Greville's Life of Sidney was written long after the deaths of Sidney and Oxford. In that book, Oxford is immortalized as the enemy of Sidney - he performs the mighty opposite to Sidney's display of 'true nobility'. The anti-Sidney. Greville provides us with an extended observation of true worth encountering 'nothing worth'. The language is loaded, and even a quick perusal of Greville's poetry reveals how critical his description of Oxford really is. Significantly, even in this text Oxford is not mentioned by name - for it is a basic tenet of reformer's values that vice does not deserve fame. Oxford is characterized as a tyrant - a loaded term for a faction that was nurtured on the Wittenberg-based values of Melanchthon and Hubert Languet. Greville's account appears to depict the tyrant Oxford encountering his David! ('Pious' Sidney would translate the Psalms of David)
(Hamlet/Amleth/Brutus/David feigned madness in the presence of the tyrant.)
Greville text may suggest why Sidney's enemy Oxford remains nameless in his Life of Sidney:
Greville - Life of Sidney
Neither am I (for my part) so much in love with this life, nor believe so little in a better to come, as to complain of God for taking him [Sidney], and such like exorbitant WORTHYness from us: fit (as it were by an Ostracisme) to be divided, and not incorporated with our corruptions: yet for the sincere affection I bear to my Prince, and Country, my prayer to God is, that this WORTH, and Way may not fatally be buried with him; in respect, that both before his time, and since,experience hath published the usuall discipline of greatnes to have been tender of it self onely; making honour a triumph, or rather TROPHY of desire, set up in the eyes of Mankind, either to be worshiped as IDOLS, or else as Rebels to perish under her glorious oppressions. Notwithstanding, when the PRIDE of FLESH, and power of favour shall cease in these by death, or disgrace; what then hath time to register, or FAME to publish in these great mens names, that will not be offensive, or infectious to others? What Pen without BLOTTING can write the story of their deeds? Or what Herald blaze their Arms without a blemish? And as for their counsels and projects, when they come once to light, shall they not live as noysome, and loathsomely above ground, as their Authors carkasses lie in the grave? So as the return of such greatnes to the world, and themselves, can be but private reproach, publique ill example, and a fatall scorn to the Government they live in. Sir Philip Sidney is none of this number; for the greatness which he affected was built upon true WORTH; esteeming Fame more than Riches, and Noble actions far above Nobility it self.
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Fame is the reward of the worthy.
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Shakespeare:
O! lest the world should task you to recite
What merit lived in me, that you should love
After my death,--dear love, forget me quite,
For you in me can NOTHING WORTHy prove.
Unless you would devise some virtuous lie,
To do more for me than mine own desert,
And hang more praise upon deceased I
Than niggard truth would willingly impart:
O! lest your true love may seem false in this
That you for love speak well of me untrue,
My name be buried where my body is,
And live no more to shame nor me nor you.
For I am shamed by that which I bring forth,
And so should you, to love things NOTHING WORTH.
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"Then make the summe of our Idea's this,
Who loue the world, giue latitude to Fame,
And this Man-pleasing, Gods displeasing is,
Who loue their God, haue glory by his name:
But fixe on Truth, who can, that know it not?
*Who fixe on ERROR, doe but write to blot*.
