• No results
ElementalAmplified
Manuscript
Notes
#
The Pulter Project
pulterproject.northwestern.edu
Poem 116

British Brennus
(Emblem 51)

Edited by Millie Godfery and Sarah C. E. Ross

Pulter is outspokenly political in this emblem, the fourth to last poem in her series. Criticising Cromwell and his republican supporters, she draws parallels between their sacrilegious behaviour and the actions of the Gauls’ army, led by Brennus, Chief of Senones, in the Battle of Allia in 390 BCE. Plutarch records the battle: in the events preceding the conflict, the Gallic army spent “many dayes spoyling and sacking all thinges they founde in the houses, and in the ende dyd set them all a fyer, and destroyed them every one”. Finding those that “kept the forte of the Capitoll” unresponsive, they began to “put all to the sworde that came in their handes, young and olde, man, woman, and childe”. This then erupted into a long siege in which many were killed, lasting until the Romans were provoked to weigh a thousand pounds of gold to offer in surrender. Brennus, “in scorne and mockey” of this acquiescence, placed his sword on the scales where the gold was being weighed and declared “vae victis”, meaning “sorrowe to the vanquished”. Soon after, however, the banished Roman statesman and general Camillus returned and viciously retaliated, leading the Roman army to conquer the Gauls. See Plutarch, The lives of the noble Grecians and Romanes. Trans. by Thomas North [1579], 154-58.

Pulter compares Cromwell to the tyrannical Brennus in her opening epithet, "British Brennus", and proceeds with a description of the Civil War and the injustice displayed via this ancient story. She shortens the names of the crucial parties in both conflicts, so that Camillus, Cromwell, Charles I, and Charles II all appear as the “C.”, cleverly denoting both the ancient and contemporaneous parties in the analogy she is drawing. She confirms the analogy in a final rhyming quatrain, calling for a Camillus-type to restore England to glory, just as he did to Rome. Pulter turns to God, pleading for Charles II, as the rightful king, to return to the throne, to vanquish Oliver Cromwell. Pulter’s reference to Charles I’s execution and Charles II’s banishment, and her appeals for him to be restored (lines 13-14), suggest this emblem was written between 1651 and 1660.

Compare Editions
i
1When
British Brennus1
sacked that noble city,
2
To age, nor sex, nor infants2
he showed pity.
3Then those which did the capital defend
4
Weighed out their gold3
to have their sufferings end,
5On which
the Britain4
bold
his sword did lay5
;
6“Woe to the conquered” then the people say.
7Then came
C.6
,7
banished long before,
8And made the Britains pay the Romans’ score.
9So let all impious,
sacrilegious8
men
10Have
lex talionis9
; heaven say thou “Amen”!
11If any underneath the sun may cry
12
Vae victis10
, reader it is thou and I;
13
C.C., killed and banished11
, we with sad hearts deplore.
14Oh, let a
C12
.13
come and our joys restore!
15For
C.14
, his sake, dear God, I thee implore,
16Or we are slaves to
C15
.16
forevermore17
?
Macron symbol indicating the end of a poem.

