John Denham: New Letters and Documents

JOHN DENHAM: NEW LETTERS AND DOCUMENTS HILTON KELLIHER IT was inevitable that the fundamental divisions made in English society by the Civil Wars should affect the ranks of the poets and playwrights, and unsurprising that the former largely and the latter almost entirely would adhere to the king's party. Not that, from our more distant vantage-point at least, the literary advantage lay with the larger faction. When the lines were drawn the Parliamentarians could muster Milton, Marvell, the young Dryden, and, proximum longo intervalloj the elderly George Wither, who had done his best work in the reign of James L Edmund Waller occupied an unenviable position between the two camps; while Cowley, Denham, Fanshawe, Lovelace, Quarks, and Suckling, along with the dramatists Davenant, the two Killigrews and Shirley, are the most notable of those who either served Charles I or his successor in exile or suffered directly on their behalf. Among the latter party John Denham (fig. i) occupied in political terms a moderately distinguished place, acting as agent at home and as envoy abroad to both Charles Stuarts in turn. As a poet he is chiefly remembered as the author of Cooper^s Hill^ the first great topographical poem in the language, and he is sometimes said to be the one who did most to promote the transition of English verse from the Metaphysical to the Augustan mode. The purpose of the present rather disjointed notes is to supplement the very different but equally indispensable accounts given by his earliest biographer, John Aubrey,^ and his latest, Brendan O'Hehir,^ with some letters and documents that have recently come to light, more especially relating to his life in exile on the Continent between September 1648 and March 1653. By way of introduction it will be as well to summarize, with a few comments, his early years. ^ John, only son of Sir John Denham, one of the barons of the Exchequer, was born in Dublin about 1615 or 1616, during his father's tour of duty in Ireland, and matriculated from Trinity College, Oxford, on 18 November 1631 at the age of 16, as of'Horseley parva' (Little Horkesley) in Essex. Since 1599 the college had been under the rule of the forthright President Ralph Kettel who on one occasion publicly rebuked Denham in chapel for not repaying a loan made to him by John Whistler,"^ a Trinity man who had kept close links with the college and served as Recorder of Oxford 1627-46 and as Member of Parliament in 1628. Years later Josias Howe, a fellow of the college who had been a contemporary of Denham's, told John Aubrey, who had himself gone up to Trinity in 1642, that the poet had been 'the dreamingst young fellow; he never expected such things Fig. I. Sir John Denham as a Knight of the Bath: water-colour by George Perfect Harding (d. 1853) after an oval portrait by an unidentified artist, c.1661-9. British Museum Department of Prints and Drawings 1948.3.15.12(36): reproduced by permission of the Trustees of the British Museum. The original portrait was purchased at the sale in 1742 of the Earl of Oxford's pictures from Wimpole Hall by Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield: it hung in the Toets Room' in Chesterfield House, Mayfair, after completion of the building in 1749, and was still in the family in 1808 from him, as he has left the world'. Denham's marriage in London on 25 June 1634, at the early age of 19, sufficiently explains his failure to be admitted formally, at the ceremonies that took place on 14 July that year, to the Batchelor of Arts degree for which Anthony Wood tells us^ he had already been examined, that is, had acted as respondent in the disputations held in the Schools in the preceding February or March. It is, moreover, clear that Denham had no real need to take his degree since he had already, on 26 April 1631, entered his name at Lincoln's Inn and was looking forward to a lucrative practice as a lawyer. The early date of his subscription, preceding matriculation at Oxford, is accounted for by the fact that the regulations of the Inns of Court required seven or eight years' 'learning and continuance' in the house before one could be called to the Bar, though in practice the required exercises generally occupied only the three years immediately previous to the call.^ Denham need not therefore have taken a chamber in Lincoln's Inn until at the earliest the New Year of 1636, and in the meanwhile is assumed to have set up house with his father at 'The Place' in Egham. His father died early in January 1638/9 and three weeks later, on the 29th, Denham became a barrister. What little is known of Denham's conduct at the Inns of Court comes from Aubrey's conversations with contemporaries of the poet there. The amusing story that he tells of a high-spirited practical joke played on the inhabitants of London may, however, have originated rather later in Denham's career than Aubrey was led to believe. He was generally temperate, as to drinking; but one time when he was a Student of Lincolnes- Inne, having been merry at the Taverne with his Camerades, late at night, a frolick came into his head, to gett a playsterers brush and a pott of Inke, and blott-out all the Signes between Temple-barre & Charing-crosse, which made a strange confusion the next day, and 'twas in Terme time, but it happened that they were discovered, and it cost him and them some moneys; this I had from R. Estcott Esq that carried the Inke-pott. This 'R. Estcott' is most unlikely to have been the Richard Estcott identified by Aubrey's first modern editor^ as the man who, having matriculated from Exeter College, Oxford, in 1612, became barrister-at-law of Lincoln's Inn in 1620. This man, who had served as Member of Parliament for his native Launceston, made his will on 12 July 1636, still describing himself as of Lincoln's Inn, esquire: it was proved by his widow Alice on 12 January 1636/7. ^ Estcott bequeathed his books to the first of his sons who should turn to the study of law, and it appears that his eldest son Richard entered his name at his father's Inn on 23 February 1639/40.^ This must in all probability have been Aubrey's informant, and the clear implication is that Denham's prank was the work of a barrister of at least one year's standing. Be this as it may, Wadham Windham, who was almost three years Denham's senior in the profession and was to become a Justice of the King's Bench after the Restoration, told Aubrey that Denham had been 'as good a Student as any in the House', though he was 'not suspected to be a witt'. This latter assertion lends some colour to the remark of Edmund Waller as quoted by Aubrey regarding Denham's only original play. The Sophy, allegedly performed at some unknown date by the King's Men at Blackfriars and printed in August 1642, that with it he 'broke-out like the Irish rebellion: threescore thousand strong before any body was aware'.^° In fact, as might be expected, it is clear that he had been writing verses for some time past. The date of the earliest version of Cooper's Hill, a justly famous topographical poem that set a fashion by interweaving its description of the scenery around Windsor with moral and political reflections, is not certain, though the piece was printed at the same time as The Sophy. However, about May 1641 he is assumed to have composed his poem On the Earl of Strafford's Tryal and Death, this being a trial at which he had acted as one of the few witnesses for the defence. Further verses attributed on good grounds to Denham, though unclaimed by him, commemorate Sir George Croke who died in the following February and who had, with Denham's father, been one of the five judges who ruled for John Hampden after his trial in 1637. It is at this juncture, when poetry and politics were already running hand in hand for tbe young lawyer, that we encounter the only indication of his movements during the earliest days of the first Civil War. A letter^^ written from Nottingham on 22 July 1642 by Edward Hyde and addressed to the Countess of Carnarvon begins thus: 'I baue receaued two very greate blessings these two last dayes; both your Ladysbipps letters, the one yesterday at Beverly, the other this day at Nottingham by MT Denham. .'. The principal business of Hyde's letter concerns the securing for the king's party of some important person, most probably Lady Carnarvon's father, the Earl of Pembroke, ^^ who was at tbis time in London, whither the countess was then travelling. Hyde was of course in the retinue of the king who, having moved his court to Beverley on 7 July, 'made a short progress into the adjacent counties of Nottingham and Leicester, to see what countenance they wore, and to encourage those who appeared to have good affections to his service. .'.^^ He arrived at Nottingham on 21 July and was in Leicester on the following day. Whence and for what precise purpose Denham had journeyed to the king at Nottingham—one month before the royal standard was raised in that city—can only be surmised.

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