Aristomenes (Emblem 45)

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Aristomenes (Emblem 45)

Poem 110

Original Source

Hester Pulter, Poems breathed forth by the nobel Hadassas, University of Leeds Library, Brotherton Collection, MS Lt q 32

Versions

  • Facsimile of manuscript: Photographs provided by University of Leeds, Brotherton Collection

  • Transcription of manuscript: By Leah Knight and Wendy Wall.
  • Elemental edition: By Leah Knight and Wendy Wall.
  • Amplified edition: By Tara L. Lyons.

How to cite these versions

Conventions for these editions

The Pulter Project: Poet in the Making

  • Created by Leah Knight and Wendy Wall
  • Encoded by Katherine Poland, Matthew Taylor, Elizabeth Chou, and Emily Andrey, Northwestern University
  • Website designed by Sergei Kalugin, Northwestern University
  • IT project consultation by Josh Honn, Northwestern University
  • Project sponsored by Northwestern University, Brock University, and University of Leeds
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X (Close panel)Notes: Transcription

 Editorial note

In these transcriptions we preserve as many details of the original material, textual, and graphic properties of Hester Pulter’s manuscript verse as we have found practical. Whenever possible, for instance, original spelling, punctuation, capitalization, lineation, insertions, deletions, alterations, spacing between words and lines, and indentation are all maintained; abbreviations and brevigraphs are not expanded; and superscript and subscript representations are retained. See full conventions for the transcriptions here.
Line number 24

 Physical note

double strike-through
Line number 24

 Physical note

in different hand from main scribe
Line number 25

 Physical note

“w” originally “h”
Line number 27

 Physical note

imperfectly erased descender (as for “g”) under “c”
Sorry, but there are no notes associated with any currently displayed witness.
X (Close panel)Transcription
Transcription
Facsimile Image Placeholder
Facsimile Image Placeholder
Facsimile Image Placeholder
[Emblem 45]
Aristomenes
(Emblem 45)
Aristomenes
(Emblem 45)
In these transcriptions we preserve as many details of the original material, textual, and graphic properties of Hester Pulter’s manuscript verse as we have found practical. Whenever possible, for instance, original spelling, punctuation, capitalization, lineation, insertions, deletions, alterations, spacing between words and lines, and indentation are all maintained; abbreviations and brevigraphs are not expanded; and superscript and subscript representations are retained. See full conventions for the transcriptions here.

— Leah Knight and Wendy Wall
The aim of the elemental edition is to make the poems accessible to the largest variety of readers, which involves modernizing spelling and punctuation as well as adding basic glosses. Spelling and punctuation reflect current standard American usage; punctuation highlights syntax which might otherwise be obscure. Outmoded but still familiar word forms (“thou,” “‘tis,” “hold’st”) are not modernized, and we do not modernize grammar when the sense remains legible. After a brief headnote aimed at offering a “way in” to the poem’s unique qualities and connections with other verse by Pulter or her contemporaries, the edition features a minimum of notes and interpretative framing to allow more immediate engagement with the poem. Glosses clarify synonyms or showcase various possible meanings in Pulter’s time. Other notes identify named people and places or clarify obscure material. We rely (without citation) primarily on the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the Oxford Reference database, and the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible. When we rely on Alice Eardley’s edition of Pulter’s work, we cite her text generally (“Eardley”); other sources are cited in full. The result is an edition we consider a springboard for further work on Pulter’s poetry. See full conventions for this edition here.

— Leah Knight and Wendy Wall
One of the affordances of digital editions like The Pulter Project is the ease with which readers can remediate the text of poems and visually alter their form in a new document. As a pedagogical tool, poetic re-formations—or as Lisa Samuel and Jerome McGann call them “deformances”—can help readers to identify formal features and visually mark them through underlining, bolding, or insertion of space or line breaks.
Gloss Note
1. For more methods of experimenting with re-forming verse as a close-reading practice, see Lisa Samuel and Jerome J McGann’s “Deformance and Interpretation,” New Literary History 30, no. 1 (1999): 25–56.
1
This Amplified Edition of “Aristomenes” re-forms Pulter’s verse by dividing the twenty-eight-line emblem into seven quatrains. Starting with my own transcription of the poem based on images from the Brotherton manuscript, I modernized the spelling to improve accessibility but retained the manuscript version’s punctuation and capitalization. I then experimented with inserting line breaks to accentuate the formal decisions that Pulter made when writing and to prioritize her organization of events and sources in this short, tightly-woven work. For instance, in this representation of the poem, the units of action and argument that govern the poem’s logic are made more apparent through the visual breaks between stanzas.
We might say, for example, that the first stanza introduces the central figure Aristomenes and his penchant for escaping captivity. The second stanza describes his imprisonment, and the third stanza, his decisive action to grab hold of the fox. The fourth narrates Aristomenes’ escape, leaving the fifth stanza to relate the moral of Aristomenes’ story. The poem’s movement from narration to prescription is evident in the first five stanzas, and then is repeated again in the final two stanzas. The sixth stanza relates two Old Testament narratives of miraculous escape, while the seventh packs in a short contemporary example and a final takeaway for readers.
Such a breakdown of stanzas may not reflect how Pulter imagined the emblem when writing it; however, this Amplified Edition hopes to demonstrate how readers might textually, typographically, and visually play with poems to better understand the convergences of form, content, and meaning.


— Leah Knight and Wendy Wall
People find support, comfort, and freedom where they least expect it—from those they consider enemies or even inferiors. In this emblem, Pulter turns to animal fables, Greek history, the Bible, and contemporary political struggles to show the widespread applicability of this lesson. The poem begins with the story of how the ancient Greek Aristomenes wisely did not give way to fear when a fox entered his prison; instead he used a seeming enemy to make a jailbreak. This apparently universal moral, however, is predicated on specific social hierarchies, as we see in the story of how the biblical prophet Jeremiah is saved by the unexpected compassion of an African (identified in the poem as a “cursed race”) and in the mention of how national stereotypes shape expectations. Directed to “her royal friends” and the royal family, Pulter tailors her lesson to offer hope specifically to Royalists imprisoned by Parliamentarians during the civil war and its aftermath. While the poem’s ending appears simply to invoke the comfort of divine providence, it implicitly adds an odd twist to the overall moral: in presenting comfort and punishment, God’s salvation becomes aligned with the unexpected rescue offered by subversive figures and forces marked as outsiders by their species, race, nationality, or sect.

— Leah Knight and Wendy Wall
In 1640s and 1650s, war-torn England was abuzz with stories of cunning prison breaks and hairbreadth escapes. With the English Civil Wars came prisoners of war, and when influential political figures were captured on or off the battlefield, their path to freedom could take any number of forms, from a generous bribe to a multi-step plot involving disguises and safe houses. In this twenty-eight-line poem, Pulter curates her own selection of tales of escape. The principal narrative features the ancient Greek warrior, Aristomenes, known for his curious ability to elude his captors. As Greek fables told and Emblem 45 conveys, Aristomenes was cast into a “dismal Dungeon” (line 5) and left for dead. When he detects a fox scavenging on corpses, the hero’s “Courageous Heart” (line 9) moves him to seize the creature by the tail and follow it to a hole in the dungeon’s wall where he digs his way to freedom (see Aristomenes in History). In this poem, Pulter does not linger long in the emotional depths of Aristomenes’ despair, a striking departure from other poems wherein she anatomizes the unnatural imprisonment of the sovereign Charles I (The Complaint of Thames, 1647, When the Best of Kings was Imprisoned by the Worst of Rebels at Holmby [Poem 4] and Upon the Imprisonment of his Sacred Majesty, That Unparalleled Prince, King Charles the First [Poem 13]), her soul’s captivity in her mortal body (How Long Shall My Dejected Soul [Poem 24] and To Aurora [3] [Poem 34]), and being “shut up in a country grange” (Why Must I Thus Forever Be Confined [Poem 57]). Instead, the poet urges her readers to test the barriers of confinement with the bravery and cunning of Aristomenes.
From this teaching, Pulter develops another primary lesson. She reminds her readers to “rest in hope, for though no help be found / Above, yet it may come from underground” (lines 19–20). These lines describe Aristomenes’ plight, as no person or creature aboveground offers assistance. Rather, it is the corpse-munching fox, the “Jackal” (line 8) as Pulter calls her, who becomes the prisoner’s savior. For Pulter, this detail is designed to remind her “Royal friends that Captive be” (line 17) that their path to freedom may depend on those of low or common rank—maids, farmers, and traders who can move from place to place without drawing notice—or figures from society’s underbelly—smugglers who can move people or goods through their secret networks. These figures from the “underground”, for instance, were partly responsible for the escape of Charles I’s second son, James, in 1648, when a dressmaker expertly tailored a maid’s gown for the teenage prince to wear when he fled from St. James’ Palace. Likewise, the King’s heir, Charles, owed his escape from the Battle of Worcester in 1651 to a colorful cadre of earls, servants, and maids, and even the notorious highwayman, Captain James Hind, famous for robbing and humiliating Royalists’ enemies (see Noble Escapes and Common Helpers.)
In Emblem 45, Pulter could have celebrated the courage and ingenuity of such friends from low places, but their agency as moral actors is circumscribed. For example, the fox in Aristomenes’ cell is a frightened animal fleeing for its life, which just happens to lead the warrior to freedom. While Pulter alludes to the fox as “old Reynard,” a talking fox in English folklore known for his sharp wit and trickster pranks, the fox in Aristomenes’ dungeon has no intention of helping the prisoner, and in fact, may have been hoping to eat him for lunch. That Pulter effaces the fox’s agency likely derives from her belief in the doctrine of divine providence. Finding comfort in the notion that God is guiding the actions of all of his creatures for the greater good, Pulter marvels in her poetry at the small, insignificant creatures that God chooses to perform his will, from reptiles to flies to lice (The Bishop and the Rats (Emblem 46) [Poem 111]).
When Pulter applies this same hierarchical rationale to human beings in Emblem 45, she adopts and perpetuates racist and nationalist stereotypes, revealing which people on earth she views as inferior to her and her noble friends. The next escapee mentioned in Pulter’s poems is the prophet Jeremiah who was saved from unjust imprisonment by a black servant named Ebed-Melech, the “only” one who showed Jeremiah pity. Pulter culls this story from the Old Testament and expresses disbelief that an African man with black skin, believed to be the modern manifestation of Noah’s curse on Ham’s descendants, was chosen by God to save the prophet. Unlike other early modern writers who explored Ebed-Melech as a model of benevolence, Pulter keeps her focus on the plight of the noble prisoner whom God chooses to rescue (see Ebed-Melech).
Pulter similarly expresses disbelief that the King of Judah, imprisoned for decades by the tyrant Nebuchadnezzar, was freed by his son, the King of Babylon, Evil-Merodach. Just as surprising to Pulter is the Swedish army’s support of Charles I’s nephew in 1638. Believing the “swashing Swedes” (line 25) to be arrogant braggarts, Pulter finds it shocking that they acted heroically and restored the Palatinate to the Elector Charles I Louis. Reminding her noble readers that God works in mysterious ways and may send anyone to their aid, Pulter’s poem clarifies that her investments are in the “royal branches” (line 27) or descendants of Charles I, not any old soldier, highwayman, or maid fighting for the cause. In the end, Pulter acknowledges that God may not choose to rescue the worthy during their lifetimes. If that is the case, she recommends they find comfort in knowing that everlasting freedom in heaven will be their reward. In other words, as God’s chosen, they eventually will be saved.
That Pulter turns to stories of escape to bring comfort to readers positions her alongside other writers of her day. What makes Pulter’s approach unique is her ability to weave together references from a variety of sources and genres, from ancient Greek and medieval English folk-history, to the Old and New Testaments, and seventeenth-century European politics. Such a mix might suggest that Pulter was attempting to communicate a universal truth, one that could be applied across all cultures and all ages; however, the racist and classicist ideologies at the core of her understanding of social hierarchies firmly situates Emblem 45 as a product of England’s problematic past.


