When the king enjoys his own again (sometimes known as The king shall enjoy his own again) is a Cavalier ballad written by Martin Parker during the English Civil War (first published in 1643). It was later adopted by Jacobites. According to the historian Dr. Bernard Capp, this song was perhaps the most popular song in mid-seventeenth century England. [1] The eighteenth century critic Joseph Ritson called it "the most famous and popular air ever heard in this country". [2]
One of the Irish Jacobite regiments formed in the 1690s from veterans of James II's Irish campaign, the Régiment Rooth (nicknamed 'the Pretender's body-guard'), marched to ‘When the king enjoys his own again’. [3] Upon Queen Mary II's death in 1694, Bristol Jacobites publicly rejoiced with bell-ringings and danced through the streets to the song. [4] In September 1711 a commander of a company of London militia, Captain John Silk, had his trained bands march to the song through the City. [5] In 1713 the Tory clergyman Henry Sacheverell preached to the Sons of the Clergy and afterwards attended a gathering with (amongst others) Dr. Bisse (the Bishop of Hereford) and Francis Atterbury (the Bishop of Rochester). The song was played by the musicians and met with such a favourable reception that it was repeated and when the musicians tried to play a different song they were met with great hissing. [6]
After the accession of the first Hanoverian king, George I, there was a resurgence of Jacobitism in the form of celebrating Charles II's Restoration Day (29 May). On that day in 1715 Bristol Jacobites were heard humming the tune. [7] At Oxford on Restoration Day in 1716 local Jacobite gownsmen disrupted attempted Whig celebrations of it by playing the tune. [8] According to the historian Daniel Szechi, this was the most popular Jacobite song of the period. [9]
In February 1716 two Exeter College, Oxford undergraduates were beaten by officers for playing the song. [10]
In 1722 in St Albans the future MP for the town, Thomas Gape, had musicians play the song during an election riot. [11] [12]
In December 1746 the Jacobite officer Thomas Chadwick played the tune on the church organs at Derby and Lancaster, to the entertainment of Jacobite officers. [13]
On 23 February 1748, the birthday of the Pretender's youngest son, two Oxford University undergraduates (James Dawes of St Mary Hall and John Whitmore of Balliol College) openly declared for the Pretender, for which they were charged with uttering treason and given bail. However, in October the pair toured Oxford's colleges with two musicians who played ‘When the king enjoys his own again’ and they were subsequently expelled, fined and sentenced to two years' imprisonment. [14] [15] [16]
Let rogues and cheats prognosticate | Though for a time we see Whitehall |
What Booker doth prognosticate
Concerning kings' or kingdoms' fate?
I think myself to be as wise
As he that gazeth on the skies;
My skill goes beyond the depth of a pond,
Or rivers in the greatest rain,
Thereby I can tell all things will be well
When the King enjoys his own again.
2. There's neither swallow, dove, nor dade,
Can soar more high, or deeper wade,
Nor show a reason from the stars
What causeth peace or civil wars;
The Man in the Moon may wear out his shoon
By running after Charles his wain:
But all's to no end, for the times will not mend
Till the King enjoys his own again.
3. Though for a time we see Whitehall
With cobwebs hanging on the wall
Instead of silk and silver brave,
Which formerly it used to have,
With rich perfume in every room,
Delightful to that princely train,
Which again you shall see, when the time it shall be,
That the King enjoys his own again.
4. Full forty years the royal crown
Hath been his father's and his own;
And is there any one but he
That in the same should sharer be?
For who better may the sceptre sway
Than he that hath such right to reign?
Then let's hope for a peace, for the wars will not cease
Till the King enjoys his own again.
5. Did Walker no predictions lack
In Hammond's bloody almanack?
Foretelling things that would ensue,
That all proves right, if lies be true;
But why should not he the pillory foresee,
Wherein poor Toby once was ta'en?
And also foreknow to the gallows he must go
When the King enjoys his own again? (1)
6. Till then upon Ararat's hill
My hope shall cast her anchor still,
Until I see some peaceful dove
Bring home the branch I dearly love;
Then will I wait till the waters abate
Which now disturb my troubled brain,
Else never rejoice till I hear the voice
That the King enjoys his own again.
Jacobitism was a political ideology advocating the restoration of the Catholic House of Stuart to the British throne. When James II of England chose exile after the November 1688 Glorious Revolution, the Parliament of England ruled he had "abandoned" the English throne, which was given to his Protestant daughter Mary II of England, and her husband William III. On the same basis, in April the Scottish Convention awarded Mary and William the throne of Scotland.
Jacobite Relics is a two volume collection of songs related to the Jacobite risings, compiled by the Scottish poet and novelist James Hogg on commission from the Highland Society of London in 1817. Most of the songs in the collection are Jacobite, and a minority are Whig. A number of the songs were written or adapted by Robert Burns and scholars speculate as to how many of them were authored or at least substantially altered by Hogg himself.
The Tories were a loosely organised political faction and later a political party, in the Parliaments of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom. They first emerged during the 1679 Exclusion Crisis, when they opposed Whig efforts to exclude James, Duke of York from the succession on the grounds of his Catholicism. Despite their fervent opposition to state-sponsored Catholicism, Tories opposed his exclusion because of their belief that inheritance based on birth was the foundation of a stable society.
