aspired no higher than to points, pins, or cherrystones’. (16) The affluence and status of his family shielded him from the more challenging environments faced by some of his immediate contemporaries:

‘I knew not what they meant by a deare summer, or an unseasonable harvest. These were the least and lightest of my cares: while I found plenty, I dreamed little of others scarcitie. Mine highest outrage was the breach of an orchard’. (17)

Perhaps his high status background proved an obstacle to making friends as he confessed an inclination to engage in behaviour designed to gain his playmates affections. This tendency to be so easily led by others might have sounded a warning shot about his future behaviour during adolescence:

‘But whatsoever I did in my selfe correct; others were as apt quickly to corrupt. If other children approved it, I gave way unto it. I shap’t my affection by their liking: my election by their loving. Thus I went on a proficient in nothing so much as folly’. (18)

Richard Brathwait was fifty when these words were first published and he was assessing his childhood from an adult perspective and with a critical inclination which reflected his serious and devout commitment to the Christian faith. His condemnation of childish conduct seems out of place from the more liberal perspective of our own times. It is difficult to see anything seriously amiss, or anything other than normal behaviour, in the young boy who Richard described:

‘What a brave youth held I my selfe with mine Eldern Gun, Hobbie-horse, and Rattle? A poore pride, and yet rich enough for that time. What was onely before mee, seemed deare unto mee. Yesterday was too long for mee to remember: and to morrow too long for mee to expect. I held the present day, the only date of my pleasure……..Thus went I on in my childish wayes; wise enough to be a Wag; too light, too bee truly wise. So as, I might be well compared to that Top, I so much used, which always ran round, & never went forward, unlesse it were whipt’. (19)

Affluent gentry families often employed a tutor to educate their sons at home (20) but it is clear from Richard’s writings that he went to school. The nascent Kendal grammar school had been established since 1524 and it subsequently acquired its own buildings when land adjacent to Abbott Hall was donated by Miles Philipson of Crook in 1582. The local Corporation actively supported this project which coincided with Thomas Brathwait’s period as Recorder of Kendal. Thomas would almost certainly have known Miles Philipson and Bernard Gilpin, another active supporter of the school, and he may, as a result of his office and these personal associations, have felt obliged to send his son through its doors. (21)

This is pure speculation. What we do know for certain is that Richard did not enjoy the schooling experience. He held ‘the condition of any creature more happie than that of a scholler’ and books he ‘loved onely for their cover’. There was little sign of the gifted man of letters in the child who claimed that ‘like a beare to the stake, was I haled to my booke’. School days were evidently dark days for the future poet:

‘No day was to mee ominous, but if any were, none so much, as after a long Breaking up, to returne to Schoole. I found in my selfe a naturall feare; but this proceeded rather from sight of the rod, than any propensitie to what was good. This feare taught me how to flatter; and this I began first to practise on my Master. What faire promises would I make him, in hope of one houres reprive from him! All things should be amended; meane time, nothing lesse intended’. (22)

Richard’s fear of the rod was probably well justified. More children were exposed to corporal punishment during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries than at any time before or since. Beatings were commonplace and often exercised with severe brutality. Nor was the emphasis on physical punishment confined to the home and school but became the established method of social control with every village supporting a whipping post. The use of flogging as a means of maintaining discipline and control even extended to the universities. (23)

Richard no doubt accommodated himself sufficiently with his master to achieve a grounding in classical grammar for in 1604, at the relatively tender age of sixteen, he left the family home and set off to study at Oxford. He enrolled as a commoner at Oriel college ‘at which time he was matriculated as a gentleman’s son and a native of the County of Northumberland’. (24) His father presumably despatched his youngest son south in the expectation that he might gain an education suitable as a foundation for a future career. However, despite its elite status Oxford was not everything that it might have seemed. With drunkenness and licentiousness apparently commonplace the university represented a potential minefield for a young and impressionable boy from the provincial north. (25)

This was inevitably a critical period in Richard’s life. Coinciding with the onset of manhood, and released from immediate parental control, he found the freedom to begin to follow his own course both through his studies and by indulging in less than worthy recreational pursuits. It was a period of critical creative development which would be subsequently reflected in the almost constant stream of classical references in his work as well as a tendency to dwell on some of the less salubrious experiences of his early years.