— Leah Knight and Wendy Wall
1
45Ariſtominus his Strang Ambiguous ffate
Gloss Note
Aristomenes was a hero of seventh-century BCE Greece who, as this poem recounts, held out in a stronghold for eleven years, escaping capture several times, once (according to legend) by grasping a fox’s tail in order to be led to the hole by which it had entered.
Aristomenes, his strange ambiguous fate,
Critical Note
Pulter could have learned about Aristomenes and his prison breaks from a variety of sources. For example, we know that Pulter was familiar with Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, which she alludes to in This Stately Ship (Emblem 43) [Poem 108], line 25 (Eardley, Poems, p. 100 & 248). In Pliny’s version of the tale, Aristomenes is a formidable soldier who killed 300 men across three battles. Pliny highlights Aristomenes’ extraordinary courage, but his main reason for discussing it is to supplement his discussion of people whose hearts were “ouergrown with hair” (see Holland’s translation of Pliny’s Natural History, 1634, Book 11, p. 340). For more on Pliny’s Aristomenes and contemporary sources, see Aristomenes in History.
Aristomenes his strange Ambiguous fate
2
Unto the Noble Reader I’le Relate
Unto the noble reader I’ll relate.
Unto the Noble reader I’ll relate
3
Thrice of his Liberty hee was Reſtrain’d
Thrice of his liberty he was restrained;
Thrice of his Liberty he was restrain’d
4
Thrice by A Miracle his freedome gain’d
Thrice by a miracle his freedom gained.
Thrice by A Miracle his freedom gain’d
5
Last in A diſmale Dung’on hee was put
Last in a dismal dungeon he was put
Last in A dismal Dungeon he was put
6
ffrom Light, and Joy, to Night, & Sorrow ſhut
From light and joy, to night and sorrow shut.
from Light, and Joy, to Night, & Sorrow shut
7
Noe ffellows but dead Bodys bout him Lay
No fellows but dead bodies ’bout him lay,
No fellows but dead Bodies bout him Lay
8
On which ô Strang A Jaccall came to prey
On which–O, strange!–a jackal came to prey.
On which O Strange A
Critical Note
Pulter, like many of her contemporaries, conflated foxes with jackals, even though we now know them to be two different species in the same genus. The OED defines “jackal” as “Any of various fox-like members of the dog family found in the Old World.” It is also worth noting that in his Itinerary (1617), Fynes Moryson reports that jackals were known to “scratch the bodies of the dead out of their graves” (p. 249).
Jackal came to prey
9
Hee whoſe Couragious Heart did never fayl
He whose courageous heart did never fail
He whose Courageous Heart did never fail
10
Start up and Caught old Renard by the Tayl
Gloss Note
Started
Start up and caught old
Gloss Note
traditional name for a fox who is the trickster hero of European folk tales
Reynard by the tail.
Start up and Caught
Gloss Note
“Old Reynard” is Pulter’s name for a popular medieval folk hero called “Reynard the Fox,” who had an uncanny ability to outsmart others and talk his way out of trouble.
old Reynard by the Tail
11
The ffrighted ffox Returnd the way Shee came
The frighted fox returned the way she came;
The frighted fox returned the way she came
12
Hee kept in’s hold in hope to doe ye Same
Gloss Note
Aristomenes kept the fox in his grasp.
He kept in’s hold, in hope to do the same.
He kept in’s hold in hope to do the Same
13
And when the hole too little was (Alas)
And when the hole too little was (alas!),
And when the hole too little was (Alas)
14
Hee Scrapt it bigger till himſelf could paſs
He scraped it bigger till himself could pass.
He Scraped it bigger till himself could pass
15
The Anchorite with’s nails Soe digs his Grave
The
Gloss Note
person who has withdrawn from the world and lives in confinement, often for religious reasons; this line refers to the anchorite’s commitment to contemplate death.
anchorite
Gloss Note
with his
with’s nails so digs his grave;
The
Gloss Note
Anchorites were Christian men and women who committed to a life of contemplation in a sealed cell or “anchor hold,” often attached to a church. Anchorites participated in a funeral-style ceremony wherein they metaphorically died to the secular world and were “buried” or sealed in their cell or small room. Pulter’s reference to an anchorite digging their own grave seemingly derived from medieval instructions that directed anchorites to begin digging their own grave in their cell with their hands.
Anchorite with’s nails So digs his Grave
16
Hee Scrapt, his Life and Liberty to have
He scraped, his life and liberty to have.
He scraped, his Life and Liberty to have
17
Then let my Royall ffriends that Captive bee
Then let my
Gloss Note
supporters of Charles I imprisoned during the civil war
royal friends that captive be,
Then let my Royal friends that Captive be
18
The various ffortune of this Warior See
The
Gloss Note
changeful; marked by variety of incident or action
various fortune of this warrior see
The various fortune of this Warrior See
19
And Rest in hope, for though noe help bee found
And rest in hope; for though no help be found
And rest in hope, for though no help be found
20
Above, yet it may come from under ground
Above, yet it may come from underground.
Above, yet it may come from underground
21
Who would have thought one of Chams Curſed Race
Who would have thought one of
Gloss Note
In the Bible, Ham’s son Canaan is cursed by his grandfather, Noah, causing his descendants to become subject to Israelites (Genesis 9:20–27). Numerous early modern texts suggest that Ham’s dark-skinned lineage populated Africa. This and the next line refer to the Ethiopian eunuch Ebed-melech who cared for the imprisoned prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 38:10).
Ham’s cursed race
Who would have thought one of
Critical Note
In Genesis 9:18–29, Noah’s youngest son, Ham (sometimes spelled “Cham”), discovered his naked father in a drunken stupor and told his brothers, Shem and Japheth, what he saw. The brothers responded by covering their father and refusing to look at his naked body. When Noah awoke, he was angry at Ham’s response. Therefore, he cursed Ham’s son, Canaan, and all of his descendants to live as slaves in service to the descendants of Noah’s other sons. Christians in Pulter’s day would have been taught that black skin was a marker of the curse of Ham, a deeply flawed and racist theory based on mistaken interpolations of the Bible by white Europeans who sought justifications for the enslavement of black Africans. For more on the curse of Ham, see Ebed-Melech.
Ham’s Cursed Race
22
Should onely pitty Jeremias Caſe
Should only pity
Gloss Note
the biblical prophet’s imprisonment for treason
Jeremiah’s case?
Should only pity Jeremiah’s Case
Or
Facsimile Image Placeholder
Facsimile Image Placeholder
Facsimile Image Placeholder
23
Or who that Merodock Should Comfort bring
Or who that
Gloss Note
The Babylonian monarch Amel-Marduk (Evil-Merodach in the Bible) freed Jehoiachin (king of Judah) from imprisonment after Merodach inherited the throne from his father, Nebuchadnezzar (2 Kings 25.27–30). This was unexpected benevolence since Nebuchadnezzar had imprisoned Jehoiachin.
Merodach should comfort bring
Or who that
Gloss Note
The story of Merodach or Evil-Merodach is told in 2 Kings 25:27 and Jeremiah 52:31. Merodach, Nebuchadnezzar’s son, released from prison his father’s rival, Jehoiachin, the King of Judah, and then elevated him to the role of an advisor at his court.
Merodach should Comfort bring
24
To Judas
Physical Note
double strike-through
blind
Physical Note
in different hand from main scribe
\sad \ dejected Captive, King
To Judah’s sad, dejected, captive king?
To Judas’ sad, dejected Captive, King
25
Or that The Swaſhing
Physical Note
“w” originally “h”
Sweads Should hear ye Moan
Or that the
Gloss Note
Because the English caricatured the Swedish as ostentatious, blustering, swaggering, and swashbuckling, their sympathy for a deposed Protestant leader is noted as unusual.
swashing Swedes should hear the moan
Or that The swashing swedes should hear the Moan
26
Of Reans Elector him to Reinthrone
Gloss Note
The introduction of Sweden’s support for the Protestants was a major turning point in the European Thirty Years’ War (the conflict between Protestants and Catholic Holy Roman Empire-Hapsburgs, 1618–1648). After the war, Charles I Louis, son of the deposed Protestant Elector Frederick V (1596–1632) was reinstated as Elector Palatine (a territory now in Germany).
Of Rhine’s elector, him to reinthrone?
Of
Gloss Note
In 1638, Prince Charles Louis reclaimed the throne as Elector Palatine with the support of the Swedish military. Charles I Louis was Charles I’s nephew, the son of Charles’ sister Elizabeth Stuart and Frederick V.
Rhine’s Elector him to Reenthrone
27
Then let the Royall
Physical Note
imperfectly erased descender (as for “g”) under “c”
branches Trust in God
Then let
Gloss Note
descendent of the king; the royal family “tree”
the royal branches trust in God:
Then let the Royal branches Trust in God
28
The Staff of Comfort Still Succeeds the Rod.
Gloss Note
God always offers the comfort of his “staff” (a stick used to guide one in walking) more than or after using his “rod,” a stick used as an instrument of punishment. The passage picks up on language from Psalms 23:4: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”
The staff of comfort still succeeds the rod.
The
Critical Note
Pulter reminds the reader that suffering precedes the rewards and comforts of heaven. The “rod” and “staff” were a shepherd’s tools for protecting his flock, and in Psalms 23:4–6, both instruments are devices imagined to bring God’s followers to safety: “Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” Here, however, Pulter, like many others in the seventeenth century, interprets the “rod” as a symbol of God’s discipline and punishment, which humans must endure on earth.
staff of Comfort still succeeds the Rod.
horizontal straight line
X (Close panel)Notes: Elemental Edition

 Editorial note

The aim of the elemental edition is to make the poems accessible to the largest variety of readers, which involves modernizing spelling and punctuation as well as adding basic glosses. Spelling and punctuation reflect current standard American usage; punctuation highlights syntax which might otherwise be obscure. Outmoded but still familiar word forms (“thou,” “‘tis,” “hold’st”) are not modernized, and we do not modernize grammar when the sense remains legible. After a brief headnote aimed at offering a “way in” to the poem’s unique qualities and connections with other verse by Pulter or her contemporaries, the edition features a minimum of notes and interpretative framing to allow more immediate engagement with the poem. Glosses clarify synonyms or showcase various possible meanings in Pulter’s time. Other notes identify named people and places or clarify obscure material. We rely (without citation) primarily on the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the Oxford Reference database, and the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible. When we rely on Alice Eardley’s edition of Pulter’s work, we cite her text generally (“Eardley”); other sources are cited in full. The result is an edition we consider a springboard for further work on Pulter’s poetry. See full conventions for this edition here.

