The Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684

INTRODUCTION.

THE Cavalier Ballads of England, like the Jacobite Ballads of England and Scotland at a later period, are mines of wealth for the student of the history and social manners of our ancestors. The rude but often beautiful political lyrics of the early days of the Stuarts were far more interesting and important to the people who heard or repeated them, than any similar compositions can be in our time. When the printing press was the mere vehicle of polemics for the educated minority, and when the daily journal was neither a luxury of the poor, a necessity of the rich, nor an appreciable power in the formation and guidance of public opinion, the song and the ballad appealed to the passion, if not to the intellect of the masses, and instructed them in all the leading events of the time. In our day the people need no information of the kind, for they procure it from the more readily available and more copious if not more reliable, source of the daily and weekly press. The song and ballad have ceased to deal with public affairs. No new ones of the kind are made except as miserable parodies and burlesques that may amuse sober costermongers and half-drunken men about town, who frequent music saloons at midnight, but which are offensive to every one else. Such genuine old ballads as remain in the popular memory are either fast dying out, or relate exclusively to the never-to-be-superseded topics of love, war, and wine. The people of our day have little heart or appreciation for song, except in Scotland and Ireland. England and America are too prosaic and too busy, and the masses, notwithstanding all their supposed advantages in education, are much too vulgar to delight in either song or ballad that rises to the dignity of poetry. They appreciate the buffooneries of the “Negro Minstrelsy,” and the inanities and the vapidities of sentimental love songs, but the elegance of such writers as Thomas Moore, and the force of such vigorous thinkers and tender lyrists as Robert Burns, are above their sphere, and are left to scholars in their closets and ladies in their drawing-rooms. The case was different among our ancestors in the memorable period of the struggle for liberty that commenced in the reign of Charles I. The Puritans had the pulpit on their side, and found it a powerful instrument. The Cavaliers had the song writers on theirs, and found them equally effective. And the song and ballad writers of that day were not always illiterate versifiers. Some of them were the choicest wits and most accomplished gentlemen of the nation. As they could not reach the ears of their countrymen by the printed book, the pamphlet, or the newspaper, nor mount the pulpit and dispute with Puritanism on its own ground and in its own precincts, they found the song, the ballad, and the epigram more available among a musical and song-loving people such as the English then were, and trusted to these to keep up the spirit of loyalty in the evil days of the royal cause, to teach courage in adversity, and cheerfulness in all circumstances, and to ridicule the hypocrites whom they could not shame, and the tyrants whom they could not overthrow. Though many thousands of these have been preserved in the King’s Pamphlets in the British Museum, and in other collections which have been freely ransacked for the materials of the following pages, as many thousands more have undoubtedly perished. Originally printed as broadsides, and sold for a halfpenny at country fairs, it used to be the fashion of the peasantry to paste them up in cupboards, or on the backs of doors, and farmers’ wives, as well as servant girls and farm labourers, who were able to read, would often paste them on the lids of their trunks, as the best means of preserving them. This is one reason why so many of them have been lost without recovery. To Sir W. C. Trevelyan literature is indebted for the restoration of a few of these waifs and strays, which he found pasted in an old trunk of the days of Cromwell, and which he carefully detached and presented to the British Museum. But a sufficient number of these flying leaves of satire, sentiment, and loyalty have reached our time, to throw a curious and instructive light upon the feelings of the men who resisted the progress of the English Revolution; and who made loyalty to the person of the monarch, even when the monarch was wrong, the first of the civic virtues. In the superabundance of the materials at command, as will be seen from the appended list of books and MSS. which have been consulted and drawn upon to form this collection, the difficulty was to keep within bounds, and to select only such specimens as merited a place in a volume necessarily limited, by their celebrity, their wit, their beauty, their historical interest, or the light they might happen to throw on the obscure biography of the most remarkable actors in the scenes which they describe. It would be too much to claim for these ballads the exalted title of poetry. They are not poetical in the highest sense of the word, and possibly would not have been so effective for the purpose which they were intended to serve, if their writers had been more fanciful and imaginative, or less intent upon what they had to say than upon the manner of saying it. But if not extremely poetical, they are extremely national, and racy of the soil; and some of them are certain to live as long as the language which produced them. For the convenience of reference and consultation they have been arranged chronologically; beginning with the discontents that inaugurated the reign of Charles I., and following regularly to the final, though short-lived, triumph of the Cavalier cause, in the accession of James II. After his ill-omened advent to the throne, the Cavalier became the Jacobite. In this collection no Jacobite songs, properly so called, are included, it being the intention of the publishers to issue a companion volume, of the Jacobite Ballads of England, from the accession of James II. to the battle of Culloden, should the public receive the present volume with sufficient favour to justify the venture.

The Editor cannot, in justice to previous fellow-labourers, omit to record his obligation to the interesting volume, with its learned annotations, contributed by Mr Thomas Wright to the Percy Society; or to another and equally valuable collection, edited by Mr J. O. Halliwell.

December, 1862.

CONTENTS.

