John Day uses the phrase Beggars Bush in the common literary usage twice in publications which cannot be precisely dated. Day was a jobbing playwright, working for Philip Henslowe and others. The old DNB described him as “one of the most neglected playwrights of the Elizabethan period: a distinction which is, for the most part, justified”. Ben Jonson described him as a “rogue” and he probably killed the playwright Henry Porter with a rapier. However, we may have sympathy with his own description of himself that in the end “notwithstanding . . . Industry . . . he was forct to take a napp at Beggars Bushe”.
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Posted: March 27th, 2011 | Filed under: Writers | Tags: Ben Jonson, Francis Kirkman, Henry Chettle, Henry Porter, Literary, Saxton, proverb | No Comments »
Thomas Heywood is significant because he does not use Beggars Bush when he might have done, but he does associate beggars with bushes. This song appears to be the source or have a common source with, a later ballad Londons Ordinary which does refer to Beggars Bush.
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Posted: March 19th, 2011 | Filed under: Writers | Tags: Cambridge, Coldharbour, Francis Beaumont, Francis Kirkman, John Taylor, London, Londons Ordinary, Saxton, Southwark, St Giles, derogatory, pubs | No Comments »
“I have here made bold to present to your illiterate protection, a beggarly Pamphlet of my threed-bare invention . . . I thought to have dedicated it to Beggars Bush, neere Andever, or to his Hawthorne brother within a mile of Huntingdon; but I considered at last, that the laps of your long Coate could shelter me as well [o]r better than any beggarly Thorne-bush.”
The Fool
Taylor’s mock dedication from the introduction to his pamphlet was directed towards Archy Armstrong, King James’s Fool, and refers to his coat of motley, the symbol of the Fool. Taylor despised Armstrong, who was renowned for his illiteracy and venality. He refers elsewhere to Armstrong’s “nimble tongue, to make other mens money runne into your purse” and called him “the bright eye-dazeling mirrour of mirth, adelantado of alacrity, the pump of pastime, spout of sport and Regent of ridiculous Confabulations”.
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Posted: March 19th, 2011 | Filed under: Writers, The Play | Tags: Andover, Ben Jonson, Brian Twyne, Elector Palatine, Godmanchester, Huntingdon, John Fletcher, John Taylor, Philip Henslowe, Saxton, beggars, bush, errors, proverb | No Comments »
This is the best known Beggars Bush site, though for the wrong reason, and through unusual sources. The site was on Ermine Street, which was the main northern road west of the fens. John Walker’s The Universal Gazetteer (London 1798) lists two Beggars Bushes, including this one and another in Middlesex at Enfield.
It is now the site of the Wood Green Animal Refuge, at King’s Bush Farm.
It is on a summit standing at 138ft above sea level in an area where the average height of the surrounding country is closer to 50ft. From London it is the last of a series of rises, and in both directions the trees on the summit stand out against the skyline. It would be widely visible, not only from the Great North Road, (A1198) but from the roads to Stevenage & London (A1) and the road to Cambridge (A14). It would be passed by travellers from London to the north of England.
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Posted: March 13th, 2011 | Filed under: Places | Tags: Andover, Brewer, Godmanchester, Huntingdonshire, John Taylor, Map, Saxton, Thomas Fuller, anthologies, naming story, print, proverb | No Comments »