 Headnote

People find support, comfort, and freedom where they least expect it—from those they consider enemies or even inferiors. In this emblem, Pulter turns to animal fables, Greek history, the Bible, and contemporary political struggles to show the widespread applicability of this lesson. The poem begins with the story of how the ancient Greek Aristomenes wisely did not give way to fear when a fox entered his prison; instead he used a seeming enemy to make a jailbreak. This apparently universal moral, however, is predicated on specific social hierarchies, as we see in the story of how the biblical prophet Jeremiah is saved by the unexpected compassion of an African (identified in the poem as a “cursed race”) and in the mention of how national stereotypes shape expectations. Directed to “her royal friends” and the royal family, Pulter tailors her lesson to offer hope specifically to Royalists imprisoned by Parliamentarians during the civil war and its aftermath. While the poem’s ending appears simply to invoke the comfort of divine providence, it implicitly adds an odd twist to the overall moral: in presenting comfort and punishment, God’s salvation becomes aligned with the unexpected rescue offered by subversive figures and forces marked as outsiders by their species, race, nationality, or sect.
Line number 1

 Gloss note

Aristomenes was a hero of seventh-century BCE Greece who, as this poem recounts, held out in a stronghold for eleven years, escaping capture several times, once (according to legend) by grasping a fox’s tail in order to be led to the hole by which it had entered.
Line number 10

 Gloss note

Started
Line number 10

 Gloss note

traditional name for a fox who is the trickster hero of European folk tales
Line number 12

 Gloss note

Aristomenes kept the fox in his grasp.
Line number 15

 Gloss note

person who has withdrawn from the world and lives in confinement, often for religious reasons; this line refers to the anchorite’s commitment to contemplate death.
Line number 15

 Gloss note

with his
Line number 17

 Gloss note

supporters of Charles I imprisoned during the civil war
Line number 18

 Gloss note

changeful; marked by variety of incident or action
Line number 21

 Gloss note

In the Bible, Ham’s son Canaan is cursed by his grandfather, Noah, causing his descendants to become subject to Israelites (Genesis 9:20–27). Numerous early modern texts suggest that Ham’s dark-skinned lineage populated Africa. This and the next line refer to the Ethiopian eunuch Ebed-melech who cared for the imprisoned prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 38:10).
Line number 22

 Gloss note

the biblical prophet’s imprisonment for treason
Line number 23

 Gloss note

The Babylonian monarch Amel-Marduk (Evil-Merodach in the Bible) freed Jehoiachin (king of Judah) from imprisonment after Merodach inherited the throne from his father, Nebuchadnezzar (2 Kings 25.27–30). This was unexpected benevolence since Nebuchadnezzar had imprisoned Jehoiachin.
Line number 25

 Gloss note

Because the English caricatured the Swedish as ostentatious, blustering, swaggering, and swashbuckling, their sympathy for a deposed Protestant leader is noted as unusual.
Line number 26

 Gloss note

The introduction of Sweden’s support for the Protestants was a major turning point in the European Thirty Years’ War (the conflict between Protestants and Catholic Holy Roman Empire-Hapsburgs, 1618–1648). After the war, Charles I Louis, son of the deposed Protestant Elector Frederick V (1596–1632) was reinstated as Elector Palatine (a territory now in Germany).
Line number 27

 Gloss note

descendent of the king; the royal family “tree”
Line number 28

 Gloss note

God always offers the comfort of his “staff” (a stick used to guide one in walking) more than or after using his “rod,” a stick used as an instrument of punishment. The passage picks up on language from Psalms 23:4: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”
Sorry, but there are no notes associated with any currently displayed witness.
X (Close panel)Elemental Edition
Elemental Edition
Facsimile Image Placeholder
Facsimile Image Placeholder
Facsimile Image Placeholder
[Emblem 45]
Aristomenes
(Emblem 45)
Aristomenes
(Emblem 45)
In these transcriptions we preserve as many details of the original material, textual, and graphic properties of Hester Pulter’s manuscript verse as we have found practical. Whenever possible, for instance, original spelling, punctuation, capitalization, lineation, insertions, deletions, alterations, spacing between words and lines, and indentation are all maintained; abbreviations and brevigraphs are not expanded; and superscript and subscript representations are retained. See full conventions for the transcriptions here.

— Leah Knight and Wendy Wall
The aim of the elemental edition is to make the poems accessible to the largest variety of readers, which involves modernizing spelling and punctuation as well as adding basic glosses. Spelling and punctuation reflect current standard American usage; punctuation highlights syntax which might otherwise be obscure. Outmoded but still familiar word forms (“thou,” “‘tis,” “hold’st”) are not modernized, and we do not modernize grammar when the sense remains legible. After a brief headnote aimed at offering a “way in” to the poem’s unique qualities and connections with other verse by Pulter or her contemporaries, the edition features a minimum of notes and interpretative framing to allow more immediate engagement with the poem. Glosses clarify synonyms or showcase various possible meanings in Pulter’s time. Other notes identify named people and places or clarify obscure material. We rely (without citation) primarily on the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the Oxford Reference database, and the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible. When we rely on Alice Eardley’s edition of Pulter’s work, we cite her text generally (“Eardley”); other sources are cited in full. The result is an edition we consider a springboard for further work on Pulter’s poetry. See full conventions for this edition here.

— Leah Knight and Wendy Wall
One of the affordances of digital editions like The Pulter Project is the ease with which readers can remediate the text of poems and visually alter their form in a new document. As a pedagogical tool, poetic re-formations—or as Lisa Samuel and Jerome McGann call them “deformances”—can help readers to identify formal features and visually mark them through underlining, bolding, or insertion of space or line breaks.
Gloss Note
1. For more methods of experimenting with re-forming verse as a close-reading practice, see Lisa Samuel and Jerome J McGann’s “Deformance and Interpretation,” New Literary History 30, no. 1 (1999): 25–56.
1
This Amplified Edition of “Aristomenes” re-forms Pulter’s verse by dividing the twenty-eight-line emblem into seven quatrains. Starting with my own transcription of the poem based on images from the Brotherton manuscript, I modernized the spelling to improve accessibility but retained the manuscript version’s punctuation and capitalization. I then experimented with inserting line breaks to accentuate the formal decisions that Pulter made when writing and to prioritize her organization of events and sources in this short, tightly-woven work. For instance, in this representation of the poem, the units of action and argument that govern the poem’s logic are made more apparent through the visual breaks between stanzas.
We might say, for example, that the first stanza introduces the central figure Aristomenes and his penchant for escaping captivity. The second stanza describes his imprisonment, and the third stanza, his decisive action to grab hold of the fox. The fourth narrates Aristomenes’ escape, leaving the fifth stanza to relate the moral of Aristomenes’ story. The poem’s movement from narration to prescription is evident in the first five stanzas, and then is repeated again in the final two stanzas. The sixth stanza relates two Old Testament narratives of miraculous escape, while the seventh packs in a short contemporary example and a final takeaway for readers.
Such a breakdown of stanzas may not reflect how Pulter imagined the emblem when writing it; however, this Amplified Edition hopes to demonstrate how readers might textually, typographically, and visually play with poems to better understand the convergences of form, content, and meaning.


— Leah Knight and Wendy Wall
People find support, comfort, and freedom where they least expect it—from those they consider enemies or even inferiors. In this emblem, Pulter turns to animal fables, Greek history, the Bible, and contemporary political struggles to show the widespread applicability of this lesson. The poem begins with the story of how the ancient Greek Aristomenes wisely did not give way to fear when a fox entered his prison; instead he used a seeming enemy to make a jailbreak. This apparently universal moral, however, is predicated on specific social hierarchies, as we see in the story of how the biblical prophet Jeremiah is saved by the unexpected compassion of an African (identified in the poem as a “cursed race”) and in the mention of how national stereotypes shape expectations. Directed to “her royal friends” and the royal family, Pulter tailors her lesson to offer hope specifically to Royalists imprisoned by Parliamentarians during the civil war and its aftermath. While the poem’s ending appears simply to invoke the comfort of divine providence, it implicitly adds an odd twist to the overall moral: in presenting comfort and punishment, God’s salvation becomes aligned with the unexpected rescue offered by subversive figures and forces marked as outsiders by their species, race, nationality, or sect.

— Leah Knight and Wendy Wall
In 1640s and 1650s, war-torn England was abuzz with stories of cunning prison breaks and hairbreadth escapes. With the English Civil Wars came prisoners of war, and when influential political figures were captured on or off the battlefield, their path to freedom could take any number of forms, from a generous bribe to a multi-step plot involving disguises and safe houses. In this twenty-eight-line poem, Pulter curates her own selection of tales of escape. The principal narrative features the ancient Greek warrior, Aristomenes, known for his curious ability to elude his captors. As Greek fables told and Emblem 45 conveys, Aristomenes was cast into a “dismal Dungeon” (line 5) and left for dead. When he detects a fox scavenging on corpses, the hero’s “Courageous Heart” (line 9) moves him to seize the creature by the tail and follow it to a hole in the dungeon’s wall where he digs his way to freedom (see Aristomenes in History). In this poem, Pulter does not linger long in the emotional depths of Aristomenes’ despair, a striking departure from other poems wherein she anatomizes the unnatural imprisonment of the sovereign Charles I (The Complaint of Thames, 1647, When the Best of Kings was Imprisoned by the Worst of Rebels at Holmby [Poem 4] and Upon the Imprisonment of his Sacred Majesty, That Unparalleled Prince, King Charles the First [Poem 13]), her soul’s captivity in her mortal body (How Long Shall My Dejected Soul [Poem 24] and To Aurora [3] [Poem 34]), and being “shut up in a country grange” (Why Must I Thus Forever Be Confined [Poem 57]). Instead, the poet urges her readers to test the barriers of confinement with the bravery and cunning of Aristomenes.
From this teaching, Pulter develops another primary lesson. She reminds her readers to “rest in hope, for though no help be found / Above, yet it may come from underground” (lines 19–20). These lines describe Aristomenes’ plight, as no person or creature aboveground offers assistance. Rather, it is the corpse-munching fox, the “Jackal” (line 8) as Pulter calls her, who becomes the prisoner’s savior. For Pulter, this detail is designed to remind her “Royal friends that Captive be” (line 17) that their path to freedom may depend on those of low or common rank—maids, farmers, and traders who can move from place to place without drawing notice—or figures from society’s underbelly—smugglers who can move people or goods through their secret networks. These figures from the “underground”, for instance, were partly responsible for the escape of Charles I’s second son, James, in 1648, when a dressmaker expertly tailored a maid’s gown for the teenage prince to wear when he fled from St. James’ Palace. Likewise, the King’s heir, Charles, owed his escape from the Battle of Worcester in 1651 to a colorful cadre of earls, servants, and maids, and even the notorious highwayman, Captain James Hind, famous for robbing and humiliating Royalists’ enemies (see Noble Escapes and Common Helpers.)
In Emblem 45, Pulter could have celebrated the courage and ingenuity of such friends from low places, but their agency as moral actors is circumscribed. For example, the fox in Aristomenes’ cell is a frightened animal fleeing for its life, which just happens to lead the warrior to freedom. While Pulter alludes to the fox as “old Reynard,” a talking fox in English folklore known for his sharp wit and trickster pranks, the fox in Aristomenes’ dungeon has no intention of helping the prisoner, and in fact, may have been hoping to eat him for lunch. That Pulter effaces the fox’s agency likely derives from her belief in the doctrine of divine providence. Finding comfort in the notion that God is guiding the actions of all of his creatures for the greater good, Pulter marvels in her poetry at the small, insignificant creatures that God chooses to perform his will, from reptiles to flies to lice (The Bishop and the Rats (Emblem 46) [Poem 111]).
When Pulter applies this same hierarchical rationale to human beings in Emblem 45, she adopts and perpetuates racist and nationalist stereotypes, revealing which people on earth she views as inferior to her and her noble friends. The next escapee mentioned in Pulter’s poems is the prophet Jeremiah who was saved from unjust imprisonment by a black servant named Ebed-Melech, the “only” one who showed Jeremiah pity. Pulter culls this story from the Old Testament and expresses disbelief that an African man with black skin, believed to be the modern manifestation of Noah’s curse on Ham’s descendants, was chosen by God to save the prophet. Unlike other early modern writers who explored Ebed-Melech as a model of benevolence, Pulter keeps her focus on the plight of the noble prisoner whom God chooses to rescue (see Ebed-Melech).
Pulter similarly expresses disbelief that the King of Judah, imprisoned for decades by the tyrant Nebuchadnezzar, was freed by his son, the King of Babylon, Evil-Merodach. Just as surprising to Pulter is the Swedish army’s support of Charles I’s nephew in 1638. Believing the “swashing Swedes” (line 25) to be arrogant braggarts, Pulter finds it shocking that they acted heroically and restored the Palatinate to the Elector Charles I Louis. Reminding her noble readers that God works in mysterious ways and may send anyone to their aid, Pulter’s poem clarifies that her investments are in the “royal branches” (line 27) or descendants of Charles I, not any old soldier, highwayman, or maid fighting for the cause. In the end, Pulter acknowledges that God may not choose to rescue the worthy during their lifetimes. If that is the case, she recommends they find comfort in knowing that everlasting freedom in heaven will be their reward. In other words, as God’s chosen, they eventually will be saved.
That Pulter turns to stories of escape to bring comfort to readers positions her alongside other writers of her day. What makes Pulter’s approach unique is her ability to weave together references from a variety of sources and genres, from ancient Greek and medieval English folk-history, to the Old and New Testaments, and seventeenth-century European politics. Such a mix might suggest that Pulter was attempting to communicate a universal truth, one that could be applied across all cultures and all ages; however, the racist and classicist ideologies at the core of her understanding of social hierarchies firmly situates Emblem 45 as a product of England’s problematic past.


— Leah Knight and Wendy Wall
1
45Ariſtominus his Strang Ambiguous ffate
Gloss Note
Aristomenes was a hero of seventh-century BCE Greece who, as this poem recounts, held out in a stronghold for eleven years, escaping capture several times, once (according to legend) by grasping a fox’s tail in order to be led to the hole by which it had entered.
Aristomenes, his strange ambiguous fate,
Critical Note
Pulter could have learned about Aristomenes and his prison breaks from a variety of sources. For example, we know that Pulter was familiar with Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, which she alludes to in This Stately Ship (Emblem 43) [Poem 108], line 25 (Eardley, Poems, p. 100 & 248). In Pliny’s version of the tale, Aristomenes is a formidable soldier who killed 300 men across three battles. Pliny highlights Aristomenes’ extraordinary courage, but his main reason for discussing it is to supplement his discussion of people whose hearts were “ouergrown with hair” (see Holland’s translation of Pliny’s Natural History, 1634, Book 11, p. 340). For more on Pliny’s Aristomenes and contemporary sources, see Aristomenes in History.
Aristomenes his strange Ambiguous fate
2
Unto the Noble Reader I’le Relate
Unto the noble reader I’ll relate.
Unto the Noble reader I’ll relate
3
Thrice of his Liberty hee was Reſtrain’d
Thrice of his liberty he was restrained;
Thrice of his Liberty he was restrain’d
4
Thrice by A Miracle his freedome gain’d
Thrice by a miracle his freedom gained.
Thrice by A Miracle his freedom gain’d
5
Last in A diſmale Dung’on hee was put
Last in a dismal dungeon he was put
Last in A dismal Dungeon he was put
6
ffrom Light, and Joy, to Night, & Sorrow ſhut
From light and joy, to night and sorrow shut.
from Light, and Joy, to Night, & Sorrow shut
7
Noe ffellows but dead Bodys bout him Lay
No fellows but dead bodies ’bout him lay,
No fellows but dead Bodies bout him Lay
8
On which ô Strang A Jaccall came to prey
On which–O, strange!–a jackal came to prey.
On which O Strange A
Critical Note
Pulter, like many of her contemporaries, conflated foxes with jackals, even though we now know them to be two different species in the same genus. The OED defines “jackal” as “Any of various fox-like members of the dog family found in the Old World.” It is also worth noting that in his Itinerary (1617), Fynes Moryson reports that jackals were known to “scratch the bodies of the dead out of their graves” (p. 249).
Jackal came to prey
9
Hee whoſe Couragious Heart did never fayl
He whose courageous heart did never fail
He whose Courageous Heart did never fail
10
Start up and Caught old Renard by the Tayl
Gloss Note
Started
Start up and caught old
Gloss Note
traditional name for a fox who is the trickster hero of European folk tales
Reynard by the tail.
Start up and Caught
Gloss Note
“Old Reynard” is Pulter’s name for a popular medieval folk hero called “Reynard the Fox,” who had an uncanny ability to outsmart others and talk his way out of trouble.
old Reynard by the Tail
11
The ffrighted ffox Returnd the way Shee came
The frighted fox returned the way she came;
The frighted fox returned the way she came
12
Hee kept in’s hold in hope to doe ye Same
Gloss Note
Aristomenes kept the fox in his grasp.
He kept in’s hold, in hope to do the same.
He kept in’s hold in hope to do the Same
13
And when the hole too little was (Alas)
And when the hole too little was (alas!),
And when the hole too little was (Alas)
14
Hee Scrapt it bigger till himſelf could paſs
He scraped it bigger till himself could pass.
He Scraped it bigger till himself could pass
15
The Anchorite with’s nails Soe digs his Grave
The
Gloss Note
person who has withdrawn from the world and lives in confinement, often for religious reasons; this line refers to the anchorite’s commitment to contemplate death.
anchorite
Gloss Note
with his
with’s nails so digs his grave;
The
Gloss Note
Anchorites were Christian men and women who committed to a life of contemplation in a sealed cell or “anchor hold,” often attached to a church. Anchorites participated in a funeral-style ceremony wherein they metaphorically died to the secular world and were “buried” or sealed in their cell or small room. Pulter’s reference to an anchorite digging their own grave seemingly derived from medieval instructions that directed anchorites to begin digging their own grave in their cell with their hands.
Anchorite with’s nails So digs his Grave
16
Hee Scrapt, his Life and Liberty to have
He scraped, his life and liberty to have.
He scraped, his Life and Liberty to have
17
Then let my Royall ffriends that Captive bee
Then let my
Gloss Note
supporters of Charles I imprisoned during the civil war
royal friends that captive be,
Then let my Royal friends that Captive be
18
The various ffortune of this Warior See
The
Gloss Note
changeful; marked by variety of incident or action
various fortune of this warrior see
The various fortune of this Warrior See
19
And Rest in hope, for though noe help bee found
And rest in hope; for though no help be found
And rest in hope, for though no help be found
20
Above, yet it may come from under ground
Above, yet it may come from underground.
Above, yet it may come from underground
21
Who would have thought one of Chams Curſed Race
Who would have thought one of
Gloss Note
In the Bible, Ham’s son Canaan is cursed by his grandfather, Noah, causing his descendants to become subject to Israelites (Genesis 9:20–27). Numerous early modern texts suggest that Ham’s dark-skinned lineage populated Africa. This and the next line refer to the Ethiopian eunuch Ebed-melech who cared for the imprisoned prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 38:10).
Ham’s cursed race
Who would have thought one of
Critical Note
In Genesis 9:18–29, Noah’s youngest son, Ham (sometimes spelled “Cham”), discovered his naked father in a drunken stupor and told his brothers, Shem and Japheth, what he saw. The brothers responded by covering their father and refusing to look at his naked body. When Noah awoke, he was angry at Ham’s response. Therefore, he cursed Ham’s son, Canaan, and all of his descendants to live as slaves in service to the descendants of Noah’s other sons. Christians in Pulter’s day would have been taught that black skin was a marker of the curse of Ham, a deeply flawed and racist theory based on mistaken interpolations of the Bible by white Europeans who sought justifications for the enslavement of black Africans. For more on the curse of Ham, see Ebed-Melech.
Ham’s Cursed Race
22
Should onely pitty Jeremias Caſe
Should only pity
Gloss Note
the biblical prophet’s imprisonment for treason
Jeremiah’s case?
Should only pity Jeremiah’s Case
Or
Facsimile Image Placeholder
Facsimile Image Placeholder
Facsimile Image Placeholder
23
Or who that Merodock Should Comfort bring
Or who that
Gloss Note
The Babylonian monarch Amel-Marduk (Evil-Merodach in the Bible) freed Jehoiachin (king of Judah) from imprisonment after Merodach inherited the throne from his father, Nebuchadnezzar (2 Kings 25.27–30). This was unexpected benevolence since Nebuchadnezzar had imprisoned Jehoiachin.
Merodach should comfort bring
Or who that
Gloss Note
The story of Merodach or Evil-Merodach is told in 2 Kings 25:27 and Jeremiah 52:31. Merodach, Nebuchadnezzar’s son, released from prison his father’s rival, Jehoiachin, the King of Judah, and then elevated him to the role of an advisor at his court.
Merodach should Comfort bring
24
To Judas
Physical Note
double strike-through
blind
Physical Note
in different hand from main scribe
\sad \ dejected Captive, King
To Judah’s sad, dejected, captive king?
To Judas’ sad, dejected Captive, King
25
Or that The Swaſhing
Physical Note
“w” originally “h”
Sweads Should hear ye Moan
Or that the
Gloss Note
Because the English caricatured the Swedish as ostentatious, blustering, swaggering, and swashbuckling, their sympathy for a deposed Protestant leader is noted as unusual.
swashing Swedes should hear the moan
Or that The swashing swedes should hear the Moan
26
Of Reans Elector him to Reinthrone
Gloss Note
The introduction of Sweden’s support for the Protestants was a major turning point in the European Thirty Years’ War (the conflict between Protestants and Catholic Holy Roman Empire-Hapsburgs, 1618–1648). After the war, Charles I Louis, son of the deposed Protestant Elector Frederick V (1596–1632) was reinstated as Elector Palatine (a territory now in Germany).
Of Rhine’s elector, him to reinthrone?
Of
Gloss Note
In 1638, Prince Charles Louis reclaimed the throne as Elector Palatine with the support of the Swedish military. Charles I Louis was Charles I’s nephew, the son of Charles’ sister Elizabeth Stuart and Frederick V.
Rhine’s Elector him to Reenthrone
27
Then let the Royall
Physical Note
imperfectly erased descender (as for “g”) under “c”
branches Trust in God
Then let
Gloss Note
descendent of the king; the royal family “tree”
the royal branches trust in God:
Then let the Royal branches Trust in God
28
The Staff of Comfort Still Succeeds the Rod.
Gloss Note
God always offers the comfort of his “staff” (a stick used to guide one in walking) more than or after using his “rod,” a stick used as an instrument of punishment. The passage picks up on language from Psalms 23:4: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”
The staff of comfort still succeeds the rod.
The
Critical Note
Pulter reminds the reader that suffering precedes the rewards and comforts of heaven. The “rod” and “staff” were a shepherd’s tools for protecting his flock, and in Psalms 23:4–6, both instruments are devices imagined to bring God’s followers to safety: “Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” Here, however, Pulter, like many others in the seventeenth century, interprets the “rod” as a symbol of God’s discipline and punishment, which humans must endure on earth.
staff of Comfort still succeeds the Rod.
horizontal straight line
X (Close panel)Notes: Amplified Edition

 Editorial note

One of the affordances of digital editions like The Pulter Project is the ease with which readers can remediate the text of poems and visually alter their form in a new document. As a pedagogical tool, poetic re-formations—or as Lisa Samuel and Jerome McGann call them “deformances”—can help readers to identify formal features and visually mark them through underlining, bolding, or insertion of space or line breaks.
Gloss Note
1. For more methods of experimenting with re-forming verse as a close-reading practice, see Lisa Samuel and Jerome J McGann’s “Deformance and Interpretation,” New Literary History 30, no. 1 (1999): 25–56.
1
This Amplified Edition of “Aristomenes” re-forms Pulter’s verse by dividing the twenty-eight-line emblem into seven quatrains. Starting with my own transcription of the poem based on images from the Brotherton manuscript, I modernized the spelling to improve accessibility but retained the manuscript version’s punctuation and capitalization. I then experimented with inserting line breaks to accentuate the formal decisions that Pulter made when writing and to prioritize her organization of events and sources in this short, tightly-woven work. For instance, in this representation of the poem, the units of action and argument that govern the poem’s logic are made more apparent through the visual breaks between stanzas.
We might say, for example, that the first stanza introduces the central figure Aristomenes and his penchant for escaping captivity. The second stanza describes his imprisonment, and the third stanza, his decisive action to grab hold of the fox. The fourth narrates Aristomenes’ escape, leaving the fifth stanza to relate the moral of Aristomenes’ story. The poem’s movement from narration to prescription is evident in the first five stanzas, and then is repeated again in the final two stanzas. The sixth stanza relates two Old Testament narratives of miraculous escape, while the seventh packs in a short contemporary example and a final takeaway for readers.
Such a breakdown of stanzas may not reflect how Pulter imagined the emblem when writing it; however, this Amplified Edition hopes to demonstrate how readers might textually, typographically, and visually play with poems to better understand the convergences of form, content, and meaning.

