Abstract
Late in March 1604, as his biographer John Strype records, Archbishop John Whitgift's “Corps was carried to Croydon … and there honourably interred in the Parish-Church … with a decent Solemnity.” Sir George Paule concurred, noting that the “Funerall was very honourably (as befitted his place) solemnized.” The funeral's honor, decency, and solemnity were somewhat marred, however, for among those laudatory elegies and epitaphs traditionally placed upon hearses, some audacious soul had contrived to pin a far from complimentary piece of doggerel. Entitled “The Lamentation of Dickie for the Death of his Brother Jockie”—Jockie being Whitgift and Dickie his successor as archbishop, Richard Bancroft—the poem was a vicious tirade against the late archbishop and his policies. The fullest extant copy survives in a collection of political papers once owned by the Kentishman Sir Peter Manwood: The prelats pope, the canonists hope,The Cortyers oracle, virginities spectacle,Reformers hinderer, trew pastors slanderer,The papists broker, the Atheists ClokerThe ceremonyes procter, the latyn docterThe dumb doggs patron, non resid[e]ns championA well a daye is dead & gone,and Jockey hath left dumb dickye alone.Prelats relent, Cortyers lamentPapiste bee sadd, Athiests runn maddGrone formalists, mone pluralistsfrowne ye docters, mourne yee ProctersBegge Registers, starve paratorsscowle ye summoners, howle yee songstersYour great Patron is dead & gone,& Jockey hath left dumb dickye alone.Popishe Ambition[,] vaine superstition,coulured conformity[,] canckared envye,Cunninge hipocrisie[,] faigned simplicity,masked ympiety, servile flatterye,Goe all daunce about his hearse,& for his dirge chant this verseOur great patron is dead and gone,& Jhockey hath left dumb dickey alone.Yf store of mourners yet there lackelett Croyden coull[i]ers bee more blackeAnd for a Cophin take a sackebearing the corpes upon their backedickye more blacke then any oneas chief mourner may marche aloneSinginge this requiem Jhocky is gone,& dickye hopes to play Jhocky aloneholla dickye bee not so bould,to woulve yt in Cheif Jhesis fouldas yf to hell thy Soule weare sould,lest as Jhocky was oft foretouldIf thou a persecutor stand,God likewise strike thee wth his hand:A-rankinge thee in the bloudy bandof ravening cleargie woolves in the land.