[One Hundred and Twenty Loyal Songs, 1684, p. 195.] The Norwich Loyal Litany. [SUNG TO THE TUNE OF, Chevy Chace.] [White-letter. No woodcuts. Earliest dated copy is the above reprint, 1684. But we see no reason to doubt that the true original date had been the end of November, 1681. The mention of Achitophel may refer to Shaftesbury having been already described in Dryden's poem, which appeared on 24th November, 1681. Nevertheless, the name had been similarly applied by previous writers.] Robert Ferguson and Samuel Johnstone, allies of Monmouth. See later pages, on the Rye-House Plot for account of Ferguson, supposed continuator of The Growth of Popery; and pp. 181 to 183 for Sam Johnson. 2 Stephen College's murderous invention. See p. 35. He had been executed at Oxford, 31st August, 1681, after being saved by an Ignoramus Jury in London. 3 Shaftesbury, and Titus Oates, with his pretended degree as Doctor, obtained at Salamanca; an "invisible" and bogus distinction. He was turned away from Whitehall in August, 1681, forbidden the Court, and deprived of weekly pension. 188 Notes to the Norwich Loyal Litany. 4 Shaftesbury's proposed Protestant Association, of which an account was found among his papers; but not in his own writing. 5 Sir Henry Hobart, whose seat was in Norfolk. He was killed in a duel by Justice Le Neve, 1698. 6 As shown on p. 27, first note, The Sixteen who had presented a remonstrance to Charles II. early in the year, against assembling the Parliament at Oxford instead of at Westminster. They were, the Earl of Essex, their spokesman; the Duke of Monmouth, the Earls of Kent, Huntington, Bedford, Salisbury, Clare, Stanford and Shaftesbury; the Lords Mordaunt, Eure, Paget, Grey, Herbert, Howard of Escrick, and De la Mere. 7 To bar James from the succession. They were chiefly Lord Wm. Russell, Sir Henry Capel, Colonel Titus, Sir Francis Winnington, Sir Thomas Player, Sir William Jones, Colonel Sidney, Thomas Bennet, John Trenchard, Boscawen, and Montague, in the Commons. Essex and Shaftesbury in the Lords. 8 But Charles's last factious set had been dissolved in previous March, 1681. 9 King Charles had conferred the government of Tangier on Colonel Sackville at beginning of November. We cannot here spare space to tell the story of misused Tangier with its destroyed forts: the Queen's dowry. The brave Ossory, the Duke of Ormond's son, was about to depart thither when he died. We disbelieve the story of Mulgrave having been intentionally consigned to a leaky vessel bound for Tangier in 1680; and he evidently disbelieved it himself. 10 Monmouth: by December he was at his house in Hedge Lane, back from Gloucestershire, where he had visited Sir Ralph Dutton's in November. He had spent the summer at Tunbridge. The Fox, the Elf, and Achitophel, all refer to Shaftesbury. 12 A delicate hint that the operation would be voluntarily performed for him, con amore. May we ne'er want such a Friend, or a Halter to give him!" 66 The woodcut of an early Printing-office, with adjacent type-foundry or stereotype cauldron, appropriately illustrates these abusive Litanies. Litanies against St. Dmer's and Geneva. THE "Twenty from St. Omer's all prov'd me perjur'd, Call'd me Rogue, and Spiller of innocent blood: Yet still I'll deny all, to save those w' advanc'd me, Whose party maintains me with gold, drink, and food." —Oates's Lamentation, and Vision, at the King's Bench. HE fraudulent "Narratives" of the sham "Salamanca Doctor" Titus Oates had familiarized the ears of the rabble with the name of St. Omer's, as the great Jesuit Seminary in which he had for awhile been allowed to reside, until his own infamous conduct made his absence be enforced in a manner more summary than pleasant. While their frantic fears of a Popish Plot unsettled the minds of those who belonged to a better class of citizens than the debased populace of Wapping, Shaftesbury's "ten thousand brisk Protestant Boys," the solemn oaths tendered in a Court of Justice by any of these Jesuit priests, or their scholars from St. Omer's, were found insufficient to save the lives of the falsely-accused martyrs, whom the perjuries of Oates doomed to the most horrible of tortures in death. Even so late as the spring-time of 1682, when sanity had returned to most people who had been deluded and terrified, the name of St. Omers was still deemed of sufficient potency to be used as a catch-penny title to the rare Litany, printed on both sides in double-columns, which is here reproduced as one more specimen of what the rabid Exclusionists delighted to receive instead of poetry. Their cause was already lost, but Error always dies hard. It may be useful once more to examine the literary garbage which they found nutritious. That the "Litany from St. Omer's" would be speedily answered, at such a time as 1682, might be safely reckoned. We add the rejoinder, much shorter, more pithy, and more stinging, than the verbose railing that provoked it to be issued as "A Litany from Geneva: in answer to that from St. Omer's." We deem it unnecessary to reprint the dreary "Second Part of the Litany for St. Omer's," which followed as a supplement; possibly issued after the "Litany from Geneva." Compare p. 196. It is wholly without literary value or political importance, and died still-born. On the next page we introduce a picture of Mrs. Cellier, "the Popish Midwife," mentioned on pp. 180, 195, as undergoing her sentence of the pillory, for writing the libel called Malice Defeated. |