Sir John Eliot on Ben Jonson and Pens-for-Hire in General.

John Eliot was born on April 20, 1592, the son of a Devonshire squire removed to Cornwall. His father died in 1609 leaving him possessed of a modest estate. As was the habit of the young gentleman of the time, he left Oxford without a degree, studied at the Inns of Court and traveled briefly on the continent.

Eliot married into more Cornish money and eight children. He was early elected to Parliament. Having spent a portion of his travels in France with George Villiers may have brought him into the circles of the singularly treacherous Royal Court of James I. He was knighted in 1618.

Sir John was also an amateur poet of considerable opinion and expressiveness. He wisely kept his satires and descriptions restricted to the social side of the Court. In his poem “To the Lord Chamberlain,” William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke,[1] we get a snapshot of Ben Jonson.

That Ionson much of what he has does owe

To you, and to your Familie, and is never

Slow to professe that,[2]

Jonson, and Court poets in general, and their manner of thriving, get considerable attention in his poems. He could not imagine writing poems to order.

I would not, for a pension or a place

Part so with mine own Candor

Eliot had no use for hired pens. He repeatedly cited Jonson as his prime example — Ben having pension, place and great care to please his patrons.

Ben dedicated his play Catiline and his Epigrams, from history’s first collected folio edition of an English author’s works, published in 1616, to William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, and Lord Chamberlain. Soon after[3], he was awarded a Royal pension of 100 marks (about ₤65) annually. This was roughly equivalent to $17,500 in today’s money.[4] He added this to the Royal Treasury’s generous payments for his regular Court Masques and occasional courtier’s payment for a private Masque.

It was understood (at least by Eliot), that the hat-trick was to tap the King’s resources to reward one’s poet.

THey that give wine to Poets, noble friend,

Verses receive, they need not verses send;

Onely your self that all men can out do,

Did send your Poet wine and verses too.

*

The gift was rare, but there's a better thing,

You drew it from the bosome of a king;[5]

This from a poem to Endymion Porter, favorite to King Charles I. Surely this explains the source of Charles’ 1530 order to

give and graunt unto the said Benjamin Johnson and his assigns, one terse of Canary Spanish wine yearly: to have, hold, perceive, receive, and take the said terse of Canary Spanish wine unto the said Benjamin Johnson and his assigns during the term of his natural life out of our store of wines yearly, and from time to time remayninge at or in our cellers within or belonging to our palace of Whitehall.[6]

Thus the Herbert’s rewards were gernally given from the Royal Treasury. On this occasion, as, it would appear, Porter’s gift came from the King’s cellars.

While by Eliot’s description, Jonson’s generous treatment came largely from intervention of the Herbert family, the historical records inform us that most of the gifts were drawn from the Royal Treasury. But not all of their gifts. From William Drummond’s transcription of his Conversations with Jonson, whom the former had hosted in 1619, we learn that:

Every first day of the new year he had 20lb. sent him from the Earl of Pembrok to buy bookes.[7]

Through various means, Ben Jonson owed his bit of personal wealth and the access it gave him to the Court to the Herbert brothers.

For his part, Eliot subscribed entirely to the old codes of conduct. A gentleman did not publish his poems. He tells us so in his poem “To His Book”

The only friends to whom I would commend thee,

Are only those to whom I humbly send thee:

Kisse their fair hands, and at their noble feet

Stand and do pennance, in a paper sheet.[8]

His “book” is a manuscript hand-copied only for his friends. Gentlemen simply did not publish their poems.

He shudders to think that the printer’s title page of a book of his might be posted on the pillars of St. Paul’s like so many advertisements for the poetry of so many solicitous scribblers. Should a publisher get hold of it and seek license to publish it from the Stationers’ Company:

IF you shall make Pauls Pillars Pennance do

In any sheet of mine, or set to view

The Title of this Book on any Post,

I wish your expectation may be lost;[9]

It is for this reason that we have his poems “By No body must know whom” more than 20 years after his death. His clear directions forbid any such thing. We can only be thankful that some intermediary eventually chose to ignore the curses of the author.

There would seem to be nothing in the record to explain Ben Jonson’s remarkable good fortune in the year 1621, though. In July of the year his pension was increased from 100 marks to ₤100. In early October he was awarded a reversionary grant from the King, by letters patent, for the office of Master of the Revels. In late October his pension was again increased to ₤200.

Perhaps he was busy on the translation of Barclay's Argenis that the King ordered him to execute.

Barclay's Argenis has grown so scarce that the price has risen from 55s. to 145s.; the King has ordered Ben Jonson to translate it, but he will not be able to equal the original. . . . At a masque [Jonson 's Masque of Augurs] he sat between Gondomar and Don Carlos de Colonna the new Spanish Ambassador.[10]

Generous gifts were not bestowed without expectations, of course. The patron who kept a poet expected that poet to be ready upon command. Whatever the command might be. If so, however, the work does not seem to have survived.

Ben’s fortunes did not come only from the Herbert brothers and their families. Our informant names the Earl of Portland, as well.

Your verses are commended and tis true,

That they were very good, I mean to you;

For they return'd you Ben as I was tould,

A certain sum of forty pound in gold:

The verses then being rightly understood,

His Lordship not Ben Iohnson made them good.[11]

When exactly this bit of hire occurred is not specified but an Jonson’s “Epithalamium” upon the Earl’s nuptials seems likely. At the beginning of Charles I’s reign, then, we see Honest Ben shifting to continue his favor with the new insiders at Court.

 

---

[1] William’s brother, Philip Herbert, could have been the chamberlain to which the poem was addressed.

[2] Eliot, John. POEMS OR EPIGRAMS, SATYRS, ELEGIES, SONGS and SONNETS, Upon several Persons and Occasions. (1658), 110-1.

[3] Feb. 1, 1616 [O.S.]

[4] Pounds Sterling to Dollars: Historical Conversion of Currency (University of Wyoming). https://www.uwyo.edu/numimage/currency.htm

[5] Eliot, 23-4. “To his Noblest Friend Mr. Endimion Porter upon Verses writ by Ben. Johnson.”

[6] Adams, Joseph Quincy. The Jonson Allusion Book, (1922). 155. Citing Whalley. Citing Order of the Treasury, “ex per Sir Robert Heath.”

[7] Drummond, William. Notes of Ben Jonson's Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden Anno. 1619. (1842). 22.

[8] Eliot, 10.

[9] Ibid. 11. “To the Stationer if need be.”

[10] Adams, 126. Citing Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, James I, 1622, p. 390. John Chamberlain to Sir Dudley Carleton, May 11, 1622.

[11] Ibid. 28. “To Ben Johnson again, upon his verses dedicated to the Earl of Portland, Lord Treasurer.”

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