William Mure (writer)

[3] Mure's early, unpublished works appear to date from 1611 to 1617,[4] and include love-lyrics (the tunes to which they are to be sung are specified in several cases), eleven miscellaneous sonnets, a ‘Hymne’ beginning 'Help, help, O Lord!

sueit saviour aryse', in a complex verse form presumably reflecting an existing song melody, and Dido and Aeneas, a paraphrase of Aeneid IV, probably written in 1614.

[3] The rest of Mure's poetic output is quite different in nature, and expresses his deep commitment to Calvinism and, latterly, to the presbyterian model of kirk government.

It has been suggested that the shift in Mure's poetic focus may have been prompted by his reading of Francis Hamilton's King James His Encomium (Edinburgh, 1626).

In these last, Mure repented of his Muse's ‘Houres mis-employed, evanisht as a dreame’ and ‘younger yeares, youthes sweet Aprile mispent’.

[10] They range from references to Eli and the ‘captive ark’ and the ‘hungry souls’ fed by the incomparable pre-episcopal Kirk, to mentions of ‘dogs and swine’, ‘poperie’ and the mourning faithful.

Melville's image of the enslavement of the defiled Kirk by James VI and I and his bishops - ‘‘upon a royall Throne, / Did awfull sit … a rampand Lyon red … And round about him thirteen wolues did dance/ To keep her sheep’ - underlies Mure's ‘woolfs that lams do chase’ in line 5 of his twelfth sonnet.

Instead, he stated on the title page that the book was ‘published with the gratious licence and privilege of GOD Almighty, King of Heaven and Earth the penult day of Iuly, Anno Dom.1635’, and in a couplet following his opening sonnet to the reader, Mure wrote ‘No marvel I my name forbear/ Since blameless Truth dar scarce appear’.

In 1640, he published A Counter-buff to Lysimachus Nicanor; calling himself a Jesuit, a verse-denunciation of anti-Covenanting propaganda, as are the 102 couplets of the undated (?1641) Caledons Complaint against infamous Libells.

Or a censure past upon the Truth-betraying Sycophant, dareing (most ignobly) to streck at the honour of this deeply afflicted Nation upon pretence of the guilt of rebellion, in justice to be represt by the power of his Majesties armes.

Mure also left a verse paraphrase of the Psalms, now incomplete and possibly never fully completed, and the unfinished prose Historie and Descent of the House of Rowallane.