George Wither and the New World

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.Notes1 Armitage, ‘Literature and Empire’, 109. On Buchanan see Williamson, ‘An Empire to End Empire’, 232. On Daniel see Fitzmaurice, Humanism and America, 81.2 Wither, ‘To His Friend Cap: Smith, Vpon His Description of New England’, A3(r).3 For a detailed contrast between the Virginia Company’s civic humanism and Captain John Smith’s aggressive Machiavellianism see Fitzmaurice, Humanism and America, 177–86. For the poem being submitted via the printers see Barbour, The Three Worlds of Captain John Smith, 327–8.4 Wither, Wither’s Motto, D4(v). See also Norbrook, Poetry and Politics in the English Renaissance, 204.5 It is difficult to pinpoint the exact familial relationship between George Wither and Anthony and Richard Wither; see Pritchard, ‘According to Wood’, 283, n. 1. Richard Wither was made a shareholder in the Virginia Company on 5 January 1623. He seems to have been a merchant, judging by a reference to his overseas interests in the records of the Company; see Kingsbury (ed.), The Records of the Virginia Company of London, II, 542. The merchant Anthony Wither may have been the poet’s brother; see Bigg Wither, Materials for a History of the Wither Family, 89. He was made a brother of the Virginia Company on 24 July 1621; see Kingsbury (ed.), The Records of the Virginia Company of London, I, 521. He was later made a member of the Somers Islands Company in September 1626; see Lefroy, Memorials of the Discovery and Early Settlement of the Bermudas or Somers Islands 1515–1685, I, 399. He rarely attended Company meetings due to spending most of his time in the United Provinces. His main input was in procuring saplings ideal for planting in Virginia from the United Provinces; see Kingsbury (ed.), The Records of the Virginia Company of London, I, 521. The same Anthony Wither had made a possible allusion to George’s poetry in September 1614 in a letter from Brussels; see Norbrook, ‘The Masque of Truth’, 109, n. 69. In 1673, when investigating his account of George Wither’s life, John Aubrey planned to meet another Anthony Wither ‘who lives wth my Lady Clynton’ in Lincoln’s Inn Fields; see Pritchard, ‘According to Wood’, 282. This is likely to be the son of the merchant Anthony Wither; see Bigg Wither, Materials for a History of the Wither Family, 89.6 Ferrar, Sir Thomas Smith’s Misgovernment of the Virginia Company, 8, 12. Ferrar’s strong interest in the missionary aspects of colonisation explains his involvement in bringing the poem ‘The Church Militant’ by his friend George Herbert to press in the 1630s, when he was trying to resurrect favour for the Virginia Company. The poem anticipates the westward movement of religion to the New World. For the links between Sir John Danvers, George Herbert, and Ferrar see Powers-Beck, Writing the Flesh.7 Kingsbury (ed.), The Records of the Virginia Company of London, II, 359.8 Fitzmaurice, Humanism and America, 183–4; Malcolm, ‘Hobbes, Sandys, and the Virginia Company’.9 Wither, Haleluiah, or Britain’s Second Remembrancer, 482–3.10 Blackstone, The Ferrar Papers, 35–6.11 Sandys, Paraphrase Upon the Psalmes; Wither, Haleluiah, or Britain’s Second Remembrancer, 21.12 Pestana, The English Atlantic in an Age of Revolution, 135. For Bermuda’s troubles in the 1640s see 60–3, 76–7. For concerns over their position without the monarchy see 114.13 The letter is included in Bermudas Company, Copy of a Petition from the Governor and Company of the Sommer Islands. See also Pritchard, ‘George Wither and the Somers Islands’.14 With its own title page and pagination, ‘A Short Collection of the Most Remarkable Passages from the original to the dissolution of the Virginia Company’ complements the speech-act of the pamphlet as a whole by surveying Danvers’s credentials as a