PAGE When the King enjoys his own again 1 ,, comes home in Peace again 4 I love my King and Country well 6 The Commoners 8 The Royalist 10 The New Courtier 11 Upon the Cavaliers departing out of London 13 A Mad World, my Masters 14 The Man O’ The Moon 16 The Tub-Preacher 18 The New Litany 20 The Old Protestant’s Litany 23 Vive Le Roy 27 The Cavalier 28 A Caveat to the Roundheads 31 Hey, then, up go we 32 The Clean Contrary Way, or, Colonel Venne’s Encouragement 35 to his Soldiers The Cameronian Cat 37 The Royal Feast 39 Upon His Majesty’s coming to Holmby 50 I thank you twice 51 The Cities Loyaltie to the King 52 The Lawyers’ Lamentation for the Loss of Charing-Cross 55 The Downfal of Charing-Cross 56 The Long Parliament 58 The Puritan 61 The Roundhead 64 Prattle your pleasure under the rose 65 The Dominion of the Sword 67 The State’s New Coin 70 The Anarchie, or the Blest Reformation since 1640 71 A Coffin for King Charles, a Crown For Cromwell, And A Pit 76 For The People A Short Litany For The Year 1649 81 The Sale of Rebellion’s Household Stuff 82 The Cavalier’s Farewell to his Mistress, being called to 86 the Wars The Last News from France 87 Song to the Figure Two 91 The Reformation 94 Upon the General Pardon passed by the Rump 98 An Old Song on Oliver’s Court 100 The Parliament Routed, or Here’s a House to be Let 102 A Christmas Song, when the Rump was first dissolved 107 A Free Parliament Litany 110 The Mock Song 114 The Answer 116 As close as a Goose 118 The Prisoners 120 The Protecting Brewer 122 The Arraignment of the Devil for stealing away President 124 Bradshaw A New Ballad to an Old Tune, “Tom Of Bedlam” 130 Saint George and the Dragon, Anglice Mercurius Poeticus 133 The Second Part of St George for England 143 A New-year’s Gift for the Rump 147 A Proper New Ballad on the Old Parliament; or, the Second 151 Part of Knave Out of Doors The Tale of the Cobbler and the Vicar of Bray 166 The Geneva Ballad 191 The Devil’s Progress on Earth, or Huggle Duggle, etc. 194 A Bottle Definition of that Fallen Angel, called a Whig 196 The Desponding Whig 197 Phanatick Zeal, or a Looking-glass for the Whigs 199 A New Game at Cards: or, Win at First and Lose at Last 202 The Cavaleers Litany 205 The Cavalier’s Complaint 209 An Echo to the Cavalier’s Complaint 211 A Relation 213 The Glory of these Nations 217 The Noble Progress, or, a True Relation of the Lord General 223 Monk’s Political Proceedings On the King’s Return 227 The Brave Barbary 228 A Catch 229 The Turn-coat 231 The Claret-drinker’s Song, or, the Good Fellow’s Design 233 The Loyal Subjects’ Hearty Wishes to King Charles II. 236 King Charles the Second’s Restoration, 29th May 243 The Jubilee, or the Coronation Day 246 The King enjoys his own again 247 A Country Song, intituled the Restoration 248 Here’s a Health unto His Majesty 251 The Whigs drowned in an Honest Tory health 251 The Cavalier 253 The Lamentation of a Bad Market, or the Disbanded Souldier 255 The Courtier’s Health; or, The Merry Boys of the Times 260 The Loyal Tories’ Delight; or A Pill for Fanaticks 262 The Royal Admiral 265 The Unfortunate Whigs 266 The Downfall of the Good Old Cause 268 Old Jemmy 271 The Cloak’s Knavery 274 The Time-server, or a Medley 278 The Soldier’s Delight 280 The Loyal Soldier 281 The Polititian 283 A New Droll 285 The Royalist 287 The Royalist’s Resolve 288 Loyalty turned up Trump, or the Danger over 290 The Loyalist’s Encouragement 290 The Trouper 292 On the Times, or The Good Subject’s Wish 293 The Jovialists’ Coronation 294 The Loyal Prisoner 295 Canary’s Coronation 297 The Mournful Subjects, or, The Whole Nation’s Lamination, 299 from the highest to the lowest Memento Mori 303 Accession of James II. 305 On the Most High and Mighty Monarch King James 307 In a Summer’s Day 309

LIST OF BALLAD AND SONG BOOKS AND MSS. QUOTED IN THIS COLLECTION.

Ashmolean Collection.

Antidote to Melancholy, 1682.

Apollo’s Banquet, 1690.

Additional MSS.

Aviary, 1740–1745.

Broadsides, in the reign of Charles II.

„ „ „ Roxburghe ballads.

Butler’s, Samuel, Posthumous Works, 1732.

Burney’s, Dr, Collection of Songs.

Ballads, six, of the time of Charles II., in the British Museum.

Bagford’s Collection [qu. date].

Brome’s, Alex., Songs [qu. date].

Banquet of Music, 1689.

Bull’s, Dr, Collection of Songs [qu. date].

* Collection of State Songs that have been published since the Rebellion, and sung at the several Mug-houses in the Cities of London and Westminster, 1716.

* Collection of Loyal Songs, 1750 [Jacobites].

Complete Collection of Old and New English and Scotch Songs, 1735.