 Headnote

In 1640s and 1650s, war-torn England was abuzz with stories of cunning prison breaks and hairbreadth escapes. With the English Civil Wars came prisoners of war, and when influential political figures were captured on or off the battlefield, their path to freedom could take any number of forms, from a generous bribe to a multi-step plot involving disguises and safe houses. In this twenty-eight-line poem, Pulter curates her own selection of tales of escape. The principal narrative features the ancient Greek warrior, Aristomenes, known for his curious ability to elude his captors. As Greek fables told and Emblem 45 conveys, Aristomenes was cast into a “dismal Dungeon” (line 5) and left for dead. When he detects a fox scavenging on corpses, the hero’s “Courageous Heart” (line 9) moves him to seize the creature by the tail and follow it to a hole in the dungeon’s wall where he digs his way to freedom (see Aristomenes in History). In this poem, Pulter does not linger long in the emotional depths of Aristomenes’ despair, a striking departure from other poems wherein she anatomizes the unnatural imprisonment of the sovereign Charles I (The Complaint of Thames, 1647, When the Best of Kings was Imprisoned by the Worst of Rebels at Holmby [Poem 4] and Upon the Imprisonment of his Sacred Majesty, That Unparalleled Prince, King Charles the First [Poem 13]), her soul’s captivity in her mortal body (How Long Shall My Dejected Soul [Poem 24] and To Aurora [3] [Poem 34]), and being “shut up in a country grange” (Why Must I Thus Forever Be Confined [Poem 57]). Instead, the poet urges her readers to test the barriers of confinement with the bravery and cunning of Aristomenes.
From this teaching, Pulter develops another primary lesson. She reminds her readers to “rest in hope, for though no help be found / Above, yet it may come from underground” (lines 19–20). These lines describe Aristomenes’ plight, as no person or creature aboveground offers assistance. Rather, it is the corpse-munching fox, the “Jackal” (line 8) as Pulter calls her, who becomes the prisoner’s savior. For Pulter, this detail is designed to remind her “Royal friends that Captive be” (line 17) that their path to freedom may depend on those of low or common rank—maids, farmers, and traders who can move from place to place without drawing notice—or figures from society’s underbelly—smugglers who can move people or goods through their secret networks. These figures from the “underground”, for instance, were partly responsible for the escape of Charles I’s second son, James, in 1648, when a dressmaker expertly tailored a maid’s gown for the teenage prince to wear when he fled from St. James’ Palace. Likewise, the King’s heir, Charles, owed his escape from the Battle of Worcester in 1651 to a colorful cadre of earls, servants, and maids, and even the notorious highwayman, Captain James Hind, famous for robbing and humiliating Royalists’ enemies (see Noble Escapes and Common Helpers.)
In Emblem 45, Pulter could have celebrated the courage and ingenuity of such friends from low places, but their agency as moral actors is circumscribed. For example, the fox in Aristomenes’ cell is a frightened animal fleeing for its life, which just happens to lead the warrior to freedom. While Pulter alludes to the fox as “old Reynard,” a talking fox in English folklore known for his sharp wit and trickster pranks, the fox in Aristomenes’ dungeon has no intention of helping the prisoner, and in fact, may have been hoping to eat him for lunch. That Pulter effaces the fox’s agency likely derives from her belief in the doctrine of divine providence. Finding comfort in the notion that God is guiding the actions of all of his creatures for the greater good, Pulter marvels in her poetry at the small, insignificant creatures that God chooses to perform his will, from reptiles to flies to lice (The Bishop and the Rats (Emblem 46) [Poem 111]).
When Pulter applies this same hierarchical rationale to human beings in Emblem 45, she adopts and perpetuates racist and nationalist stereotypes, revealing which people on earth she views as inferior to her and her noble friends. The next escapee mentioned in Pulter’s poems is the prophet Jeremiah who was saved from unjust imprisonment by a black servant named Ebed-Melech, the “only” one who showed Jeremiah pity. Pulter culls this story from the Old Testament and expresses disbelief that an African man with black skin, believed to be the modern manifestation of Noah’s curse on Ham’s descendants, was chosen by God to save the prophet. Unlike other early modern writers who explored Ebed-Melech as a model of benevolence, Pulter keeps her focus on the plight of the noble prisoner whom God chooses to rescue (see Ebed-Melech).
Pulter similarly expresses disbelief that the King of Judah, imprisoned for decades by the tyrant Nebuchadnezzar, was freed by his son, the King of Babylon, Evil-Merodach. Just as surprising to Pulter is the Swedish army’s support of Charles I’s nephew in 1638. Believing the “swashing Swedes” (line 25) to be arrogant braggarts, Pulter finds it shocking that they acted heroically and restored the Palatinate to the Elector Charles I Louis. Reminding her noble readers that God works in mysterious ways and may send anyone to their aid, Pulter’s poem clarifies that her investments are in the “royal branches” (line 27) or descendants of Charles I, not any old soldier, highwayman, or maid fighting for the cause. In the end, Pulter acknowledges that God may not choose to rescue the worthy during their lifetimes. If that is the case, she recommends they find comfort in knowing that everlasting freedom in heaven will be their reward. In other words, as God’s chosen, they eventually will be saved.
That Pulter turns to stories of escape to bring comfort to readers positions her alongside other writers of her day. What makes Pulter’s approach unique is her ability to weave together references from a variety of sources and genres, from ancient Greek and medieval English folk-history, to the Old and New Testaments, and seventeenth-century European politics. Such a mix might suggest that Pulter was attempting to communicate a universal truth, one that could be applied across all cultures and all ages; however, the racist and classicist ideologies at the core of her understanding of social hierarchies firmly situates Emblem 45 as a product of England’s problematic past.
Line number 1

 Critical note

Pulter could have learned about Aristomenes and his prison breaks from a variety of sources. For example, we know that Pulter was familiar with Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, which she alludes to in This Stately Ship (Emblem 43) [Poem 108], line 25 (Eardley, Poems, p. 100 & 248). In Pliny’s version of the tale, Aristomenes is a formidable soldier who killed 300 men across three battles. Pliny highlights Aristomenes’ extraordinary courage, but his main reason for discussing it is to supplement his discussion of people whose hearts were “ouergrown with hair” (see Holland’s translation of Pliny’s Natural History, 1634, Book 11, p. 340). For more on Pliny’s Aristomenes and contemporary sources, see Aristomenes in History.
Line number 8

 Critical note

Pulter, like many of her contemporaries, conflated foxes with jackals, even though we now know them to be two different species in the same genus. The OED defines “jackal” as “Any of various fox-like members of the dog family found in the Old World.” It is also worth noting that in his Itinerary (1617), Fynes Moryson reports that jackals were known to “scratch the bodies of the dead out of their graves” (p. 249).
Line number 10

 Gloss note

“Old Reynard” is Pulter’s name for a popular medieval folk hero called “Reynard the Fox,” who had an uncanny ability to outsmart others and talk his way out of trouble.
Line number 15

 Gloss note

Anchorites were Christian men and women who committed to a life of contemplation in a sealed cell or “anchor hold,” often attached to a church. Anchorites participated in a funeral-style ceremony wherein they metaphorically died to the secular world and were “buried” or sealed in their cell or small room. Pulter’s reference to an anchorite digging their own grave seemingly derived from medieval instructions that directed anchorites to begin digging their own grave in their cell with their hands.
Line number 21

 Critical note

In Genesis 9:18–29, Noah’s youngest son, Ham (sometimes spelled “Cham”), discovered his naked father in a drunken stupor and told his brothers, Shem and Japheth, what he saw. The brothers responded by covering their father and refusing to look at his naked body. When Noah awoke, he was angry at Ham’s response. Therefore, he cursed Ham’s son, Canaan, and all of his descendants to live as slaves in service to the descendants of Noah’s other sons. Christians in Pulter’s day would have been taught that black skin was a marker of the curse of Ham, a deeply flawed and racist theory based on mistaken interpolations of the Bible by white Europeans who sought justifications for the enslavement of black Africans. For more on the curse of Ham, see Ebed-Melech.
Line number 23

 Gloss note

The story of Merodach or Evil-Merodach is told in 2 Kings 25:27 and Jeremiah 52:31. Merodach, Nebuchadnezzar’s son, released from prison his father’s rival, Jehoiachin, the King of Judah, and then elevated him to the role of an advisor at his court.
Line number 26

 Gloss note

In 1638, Prince Charles Louis reclaimed the throne as Elector Palatine with the support of the Swedish military. Charles I Louis was Charles I’s nephew, the son of Charles’ sister Elizabeth Stuart and Frederick V.
Line number 28

 Critical note

Pulter reminds the reader that suffering precedes the rewards and comforts of heaven. The “rod” and “staff” were a shepherd’s tools for protecting his flock, and in Psalms 23:4–6, both instruments are devices imagined to bring God’s followers to safety: “Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” Here, however, Pulter, like many others in the seventeenth century, interprets the “rod” as a symbol of God’s discipline and punishment, which humans must endure on earth.
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X (Close panel)Amplified Edition
Amplified Edition
Facsimile Image Placeholder
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[Emblem 45]
Aristomenes
(Emblem 45)
Aristomenes
(Emblem 45)
In these transcriptions we preserve as many details of the original material, textual, and graphic properties of Hester Pulter’s manuscript verse as we have found practical. Whenever possible, for instance, original spelling, punctuation, capitalization, lineation, insertions, deletions, alterations, spacing between words and lines, and indentation are all maintained; abbreviations and brevigraphs are not expanded; and superscript and subscript representations are retained. See full conventions for the transcriptions here.

— Tara L. Lyons
The aim of the elemental edition is to make the poems accessible to the largest variety of readers, which involves modernizing spelling and punctuation as well as adding basic glosses. Spelling and punctuation reflect current standard American usage; punctuation highlights syntax which might otherwise be obscure. Outmoded but still familiar word forms (“thou,” “‘tis,” “hold’st”) are not modernized, and we do not modernize grammar when the sense remains legible. After a brief headnote aimed at offering a “way in” to the poem’s unique qualities and connections with other verse by Pulter or her contemporaries, the edition features a minimum of notes and interpretative framing to allow more immediate engagement with the poem. Glosses clarify synonyms or showcase various possible meanings in Pulter’s time. Other notes identify named people and places or clarify obscure material. We rely (without citation) primarily on the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the Oxford Reference database, and the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible. When we rely on Alice Eardley’s edition of Pulter’s work, we cite her text generally (“Eardley”); other sources are cited in full. The result is an edition we consider a springboard for further work on Pulter’s poetry. See full conventions for this edition here.