"Who worship Fame, commit Idolatry,
"Make Men their God, Fortune and Time their worth,
"Forme, but reforme not, meer hypocrisie,
"By shadowes, onely shadowes bringing forth,
"Which must, as blossomes, fade ere true fruit springs,
"(Like voice, and eccho) ioyn'd; yet diuers things." (Greville)
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Mark of Reprobation:
Publique Ill Example: Oxford appears UNNAMED as Sidney’s intemperate, humorous and insubstantial adversary (consisting of wind/shadows/echoes/reflections) in Greville’s _A Dedication to Sir Philip Sidney_(originally published as _Life of Sidney_)
...And in this freedome of heart [Sidney] being one day at Tennis, a Peer of this Realm, born great, greater by alliance, and superlative in the Princes favour, abruptly came into the Tennis- Court; and speaking out of these three paramount authorities, he forgot to entreat that, which he could not legally command. When by the encounter of a steady object, finding unrespectiveness in himself (though a great Lord) not respected by this Princely spirit, he grew to expostulate more ROUGHLY. The returns of which stile comming still from an understanding heart, that knew what was due to it self, and what it ought to others, seemed (through the MISTS of my Lords PASSIONS, SWOLN with the WINDE of his FACTION then reigning) to provoke in yeelding. Whereby, the lesse amazement, or confusion of thoughts he stirred up in Sir Philip, the more SHADOWES this great Lords own mind was POSSESSED with: till at last with RAGE (which is ever ILL-DISCIPLINED) he commands them to depart the Court. To this Sir Philip temperately answers; that if his Lordship had been pleased to express desire in milder Characters, perchance he might have led out those, that he should now find would not be driven out with any scourge of FURY. This answer (like a BELLOWS) blowing up the sparks of EXCESS already kindled, made my Lord scornfully call Sir Philip by the name of Puppy. In which progress of HEAT, as the TEMPEST grew more and more vehement within, so did their hearts breath out their perturbations in a more loud and shrill accent. The French Commissioners unfortunately had that day audience, in those private Galleries, whose windows looked into the Tennis-Court. They instantly drew all to this tumult: every sort of quarrels sorting well with their humors, especially this. Which Sir Philip perceiving, and rising with inward strength, by the prospect of a mighty faction against him; asked my Lord, with a loud voice, that which he heard clearly enough before. Who ( LIKE AN ECHO, that still multiplies by REFLEXIONS) repeated this Epithet of Puppy the second time. Sir Philip resolving in one answer to conclude both the attentive hearers, and PASSIONATE ACTOR, gave my Lord a Lie, impossible (as he averred) to be retorted; in respect all the world knows, Puppies are gotten by Dogs, and Children by men. Hereupon those GLORIOUS INEQUALITIES of FORTUNE in his Lordship were put to a kinde of pause, by a PRECIOUS INEQUALITY OF NATURE in this Gentleman. So that they both stood silent a while, like a dumb shew in a tragedy; till Sir Philip sensible of his own wrong, the forrain, and factious spirits that attended; and yet, even in this question between him, and his superior, tender to his Countries honour; with some words of sharp accent, led the way abruptly out of the Tennis-Court; as if so unexpected an accident were not fit to be decided any farther in that place. Whereof the great Lord making another sense, continues his play, without any advantage of reputation; as by the standard of humours in those times it was conceived.
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Robert E Stillman gives some insight into the relationship between Sidneians such as Greville and their enemies:
[Philippe Duplessis-Mornay’s text, the De Veritate], dedicated to Hubert Languet (Mornay’s mentor and Sidney’s) and inspired by his piety, the De veritate had an enormous appeal to contemporary Philippists [followers of Wittenberg based intellectual Philip Melanchthon], as a reflection of their ecumenical piety, their disdain for theological controversy, and their intellectual regard for the value of humanistic studies to advance the cause of true religion. For both Mornay and Sidney, the embrace of knowledge, secular and sacred, was urgently required in a contemporary culture imperilled, on the one hand, by atheists and epicureans – CRECROPIAN all!s – and, on the other, by confessional divisions threatening the church’s very survival. For both, the nightmare was the same. The term "CRECROPIAN" was contemporary shorthand for "BEASTLY ENEMY OF REFORMED CULTURE." Crecropia no longer lived in ancient Athens. She had metamorphosed into the monster next door, as they (Sidney and other Philippists) knew because of their readings. Both Mornay and Sidney had read George Buchanan (that tyrant-killer from the north), both knew the epigrams of Philip Melanchthon, and both found those epigrams recently edited by another mutual friend in Viennna, Johannes Crato Von Crafftheim. Belonging to the same republic of letters meant, in no small part, reading the same books, sharing the same intellectual travels with an eye to private and public government.(Stillman, Philip Sidney and the Poetics of Renaissance Cosmopolitanism, intro. p.x)
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Circe/Comus/Medea themes and Italianate Oxford:
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Mark of Reprobation:
Jonson's pictorial and literary legerdemain at the front of the First Folio creates a clear impression of Shakespeare's 'character', if we take care to understand.
