I date this poem, then 1612 or 1613, a year or two after the play just mentioned and the epistle to Lady Rutland; and I imagine with some confidence that it was written by Beaumont for Ursula Isley, whom he married about this time.
Ursula's father, Henry Isley, belonged to a family of landed gentry which had been seated since the reign of Edward II in the parish of Sundridge, Kent. The manor came to them from the de Freminghams in 1412. In 1554 Sir Harry Isley and his son, William, who were prominent upholders of the reformed religion, had joined hands with the gallant young Sir Thomas Wyatt of Allington Castle—about seventeen miles from Sundridge—in the rebellion which he raised in protest against the proposed marriage of Queen Mary with Philip of Spain. At Blacksole Field, near Wrotham, half-way between Sundridge and Allington, the Isley contingent was met and routed by Sir Robert Southwell and Lord Abergavenny; and the vast Isley estates were confiscated. A considerable part was restored to William within a year or two. But he falling into debt had to sell the larger portion; and for the manor of Sundridge itself, he appears to have paid fee farm rent to the Crown.
By will, probably September 3, 1599, William's son, Henry, left all his "manners, lands, tenements, and hereditaments, in the countie of Kent or else where within the realme of England, unto Jane my lovinge wief in fee simple, vizt to her and her heires for ever, to the end and purpose that she maye doe sell or otherwise dispose at her discretion the same, or such parte or soe much thereof as to her shall seeme fitt, for the payement of all my just and true debts ... and also for the bringing up and preferment in marriage of Ursula and Una, the two daughters or children of her the said Jane, my lovinge wief." That the children were not, however, stepdaughters of Henry, is pointed out by Dyce, who quotes the manuscript of Vincent's Leicester, 1619: "Ursula, the daughter and coheir [evidently with Una] of Henry Isley."[109] In fact, Henry had named Ursula after his mother, the daughter of Nicholas Clifford.
It will be remembered that Beaumont's sister Elizabeth became the wife of a Thomas Seyliard of Kent. The Seyliards were one of the oldest families in the vicinity of Sundridge; and Thomas would be of Brasted, which adjoins Sundridge westward, a quarter of a mile from Sundridge Place and near the river Darenth; or of Delaware at the south of the parish; or of Gabriels about a mile from there and seven miles south of Sundridge; or of Chidingstone close by; or Boxley.[110] If Elizabeth was married before 1613, it is easy to surmise that during some visit to her, Beaumont was brought acquainted with Ursula Isley of Sundridge Place. If not, we may refer the acquaintance to sojournings with his friend, Fletcher, at Cranbrook or at the Kentish homes of Fletcher's stepsisters, or with their cousins, the Sackvilles.
We have no proof that Francis Beaumont wrote more than one drama after the Whitehall festivities of February 1613. Two plays in which he is supposed by some to have had a hand with Fletcher, The Captaine and The Honest Man's Fortune, were acted during that year; but I find no trace of Francis in the latter and but slight possibility of it in the former. We must conclude that from 1613 he lived as a country gentleman. He would be much more likely to take up his abode at Sundridge, which, as we have seen, belonged to his wife and her sister, than at Grace-Dieu Manor; for that was occupied by John Beaumont who had four sons to provide for. It is, of course, barely possible that one of his father's properties in Leicestershire or Derby may have fallen to him,—Cottons, for instance, in the latter county, or that "Manner House of Normanton, and a close ther called the Parke" mentioned in the Judge's will and in which house-room was given by him to a "servaunte ... for the tearme of eleaven yeares" beginning 1598. But the probabilities all point to the manor house in Kent as the scene of Beaumont's closing years.[111]
Sundridge Place lies, as we know, just south of Chevening and west of Sevenoaks. The old manor house in which, we may presume, