Concerning the Original by Ward:

From Caricature in the Puritan Period, by James Parton: pp. 806-820
          p. 809  Harper's new monthly magazine. / Volume 50, Issue 300
           Harper & Bros. May 1875 New York

The long dread of the Queen of Scots’s machinations ended only with her death in 1587. Soon after, the shadow of the coming Spanish Armada crept over Great Britain, which was not dispelled till the men of England defeated and scattered it in 1588. In 1605 Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot struck such terror to the Protestant mind that it has not, in this year, 1875, wholly recovered from it, as all may know who will converse with uninstructed people in the remoter counties of Great Britain. Raleigh was beheaded in 1618. The civil war began in 1642. In 1665 the plague desolated England, and in the next year occurred the great fire of London, good Protestants not doubting that both events were traceable to the fell influence of the Beast. The accession of James II., a Roman Catholic, filled the Puritans with new alarm in1685, and during the three anxious years of his reign their brethren, the Huguenots, were fleeing into all the Protestant lands from the hellish persecution of the priests who governed  Louis XIV.    Upon looking back at this period of agitation and alarm, it startles the mind to ob-serve in the catalogue of dates this one: “Shakspeare died, 1616.” It shows us, what the ordinary records do not show, that there are people who retain their sanity and serenity in the maddest times. The rapid succession of the plays—an average of near-ly two per annum—proves that there was a public for Shakespeare when all the world seemed absorbed in subjects least akin to art and humor. And how little trace we find of all those thrilling events in the  plays! He was a London actor when the Armada came; and during the year of the Gunpowder Plot he was probably meditating the grandest of all his themes, King  Lear! The picture entitled “Spayne and Rome Defeated’” was one of the most noted and influential broadsheets published during the Puritan period. It may properly be termed a broadsheet, since the copy of the original in the British Museum measures 201 inches by 13. The Puritans of England saw with  dismay the growing cordiality between James I. and the Spanish court, and watched with just apprehension the visit of Prince Charles to Spain and the prospect of a marriage between the heir-apparent and a Spanish princess. At this alarming crisis,1621, the sheet was composed in England, and sent over to Holland to be engraved and printed, Holland being then, and for a hundred and fifty years after, the printing-house and type-foundry of Northern Europe. Some of the Pilgrim Fathers of Massachusetts, then residing at Leyden, and still waiting to hear the first news of the May- flower company, who had sailed the year before, may have borne a hand in the work. Pastor  Robinson, we know, gained part of his livelihood by co-operating with brethren in England in the preparation of works   designed for distribution at home. Besides being one of the most characteristic specimens of Puritan caricature which have been preserved, it presents to us a  resume of history, as Protestants interpreted it, from the time of the Spanish Armada to that of Guy Fawkes—1588 to 1605. It appears to have been designed for circulation in Holland and Germany as well as in England, as the words and verses upon it are in English, Dutch, and Latin. The English  lines are these:“In Eighty-eight, Spayne, arm’d with potent might, Against our peacefull Land came on to fight; But windes and waves and fire in one conspire,To help the English, frustrate Spaynes desire.To second that the Pope in counsell sitts, For some rare stratagem they strayne their wits; November’s 5th, by powder they decree Great Brytanes state inmate should bee. But lice, whose never-slumbring Eye did view The dire intendments of this damned crew, Did soone prevent what they did thinke most sure.Thy mnercyes, Lord! for evermore endure.This interesting sheet was devised by Samuel Ward, a Puritan preacher of Ipswich, of great zeal and celebrity, who dedicated it, in the fashion of the day, thus: “To God. In memorye of his douhie deliveramnce from ye invincihie Navie and ye unmatcheahie powder     Treason, 1605.”It was a timely reminder. As we occasionally see in our own day a public man committing the absurdity of replying in a serious strain to a caricature, so, in 1621, the Spanish ambassador in London, Count Gondomar, called the attention of the British government to this engraving, complaining that it was calculated to revive the old an-tipathy of the English people to the Spanish  monarchy. The obsequious lords of the  Privy Council summoned Samuel Ward to appear before them. After examining him,they remanded him to the custody of their messenger, whose house was a place of confinement for such prisoners; and there he  remained. As there was yet no habeas  corpus act known among men, he could only protest his innocence of any ill designs  upon the Spanish monarchy, and humbly petition for release. He petitioned first the Privy Council; and they proving obdurate, he petitioned the king. He was set free at last, and he remained for twenty years a thorn in the side of those who dreaded “Spayne and Rome” less than they hated  Puritans and Parliaments. This persecution of Samuel Ward gave his print such celebrity that several imitated   From Malcolm, who copied it from the original in the British Museum. See Malcolm’s Cericeturing.Plate 22.   Voa. L.—No. 300.— editions or pirated editions of the work speedily appeared, of which four are preserved in the great collection of the British Museum, each differing from the original in details. Caricatures aimed directly at the Spanish embassador followed, but they are only re-markable for the explanatory words which accompany them. In one we read that the residence of Count Gondomar in England had “hung before the eyes of many good men like a prodigious comet, threatening worse effects to church and state than this other comet,” which had recently menaced both f rom the vault of heaven. “No ecdipse ofthe sunne,” continues the writer, “could more damnifle the earth, to make it barraine and the best things abortive, than did his interposition.” We learn also that when the count left England for a visit to his own country, in 1618,” there was an uproare and assault a day or two before his departure from London by the Apprentices, who seemed greedy of such an occasion to vent their own spleenes in doing him or any of his a mischiefe.” Another picture exhibits the odious Gondomar giving an account of his conduct in England to the “Spanishe Parliament,” in the course of which he attributes the British abhorrence of Spain to such  men as “Ward of Ipswich,” whom he describes as “light and unstayed wits,” intent on winning the airy applause of the vulgar,and to raise their desperate fortunes. Nor does he refrain from chuckling over the pen-alty inflicted upon that enemy of Spaynean  Rome: “And I think that Ward of Ipswich escaped not safely for his lewed and profane picture of ‘88 and their Powder Treason, one whereof, my Lord Archbishop, I sent you in a letter, that you might see the malice of these detestable Heretiques against his Holiness and the Catholic Church.” This broadsheet being entitled Vox Pojpuli, the writer concludes his explanation by styling the embassador “Fox Populi, Count Gondomar the Great.”Ward of Ipswich continued to be heard from occasionally during the first years of the reign of Charles I. Ipswich itself acquired a certain celebrity as a Puritan centre, and the name was given during the life- time of Samuel Ward to a town in Massachusetts, which is still thriving.

To send us an e.mail click here

Return to the page of  all images click here