As Jonson's most recent biographer, Ian Donaldson remind us, the word 'character' 'had not yet acquired its familiar modern sense of 'personality', but more commonly meant simply a mark or sign: something cut or engraved or stamped or otherwise forcibly impressed. By extension, it might refer to qualities valued and worth aspiring to, though not necessarily achieved. (Donaldson, Ben Jonson, A Life, p.11)
By extension, it might also refer to qualities unvalued and nothing worth. For a neoclassicist such as Jonson, the incongruities of the Droeshout engraving - its lack of form, order and proportion mark or brand Shakespeare as a 'beastly enemy of reformed culture' (or the Jacobean equivalent of Alexander Pope's 'literary dunce'). Or in Shakespeare/Oxford's case - the monstrous enemy of reformed culture - a Crecropian author. The two left arms of the Droeshout engraving, observed and commented upon by Vladimir Nabokov (no doubt familiar with bespoke tailoring), mark Shakespeare as an irreformable, cack-handed author incapable or 'right' or correct writing. Sidney's 'right' poet meets his mighty opposite in an ambisinister or 'wrong-handed' Shakespeare, who has been mock-immortalized by Jonson as an unruly, degenerate linguistic and ethical force that required censure and restraint so that British civilization could continue to advance along more temperate and reformed lines.
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Jonson, Volpone intro:
As for the Vile and Slothful, who never affected
an Act worthy of Celebration, or are so inward with their own vicious
Natures, as they worthily fear her, and think it a high Point of
Policy to keep her in contempt with their declamatory and windy
Invectives; she shall out of just rage incite her Servants (who are
Genus iritabile) to spout Ink in their Faces, that shall eat farther
than their Marrow, into their Fames; and not Cinnamus the Barber, with
his Art, shall be able to take out the Brands; but they shall live,
and be read, till the Wretches die, as Things worst deserving of
Themselves in chief, and then of all Mankind.
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Horace, of the Art of Poetrie
transl. Ben Jonson
If to Quintilius, you recited ought:
Hee'd say, Mend this, good friend, and this; "Tis naught.
If you denied, you had no better straine,
And twice, or thrice had 'ssayd it, still in vaine:
Hee'd bid, BLOT ALL: and to the anvile bring
Those ill-torn'd Verses, to new hammering.
Then: If your fault you rather had defend
Then change. No word, or worke, more would he spend
In vaine, BUT YOU, AND YOURS, YOU should LOVE STILL
Alone, without a rivall, by his will.
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Sonnet 111
O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide,
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide
Than public means which public manners breeds.
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand:
Pity me then and wish I were renew'd;
Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink
Potions of eisel 'gainst my strong infection
No bitterness that I will bitter think,
Nor double penance, to correct correction.
Pity me then, dear friend, and I assure ye
Even that your pity is enough to cure me.
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(disease of the age/mountebank) -
Sweet Swan of Avon ! what a sight it were
To see thee in our waters yet appear,
And make those flights upon the banks of Thames,
That so did take Eliza, and our James !
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_Mirth Making_, Chris Holcomb Sidney, _Defence of Poesy_: eikastike vs. phantastike
In his Ethics, Aristotle suggests that *changes in stylistic and substantive predilections indicate advances in civilization*. While enumerating the differences between the jesting of a BUFFOON and a witty gentleman, Aristotle compares each character type to Old and New Comedy, respectively: "The difference (between a buffoon and a gentleman) may be seen by comparing the old and modern comedies; the earlier dramatists found their fun in obscenity, the modern prefer innuendo, which marks a great advance in decorum; (4.8.6). This comparison suggest that smutty humor is less civilized than the more refined humor delivered through innuendo. (footnote pp. 199-200)
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-- CARTWRIGHT, WILLIAM, 1647, (note - a son of Ben)
Upon the Dramatick Poems of Mr. John Fletcher.
...Shakespeare to thee was DULL, whose best jest lyes
I'th Ladies questions, and the Fooles replyes; [70]
Old fashion'd wit, which walkt from town to town
In turn'd Hose, which our fathers call'd the CLOWN;
Whose wit our nice times would obsceannesse call,
And which made Bawdry passe for Comicall:
Nature was all his Art, thy veine was free
As his, but without his SCURILITY...
