(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)David a Prophet, yet in Verse excels:'Twas ECCLESIASTES made the Canticles.1The Cromwellian invasion of Ireland has not been famed for the value of its poetry. And yet, like 'David a Prophet', some of the soldiers, civil servants and divines that have been identified with and resisted the Cromwellian invasion and administration of Ireland did produce a discernable body of religiously orientated verse. The best overview of the writing produced during this period has been provided in Andrew Carpenter's groundbreaking anthology, Verse in English from Tudor and Stuart Ireland (2003), but its selection of a dozen or so examples of material from the 1650s could represent only a small fraction of the decade's poetic output, and, necessarily, could not offer a broader context for its production and reception. The recent edition of Faithful Teate's Ter Tria (1658), edited by Angelina Lynch (2007), reminded scholars that material produced in this period did make significant demands upon its readers and usefully highlighted its complexity, its value, and its relation to the wider English tradition. Nevertheless, the thematic characteristics of the poetry of Cromwellian Ireland can be distinguished from that of earlier periods - most of all in its engagement with the tumult of its contexts, the 'strange alteration of affaires' in the aftermath of the regicide and the English Parliament's campaign to subjugate Ireland.2 This article will outline a context for this body of writing within the changing mentalities of Cromwellian Ireland, and will offer a new model for the interpretation of such principal works as Ter Tria, alongside a reading of other texts, which emerged out of even as they shaped the experiences of invasion and administration in Cromwellian Ireland.IOf course, poetry in English had been written in Ireland long before the Cromwellian invasion: John Derricke and Edmund Spenser are just two of its better-known exponents. But this English-language poetry was not uniquely Protestant in its orientation - Richard Stanihurst, uncle of the Renaissance polymath and Protestant polemicist James Ussher, combined his interest in writing metaphysical lyrics with the literary defence of the Catholic faith at the end of the sixteenth century. While it crossed confessional boundaries, this English-language poetry rarely moved beyond its coterie circulation. But a native literary culture did begin to appear. In the 1630s, Dublin felt like 'a city under the distant but perceptible influence of English-language Renaissance culture ... a city which thought of itself as an intellectual centre'.3 Its new cultural confidence emerged with its first printing of poetry, though it would be another generation and several political revolutions later before those publications appeared in anything other than short runs. The slow development of the publication of poetry can be partly explained by the difficulty of securing access to printing presses. When the teaching staff of Trinity College combined their efforts to produce Musarum Lachrymae (1630), a collection of verse elegising Catherine Fenton, the second wife of Richard Boyle, first Earl of Cork, they benefited from access to the printing facilities of the official stationers' office in Dublin, but most poetry written by Protestants in Ireland continued to be published in London.4 By the 1650s, responding to the new need for the rapid and widespread dissemination of news, printing presses had been established in several of the major Irish towns. But poets' access to publication did not markedly improve: these presses were strictly controlled, and were most often used for official business.5But, throughout the 1650s, and on both sides of the confessional division, English verse published in Ireland did make occasional appearances, and in all manner of literary contexts. At the beginning of the decade, Frances Cook, wife of the regicide judge John Cook, succeeded in finding a publisher for her verse in Cork, though her work, like that of her husband, was later reprinted in London. …
Read full abstract