Time Vindicated to Himself and to his Honours was a late Jacobean era masque, written by Ben Jonson[1] and with costumes, sets, and stage effects designed by Inigo Jones.
Originally scheduled for Twelfth Night in 1623, its performance was delayed by an illness of the King, James I; the masque was staged on Sunday 19 January, in the Banqueting House at Whitehall Palace.
Though Jonson expressed the appropriate establishmentarian disapproval of libel and scandal and political pamphleteering, the mere fact that he broached this increasingly delicate subject was questioned; the masque was not well received by its courtly audience.
(British popular culture was then moving into a stage of increasingly aggressive religious and political controversy, especially involving Puritan commentators like William Prynne, who were deeply hostile to the reigning monarchy and the dominant social order.)
A little more than a month after the staging of Time Vindicated, James consoled Wither by granting him and his heirs a 51-year patent (or copyright) on his Hymns and Songs of the Church, a translation of Biblical lyrics for musical settings by Orlando Gibbons, and potentially a very lucrative work.