— Tara L. Lyons
One of the affordances of digital editions like The Pulter Project is the ease with which readers can remediate the text of poems and visually alter their form in a new document. As a pedagogical tool, poetic re-formations—or as Lisa Samuel and Jerome McGann call them “deformances”—can help readers to identify formal features and visually mark them through underlining, bolding, or insertion of space or line breaks.
Gloss Note
1. For more methods of experimenting with re-forming verse as a close-reading practice, see Lisa Samuel and Jerome J McGann’s “Deformance and Interpretation,” New Literary History 30, no. 1 (1999): 25–56.
1
This Amplified Edition of “Aristomenes” re-forms Pulter’s verse by dividing the twenty-eight-line emblem into seven quatrains. Starting with my own transcription of the poem based on images from the Brotherton manuscript, I modernized the spelling to improve accessibility but retained the manuscript version’s punctuation and capitalization. I then experimented with inserting line breaks to accentuate the formal decisions that Pulter made when writing and to prioritize her organization of events and sources in this short, tightly-woven work. For instance, in this representation of the poem, the units of action and argument that govern the poem’s logic are made more apparent through the visual breaks between stanzas.
We might say, for example, that the first stanza introduces the central figure Aristomenes and his penchant for escaping captivity. The second stanza describes his imprisonment, and the third stanza, his decisive action to grab hold of the fox. The fourth narrates Aristomenes’ escape, leaving the fifth stanza to relate the moral of Aristomenes’ story. The poem’s movement from narration to prescription is evident in the first five stanzas, and then is repeated again in the final two stanzas. The sixth stanza relates two Old Testament narratives of miraculous escape, while the seventh packs in a short contemporary example and a final takeaway for readers.
Such a breakdown of stanzas may not reflect how Pulter imagined the emblem when writing it; however, this Amplified Edition hopes to demonstrate how readers might textually, typographically, and visually play with poems to better understand the convergences of form, content, and meaning.


— Tara L. Lyons
People find support, comfort, and freedom where they least expect it—from those they consider enemies or even inferiors. In this emblem, Pulter turns to animal fables, Greek history, the Bible, and contemporary political struggles to show the widespread applicability of this lesson. The poem begins with the story of how the ancient Greek Aristomenes wisely did not give way to fear when a fox entered his prison; instead he used a seeming enemy to make a jailbreak. This apparently universal moral, however, is predicated on specific social hierarchies, as we see in the story of how the biblical prophet Jeremiah is saved by the unexpected compassion of an African (identified in the poem as a “cursed race”) and in the mention of how national stereotypes shape expectations. Directed to “her royal friends” and the royal family, Pulter tailors her lesson to offer hope specifically to Royalists imprisoned by Parliamentarians during the civil war and its aftermath. While the poem’s ending appears simply to invoke the comfort of divine providence, it implicitly adds an odd twist to the overall moral: in presenting comfort and punishment, God’s salvation becomes aligned with the unexpected rescue offered by subversive figures and forces marked as outsiders by their species, race, nationality, or sect.

— Tara L. Lyons
In 1640s and 1650s, war-torn England was abuzz with stories of cunning prison breaks and hairbreadth escapes. With the English Civil Wars came prisoners of war, and when influential political figures were captured on or off the battlefield, their path to freedom could take any number of forms, from a generous bribe to a multi-step plot involving disguises and safe houses. In this twenty-eight-line poem, Pulter curates her own selection of tales of escape. The principal narrative features the ancient Greek warrior, Aristomenes, known for his curious ability to elude his captors. As Greek fables told and Emblem 45 conveys, Aristomenes was cast into a “dismal Dungeon” (line 5) and left for dead. When he detects a fox scavenging on corpses, the hero’s “Courageous Heart” (line 9) moves him to seize the creature by the tail and follow it to a hole in the dungeon’s wall where he digs his way to freedom (see Aristomenes in History). In this poem, Pulter does not linger long in the emotional depths of Aristomenes’ despair, a striking departure from other poems wherein she anatomizes the unnatural imprisonment of the sovereign Charles I (The Complaint of Thames, 1647, When the Best of Kings was Imprisoned by the Worst of Rebels at Holmby [Poem 4] and Upon the Imprisonment of his Sacred Majesty, That Unparalleled Prince, King Charles the First [Poem 13]), her soul’s captivity in her mortal body (How Long Shall My Dejected Soul [Poem 24] and To Aurora [3] [Poem 34]), and being “shut up in a country grange” (Why Must I Thus Forever Be Confined [Poem 57]). Instead, the poet urges her readers to test the barriers of confinement with the bravery and cunning of Aristomenes.
From this teaching, Pulter develops another primary lesson. She reminds her readers to “rest in hope, for though no help be found / Above, yet it may come from underground” (lines 19–20). These lines describe Aristomenes’ plight, as no person or creature aboveground offers assistance. Rather, it is the corpse-munching fox, the “Jackal” (line 8) as Pulter calls her, who becomes the prisoner’s savior. For Pulter, this detail is designed to remind her “Royal friends that Captive be” (line 17) that their path to freedom may depend on those of low or common rank—maids, farmers, and traders who can move from place to place without drawing notice—or figures from society’s underbelly—smugglers who can move people or goods through their secret networks. These figures from the “underground”, for instance, were partly responsible for the escape of Charles I’s second son, James, in 1648, when a dressmaker expertly tailored a maid’s gown for the teenage prince to wear when he fled from St. James’ Palace. Likewise, the King’s heir, Charles, owed his escape from the Battle of Worcester in 1651 to a colorful cadre of earls, servants, and maids, and even the notorious highwayman, Captain James Hind, famous for robbing and humiliating Royalists’ enemies (see Noble Escapes and Common Helpers.)
In Emblem 45, Pulter could have celebrated the courage and ingenuity of such friends from low places, but their agency as moral actors is circumscribed. For example, the fox in Aristomenes’ cell is a frightened animal fleeing for its life, which just happens to lead the warrior to freedom. While Pulter alludes to the fox as “old Reynard,” a talking fox in English folklore known for his sharp wit and trickster pranks, the fox in Aristomenes’ dungeon has no intention of helping the prisoner, and in fact, may have been hoping to eat him for lunch. That Pulter effaces the fox’s agency likely derives from her belief in the doctrine of divine providence. Finding comfort in the notion that God is guiding the actions of all of his creatures for the greater good, Pulter marvels in her poetry at the small, insignificant creatures that God chooses to perform his will, from reptiles to flies to lice (The Bishop and the Rats (Emblem 46) [Poem 111]).
When Pulter applies this same hierarchical rationale to human beings in Emblem 45, she adopts and perpetuates racist and nationalist stereotypes, revealing which people on earth she views as inferior to her and her noble friends. The next escapee mentioned in Pulter’s poems is the prophet Jeremiah who was saved from unjust imprisonment by a black servant named Ebed-Melech, the “only” one who showed Jeremiah pity. Pulter culls this story from the Old Testament and expresses disbelief that an African man with black skin, believed to be the modern manifestation of Noah’s curse on Ham’s descendants, was chosen by God to save the prophet. Unlike other early modern writers who explored Ebed-Melech as a model of benevolence, Pulter keeps her focus on the plight of the noble prisoner whom God chooses to rescue (see Ebed-Melech).
Pulter similarly expresses disbelief that the King of Judah, imprisoned for decades by the tyrant Nebuchadnezzar, was freed by his son, the King of Babylon, Evil-Merodach. Just as surprising to Pulter is the Swedish army’s support of Charles I’s nephew in 1638. Believing the “swashing Swedes” (line 25) to be arrogant braggarts, Pulter finds it shocking that they acted heroically and restored the Palatinate to the Elector Charles I Louis. Reminding her noble readers that God works in mysterious ways and may send anyone to their aid, Pulter’s poem clarifies that her investments are in the “royal branches” (line 27) or descendants of Charles I, not any old soldier, highwayman, or maid fighting for the cause. In the end, Pulter acknowledges that God may not choose to rescue the worthy during their lifetimes. If that is the case, she recommends they find comfort in knowing that everlasting freedom in heaven will be their reward. In other words, as God’s chosen, they eventually will be saved.
That Pulter turns to stories of escape to bring comfort to readers positions her alongside other writers of her day. What makes Pulter’s approach unique is her ability to weave together references from a variety of sources and genres, from ancient Greek and medieval English folk-history, to the Old and New Testaments, and seventeenth-century European politics. Such a mix might suggest that Pulter was attempting to communicate a universal truth, one that could be applied across all cultures and all ages; however, the racist and classicist ideologies at the core of her understanding of social hierarchies firmly situates Emblem 45 as a product of England’s problematic past.