Amplified Edition,

edited by Millie Godfery and Sarah C. E. Rossi

Editorial Note

Our priority in editing these poems has been to modernise, and to achieve interpretative and visual clarity, in order to make the poems as accessible as possible to as wide a modern audience as is possible. Spelling is modernised, as is punctuation. Modernising the latter, in particular, often involves a significant act of editorial interpretation, but in our view this is one of the most productive areas of editorial intervention, particularly for a manuscript text such as Pulter’s where the punctuation is erratic compared to modern usage (and, indeed, compared to early modern printed texts).[1] All biblical references are to the King James Version (1612).
  • See Alice Eardley, “‘I haue not time to point yr booke … which I desire you yourselfe to doe’: Editing the Form of Early Modern Manuscript Verse”, in The Work of Form: Poetics and Materiality in Early Modern Culture, ed. Ben Burton and Elizabeth Scott-Baumann (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 162-178.
Macron symbol indicating the end of a poem.
  • Millie Godfery
  • Sarah C. E. Ross, Victoria University of Wellington
  • British Brennus
    Oliver Cromwell, Pulter creates a parallel between Brennus, the Chief of Gauls who viciously fought and ridiculed the Romans during the Battle of Allia, and the actions of Cromwell in his rise to power; see Headnote.
  • To age, nor sex, nor infants
    Plutarch describes the actions of the Gaul army who, to provoke a response from the leaders of Rome, “put all to the sworde that came in their handes, young and olde, man, woman, and childe” (The lives of the noble Grecians and Romanes. Trans. by Thomas North [1579], 154).
  • Weighed out their gold
    In Plutarch’s account, those that “kept the forte of the Capitoll” offered a payment of “a thousand pounde weight of gold” if the Gauls would retreat from Rome and cease slaughtering their people (The lives of the noble Grecians and Romanes. Trans. by Thomas North [1579], 154, 157).
  • the Britain
    Cromwell, the “British Brennus” of line 1
  • his sword did lay
    Brennus, in an act of ridicule, laid his sword on the scale being used to weight the gold offered by the Romans in surrender. When questioned as to the meaning of this, he uttered, “sorrowe to the vanquished”, which Pulter reproduces in lines 6 and 12 (The lives of the noble Grecians and Romanes. Trans. by Thomas North [1579], 157).
  • C.
    Marcus Furius Camillus, Roman statesman and general, who, after being banished from Rome, returned and led their army to victory, destroying the Gauls; see Headnote.
  • ,
    A space, long enough for a word to be inserted, has been left at this point in the manuscript, possibly to invite readers to fill in the blank. Pulter has not been uniform in this practice, however, as the following use of “C.” abbreviations are formatted regularly, without added spacing.
  • sacrilegious
    stealing or misappropriating what is consecrated to God's service.
  • lex talionis
    Latin: the law of retaliation, “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” (OED). This moral occurs throughout the Bible: see Gen 9.6, “Who so sheddeth mans blood, by man shall his blood be shed”; and Exod. 21:23-25, “And if any mischiefe follow, then thou shalt give life for life, / Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foote for foote, / Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.” Pulter argues that “impious, sacrilegious men” will be punished in accordance with their own crimes, specifically turning her criticisms to republicans.
  • Vae victis
    Latin for “woe to the vanquished” (OED “vae” 2a)
  • C.C., killed and banished
    Charles I (1600-1649), who was executed by the Republican parliament near the end of the Civil War; and his son Charles II (1630-1685) who was exiled from England in 1651 until 1660, when he returned to England to be crowned king.
  • C
    The abbreviation of “C.” here is notably ambiguous. Pulter continues to draw on Plutarch’s account of the Battle of Allia, referring to the role of Camillus in restoring the Roman army and conquering the Gauls to allude to Charles II as Britain’s modern-day version of this. “C.” here could also be invoking Christ.
  • .
    “Charles” inserted above in what looks like the hand of the manuscript’s early eighteenth-century annotator.
  • C.
    Charles II
  • C
    Cromwell. Pulter ends her poem with a rhyming quatrain in which she “implore[s]” God in an explicit address, asking him to “let” another Camillus, in the form of Charles II, return to restore the monarchy.
  • .
    “Cromwell” inserted above in what looks like the hand of the manuscript’s early eighteenth-century annotator.
  • forevermore
    "for" has been crossed out. Because we have chosen to retain “C.” in the main text, we have also retained the original “for”, for the sake of scansion.
The Pulter Project

Copyright © 2023
Wendy Wall, Leah Knight, Northwestern University, others.

Except where otherwise noted, this site is licensed
under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 License.

How to cite
About the project
Editorial conventions
Who is Hester Pulter?
Scholarship
Get in touch