The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson

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Letter 15, to the Earl of Newcastle (1631)

Letter   15, to William Cavendish, Earl of Newcastle

A letter to the Earl of Newcastle


My Lord,

The faith of a fast friend, with the duties of an humble servant, and the hearty

prayers of a religious  beadsman, all kindled upon this altar to Your Honour,  my

honourable Lady, the hopeful issue, and your right noble brother, be ever my 5

sacrifice.

 It is the lewd printer’s fault that I can send Your Lordship no more of my book

done. I sent you one piece before, The Fair, by Master Withrington, and now I

send you this other morsel, the fine gentleman that walks in town, The Fiend;

but before  he will perfect the rest, I fear, he will come himself to be a part, under 10

the title of The Absolute Knave, which he hath played with me.  My printer and I

shall afford subject enough for a tragicomedy, for with his delays and vexation I

am almost become blind; and if heaven be so just in the metamorphosis to turn

him into that creature he most  assimilates, a dog with a bell, to lead me between

Whitehall and my lodging, I may bid the world good night. 15

And so I do.

Ben Jonson

Letters 15–19, from BL Harley MS. 4955, (‘Newcastle MS’), were written to Jonson’s most important patron during the final period of his life, William Cavendish (bapt. 1593, d. 1676), Viscount Mansfield (1620); Earl (1628) and later Duke (1665) of Newcastle, lover of music, poetry, drama, fencing, and horsemanship. Jonson addressed Und. 53 and 59 to Newcastle, and wrote Welbeck for him in celebration of Charles’s visit to Welbeck Abbey in 1633. Jonson’s advice on the education of children in Discoveries 1163ff. may have been written for Newcastle’s benefit; Lovel in The New Inn appears to reflect aspects of his character. The present letter (Harley MS. 4955, fol. 202v) was probably written early in 1631. [Editor: Ian Donaldson]
4 beadsman ‘One paid or endowed to pray for others; a pensioner or almsman charged with the duty of praying for the souls of his benefactors’; hence, by extension, an inmate of an almshouse or (in Scotland) a licensed beggar (OED).
4–5 my honourable . . . brother Cavendish’s first wife was the heiress Elizabeth, née Bassett, widow of Henry Howard; they had married in 1618. Elizabeth d. in 1643. In 1631 their ‘hopeful issue’ were Jane (b. 1622), Charles (b. 1626?), Elizabeth (b. 1627?), and Henry (b. 1630). William’s younger and ‘right noble brother’ was the mathematician Sir Charles Cavendish (1595?–1654).
7–11 The ‘lewd printer’ is John Beale, who in 1631 printed for Robert Allott Bartholomew Fair and The Devil Is an Ass (whose titles are facetiously referred to here) together with The Staple of News as part of a projected ‘second volume’ of Jonson’s Works. For discussion of this doomed project, see Textual Essay to F2(2), and Loewenstein (2002), 202ff. ‘Master Withrington’ (who has delivered a copy of Bart. Fair to Cavendish) is otherwise unknown.
10 he i.e. Beale.
11–15 My printer . . . night Jonson’s references to his failing eyesight may well be humorously exaggerated, but testify to the close attention he was still paying to the printing of his works in the final years of his life. Despite his stroke of 1628, he was evidently still able to walk the streets, albeit with assistance.
14 assimilates resembles (OED, †5).