The Act 9 Geo. 1. c. 22, commonly known as the Black Act, or the Waltham Black Act, and sometimes called the Black Act 1722, the Black Act 1723, the Waltham Black Act 1722, the Criminal Law Act 1722, or the Criminal Law Act 1723, was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain. It was passed in 1723 in response to a series of raids against landowners by two groups of poachers, known as the Blacks from their habit of blacking their faces when they undertook the raids. The Act was expanded over the years and greatly strengthened the criminal code by specifying over 200 capital crimes, many with intensified punishment. Arson, for example, had its definition expanded to include the new crime of burning haystacks.
The Jacobite succession is the line through which Jacobites believed that the crowns of England, Scotland, and Ireland should have descended, applying male preference primogeniture, since the deposition of James II and VII in 1688 and his death in 1701. It is in opposition to the legal line of succession to the British throne since that time.
Charlwood Lawton was an English lawyer and phrase-making pamphleteer, a Whig of Jacobite views. He invented the term "Whiggish Jacobite", used to point out the difference between those who shared his opinions, and the nonjuror faction. After the Battle of La Hogue of 1692, the exiled James II of England became more receptive to Lawton's range of arguments. Lawton promoted "civil comprehension", i.e. the removal of all religious tests for the holding of public office. He was a prolific author of subversive literature, to whom some uncertain attributions are made. He is credited with the concept that the Glorious Revolution was a constitutional charade that fell short of its ideals.
The Nonjuring schism refers to a split in the established churches of England, Scotland and Ireland, following the deposition and exile of James II and VII in the 1688 Glorious Revolution. As a condition of office, clergy were required to swear allegiance to the ruling monarch; for various reasons, some refused to take the oath to his successors William III and II and Mary II. These individuals were referred to as Non-juring, from the Latin verb iūrō, or jūrō, meaning "to swear an oath".
Martin Parker was an English ballad writer, and probably a London tavern-keeper.
The Jacobite uprising in Cornwall of 1715 was an unsuccessful Jacobite attempt at launching a rebellion against the Hanoverian regime which took place in the county of Cornwall.
The Planned French Invasion of Britain, took place in March 1708 during the War of the Spanish Succession. Hoping to divert British resources from Flanders, a French Navy expedition was ordered to transport 5,000–6,000 soldiers to northeast Scotland. Once landed, they would help local Jacobites restore James Francis Edward Stuart to the throne of Great Britain.
The Jacobite rising of 1745 was an attempt by Charles Edward Stuart to regain the British throne for his father, James Francis Edward Stuart. It took place during the War of the Austrian Succession, when the bulk of the British Army was fighting in mainland Europe, and proved to be the last in a series of revolts that began in March 1689, with major outbreaks in 1715 and 1719.
The Jacobite rising of 1715 was the attempt by James Edward Stuart to regain the thrones of England, Ireland and Scotland for the exiled Stuarts.
Eleanor Oglethorpe (1684–1775), later Marquise de Mézières, was an English Jacobite who settled in France after James II was deposed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. She served as an agent and advisor to James III "The Old Pretender" after the death of his father in 1701. Eleanor married in 1707 Eugène Marie de Béthisy, Marquis de Mézières, with whom she had seven children; their descendants include members of royal families throughout Europe.
William King was an English academic and writer, Principal of St Mary Hall, Oxford from 1719, He was known for strongly held Jacobite views, and as a satirist and poet.
Paul Kléber Monod is a Canadian-born academic historian specializing in Jacobitism and British history in the 17th and 18th centuries. Since 1984 he has taught at Middlebury College, Vermont, where he is now A. Barton Hepburn Professor of History, and he is the author of a number of books and articles dealing with his period.
The coronation riots of October 1714 were a series of riots in southern and western England in protest against the coronation of the first Hanoverian king of Great Britain, George I.
In the spring and summer of 1715 a series of riots occurred in England in which High Church mobs attacked over forty Dissenting meeting-houses. The rioters also protested against the first Hanoverian king of Britain, George I and his new Whig government. The riots occurred on symbolic days: 28 May was George I's birthday, 29 May was the anniversary of Charles II's Restoration and 10 June was the birthday of the Jacobite Pretender, James Francis Edward Stuart.
The Last News From France is an English broadside ballad from the 17th century. It tells the story of Charles II's escape to France following the Battle of Worcester, as told by the man who helped him escape by dressing as a woman. Sung to the tune of When the King Enjoys His Own Again. Copies of the broadside can be found at the University of Glasgow Library, the British Library, and Magdalene College, Cambridge. Facsimiles are also available on-line for public consumption.
The Jacobite Rising of 1719 was a failed attempt to restore the exiled James Francis Edward Stuart to the throne of Great Britain. Part of a series of Jacobite risings between 1689 and 1745, it was supported by Spain, then at war with Britain during the War of the Quadruple Alliance.
"Nero the Second" or "Nero II" is a traditional ballad that was popular amongst Jacobites in Great Britain and Ireland during the first half of the eighteenth century.