Richard himself recognised the importance of the university in his development when he dedicated an early work to ‘his deare foster mother, the universitie of Oxford’ and then penned the following lines:

‘To thee (deare mother) in whose learned lap,

I once repos’d, and from whose batt’ning papp

I suckt the milke of knowledge, send I these

Which if they please, as I could wish then please

I’me honour’d by them, and will still renew

My love to them, because they’r lik’d by you.

But these are feeble, scarce penfeathered,

And like young lapwings run with shell on head:

Nor can I blame them: for belike they’ve heard,

How I was young when I to you repair’d:

Growing in some sort riper; and these doe

Expect the like, that they shall thrive so too.’ (26)

Whilst in the ‘heat of youth’ Richard would ‘hunt after pleasures of more height’ there is little doubt that he also engaged in serious study. He loved his time at Oxford and was clearly stimulated by the competitive intellectual environment:

‘I was sent to the universitie; where (still with an humble acknowledgement of others favours and reasonable endevours) I became proficient, as time call’d mee for a graduate. And in these studies I continued, till by universal voice and vote, I was put upon a task, whose style I have, and shall ever retaine, the sonne of Earth, Terrae Filius. From the performance of which exercise, whether it were the extraordinary favour which the universitie pleased to grace mee withal, or that shee found some tokens in mee of such future proficience as might answer the hopes of so tender a mother, I know not: but, sure I am, I received no small encouragement both in my studies and free tender of ample preferment’. (27)

The Terrae Filius was an anonymous speaker charged with delivering a satirical speech during the trinity term. Richard was presumably chosen for this task because of his inherent propensity to demonstrate a biting wit which in later years may have been responsible for his nickname of ‘Dagger Dick’. Clearly, Richard saw this ‘preferment’ as a reward for his academic endeavours and for an opportunity to shine.

As an undergraduate it is likely that he spent his first year studying rhetoric before moving on to logic in his second and third year. (28) However, his inclinations lay elsewhere:

‘He avoided as much as he could, the rough paths of logic and philosophy, and traced those smooth ones of poetry and roman history, in which at length he did excel.’ (29)

Poetry was highly valued at Oxford both for its potential to stimulate the learning process and for the pleasure to be derived from its study. However, in this latter context, it was sometimes feared that the subject might so captivate students that it could divert them from more onerous academic tasks. (30) Richard Brathwait certainly started to compose light verse during this period and it may have been his growing passion for literature that started to concern his father. This concern may have been fuelled by a recognition that Richard had styled himself as one of the ‘wits’ who, as a group, had a reputation for meeting in local taverns and keeping company of the less virtuous kind. Thomas Brathwait had mapped out his sons career path and he was not prepared to see his intentions frustrated by adolescent fancy. His resolution was recorded in February 1606 when he wrote his final will:

‘And also my Will and mynd is that my sonne Richard Brathwait shall contynue in the Univrsitie of Oxford, and there to applie and followe learning for and during such tyme as my Wife, with the advise of the more pt of the supervisors of this my last Will and Testament, then living, shall think meet: And afterwards goe and remayne at the Innes of Court, and there to applie and followe the studie of the lawes of this Realme, so long as he shall behave himself, and diligentlie followe and applie the said studie: as my trust is that he will do’. (31)

Perhaps Thomas envisaged his youngest son following in his own illustrious footsteps. Clearly he was intent upon him acquiring legal training. Whatever the thinking Richard’s academic idyll was to be interrupted and his life set upon a path far different from that of his own personal inclination:

‘Having for sundry yeares together thus remained in the bounteous bosom of this my nursing-mother; all which time, in the freedome of those studies, I reap’t no lesse private comfort, than I received from others incouragement; I resolved to set my rest upon this, to bestow the most of my time in that place, if it stood with my parents liking. But soone I was crossed by them in these resolves: being injoyned by them to turne the course of my studies from those sweet academick exercises, wherein I tasted such infinite content: and to betake my selfe to a profession, which I must confesse suited not well with