— Tara L. Lyons
1
45Ariſtominus his Strang Ambiguous ffate
Gloss Note
Aristomenes was a hero of seventh-century BCE Greece who, as this poem recounts, held out in a stronghold for eleven years, escaping capture several times, once (according to legend) by grasping a fox’s tail in order to be led to the hole by which it had entered.
Aristomenes, his strange ambiguous fate,
Critical Note
Pulter could have learned about Aristomenes and his prison breaks from a variety of sources. For example, we know that Pulter was familiar with Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, which she alludes to in This Stately Ship (Emblem 43) [Poem 108], line 25 (Eardley, Poems, p. 100 & 248). In Pliny’s version of the tale, Aristomenes is a formidable soldier who killed 300 men across three battles. Pliny highlights Aristomenes’ extraordinary courage, but his main reason for discussing it is to supplement his discussion of people whose hearts were “ouergrown with hair” (see Holland’s translation of Pliny’s Natural History, 1634, Book 11, p. 340). For more on Pliny’s Aristomenes and contemporary sources, see Aristomenes in History.
Aristomenes his strange Ambiguous fate
2
Unto the Noble Reader I’le Relate
Unto the noble reader I’ll relate.
Unto the Noble reader I’ll relate
3
Thrice of his Liberty hee was Reſtrain’d
Thrice of his liberty he was restrained;
Thrice of his Liberty he was restrain’d
4
Thrice by A Miracle his freedome gain’d
Thrice by a miracle his freedom gained.
Thrice by A Miracle his freedom gain’d
5
Last in A diſmale Dung’on hee was put
Last in a dismal dungeon he was put
Last in A dismal Dungeon he was put
6
ffrom Light, and Joy, to Night, & Sorrow ſhut
From light and joy, to night and sorrow shut.
from Light, and Joy, to Night, & Sorrow shut
7
Noe ffellows but dead Bodys bout him Lay
No fellows but dead bodies ’bout him lay,
No fellows but dead Bodies bout him Lay
8
On which ô Strang A Jaccall came to prey
On which–O, strange!–a jackal came to prey.
On which O Strange A
Critical Note
Pulter, like many of her contemporaries, conflated foxes with jackals, even though we now know them to be two different species in the same genus. The OED defines “jackal” as “Any of various fox-like members of the dog family found in the Old World.” It is also worth noting that in his Itinerary (1617), Fynes Moryson reports that jackals were known to “scratch the bodies of the dead out of their graves” (p. 249).
Jackal came to prey
9
Hee whoſe Couragious Heart did never fayl
He whose courageous heart did never fail
He whose Courageous Heart did never fail
10
Start up and Caught old Renard by the Tayl
Gloss Note
Started
Start up and caught old
Gloss Note
traditional name for a fox who is the trickster hero of European folk tales
Reynard by the tail.
Start up and Caught
Gloss Note
“Old Reynard” is Pulter’s name for a popular medieval folk hero called “Reynard the Fox,” who had an uncanny ability to outsmart others and talk his way out of trouble.
old Reynard by the Tail
11
The ffrighted ffox Returnd the way Shee came
The frighted fox returned the way she came;
The frighted fox returned the way she came
12
Hee kept in’s hold in hope to doe ye Same
Gloss Note
Aristomenes kept the fox in his grasp.
He kept in’s hold, in hope to do the same.
He kept in’s hold in hope to do the Same
13
And when the hole too little was (Alas)
And when the hole too little was (alas!),
And when the hole too little was (Alas)
14
Hee Scrapt it bigger till himſelf could paſs
He scraped it bigger till himself could pass.
He Scraped it bigger till himself could pass
15
The Anchorite with’s nails Soe digs his Grave
The
Gloss Note
person who has withdrawn from the world and lives in confinement, often for religious reasons; this line refers to the anchorite’s commitment to contemplate death.
anchorite
Gloss Note
with his
with’s nails so digs his grave;
The
Gloss Note
Anchorites were Christian men and women who committed to a life of contemplation in a sealed cell or “anchor hold,” often attached to a church. Anchorites participated in a funeral-style ceremony wherein they metaphorically died to the secular world and were “buried” or sealed in their cell or small room. Pulter’s reference to an anchorite digging their own grave seemingly derived from medieval instructions that directed anchorites to begin digging their own grave in their cell with their hands.
Anchorite with’s nails So digs his Grave
16
Hee Scrapt, his Life and Liberty to have
He scraped, his life and liberty to have.
He scraped, his Life and Liberty to have
17
Then let my Royall ffriends that Captive bee
Then let my
Gloss Note
supporters of Charles I imprisoned during the civil war
royal friends that captive be,
Then let my Royal friends that Captive be
18
The various ffortune of this Warior See
The
Gloss Note
changeful; marked by variety of incident or action
various fortune of this warrior see
The various fortune of this Warrior See
19
And Rest in hope, for though noe help bee found
And rest in hope; for though no help be found
And rest in hope, for though no help be found
20
Above, yet it may come from under ground
Above, yet it may come from underground.
Above, yet it may come from underground
21
Who would have thought one of Chams Curſed Race
Who would have thought one of
Gloss Note
In the Bible, Ham’s son Canaan is cursed by his grandfather, Noah, causing his descendants to become subject to Israelites (Genesis 9:20–27). Numerous early modern texts suggest that Ham’s dark-skinned lineage populated Africa. This and the next line refer to the Ethiopian eunuch Ebed-melech who cared for the imprisoned prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 38:10).
Ham’s cursed race
Who would have thought one of
Critical Note
In Genesis 9:18–29, Noah’s youngest son, Ham (sometimes spelled “Cham”), discovered his naked father in a drunken stupor and told his brothers, Shem and Japheth, what he saw. The brothers responded by covering their father and refusing to look at his naked body. When Noah awoke, he was angry at Ham’s response. Therefore, he cursed Ham’s son, Canaan, and all of his descendants to live as slaves in service to the descendants of Noah’s other sons. Christians in Pulter’s day would have been taught that black skin was a marker of the curse of Ham, a deeply flawed and racist theory based on mistaken interpolations of the Bible by white Europeans who sought justifications for the enslavement of black Africans. For more on the curse of Ham, see Ebed-Melech.
Ham’s Cursed Race
22
Should onely pitty Jeremias Caſe
Should only pity
Gloss Note
the biblical prophet’s imprisonment for treason
Jeremiah’s case?
Should only pity Jeremiah’s Case
Or
Facsimile Image Placeholder
Facsimile Image Placeholder
Facsimile Image Placeholder
23
Or who that Merodock Should Comfort bring
Or who that
Gloss Note
The Babylonian monarch Amel-Marduk (Evil-Merodach in the Bible) freed Jehoiachin (king of Judah) from imprisonment after Merodach inherited the throne from his father, Nebuchadnezzar (2 Kings 25.27–30). This was unexpected benevolence since Nebuchadnezzar had imprisoned Jehoiachin.
Merodach should comfort bring
Or who that
Gloss Note
The story of Merodach or Evil-Merodach is told in 2 Kings 25:27 and Jeremiah 52:31. Merodach, Nebuchadnezzar’s son, released from prison his father’s rival, Jehoiachin, the King of Judah, and then elevated him to the role of an advisor at his court.
Merodach should Comfort bring
24
To Judas
Physical Note
double strike-through
blind
Physical Note
in different hand from main scribe
\sad \ dejected Captive, King
To Judah’s sad, dejected, captive king?
To Judas’ sad, dejected Captive, King
25
Or that The Swaſhing
Physical Note
“w” originally “h”
Sweads Should hear ye Moan
Or that the
Gloss Note
Because the English caricatured the Swedish as ostentatious, blustering, swaggering, and swashbuckling, their sympathy for a deposed Protestant leader is noted as unusual.
swashing Swedes should hear the moan
Or that The swashing swedes should hear the Moan
26
Of Reans Elector him to Reinthrone
Gloss Note
The introduction of Sweden’s support for the Protestants was a major turning point in the European Thirty Years’ War (the conflict between Protestants and Catholic Holy Roman Empire-Hapsburgs, 1618–1648). After the war, Charles I Louis, son of the deposed Protestant Elector Frederick V (1596–1632) was reinstated as Elector Palatine (a territory now in Germany).
Of Rhine’s elector, him to reinthrone?
Of
Gloss Note
In 1638, Prince Charles Louis reclaimed the throne as Elector Palatine with the support of the Swedish military. Charles I Louis was Charles I’s nephew, the son of Charles’ sister Elizabeth Stuart and Frederick V.
Rhine’s Elector him to Reenthrone
27
Then let the Royall
Physical Note
imperfectly erased descender (as for “g”) under “c”
branches Trust in God
Then let
Gloss Note
descendent of the king; the royal family “tree”
the royal branches trust in God:
Then let the Royal branches Trust in God
28
The Staff of Comfort Still Succeeds the Rod.
Gloss Note
God always offers the comfort of his “staff” (a stick used to guide one in walking) more than or after using his “rod,” a stick used as an instrument of punishment. The passage picks up on language from Psalms 23:4: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”
The staff of comfort still succeeds the rod.
The
Critical Note
Pulter reminds the reader that suffering precedes the rewards and comforts of heaven. The “rod” and “staff” were a shepherd’s tools for protecting his flock, and in Psalms 23:4–6, both instruments are devices imagined to bring God’s followers to safety: “Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” Here, however, Pulter, like many others in the seventeenth century, interprets the “rod” as a symbol of God’s discipline and punishment, which humans must endure on earth.
staff of Comfort still succeeds the Rod.
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Transcription

 Editorial note

In these transcriptions we preserve as many details of the original material, textual, and graphic properties of Hester Pulter’s manuscript verse as we have found practical. Whenever possible, for instance, original spelling, punctuation, capitalization, lineation, insertions, deletions, alterations, spacing between words and lines, and indentation are all maintained; abbreviations and brevigraphs are not expanded; and superscript and subscript representations are retained. See full conventions for the transcriptions here.
Elemental Edition

 Editorial note

The aim of the elemental edition is to make the poems accessible to the largest variety of readers, which involves modernizing spelling and punctuation as well as adding basic glosses. Spelling and punctuation reflect current standard American usage; punctuation highlights syntax which might otherwise be obscure. Outmoded but still familiar word forms (“thou,” “‘tis,” “hold’st”) are not modernized, and we do not modernize grammar when the sense remains legible. After a brief headnote aimed at offering a “way in” to the poem’s unique qualities and connections with other verse by Pulter or her contemporaries, the edition features a minimum of notes and interpretative framing to allow more immediate engagement with the poem. Glosses clarify synonyms or showcase various possible meanings in Pulter’s time. Other notes identify named people and places or clarify obscure material. We rely (without citation) primarily on the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the Oxford Reference database, and the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible. When we rely on Alice Eardley’s edition of Pulter’s work, we cite her text generally (“Eardley”); other sources are cited in full. The result is an edition we consider a springboard for further work on Pulter’s poetry. See full conventions for this edition here.
Amplified Edition

 Editorial note

One of the affordances of digital editions like The Pulter Project is the ease with which readers can remediate the text of poems and visually alter their form in a new document. As a pedagogical tool, poetic re-formations—or as Lisa Samuel and Jerome McGann call them “deformances”—can help readers to identify formal features and visually mark them through underlining, bolding, or insertion of space or line breaks.
Gloss Note
1. For more methods of experimenting with re-forming verse as a close-reading practice, see Lisa Samuel and Jerome J McGann’s “Deformance and Interpretation,” New Literary History 30, no. 1 (1999): 25–56.
1
This Amplified Edition of “Aristomenes” re-forms Pulter’s verse by dividing the twenty-eight-line emblem into seven quatrains. Starting with my own transcription of the poem based on images from the Brotherton manuscript, I modernized the spelling to improve accessibility but retained the manuscript version’s punctuation and capitalization. I then experimented with inserting line breaks to accentuate the formal decisions that Pulter made when writing and to prioritize her organization of events and sources in this short, tightly-woven work. For instance, in this representation of the poem, the units of action and argument that govern the poem’s logic are made more apparent through the visual breaks between stanzas.
We might say, for example, that the first stanza introduces the central figure Aristomenes and his penchant for escaping captivity. The second stanza describes his imprisonment, and the third stanza, his decisive action to grab hold of the fox. The fourth narrates Aristomenes’ escape, leaving the fifth stanza to relate the moral of Aristomenes’ story. The poem’s movement from narration to prescription is evident in the first five stanzas, and then is repeated again in the final two stanzas. The sixth stanza relates two Old Testament narratives of miraculous escape, while the seventh packs in a short contemporary example and a final takeaway for readers.
Such a breakdown of stanzas may not reflect how Pulter imagined the emblem when writing it; however, this Amplified Edition hopes to demonstrate how readers might textually, typographically, and visually play with poems to better understand the convergences of form, content, and meaning.
Elemental Edition

 Headnote

People find support, comfort, and freedom where they least expect it—from those they consider enemies or even inferiors. In this emblem, Pulter turns to animal fables, Greek history, the Bible, and contemporary political struggles to show the widespread applicability of this lesson. The poem begins with the story of how the ancient Greek Aristomenes wisely did not give way to fear when a fox entered his prison; instead he used a seeming enemy to make a jailbreak. This apparently universal moral, however, is predicated on specific social hierarchies, as we see in the story of how the biblical prophet Jeremiah is saved by the unexpected compassion of an African (identified in the poem as a “cursed race”) and in the mention of how national stereotypes shape expectations. Directed to “her royal friends” and the royal family, Pulter tailors her lesson to offer hope specifically to Royalists imprisoned by Parliamentarians during the civil war and its aftermath. While the poem’s ending appears simply to invoke the comfort of divine providence, it implicitly adds an odd twist to the overall moral: in presenting comfort and punishment, God’s salvation becomes aligned with the unexpected rescue offered by subversive figures and forces marked as outsiders by their species, race, nationality, or sect.
Amplified Edition