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Sidney, Defense of Poesy
...But grant love of bewtie to be a beastly fault, although it be verie hard, since onely man and no beast hath that gift to discerne bewtie, graunt that lovely name of love to deserve all hatefull reproches, although even some of my maisters the Philosophers spent a good deale of their Lampoyle in setting foorth the excellencie of it, graunt I say, what they will have graunted, that not onelie love, but lust, but vanitie, but if they will list SCURRILITIE, possesse manie leaves of the Poets bookes, yet thinke I, when this is graunted, they will finde their sentence may with good manners put the last words foremost; and not say, that Poetrie ABUSETH mans wit, but that mans wit ABUSETH Poetrie. For I will not denie, but that mans wit may make Poesie, which should be EIKASTIKE, which some learned have defined figuring foorth good things to be PHANTASTIKE, which doth contrariwise INFECT the FANCIE with unWOORTHie objects, as the Painter should give to the eye either some excellent perspective, or some fine Picture fit for building or fortification, or containing in it some notable example, as Abraham sacrificing his sonne Isaack, Judith killing Holofernes, David fighting with Golias, may leave those, and please an ILL PLEASED EYE with WANTON SHEWES of better hidden matters. But what, shal the ABUSE of a thing, make the RIGHT use odious?
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HAMLET. O, reform it altogether.
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No, I am that I am, and they that LEVEL
At my ABUSES reckon up their own:
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Sidney, Defence of Poetry:
But I have lavished out too many words of this playmatter. I do it, because as they are excelling parts of poesy, so is there none so much used in England, and none can be more pitifully ABUSED; which, like an unMANNERly daughter, showing a bad education, causeth her mother Poesy`s HONESTY to be called in question.
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Sidney, Defence of Poetry
But, besides these gross absurdities, how all their plays be neither RIGHT tragedies nor RIGHT comedies (note - two left arms or the Droeshout), mingling kings and clowns, not because the matter so carrieth it, but thrust in the clown by head and shoulders to play a part in majestical matters, with neither DECENCY nor DISCRETION; so as neither the admiration and commiseration, nor the right sportfulness, is by their mongrel tragi-comedy obtained. I know Apuleius did somewhat so, but that is a thing recounted with space of time, not represented in one moment; and I know the ancients have one or two examples of tragi-comedies, as Plautus hath Amphytrio. But, if we mark them well, we shall find that they never, or very daintily, match hornpipes and funerals. So falleth it out that, having indeed NO RIGHT COMEDY in that comical part of our tragedy, we have nothing but SCURRILITY, unworthy of any chaste ears, or some extreme show of doltihsness, indeed fit to lift up a loud laughter, and nothing else; where the whole tract of a comedy should be full of delight, as the tragedy should be still maintained in a well-raised admiration.
But OUR COMEDIANS think there is no delight without laughter, which is very WRONG; for though laughter may come with delight, yet cometh it not of delight, as though delight should be the cause of laughter; but well may one thing breed both together. Nay, rather in themselves they have, as it were, a kind of contrariety. For delight we scarcely do, but in things that have a conveniency to ourselves, or to the general nature; laughter almost ever cometh of things most DISPROPORTIONED to ourselves and nature.
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Disproportioned Droeshout/Shakespeare
Proportioned Jonson
The Muse's fairest light in no dark time,
The WONDER of a LEARNED AGE; the line
Which none can pass; the most PROPORTIONED wit, --
To nature, the best judge of what was fit;
The deepest, plainest, highest, clearest pen;
The voice most echoed by consenting men;
The soul which answered best to all well said
By others, and which most requital made;
Tuned to the highest key of ancient ROME,
Returning all her music with his own;
In whom, with nature, study claimed a part,
And yet who to himself owed all his art:
Here lies Ben JONSON! every age will LOOK
With sorrow here, with WONDER on his BOOK.
-- John Cleveland
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Shakespeare/small latin/soul ignorant age
Jonson/soul learned age:
Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount FALKLAND, Jonsonus Virbius
...How in an IGNORANT, and LEARN'D AGE he swaid,
(Of which the first he found, the second made)
How He, when he could know it, reapt his Fame,
And long out-liv'd the envy of his Name:
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Ian Donaldson places both Jonson and Fulke Greville as part of the circle of wits and poets that gathered at the Mermaid Tavern at Bread Street. Jonson was also a client of William Herbert, and the First Folio was also dedicated to this nephew of Philip Sidney. Jonson may perform the literary magic that makes Oxford vanish in a cloud of ink and ambiguous language at the front of the First Folio, but I do not think he could have acted on his own authority.
