Royalists Write the Death of Lord Hastings: Post-Regicide Funerary Propaganda

Abstract

Lachrymae Musarum; The Tears of the Muses, a volume of verse issued to commemorate the death of Lord Hastings in June 1649, has long been recognized as a covert attempt to mourn the death of Charles I. It is also susceptible to consideration as one of a number of royalist contributions to the propaganda skirmish fought out through funerary elegiac verse in the months after the regicide. Furthermore, it has not been previously noted that John Denham's and John Hall of Durham's contributions to Lachrymae Musarum borrowed heavily from Casimire Sarbiewski's 'Ode Against Tears.' As such, Denham's and Hall's contributions represent a particular kind of literary borrowing, one identified by Lois Potter as designed to generate and retain a coherent sense of royalist identity in the face of extreme pressure.