 Headnote

In 1640s and 1650s, war-torn England was abuzz with stories of cunning prison breaks and hairbreadth escapes. With the English Civil Wars came prisoners of war, and when influential political figures were captured on or off the battlefield, their path to freedom could take any number of forms, from a generous bribe to a multi-step plot involving disguises and safe houses. In this twenty-eight-line poem, Pulter curates her own selection of tales of escape. The principal narrative features the ancient Greek warrior, Aristomenes, known for his curious ability to elude his captors. As Greek fables told and Emblem 45 conveys, Aristomenes was cast into a “dismal Dungeon” (line 5) and left for dead. When he detects a fox scavenging on corpses, the hero’s “Courageous Heart” (line 9) moves him to seize the creature by the tail and follow it to a hole in the dungeon’s wall where he digs his way to freedom (see Aristomenes in History). In this poem, Pulter does not linger long in the emotional depths of Aristomenes’ despair, a striking departure from other poems wherein she anatomizes the unnatural imprisonment of the sovereign Charles I (The Complaint of Thames, 1647, When the Best of Kings was Imprisoned by the Worst of Rebels at Holmby [Poem 4] and Upon the Imprisonment of his Sacred Majesty, That Unparalleled Prince, King Charles the First [Poem 13]), her soul’s captivity in her mortal body (How Long Shall My Dejected Soul [Poem 24] and To Aurora [3] [Poem 34]), and being “shut up in a country grange” (Why Must I Thus Forever Be Confined [Poem 57]). Instead, the poet urges her readers to test the barriers of confinement with the bravery and cunning of Aristomenes.
From this teaching, Pulter develops another primary lesson. She reminds her readers to “rest in hope, for though no help be found / Above, yet it may come from underground” (lines 19–20). These lines describe Aristomenes’ plight, as no person or creature aboveground offers assistance. Rather, it is the corpse-munching fox, the “Jackal” (line 8) as Pulter calls her, who becomes the prisoner’s savior. For Pulter, this detail is designed to remind her “Royal friends that Captive be” (line 17) that their path to freedom may depend on those of low or common rank—maids, farmers, and traders who can move from place to place without drawing notice—or figures from society’s underbelly—smugglers who can move people or goods through their secret networks. These figures from the “underground”, for instance, were partly responsible for the escape of Charles I’s second son, James, in 1648, when a dressmaker expertly tailored a maid’s gown for the teenage prince to wear when he fled from St. James’ Palace. Likewise, the King’s heir, Charles, owed his escape from the Battle of Worcester in 1651 to a colorful cadre of earls, servants, and maids, and even the notorious highwayman, Captain James Hind, famous for robbing and humiliating Royalists’ enemies (see Noble Escapes and Common Helpers.)
In Emblem 45, Pulter could have celebrated the courage and ingenuity of such friends from low places, but their agency as moral actors is circumscribed. For example, the fox in Aristomenes’ cell is a frightened animal fleeing for its life, which just happens to lead the warrior to freedom. While Pulter alludes to the fox as “old Reynard,” a talking fox in English folklore known for his sharp wit and trickster pranks, the fox in Aristomenes’ dungeon has no intention of helping the prisoner, and in fact, may have been hoping to eat him for lunch. That Pulter effaces the fox’s agency likely derives from her belief in the doctrine of divine providence. Finding comfort in the notion that God is guiding the actions of all of his creatures for the greater good, Pulter marvels in her poetry at the small, insignificant creatures that God chooses to perform his will, from reptiles to flies to lice (The Bishop and the Rats (Emblem 46) [Poem 111]).
When Pulter applies this same hierarchical rationale to human beings in Emblem 45, she adopts and perpetuates racist and nationalist stereotypes, revealing which people on earth she views as inferior to her and her noble friends. The next escapee mentioned in Pulter’s poems is the prophet Jeremiah who was saved from unjust imprisonment by a black servant named Ebed-Melech, the “only” one who showed Jeremiah pity. Pulter culls this story from the Old Testament and expresses disbelief that an African man with black skin, believed to be the modern manifestation of Noah’s curse on Ham’s descendants, was chosen by God to save the prophet. Unlike other early modern writers who explored Ebed-Melech as a model of benevolence, Pulter keeps her focus on the plight of the noble prisoner whom God chooses to rescue (see Ebed-Melech).
Pulter similarly expresses disbelief that the King of Judah, imprisoned for decades by the tyrant Nebuchadnezzar, was freed by his son, the King of Babylon, Evil-Merodach. Just as surprising to Pulter is the Swedish army’s support of Charles I’s nephew in 1638. Believing the “swashing Swedes” (line 25) to be arrogant braggarts, Pulter finds it shocking that they acted heroically and restored the Palatinate to the Elector Charles I Louis. Reminding her noble readers that God works in mysterious ways and may send anyone to their aid, Pulter’s poem clarifies that her investments are in the “royal branches” (line 27) or descendants of Charles I, not any old soldier, highwayman, or maid fighting for the cause. In the end, Pulter acknowledges that God may not choose to rescue the worthy during their lifetimes. If that is the case, she recommends they find comfort in knowing that everlasting freedom in heaven will be their reward. In other words, as God’s chosen, they eventually will be saved.
That Pulter turns to stories of escape to bring comfort to readers positions her alongside other writers of her day. What makes Pulter’s approach unique is her ability to weave together references from a variety of sources and genres, from ancient Greek and medieval English folk-history, to the Old and New Testaments, and seventeenth-century European politics. Such a mix might suggest that Pulter was attempting to communicate a universal truth, one that could be applied across all cultures and all ages; however, the racist and classicist ideologies at the core of her understanding of social hierarchies firmly situates Emblem 45 as a product of England’s problematic past.
Elemental Edition
Line number 1

 Gloss note

Aristomenes was a hero of seventh-century BCE Greece who, as this poem recounts, held out in a stronghold for eleven years, escaping capture several times, once (according to legend) by grasping a fox’s tail in order to be led to the hole by which it had entered.
Amplified Edition
Line number 1

 Critical note

Pulter could have learned about Aristomenes and his prison breaks from a variety of sources. For example, we know that Pulter was familiar with Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, which she alludes to in This Stately Ship (Emblem 43) [Poem 108], line 25 (Eardley, Poems, p. 100 & 248). In Pliny’s version of the tale, Aristomenes is a formidable soldier who killed 300 men across three battles. Pliny highlights Aristomenes’ extraordinary courage, but his main reason for discussing it is to supplement his discussion of people whose hearts were “ouergrown with hair” (see Holland’s translation of Pliny’s Natural History, 1634, Book 11, p. 340). For more on Pliny’s Aristomenes and contemporary sources, see Aristomenes in History.
Amplified Edition
Line number 8

 Critical note

Pulter, like many of her contemporaries, conflated foxes with jackals, even though we now know them to be two different species in the same genus. The OED defines “jackal” as “Any of various fox-like members of the dog family found in the Old World.” It is also worth noting that in his Itinerary (1617), Fynes Moryson reports that jackals were known to “scratch the bodies of the dead out of their graves” (p. 249).
Elemental Edition
Line number 10

 Gloss note

Started
Elemental Edition
Line number 10

 Gloss note

traditional name for a fox who is the trickster hero of European folk tales
Amplified Edition
Line number 10

 Gloss note

“Old Reynard” is Pulter’s name for a popular medieval folk hero called “Reynard the Fox,” who had an uncanny ability to outsmart others and talk his way out of trouble.
Elemental Edition
Line number 12

 Gloss note

Aristomenes kept the fox in his grasp.
Elemental Edition
Line number 15

 Gloss note

person who has withdrawn from the world and lives in confinement, often for religious reasons; this line refers to the anchorite’s commitment to contemplate death.
Elemental Edition
Line number 15

 Gloss note

with his
Amplified Edition
Line number 15

 Gloss note

Anchorites were Christian men and women who committed to a life of contemplation in a sealed cell or “anchor hold,” often attached to a church. Anchorites participated in a funeral-style ceremony wherein they metaphorically died to the secular world and were “buried” or sealed in their cell or small room. Pulter’s reference to an anchorite digging their own grave seemingly derived from medieval instructions that directed anchorites to begin digging their own grave in their cell with their hands.
Elemental Edition
Line number 17

 Gloss note

supporters of Charles I imprisoned during the civil war
Elemental Edition
Line number 18

 Gloss note

changeful; marked by variety of incident or action
Elemental Edition
Line number 21

 Gloss note

In the Bible, Ham’s son Canaan is cursed by his grandfather, Noah, causing his descendants to become subject to Israelites (Genesis 9:20–27). Numerous early modern texts suggest that Ham’s dark-skinned lineage populated Africa. This and the next line refer to the Ethiopian eunuch Ebed-melech who cared for the imprisoned prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 38:10).
Amplified Edition
Line number 21

 Critical note

In Genesis 9:18–29, Noah’s youngest son, Ham (sometimes spelled “Cham”), discovered his naked father in a drunken stupor and told his brothers, Shem and Japheth, what he saw. The brothers responded by covering their father and refusing to look at his naked body. When Noah awoke, he was angry at Ham’s response. Therefore, he cursed Ham’s son, Canaan, and all of his descendants to live as slaves in service to the descendants of Noah’s other sons. Christians in Pulter’s day would have been taught that black skin was a marker of the curse of Ham, a deeply flawed and racist theory based on mistaken interpolations of the Bible by white Europeans who sought justifications for the enslavement of black Africans. For more on the curse of Ham, see Ebed-Melech.
Elemental Edition
Line number 22

 Gloss note

the biblical prophet’s imprisonment for treason
Elemental Edition
Line number 23

 Gloss note

The Babylonian monarch Amel-Marduk (Evil-Merodach in the Bible) freed Jehoiachin (king of Judah) from imprisonment after Merodach inherited the throne from his father, Nebuchadnezzar (2 Kings 25.27–30). This was unexpected benevolence since Nebuchadnezzar had imprisoned Jehoiachin.
Amplified Edition
Line number 23

 Gloss note

The story of Merodach or Evil-Merodach is told in 2 Kings 25:27 and Jeremiah 52:31. Merodach, Nebuchadnezzar’s son, released from prison his father’s rival, Jehoiachin, the King of Judah, and then elevated him to the role of an advisor at his court.
Transcription
Line number 24

 Physical note

double strike-through
Transcription
Line number 24

 Physical note

in different hand from main scribe
Transcription
Line number 25

 Physical note

“w” originally “h”
Elemental Edition
Line number 25

 Gloss note

Because the English caricatured the Swedish as ostentatious, blustering, swaggering, and swashbuckling, their sympathy for a deposed Protestant leader is noted as unusual.
Elemental Edition
Line number 26

 Gloss note

The introduction of Sweden’s support for the Protestants was a major turning point in the European Thirty Years’ War (the conflict between Protestants and Catholic Holy Roman Empire-Hapsburgs, 1618–1648). After the war, Charles I Louis, son of the deposed Protestant Elector Frederick V (1596–1632) was reinstated as Elector Palatine (a territory now in Germany).
Amplified Edition
Line number 26

 Gloss note

In 1638, Prince Charles Louis reclaimed the throne as Elector Palatine with the support of the Swedish military. Charles I Louis was Charles I’s nephew, the son of Charles’ sister Elizabeth Stuart and Frederick V.
Transcription
Line number 27

 Physical note

imperfectly erased descender (as for “g”) under “c”
Elemental Edition
Line number 27

 Gloss note

descendent of the king; the royal family “tree”
Elemental Edition
Line number 28

 Gloss note

God always offers the comfort of his “staff” (a stick used to guide one in walking) more than or after using his “rod,” a stick used as an instrument of punishment. The passage picks up on language from Psalms 23:4: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”
Amplified Edition
Line number 28

 Critical note

Pulter reminds the reader that suffering precedes the rewards and comforts of heaven. The “rod” and “staff” were a shepherd’s tools for protecting his flock, and in Psalms 23:4–6, both instruments are devices imagined to bring God’s followers to safety: “Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” Here, however, Pulter, like many others in the seventeenth century, interprets the “rod” as a symbol of God’s discipline and punishment, which humans must endure on earth.
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