Why the elaborate and covert criticism at the front of the First Folio - why is Oxford criticized under cover of the figure Shakespeare (the 'bumpkinification' of Edward de Vere)? Scandalum Magnatum, perhaps - as one of the Queen's Great Officers of State, Edward de Vere could not be openly criticised or slandered without serious repercussions.
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Greville, __A Dedication to Sir Philip Sidney_
“I conceived an Historian was bound to tell nothing but the truth, but to tell all truths were both justly to wrong, and offend not only princes and States, but to blemish, and stir up himself, the frailty and tenderness, not only of particular men, but of many Families, with the spirit of an Athenian Timon.”
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Respect for Henry de Vere, the eighteenth earl, perhaps. The name of Vere and the title belonged to a larger family. Henry's formative years spent as the companion of the militant Protestant Prince Henry, his friendship with the Sidneian/Essexian Southampton, his portrait that still hangs at Sidney-central Wilton, his military-related death in Europe all point to a man of reformed sensibilities - a man of quite a different stamp than his father.
As Peter Dickson has observed - the famous imprisonments of Southampton and the 18th Earl of Oxford for their opposition to the Spanish Match seem to have provided the sudden impetus for the publication of the First Folio. And yet the ambiguous and critical prefatory material provided by Ben Jonson suggest to me that the Folio was published without the wholehearted endorsement of those who were in control of the First Folio material.
Was the Folio published to mollify the King?
The Tempest seems a strange play for a group of militant Protestants to showcase at the front of the First Folio, given their ferocious opposition to the Spanish Match.
Letter from Count Gondomar to King Philip (while Henry de Vere was incarcerated in the Tower).
"In the letter of April 1, I said to your Majesty how the King removed the Earl Oxford as commander in chief of the armada in the Strait [Ed. note: the fleet in the Channel] because I told him to, because he [Oxford] was partial to the Dutch, and also because of the way Oxford was bad mouthing the King and me. He spoke even to the point of saying that it was a miserable situation that had reduced England's stature because the people had to tolerate a King who had given the Pope everything spiritual; and everything temporal to the King of Spain. I told King James to arrest this man and put him in the Tower in a narrow cell so that no one can speak to him. I have a strong desire to cut off his head because he is an extremely malicious person and has followers. And he is the second ranking Earl in England, and he and his followers are committed to the Puritan Faction with great passion and to the faction of the Count of the Palatinate against the service of the Emperor and your Majesty." (May 16, 1622)
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1623 - figural defacement Earl of Oxford/tyrant
1649 - literal defacement King Charles/tyrant
Shakespeare - Sonnet 121
'Tis better to be vile than vile esteem'd,
When not to be receives reproach of being,
And the just pleasure lost which is so deem'd
Not by our feeling but by others' seeing:
For why should others false adulterate eyes
Give salutation to my sportive blood?
Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,
Which in their wills count bad what I think good?
No, I am that I am, and they that level
At my abuses reckon up their own:
I may be straight, though they themselves be bevel;
By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown;
Unless this general evil they maintain,
All men are bad, and in their badness reign.
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Protestant resistance theory.
Interesting that Oxford is characterized as a tyrant in Greville's 'Life of Sidney' - and Greville is careful to distinguish between the Earl's self-love and the untyrannical generousity of the Queen. Oxford is stripped of the monuments of his pen in the First Folio and mocked in effigy, a tyrant's picture raised high on a pole, so to speak, and his overthrow displayed to the world. Jonson's opima spolia - a 'monument/trophy'?
Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to SHOW
The Folio was published in 1623. In 1649, King Charles would be dis-figured/decapitated after being refashioned by 'reformers' into a monstrous tyrant. William Shakespeare was King Charles' 'closet companion' as the King was imprisoned, as the republican Milton is careful to tell us. A corrupt and tyrannical book/author advising another tyrant as he wrote his Eikon Basilike?
Unless this general evil [the reformers] maintain,
All men are bad, and in their badness reign.
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(Added April, 2017)
In Remembrance of Master William
Shakespeare
Sir William Davenant (1638)
Beware (delighted Poets!) when you sing
To welcome Nature in the early Spring;
Your num'rous Feet not tread
The Banks of Avon; for each Flowre
(As it nere knew a Sunne or Showre)
Hangs there, the pensive head.