figure loyal to the parliamentary cause. Danvers had recently been associated with a plot against the Rump, and in order to attract favour from the Council of State, his actions needed to be rewritten in an anti-monarchical light. ‘A Short Collection’ blames the failure of the Virginia Company on the private interest culture of the monarchy, which could never support a project that strove for a ‘free government’. As with the Wither letter, ‘A Short Collection’ was not as random a contribution as it first appears. The confidence of its anti-monarchism was very rare for the supposed 1620s composition date. It seems likely that it was written later by someone radicalised by the civil wars; the supposed author, Arthur Woodnoth, a good friend of George Herbert, was closer instead to moderate networks. At the very least, if Woodnoth had composed the manuscript in the 1620s, it would undoubtedly have had to have been radicalised on its way to the press in 1651.15 Bermudas Company, Copy of a Petition from the Governor and Company of the Sommer Islands, 27–8.16 Ibid., 28.17 Ferrar, Sir Thomas Smith’s Misgovernment of the Virginia Company, 15.18 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 584.19 Beckles, ‘The “Hub of Empire”‘, 236. See also Braddick, State Formation in Early Modern England, 410–19.20 For the growth of this literature see Hoxby, Mammon’s Music, 66–9.21 Wither, The Dark Lantern, ‘The Perpetuall Parliament’, 74.22 Ibid., 68.23 Wither, Carmen Eucharisticon; Norbrook, Writing the English Republic, 239–40.24 See Raylor, ‘Waller’s Machiavellian Cromwell’.25 Wither, Salt-upon-Salt, 9.26 Ibid., 26.27 Ibid., 30.28 See, for example, Anon., A Dialogue Containing a Compendious Discourse.29 Waller, Dryden and Sprat, Three Poems. The volume was initially registered in the stationers’ register for 20 January 1659, with Marvell’s ‘A Poem on the Death of his Late Highness the Lord Protector’ in place of Waller’s poem. But the Marvell poem was withdrawn and replaced with Waller’s when the volume was finally published in the spring; see Marvell, The Poems of Andrew Marvell, 299. This still allows time for Wither having digested the volume and responded to it in Salt-upon-Salt, which was published in the summer. Thomason dated his copy ‘July 1658’, crossing out the printed date of 1659 (British Library, Shelfmark E.1827[2]); but Salt-upon-Salt could not have appeared in July of 1658 as Cromwell did not die until September.30 Henry Vane attacked Cromwell’s decision to undertake the Western Design, suggesting that it was rooted in his ambition, in Vane, A Healing Question. The accusation of self-interest gained greater purchase alongside rumours that Cromwell had also been considering taking the Crown just before the Western Design. For an analysis of the considerable level of criticism following its failure see Armitage, ‘The Cromwellian Protectorate and the Languages of Empire’, 540–2. Republican and Royalist responses to Waller’s colonial representations of Cromwell are analysed by Knoppers, Constructing Cromwell, 104–5. David Norbrook examines Wither’s response to Waller in Norbrook, English Republic, 383–6. The accusation that Cromwellian foreign policy was inextricable from Cromwell’s ambition was the central argument of the later work, Bethel, The World’s Mistake in Oliver Cromwell. See also Hoxby, Mammon’s Music, 69–74.31 Waller, Dryden, and Sprat, Three Poems, 3.32 Ibid., 6.33 Ibid., 6–7.34 See, for example, Wither, Paralellogrammaton, 57; Wither, Speculum Speculativum, 153.35 See Venning, Cromwellian Foreign Policy, 83–90.36 Wither, Salt-upon-Salt, 29.37 Raylor, ‘Waller’s Machiavellian Cromwell’, 399.38 Wither, Salt-upon-Salt, 10.39 ‘To Mr. Waller upon His Panegyrique to the Lord Protector’, ll. 61–4. First published and attributed to Lucy Hutchinson in Norbrook, ‘Lucy Hutchinson