Giles Fletcher the Younger

1588?–1623

Introduction

The small corpus of extant poetical works by Giles Fletcher the Younger is almost entirely edited in Boas (I, 1-90, 265-73). Only one of the poems in that edition is preserved in manuscript (FlG 1), although there also exists in manuscript a poem by Fletcher not known to Boas: namely, Fletcher's contribution to the gratulatory anthology presented by Cambridge University to Frederick V, the Elector Palatine (FlG 2).

Boas notes (I, ix-x) that a manuscript entitled Aegidii Fletcheri Versio Poetica Lamentationum Jeremiae was formerly preserved in the library of King's College, Cambridge, but cannot now be found. It was described by William Cole (1714-82) as a small MS. given to it [the library] Febr. 2. 1654-5 by S. Th. Socius [i.e. Samuel Thomson] and containing a nineteen-verse dedication to Dr Whytgyfte. Cole assumed that the manuscript was the work of Giles Fletcher the Younger, but there is reason for attributing it to Giles Fletcher the Elder (1546-1611), who (unlike his son) was a member of King's College and was in residence at the same time as John Whitgift, the future Archbishop of Canterbury (1530/1-1604).

One other poem, found in manuscript sources, has some connection with Giles Fletcher. He contributed to the Epicedium Cantabrigiense (1612) an eight-line Latin elegy on Prince Henry, Carmen Sepulchrale (Miraris qui Saxa loqui didicere, Viator?) (Boas, I, 270). An English version, beginning Reader, wonder thinke it none, achieved considerable popularity and occurs in very many seventeenth-century miscellanies, but there is no evidence that Fletcher was its author. The English version, which has been doubtfully attributed to Ben Jonson, is discussed in William Dinsmore Briggs, Studies in Ben Jonson. III, Anglia, 39 (1916), 16-44 (pp. 32-41), and in Ben Jonson, ed. C.H. Herford and Percy and Evelyn Simpson, 11 vols (Oxford, 1925-52), VIII, 432-3. In two sources (Folger, MS V.a.103, Part I, f. 3, and University of Nottingham, Pw V 37, p. 4), both written in the same hand, the poem is ascribed to M^r C. W.

Two examples of Fletcher's handwriting have come to light: one his student subscription at Cambridge (*FlG 4); the other a letter to his benefactor, Sir Nathaniel Bacon (*FlG 3).

Abbreviations

Boas: The Poetical Works of Giles Fletcher and Phineas Fletcher, ed. Frederick S. Boas, 2 vols (Cambridge 1908-9).

Verse

A Description of Encolpius ('It was at evening, & in Aprill mild')

First published in Miscellanies of the Fuller Worthies Library, ed. Alexander B. Grosart, III (1872), 510-12. Boas, I, 89-90.

FlG 1

Copy, headed Nisus amore pio pueri &c. and endorsed in another hand 'tis Encolpus in Petronius. I had it of Mr. Blois.

Edited from this MS in Grosart and in Boas.

A quarto composite miscellany of verse, in English and Latin, compiled by William Sancroft (1617-93), Archbishop of Canterbury, who lived in Cambridge as student and Fellow of Emmanuel College from 1633 to 1651, ii + 115 leaves, in calf.

Comprising three separate units: ff. 1r-96v all in Sancroft's hand; ff. 97r-104r in a second hand; and ff. 105r-9r in a third hand.

Including (on ff. 2-23, 27ar-v, 70) 94 Latin poems ascribed to Crashaw (including three of doubtful authorship) and (on ff. 29-41, 43v, 44v-58, 60v, 62v-5v, 67-70v, 72-3, 95-6) 101 English poems (plus a second copy of one of them) attributed to him (including one of doubtful authorship) and (on f. 16r-v) one Greek poem attributed to him; a list of contents on the first page beginning Mr. Crashaw's poems transcrib'd fro his own copie, before the were printed; among w^ch are some not printed….

c.1640s [and later]

Cited in IELM as the Sancroft MS: CrR Δ 1. Crashaw edited in part from this MS, and collated, in Grosart, in Waller and in Martin (cited as T or T5), and discussed in Waller, pp. vi-ix, and in Martin, pp. lviii-lxxiii. Folios 28-34v, 38v-41, 44v, 52v-6 reproduced in facsimile in Steps to the Temple (1970).

Bodleian Library, Tanner Collection (MS Tanner 465 f. 42r-v)

'Surgens coerulco lotus ab aquore'

An unpublished Latin poem in honour of Frederick V, Elector Palatine.

FlG 2

Copy.

Two MS volumes of gratulatory verse presented to the Elector Palatine by the University of Cambridge on 6 March 1612/13.

6 March 1612/13

This MS recorded in Leicester Bradner, New Poems by George Herbert: The Cambridge Latin Gratulatory Anthology of 1613, RN, 15 (1962), 208-11.

Vatican Library (MS Palat. lat. 1736. f. 13r)

Letters

Letter(s)

*FlG 3

Autograph

Autograph letter signed by Fletcher, to Sir Nathaniel Bacon of Stiffkey, Norfolk, 21 May 1611.

1611

Later owned by Harry Lawrence Bradfer-Lawrence (1887-1965), Norfolk and Yorkshire antiquary and manuscript collector. Formerly Bradfer-Lawrence VII b (1).

Facsimile in IELM, I.ii (1980), Facsimile XIV (p. 76).

Norfolk Record Office (BL/ BC 8/11)

Documents

Document(s)

*FlG 4 1619

Autograph

Fletcher's autograph signed subscription for the degree of B.D. on 3 July 1619.