Elegies on the children of Dr John Prideaux, 1624–5

Abstract

John Prideaux, the farmer 's son who walked from Devon to Oxford in 1596 to take up a position as a servitor (poor scholar acting as a servant in his college), achieved considerable success in most areas of his life. Rising rapidly in academic and ecclesiastical circles, he became successively a royal chaplain, Rector of Exeter College, Regius Professor of Divinity and eventually Bishop of Worcester. He was a notable theologian and became the leading exponent in Laudian Oxford of the Calvinist position.In his private life, he was less fortunate. Seven of his nine children pre-deceased him, the period from September 1624 to September 1627 being a particularly unhappy one with two sons, two daughters and a wife dying within three years.1 For children to die young was hardly exceptional in that period, but in the university community children must have been a rarity, since only heads of colleges and prebends of Christ Church were allowed to marry. Even so, the attention paid to the deaths of Prideaux's children by university poets is somewhat surprising: seven poems in all were written on three of them.The daughters commemorated were Ann, who died in September1624 at the age of six, and Mary, who died the following December, aged seven. An elegy was also written on one of the boys:An Epitaph upon Doctor Prideaux's SonHere lyes his Parents hopes and fears,Once all their joyes, now all their tears.He's now past sense, past fear of paine.'Twere sin to wish him here againe.Had it liv'd to have been a Man,This inch had grown but to a span;And now he takes up the lesse room,Rock'd from his Cradle to his Tomb.'Tis better dye a child, at four,Then live and dye so at fourscore,View but the way by which we come,Thoul't say, he's best, that's first at home.2No author is assigned to this epitaph in Musarum Deliciae3 or in British Library Add. MS 19268,4 where it is entitled merely On the death of a child. Harvard MS Eng.686 and British Library MS Lansdowne 777 agree that the subject is Prideaux's son,5 but the former attributes it to and the latter to Mr George Morley of Ch Ch. Duppa may seem to have the better claim, since MS 328 in Corpus Christi College, Oxford, has an attribution to Duppa as well as corrections in the hand of its later owner William Fulman, who was a careful annotator and in touch with survivors of Caroline Oxford.6The son in question may be assumed to be Matthew, a toddler for whom cradle would be more relevant than for 3-year-old Robert, while John died at 13. As the first death in the young family it probably attracted particular attention. That the poem mentions the age of four is not a difficulty; the poet does not state that this particular child died at that age, but is making a general observation about early death. The number was chosen to contrast with fourscore.Probably Matthew was also the subject of a quatrain found without attribution on the opening page of Folger MS V a 170, headed merely On Dr Prideax his child:Careful mothers to their beds do layTheir babes who would too long, the wantons, play,So to prevent my youth's crimesNature my nurse laid me to bed betimes.It seems less likely that ensuing crimes would have been envisaged for a girl than for a boy, and this elegy also implies a very young child (babes). In Bodleian MS Rawl.117, it is attributed to Sir John Davis; neither author nor subject is identified elsewhere, although the lines were widely copied.7The death of Ann produced a neat epigram:Nature in this small Volume was aboutTo perfect what in woman was left out.Yet fearfull least a Piece soe well begun,Might want Preservatives when she had done,Ere she could finish what she undertookeThrew Dust upon yt, and shut up the Booke.This is found in 36 manuscripts. …