Versus Edmund Waller’. See also Venning, Cromwellian Foreign Policy, 88.40 Beckles, ‘The “Hub of Empire”‘, 231.41 Wither, Salt-upon-Salt, 40. For Vane’s foreign policy, see Mayers, 1659, ch. 6. Honywood later translated Battista Nani’s The history of the affairs of europe in this present age, but more particularly of the republic of Venice (1673; N151).42 Wither, Epistolium-Vagum-Prosa-Metricum, 21.43 Wither, A Triple Paradox, 10; Hoxby, Mammon’s Music, ch. 3.44 Waller republished his 1658 A Lamentable Narration of the Sad Disaster of a Great Part of the Spanish Plate-fleet (L272) as ‘Of a war with Spain, and a fight at sea’ in his 1664 folio works, having only to remove the last section of Cromwellian praise. See Waller, The Poems of Edmund Waller, II, 23–8, 200.45 Wild, A Panegyrique Humbly Addrest to the Kings Most Excellent Majesty, 4–5. My thanks to George Southcombe for this reference.46 De Guevara, The Dial of Princes. The adventurer Captain John Smith had read this work as a youth, although judging by Smith’s reputation for employing aggressive reason of state policies, he seems to have paid more attention to the Machiavelli he had simultaneously been reading; see Fitzmaurice, Humanism and America, 183–4.47 Wither, Fides-Anglicana, 66; De Guevara, The Dial of Princes, fol. 228(v).48 Wither, Fides-Anglicana, 70; De Guevara, The Dial of Princes, fol. 230(v).49 Waller, On St. James’s Park, l. 112; Hoxby, Mammon’s Music, 92.50 CSPD 1663–4, 403.51 Spurr, England in the 1670s, 133.52 See Pincus, Protestantism and Patriotism, 237–55. For an important critique of Pincus’s dismissal of economic reasons for the conflict see Israel, ‘Review: England, the Dutch Republic, and Europe in the Seventeenth Century’, 1120. For a more straightforward economic interpretation see Seaward, ‘The House of Commons Committee of Trade’.53 Wither, Tuba-Pacifica, 21.54 Sidney, Court Maxims, 133–44.55 Wither, Tuba-Pacifica, 5, 6–7, 19.56 Ibid.57 Ibid., 5.58 Waller, Instructions to a Painter, 3.59 Wither, Tuba-Pacifica, 24.60 Ibid., 11.61 Ibid., 8–9.62 Wither, Sighs for the Pitchers, 35.63 Ibid., 19.64 Ibid., 29 (mispaginated 39).65 Ibid., 28 (mispaginated 38).66 Ibid., 37.67 Ibid., 29 (mispaginated 39).68 Smith, A True, Short, Impartial Relation; Smith, A Second Relation from Hertford.69 Wither, Sighs for the Pitchers, 30.70 Ibid., 29–30.71 Blair Hoxby and Christopher Hill have also concluded that Wither is referring here to black slavery. See Hoxby, Mammon’s Music, 248–9; Hill, ‘George Wither (1588–1667) and John Milton (1608–74)’, 153, n. 66. More recently David Norbrook has written that Wither is ‘clearly thinking of the African slave trade’ in his article ‘“A fleet of Worlds”: Marvell, Globalisation, and Slavery’, 107.72 Barber, A Revolutionary Rogue, 130–1. John Oxenbridge ODNB.73 Beckles, ‘The “Hub of Empire”‘, 232–3.74 Baxter, A Christian Directory, 557–60. Thomas Drake suggests that Baxter wrote this passage between 1664–5, very close chronologically to Wither; see Drake, Quakers and Slavery in America, 3, n. 3. On Fox and slavery, see Frost, ‘George Fox’s Ambiguous Anti-Slavery Legacy’.75 Penn, The Papers of William Penn, II, 227–35. Furly is long overdue a biography; for a summary of his religious activities in the United Provinces see Hull and Brown, Benjamin Furly and Quakerism in Rotterdam. For an analysis of the Revolution’s disregard for the liberty of other people, as encapsulated in the slave trade, see Pestana, The English Atlantic in an Age of Revolution, ch. 6.76 Armitage, ‘John Milton: Poet against Empire’.77 Evans, Milton’s Colonial Epic.78 Stevens, ‘Paradise Lost and the Colonial Imperative’, 6, 16–17. See also Stevens, ‘Milton’s “Renunciation” of Cromwell’. Stevens’s argument has been contested in turn; see Worden, Literature and Politics in Cromwellian England, 325, n. 150.