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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
The Gratulationes Valdinenses is one of the extant Latin works of Gabriel Harvey, published in 1578, and first referred to in the gloss to the September Eclogue of the Shepheardes Calendar in the following year:
Mayster Gabriel Harvey: of whose speciall commendation, as well in poetrye as rhetorike and other choyce learning, we have lately had a sufficient tryall in diverse his workes, but specially in his Musarum Lachrymae, and his late Gratulationum Valdinensium, which boke, in the progresse at Audley in Essex, he dedicated in writing to her Majestie, afterward presenting the same in print unto her Highnesse at the worshipfull Maister Capells in Hertfordshire.
1 Gabrielis Harueij / Gratulationum Valdinensium / Libri Quatuor / Londini / Ex. of.—Henrici Binnemani. / 1578 / Mense Septembri.
2 Hitherto it has been taken for granted that Harvey presented the poems at Audley End on the day of the attendance by the nearby University of Cambridge, July 27. But Harvey's mention of Sussex (Gratulationes, i. 15. 2) certainly conflicts with Nichols's express information: “The Erle of Sussex was this daie from the Courte.” Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth (London, 1823), ii, 113. In his new rôle of courtier Harvey probably arrived with the court on July 26, and we know from Grat., i. [i]. 23 that his audience came after five days of their stay there.
3 Nichols, op. cit., ii, 222, briefly records the stop at Capel's on this day.
4 The only poems assumed to be additions are the Epilogus to Book i and the poems introduced as noua carmina at the end of ii and iii. These are the books addressed to the three heads of state, Elizabeth, Leicester, and Burghley. The fourth book was addressed to three younger courtiers, Oxford, Hatton, and Sidney and seems not to have been added to.
5 E. Meyer, “Machiavelli and the Elizabethan Drama” Litterarhistorische Forschungen (Weimar, 1897), vol. I, used them as examples of authentic anti-Machiavellianism in England. Such a view it is my intention to render untenable, although Meyer, writing before the publication of Harvey's marginal jottings on Machiavelli, had no reason for construing the satires in any other way.
6 The responsibility for this may be Nichols's, whose assumption (op. cit., ii, 110) that the whole Grat, was an account of the “Entertainment” given by the scholars of Cambridge could not be more misleading.
7 See Conyers Read, Secretary Walsingham (Oxford, 1925), i, 202, 295.
8 See Grat., iv. 17, Elegia ai eundem paulo ante discessum.
9 State Papers (Foreign), 1578–79, no. 149.
10 Leicester himself had no illusions about the Queen's serious intentions in this match (State Papers (Foreign), 1578–79, no. 161), but he permitted his followers to entertain them and to suppose Alençon to be his rival. Few people knew that he was already married to the Countess of Essex, certainly not Harvey, whose original address to his patron was largely a series of second-hand epigrams urging him to marry the Queen.
11 July 30 (Stale Papers (Foreign) 1578–79, no. 123). Cf. above, note 2.
12 State Papers (Spanish) 1568–79, nos. 521 and 614.
13 Have with You to Saffron-Waldon, Nashe's Works, ed. R. B. McKerrow (London, 1905), iii, 73 ff.
14 Grat., i. 13. 1–2 is evidence that the court remained longer than July 29, the dating of the last extant letters sent from Audley End.
15 Harvey's Letter Book, Camden Soc. Pub. (1884), p. 88.
16 Gabriel Harvey's Marginalia, 157. 13. (ed. G. C. Moore Smith (Shakespeare Head Press, 1913).
17 Letter-Book, p. 182. Cf. verbum tibi sat with letter to Spenser, 1579 (?) (ibid., pp. 79–80): “And I warrant you sum good fellowes amongst us begin nowe to be prettely well acquayntid with a certayne parlous booke callid, as I remember me, II Principe di Niccolo Machiavelli etc.—verbum intellegenti sat.” It is to be noted that this mystification occurs in connection with Harvey's confession to Spenser of his ineptitude in active life—an ineptitude that has brought on him some unnamed disgrace.
