The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson

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  • Letter 14, to William Drummond (1619)

Letter 14, to William Drummond (1619)

 Letter 14, to William Drummond of Hawthornden

To my worthy, honoured, and beloved friend, Mr William Drummond,

Edinburgh


Most loving and beloved sir,

Against which titles I should most knowingly offend if I made you not at length

some account of myself, to come even with your friendship. I am arrived safely, 5

with a most  catholic welcome, and my reports not unacceptable to His Majesty.

He professed (I thank God) some joy to see me, and is pleased to hear of the

purpose of  my book: to which I most earnestly solicit you for your promise of

the  inscriptions at Pinkie, some things concerning  the Loch of Lomond, touching

the government of Edinburgh, to urge  Master James Scot; and what else you 10

can procure for me with all speed. Especially I make it my request that you will

enquire for me whether the students’ method at St Andrews be the same with that

at Edinburgh, and so to assure me, or wherein they differ. Though these requests

be full of trouble, I hope they shall neither burden nor weary such a friendship,

whose commands to me I will ever interpret a pleasure. News we have none here, 15

 but what is making against the Queen’s funeral, whereof I have somewhat in

hand, which shall look upon you with the next.  Salute the beloved Fentons, the

Nisbets, the Scots, the  Livingstons, and all the honest and honoured names with

you: especially Mr James  Raith, his wife, your sister, etc. And if you forget yourself,

you believe not in 20

Your most true friend and lover,

Ben Jonson

London, 10th of May 1619

Letter 14 From Drummond, Works, ed. Sage, 1711, 154–5. [Editor: Ian Donaldson]
6 catholic universal.
8 my book ‘He is to write his foot pilgrimage hither, and to call it A Discovery’: Informations, 317. The work perished in the fire of 1623: see Und. 43.93–5.
9 inscriptions at Pinkie The Long Gallery at Pinkie Castle, Musselburgh, built in 1613 for Alexander Seton, Lord Chancellor of Scotland and first Earl of Dunfermline, has 21 panels of emblems based on the Emblemata Horatiana (Antwerp, 1607) of Otto van Veen and the Emblemata (Frankfurt, 1596) of J. J. Boissard and Denis Lebey de Batilly. See Bath (1994), 13, 38; Apted (1966), 16 and plate 30; Royal Commission (1929), 83–6 and plate.
9 the Loch of Lomond ‘He hath intention to write a fisher or pastoral play, and set the stage of it in the Lomond Lake’, Informations, 313–14. The work does not survive.
10 Master James Scot Of Edinburgh; related to Drummond’s brother-in-law, Sir John Scot of Scotstarvet, Director of Chancery and later Privy Councillor and Senator of the College of Justice.
16–17 but . . . next Queen Anne had died on 2 March 1619; her funeral was to take place on 13 May in Westminster Abbey. Jonson’s poem for this occasion, if ever completed, is not known to have survived (it is not among the Hawthornden papers).
17–19 Salute . . . etc. For the Fentons, see Letter (e), 3n.; for the Scots, see 10n. above. Sir William Nisbet of the Dean was a wealthy merchant who had been Provost of Edinburgh at the time of James’s visit in 1617, and was now Lord Provost; James Nisbet was a town councillor. They had both been concerned with the vote of the Magistrates and Town Council to make Jonson an honorary burgess during his visit to Edinburgh (see Life Records, 57, 58, Electronic Edition). Patrick Nisbet was an advocate associated with the College (later University) of Edinburgh, on whose behalf he had welcomed King James in May 1617 (Adamson, 1618, 43). Several prominent members of the Livingston family were resident in Edinburgh in 1619. James Raith was an Edinburgh advocate and businessman, married to Eliza née Fowler (possibly a relative of Drummond’s). See Masson (1893), 803–4, and (1894), clxvi–clxviii.
18 Livingstones] Levingstons Sage
19 Raith] Writh Sage