Each Tree, whose thick, and spreading growth hath made,
Rather a Night beneath the Boughs, than Shade,
(Unwilling now to grow)
Looks like the Plume a Captain weares,
Whose rifled Falls are steept i'th teares
Which from his last rage flow.
The piteous River wept it selfe away
Long since (Alas!) to such a swift decay;
That read the Map; and looke
If you a River there can spie;
And for a River your mock'd Eie,
Will find a shallow Brooke.
Beware (delighted Poets!) when you sing
To welcome Nature in the early Spring;
Your num'rous Feet not tread
The Banks of Avon; for each Flowre
(As it nere knew a Sunne or Showre)
Hangs there, the pensive head.
Each Tree, whose thick, and spreading growth hath made,
Rather a Night beneath the Boughs, than Shade,
(Unwilling now to grow)
Looks like the Plume a Captain weares,
Whose rifled Falls are steept i'th teares
Which from his last rage flow.
The piteous River wept it selfe away
Long since (Alas!) to such a swift decay;
That read the Map; and looke
If you a River there can spie;
And for a River your mock'd Eie,
Will find a shallow Brooke.
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Writing the English Republic: Poetry, Rhetoric, and Politics,
1627-1660. - Review - book review
Criticism, Spring, 2000 by Fritz Levy
Long after it was all over, Thomas Hobbes looked back at the civil war to search out the causes for an event he continued to think unnatural. How was it that men abandoned the duty owed their governors and instead followed the guidance of their own wits? Envy and ambition had a great deal to do with it, of course, Hobbes contended in Behemoth, or The Long Parliament (ed. Ferdinand Tonnies: 2nd ed. [1967]), but the critical element in promoting insubordination was attendance at the universities, where such men became persuaded that they lacked no "ability requisite for the government of a commonwealth, especially after having read the glorious histories and the sententious politics of the ancient popular governments of the Greeks and Romans, amongst whom kings were hated and branded with the name of tyrants, and popular government ... passed by the name of liberty" (23). Hobbes hammers the point time and again, concluding at last with the question: "Who can be a good subject to monarchy, whose principles are taken from the enemies of monarchy, such as were Cicero, Seneca, Cato, and other politicians of Rome, and Aristotle of Athens, who seldom speak of kings but as of wolves and other ravenous beasts?" (ibid., 158). It is easy to write off Hobbes's comments as exaggeration, and to treat the "classical republicanism" to which they refer as a minority opinion, held by a few malcontents, but of no real political importance. Easy, yes, but perhaps not altogether correct. For we have been learning that the language to which Hobbes referred was in use long before the fighting started, and was understood even by those who did not share its assumptions.
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Amleth/Brutus myth
Proto-Hamlet
The closest myth is Roman: the story of Junius Brutus, legendary
founder of Rome, follows a similar pattern of murder and revenge.
Brutus' father and brother are killed by his uncle Tarquin; Brutus
feigns stupidity to save himself and ultimately overthrows the tyrant,
founding the Roman republic. The Scandinavian name "Amleth" and the
Latin "Brutus" both have the same meaning ("dull," or "foolish").
The Tarquins -In Roman tradition, the Tarquins were an Etruscan family that ruled
Rome from ca.657 to ca.510 B.C. The revolt that deposed the last
Tarquin was brought about by his son's rape of Lucrece and her
subsequent suicide--a subject Shakespeare chose for a long narrative
poem.
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THE
Tragicall Historie of
HAMLET
Prince of Denmarke
By William Shake‐speare.
As it hath beene diuerse times acted by his Highnesse seruants in the Cittie of London: as also in the two Vniuersities of Cambridge and Oxford, and else‐where
At London printed for N.L. and Iohn Trundell.
1603
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Languet or Mornay - Junius Brutus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vindiciae_contra_tyrannos
http://www.constitution.org/vct/vind.htm
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HAMLET. O, reform it altogether.
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Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex (11 January 1591 – 14 September 1646) was an English Parliamentarian and soldier during the first half of the seventeenth century. With the start of the English Civil War in 1642 he became the first Captain-General and Chief Commander of the Parliamentarian army, also known as the Roundheads.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Devereux,_3rd_Earl_of_Essex