18 It is another coincidence that this was also the date on which Elizabeth took the final step of recalling her minister, Walsingham, from the Low Countries (State Papers (Foreign) 1578–79, no. 253).
19 Gentillet. Quoted by Lord Acton in his introduction to L. A. Burd's edition of Il Principe (Oxford, 1891), p. 53.
20 Acton's Introduction, op. cit., p. 51.
21 Farneworth, Anecdotes, in Works of Machiavelli (London, 1762), i, 448–449.
22 Paul Van Dyke, Catherine de Medicis (New York, 1927), ii, 104.
23 Meyer, op. cit., p. 7.
24 Meyer, op. cit., pp. 17–25.
25 Between them, the close friends, Philip Sidney and Daniel Rogers—see S. A. Pears, The Correspondence of Sir Philip Sidney and Hubert Languet (London, 1845), passim— knew every Protestant of importance on the continent. Harvey's acquaintance with Rogers, that elusive foreign agent of Elizabeth, has been remarked by Moore Smith (op. cit., p. 21). With Sidney, Harvey's intimacy is best demonstrated by the book addressed to him at Audley End.
Both Rogers and Sidney were at Audley End, and at least Rogers, at Hadham Hall when Harvey made his second presentation (Stale Papers (Foreign), 1578–79, no. 254). Is it too much to imagine their complicity in the “secrets and privityes” referred to in the letter to Arthur Capei? Is it an accident that Harvey prints so many epigrams by notorious Protestants, one of them, at least, previously unpublished (Grat., ii. 3)? All of the epigrams in the Grat, are by Protestants except for an Italian series lifted bodily out of Pietro Bizarro's (himself a Protestant agent) Varia Opuscula (Venice, 1565).
26 Passim.
27 Marginalia, 143.21.
28 E.g., Grat., ii. 9. 10–12.
29 Grat., ii. 8. 9–12:
30 Ibid., ii. 7. 27.
31 “Irasci, rude, et ferinum: parum dixi: certe quidem barbarum est, et prophanum, ullo modo irasci; nisi fortè simulatò, et Ironicè.” (Marg. 198. 29. Cf. 153. 33).
32 Grat., i. 15. 10.
33 Ibid., i. 20. 26–29:
34 Ibid., i. 25. 10–30.
35 The allusion to The Prince in the original “Greeting” addressed to Elizabeth at Audley End (Grat., i. 9. 27) suggests two things: that Harvey could mention the name without emotion, and—since he mentions it in connection with Osorio—that he had been recently dealing with other anti-Machiavellians beside Gentillet.
36 Nevertheless, the whole book is prefaced by a short disclamatory epigram in which he refers to his muse as a parrot (one who may give offense without meaning to).
37 See note 28.
38 Grat., ii, 9. 19–10. 1:
39 Grat., ii. 10. 21–11. 10:
40 Grat., ii. 11. 21–22.
41 Grat., ii. 11. 23–24:
42 Epistle Dedicatorie (Meyer, op. cit., p. 21).
43 Not only does the parrot-disclaimer reappear—this time directly before the noua carmina (Grat., iii. 7. 5)—but there is a curious attempt at suggesting that what follows was authorized by the Queen herself (Ibid., iii. 7. 11–12).
44 Grat., iii. 9. 27–10. 1:
45 Ibid., iii. 9. 21–4:
46 Sidney's Works (Ed. Feuillerat, Cambridge University Press, 1923) iii, 52.
47 Elizabeth spent several days at Audley End in 1571 (when Harvey was a newly-made fellow of Pembroke Hall) and all the talk was of the Anjou match. Cf., the letter of Robert Higford to Lawrence Banister, Aug. 29, Cal. of the MSS.—at Hatfield, i, 516.
48 State Papers (Spanish), 1568–79, no. 521.
49 McKerrow, op. cit., iii, 78.
50 Letter-book, p. 95.