The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson

  • You are here:
  • /
  • Works
  • /
  • Charles Cavendish to His Posterity

Charles Cavendish to His Posterity

  Charles Cavendish to His Posterity

 Sons, seek not me among these polished stones——

 These only hide part of my flesh and bones,

Which, did they ne’er so neat or proudly dwell,

Will all  turn dust, and may not make me swell.

Let such as justly have outlived all praise 5

Trust in the tombs their  care-full friends do raise;

I made my life my monument,  and yours——

 To which there’s no material that endures,

Nor yet inscription like  it. Write but that,

And teach your  nephews it to emulate: 10

It will be matter loud enough to tell

Not when I died, but how I lived. Farewell.


From which happiness, he was translated to the better, on the 4th of April,  1617. Yet

not without the sad and weeping remembrance of his sorrowful Lady Katherine,

second daughter to Cuthbert, late Lord Ogle, and sister to Jane, present Countess 15

of Shrewsbury,  who, of her piety, with her two surviving sons, have dedicated this

humble monument to his memory, and do all desire in their time to be gathered

to his dust, expecting the happy hour of resurrection when these garments, here

put off, shall be put on glorified.

Charles Cavendish Esquire

Deceased

William Cavendish

Knight

Charles Cavendish

Esquire surviving.20

M=Monument at Welbeck Abbey
Charles Cavendish to His Posterity The poem is on the monument of Sir Charles Cavendish (1553–4 Apr. 1617) of Welbeck Abbey in Notts. The monument covers the south wall of the Cavendish Chapel at Bolsover (illustrated in Scodel, 1991, 26), which was erected in 1618 (A. Collins, 1752, 23; see also G. Parry, 1994a). Given that the poem is dated 1618 in the Newcastle MS (BL Harley MS 4955) it is likely that it was composed in that year rather than in 1617, the year of Cavendish’s death (which H&S erroneously record as 1619; see Turberville (1938), 1.41–2). Cavendish was the father of Jonson’s patron William Cavendish, first Duke of Newcastle (see Und. 53 and 59), for whom the Newcastle MS was prepared. The copy in the Newcastle MS (on which, see Kelliher, 1993) may derive from a funerary placard similar to that for Vincent Corbett (see Und. 12 headnote), which would have been used at the funeral to illustrate the planned monument, and which would have remained in the Cavendish family’s possession. See ‘Jane Ogle’ headnote, 5.713. In the MS Jonson’s lines are followed by a list of Charles Cavendish’s virtues attributed to ‘Mr Lukin, a Mathemat[ic]ian’ (‘Whom Knowledge, zeal sincerity made religious’, etc.). (For Lukin, see Cavendish Ent., 168 and n.) The prose note which follows Lukin’s inscription is reproduced here: it is firmly ascribed to Jonson in the Newcastle MS. For discussion of the origins of this poem in Jonson’s journey into Scotland, see ‘Foot-Voyage’ in the Electronic Edition, and Loxley (2009). [Editor: Colin Burrow]
1 Sons Two sons survived: William and Charles.
2 Scodel (1991), 31 compares Seneca, De Consolatione Ad Marciam, 25.1: Proinde non est quod ad sepulchrum filii tui curras; pessima eius . . . istic iacent, ossa cineresque, non magis illius partes quam vestes aliaque tegimenta corporum, ‘so there is no need to run to your son’s tomb: the worst of him lies there, bones and ashes which are not more part of him than his clothes and the other coverings of his body’ and the angel’s words to the women who visits Christ’s tomb: ‘Why seek ye the living among the dead?’ (Luke, 24.5).
4 turn] JnB 47; be M
6 care-full The hyphenation in the Newcastle MS registers the pun on ‘dutiful’ and ‘full of woe’.
7 and yours The chapel was large enough to contain Sir Charles’s children (Charles was also buried there, although William was interred at Westminster Abbey); but ‘monument’ also plays on OED, 5b: ‘something that gives warning’.
8 To which In comparison with which.
9 it. Write] M; it writt JnB 47
10 nephews descendants (OED, †4).
13 1617] M; 1618 JnB 47
16 who] JnB 47; She M