“The Daring Pen of Sorrow”: elegies on the death of Thomas Murray (1564-1623)

Abstract

ABSTRACTBritish Library MS Harl. 3910 includes a hitherto unexamined sequence of anonymous English and Latin funeral elegies on Thomas Murray (1564–1623), former royal tutor and secretary. His death, which coincided with Prince Charles’ trip to court the Spanish Infanta, prompted his poetic mourners to consider the exceptional political circumstances of the time, in particular lamenting the loss of a staunchly Protestant courtier like Murray who might have protected Charles in Catholic Spain. While satiric ballads and libels about the Spanish Match were widespread at the time and have attracted considerable scholarly attention, the Murray elegies offer a more probing and sophisticated poetic exploration of the fraught national situation. They combine satire with praise of an ideal courtier, and strikingly reconfigure the usual political paradigm by presenting Murray as the dominant “maker” and “ruler” of his royal master/student. Annotated diplomatic transcriptions of the elegies are included in the Transcription section.