Chidiock Tichborne
Chidiock Tichborne (after 24 August 1562 – 20 September 1586), erroneously[citation needed] referred to as Charles, was an English conspirator and poet.
In Chidiock's reported oration from the scaffold before his execution he allegedly stated: "I am descended from a house, from two hundred years before the Conquest, never stained till this my misfortune".
[3] Chidiock's father Peter appears to have been the youngest son of Henry Tichborne (born circa 1474) and Anne Mervin (or Marvin) but the records are unclear.
Chidiock Tichborne was never called Charles – this is an error that has grown from a misprint in the AQA GCSE English Literature syllabus which has included the Elegy in its early poetry section for several years.
[8] After the succession of Elizabeth I to the throne following the death of Mary I, Chidiock was allowed to practise Catholicism for part of his early life.
However, in 1570 the Queen was excommunicated by the Pope for her own Protestantism and support of Protestant causes, most notably the Dutch Rebellion against Spain; in retaliation she ended her relative toleration of the Catholic Church.
The plot was foiled by Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth's spymaster, using double agents, most notably Robert Poley who was later witness to the murder of Christopher Marlowe, and though most of the conspirators fled, Tichborne had an injured leg and was forced to remain in London.
But in Tudor times, Agnes was often used as a nickname or term of endearment for very devout women; and it was pronounced in a way that made it sound similar to Jane.
The letter contained three stanzas of poetry that is his best known piece of work, Tichborne's Elegy, also known by its first line My Prime of Youth is but a Frost of Cares.
However, when Elizabeth was informed that these gruesome executions were arousing sympathy for the condemned, she ordered that the remaining seven conspirators were to be hanged until 'quite dead' before being eviscerated.
My prime of youth is but a frost of cares, My feast of joy is but a dish of pain, My crop of corn is but a field of tares, And all my good is but vain hope of gain; The day is past, and yet I saw no sun, And now I live, and now my life is done.
My tale was heard and yet it was not told, My fruit is fallen, and yet my leaves are green, My youth is spent and yet I am not old, I saw the world and yet I was not seen; My thread is cut and yet it is not spun, And now I live, and now my life is done.
There lodged we were in a gulf of woe, despairing what to do, Till at the length, from shore unknown, a Pilot to us drew, Whose help did sound our grounded ship from out Caribda's mouth, But unadvised, on Scylla drives; the wind which from the South Did blustering blow the fatal blast of our unhappy fall, Where driving, leaves my friend and I to fortune ever thrall; Where we be worse beset with sands and rocks on every side, Where we be quite bereft of aid, of men, of winds, of tide.
However it was printed soon after the Babington plot in a volume called Verses of Praise and Joy in 1586, published by John Wolfe of London to celebrate the Queen's survival and to attack the plotters.
Tichborne's "Elegy" (his rhyming, final soliloquy poem[10]), uses two favourite Renaissance figures of speech – antithesis and paradox – to crystallise the tragedy of the poet's situation.
[12] The "Elegy" has also been set to music many times from the Elizabethan era to the present day by, among others, Michael East, Richard Alison (fl1580-1610, in An Hour's Recreation in musicke, 1606), John Mundy (1592) and Charles-François Gounod (1873) and more recently Norman Dello Joio (1949) and Jim Clark (see Tichborne's Elegy Poem Animation[13]) and Taylor Momsen.
