A Show of the Nine Worthies

Abstract

el d Eight years later, being then aged 68 and spelling his name Trevilyan, he finished another folio of more than a thousand pages, describing it as my Spectrum, and as a Miscelane designed to give pleasure to his friends and to himself. In this second copy, which was formerly in the Leconfield collection and is now in that of Mr. Boies Penrose, the illustrations in their original complicated order range from the labors of the months through Biblical and British History, Scripture, and Allegory to designs for joyners, gardeners, and embroiderers. In both folios, nine pages are devoted to the Nine Worthies; there is a general similarity between the two, but there are certain significant variations in text and illustrations. The Nine Worthies belong to that province of learning which lies between the Exempla of the Middle Ages and the Imprese of the Renaissance. Their early history in France as Les neuf Preux is traced and illustrated in the monograph by Mr. James J. Rorimer and Miss Margaret Freeman on the famous tapestries now at the Cloisters of the Metropolitan Museum, New York. For England, if one follows the list in Caxton's foreword to the Morte Darthur (1485), the Worthies should consist of three Pagans, three Jews, and three Christians-Hector of Troy (or Jason), Alexander of Macedon, and Julius Caesar; Joshua, David, and Judas Maccabaeus; Charlemagne, King Arthur, and usually Godfrey of Boulogne, for whom local preference could substitute Guy of Warwick or another. As the mythical element tended to outweigh the historical, the representation of these personages taxed the artists' skill severely. All the nine Worthies were soldiers, and in ages when knowledge of historic dress and armor was but slight, their bearded portraits were apt to look alike; only the Kings could be distinguished by their crowns. The heralds soon tried to come to the rescue, and just as saints could be picked out by their attributes, so the Worthies can often be identified solely by their coats of arms. But the heralds disagreed with one another, and it is not easy to reconcile the English arms in Gerard Legh's Accedens of Armoury with those, say, in A. Favyn's Theater of Honour published in translation by Jaggard in i623. Hector of Troy had a device of two lions confronted (Jason had the golden fleece); Alexander the Great, a lion sitting rather oddly in an upright armchair and holding a battle-axe; Julius Caesar, a Roman eagle. Joshua's emblem was the Sun, standing still upon Gibeon; for David there was his harp; and