STC 10937 (+ in UK; Folger, Huntington & Newberry Library only in USA). Madan, Oxford Books, I, p. 168.
As a young man the Rev. Charles FitzGeffry (c. 1575-1638) gained a reputation as a poet. In 1596 he published an epic poem, Sir Francis Drake, his honorable lifes commendation, and his tragicall deathes lamentation; several quotations from it appear in England’s Helicon, and Francis Meres referred to him as “yong Charles Fitz-Ieffrey, that high touring Falcon”. In 1601 he published a volume of Latin epigrams and epitaphs, Caroli Fitzgeofridi affaniae: sive epigrammatum libri tres, addressed to Drayton, Daniel, Harington, Campion, Spenser, Tarleton and Nash. The Blessed birth-day celebrated in some pious meditations (1634) was his final attempt at verse. John Davies of Hereford addressed a poem to him in The Scourge of Folly (1611) and Campion addressed two to him. Fitz-Geffrey contributed poems to Davies’s Microcosmus (1603), Sylvester’s Bartas, his Devine Weekes and Workes (1605) and William Vaughan’s Golden Grove (1608). He was born at Fowey in Cornwall in 1590 and was vicar of St. Dominick, near Saltash, a few miles up the Tamar from Plymouth (hence the Drake interest).
In these three sermons, dedicated to the Mayor of Plymouth, FitzGeffry, with much flowery description of the horrors of slavery and imprisonment at the hands of the Turks, preaches compassion for the victims and attempts to raise support for the infamous and unpopular Ship Money tax, part of which was intended to help rescue or redeem such prisoners who were mostly sailors and often from Devon or Cornwall. But it was not just sailors who were at risk as Barbary pirates would occasionally raid coastal villages in search of captives. The most notorious of theseraids was the so-called “Sack of Baltimore” on 20 June 1631 when at least people, mostly English settlers, from this village on the coast of West Cork were seized with only three reputedly ever returning. On p. 46 FitzGeffry reminds his audience of this:
“Can we forget that Tragicall transportation of our brethren from Baltamore into that Babilon, Barbary? All of them English, most of them Cornish, suddenly surprized in the silence of the night. They dreaded no disaster, they supposed themselves safe, they went to bed and laied themselves downe (as they hoped) to sleepe in safty. When suddenly their houses were broken up, they haled out of their beds, the husband, wife and children every one fast bound, carried away in three or fowre howres, and afterward so seperated as not suffered to meet againe, but every one left to lament others misery as well as his owne. It was not with them in that night as the Iudge saith it shall be at his comming; Two in one bed, the one taken and the other left; But two or three in one bed, Father, Mother, Child, seaven or more in an house all taken and not one left. What heart at this houre bleedes not at the remembrance of that nights Tragedy? The wife calls on her husband to helpe her. How can he help his Other selfe who cannot help his owne selfe? The poore child cries, O Mother keepe me, O Father keepe me, when Father and Mother are kept fast enough themselves from keeping and helping theirs. Oft had the poore litle ones when they were pettish being terrified with, The bug-beare comes to carry thee away: Now not bug-beares but Barbary beares are come to carry away Child, Mother, Father and all they can finde in the family. Some lost their lives fighting (but in vaine) to save their wives and children, herein happy that death prevented in them those miseries which theirs, surviving to greater sorrowes doe endure. For of the two, better it is to fall by the hands, then into the hands of those *Tyranous Turkes,*whose saving is worse then slaying, who, if they grant life, it is but to prolong griefe. May not the same or the like betide us, if God shall so appoint it? And are our merits better then theirs that God should not so appoint it?
Provenance: Dr Howard R. Knohl, Fox Pointe Collection, with bookplate, Forum Auctions, 31/1/2024, lot 75.
See also: Meek (Richard), Sympathy in Early Modern Literature and Culture (2023), pp. 241-2.
