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Dudley Carleton's Prorogation and 'Poor Young Pope' Epitaphs Letter, 1608/9

Verified With Contextual Identification Ready witness packet

Dudley Carleton's prorogation and “poor young Pope” epitaphs letter

Central finding

From Eton on 13 January 1608 Old Style, Dudley Carleton sent Sir Henry Neville a compact note about two different forms of printed or manuscript circulation. First, Parliament's prorogation was now in print, allowing Neville to continue his good housekeeping until November. Second, Carleton enclosed a pair of epitaphs on the poore yong Pope, asking Neville to show them to Sir Richard Brooke.

The letter is datelined 1608 under the English Old Style calendar and is best normalized as 13 January 1608/9. A public calendar records the printed prorogation proclamation on 4 January and a near-verbal parallel on 19 January, when Carleton sent Chamberlain verses on the same poor young Pope from Eton.

This is the reciprocal half of a two-way documentary relationship. Neville had written to Dudley on 8 April 1606, asking for information about a marriage overture and thanking him for good offices. The present letter proves that Dudley later wrote directly back into Neville's political, household, and manuscript-circulation world.

Physical and archival control

The letter is D/EN/F6/1/15 within the RBA miscellaneous correspondence file, publicly catalogued as Miscellaneous correspondence, of Sir Henry Neville. The recto begins S^r, is signed Dudley Carleton, and is datelined from Eton. The outer leaf carries a later from S^r Dudley Carleton docket and the pencil item shelfmark; it does not itself name Neville. Recipient attribution rests on the letter's archival placement in Neville's correspondence file and its internal Neville household/Brooke context. Both photographs were freshly inspected at original resolution on 1 September 2026. No enclosure survives among these two photographed faces.

Reciprocal correspondence and the 1606 Eton Mr. Carlton

The two surviving directions should be read together:

The incoming letter also strengthens the proposed identification of the Mr. Carlton fishing with Sir Henry Savile at Eton on 8 October 1606 as probably Dudley Carleton. It places Dudley himself at Eton in direct correspondence with Neville and inside the same household/family circuit. Because it is twenty-seven months later, it corroborates the relationship and place but does not prove Dudley's presence on Savile's exact 1606 date. Savile's printed letter.

Controlled transcription

the Parliament is now prorogued in print, and

you have leave to continue y^r goode house-

keeping till Novemb^r next by proclamation.

Carleton then turns from political print to verse:

you will please to shew this paper enclosed

to S^r Richard Brooke, w^ch containes

a brase [= brace] of Epitaphs uppon the poore yong

Pope so piteyfully massacred by the

Frenchmen

He calls the verses suitable to Neville's yesterdayes melancoly dinner and ends with the dry New Year wish that Neville should be no worse all year. Brace means a pair; it does not identify the verse form, language, author, or length of either epitaph.

Parliament and housekeeping

The CSPD James I calendar for January–February 1609 records a printed proclamation for prorogation on 4 January. This independently anchors Carleton's now prorogued in print nine days later. The jest about Neville's continued housekeeping converts a national parliamentary delay into country-house sociability. The letter does not explain whether the prior dinner was melancholy because of politics, company, entertainment, weather, or some private event.

Identifying the “poor young Pope”

The contextual identification with Borghese is strong but should be stated as an identification, not as words written in this manuscript. Chamberlain wrote to Carleton on 16 December 1608 that a young man named Borghese had been executed in Paris after claiming to be the Pope's illegitimate son. The printed letter appears on page 82 of *The Court and Times of James the First*. On 23 December Chamberlain reported that the execution was widely condemned and had produced many epigrams and jests; see page 84.

The January CSPD calendar then records, on 19 January from Eton, Carleton sending Chamberlain verses on the poor young Pope who was so pitifully massacred by the mad monsieurs. That wording, date, sender, place, and verse context closely match the 13 January Neville letter. Borghese is therefore the probable subject of Neville's enclosed epitaphs. The two epitaphs themselves have not been recovered, and the evidence does not prove that the 13 and 19 January copies were textually identical.

A small circuit of literary news

The manuscript documents a six-day window in which Carleton circulated topical verse from Eton to at least two correspondents. Neville was asked not merely to read but to relay the enclosure to Sir Richard Brooke. The paper therefore belonged to a social circuit: political print, foreign scandal, epigrammatic response, dining-company humour, and onward manuscript sharing occupy one short note.

That is the document's literary value. It is evidence for reception and circulation, not for Carleton's authorship of the epitaphs and not for Neville's authorship, copying, or preservation of them.

Research programme

  1. Search Carleton and Chamberlain correspondence for enclosures around 13–19

    2. January 1608/9 and collate any verse incipits.

  2. Identify Sir Richard Brooke from Neville's and Carleton's overlapping

    3. networks before assigning a biography.

  3. Search English, French, and Latin epigram collections for Borghese verses

    4. with secure pre-February 1609 circulation.

  4. Keep the proclamation, letter, enclosure, and later printed reports as

    5. separate witnesses even if their events and wording align.

Sources