⏵︎ “To plead my faith,” a sonnet attributed to Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, has often been read in relation to his fraught relationship with Queen Elizabeth I. Set to music by Daniel Batchelar, the poem was published in Robert Dowland’s 1610 collection A Musicall Banquet. The print identifies it as “The Right Honourable Robert, Earle of Essex: Earle Marshall of England. To Plead my faith where faith hath no reward.” Its emphasis on unrewarded faith recalls the Latin motto Dat poenas laudata fides (“Praised faith brings penalties”) on Nicholas Hilliard’s miniature Young Man among Roses, whose sitter has traditionally been identified as Essex.
Portrait miniature Young Man among Roses, by Nicholas Hilliard, c. 1587; the sitter is traditionally identified as Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex (1565–1601). Victoria and Albert Museum, P.163-1910.
Essex’s rise at court from the mid-1580s to his execution in 1601 was marked by ambition, fierce quarrels with Elizabeth, and uneasy reconciliations. At moments of conflict, he sometimes withdrew from court and sought to recover the Queen’s favour through letters and verse. His poems use the language of courtly love but also invite biographical readings in relation to Elizabeth. Lines such as “I loved her whom all the world admir’d” and “I was refused of her that can love none” have therefore been read as personal allusions, although they do not by themselves establish a specific occasion. Ben Jonson’s much later reported remark about Elizabeth’s body belongs to early modern court gossip and should not be treated as evidence for the poem’s meaning. Another line, “I was as fond as ever she was fair, yet loved I not more then I now despair,” recalls a sentiment from a letter Essex wrote to the Queen during one of his retreats at Wanstead: “I do carry the same heart I was wont, though now overcome with unkindness, as before I was conquered by beauty.”
British Library, Add. MS 24665, f. 48v.
British Library, Add. MS 24665, usually known as “Giles Earle’s Book,” is a collection of songs compiled c. 1615–26 for treble voice and bass, written on facing pages rather than in score. The manuscript does not name composers, but concordances identify music associated with John Dowland, Thomas Campion, Daniel Batchelar, and others. Many songs preserve written-out embellishments.
The manuscript includes a heavily embellished version of Batchelar’s song at f. 48v. It transmits only treble and bass, whereas the 1610 print includes lute tablature. The original song’s galliard-like triple metre is recast in quadruple time in Earle’s version, creating a different rhythmic framework for its extensive ornamentation.
Performance practices and modern responses to written-out divisions have changed over time, and Earle’s version of “To plead my faith” preserves an exceptionally elaborate early seventeenth-century style of vocal ornamentation. Its profusion of divisions may recall the kind of “blind Division-making” criticized by John Dowland in “To the Reader” of A Pilgrimes Solace (1612), although Dowland was not commenting on this manuscript specifically.
Earle’s divisions nevertheless display considerable rhythmic freedom. They sometimes exceed the original note values, making the intended rhythm ambiguous. As in other ornamented sources, penultimate or antepenultimate notes may be expanded to accommodate elaborate cadential diminutions; similar treatment occasionally appears near the beginnings of phrases. The divisions often seem more musically than textually motivated, placing ornamentation on comparatively unimportant words or unaccented syllables. This may contrast with writers such as Giovanni Battista Bovicelli, who emphasized careful coordination of words and notes. Earle also fills in leaps and departs from the original melody, using climax and gradatio to intensify Batchelar’s rising line—techniques found in both English and Italian sources.
‘To plead my faith’ from Robert Dowland’s A Musicall Banquet, 1610.
The comparative edition incorporates the divisions from Earle’s songbook while retaining the original galliard form of Robert Dowland’s 1610 print. The embellished version appears on a small staff above the original setting. The bass line is transcribed from both Earle’s and Dowland’s versions; small notes with downward stems represent Earle’s bass line. Corrections are indicated by small notes above the staff showing the original note values, and editorial accidentals appear in brackets.
Other contemporaneous manuscripts—including Oxford, Christ Church, Mus. 439 and Mus. 87; Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MU.MS. 782; and British Library, Add. MS 29481—also preserve comparable rhythmic freedom in vocal ornamentation. Together, these sources offer modern singers a range of models for divisions, from mid-sixteenth-century cadential ornamentation to the more flamboyant styles of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.
References
Toft, R. (2014). With Passionate Voice: Re-Creative Singing in Sixteenth-Century England and Italy. Oxford University Press.
Poulton, D. (1982). John Dowland. University of California Press.
Strong, R. (1986). The Cult of Elizabeth: Elizabethan Portraiture and Pageantry. University of California Press.
Jones, E. H. (1989). The Performance of English Song: 1610–1670. Garland Publishing.
Marinčič, D. (2024). “‘Nach seinem selbst gefallen mit der Mensur wexln’: Instances in Sixteenth-Century Keyboard Music Where Ornamentation and Changing Note Values Might Induce the Player to Vary the Beat.” In A. Campagne and M. Grassl (Eds.), ‘Universum rei harmonicae concentum absolvunt’: The Harpsichord in the Sixteenth Century (pp. 79–111). mdwPress. https://doi.org/10.21939/harpsichord-16c-06
Jorgens, E. B. (Ed.). (1986). English Song 1600–1675: Facsimiles of Twenty-Six Manuscripts and an Edition of the Texts. Garland Publishing.
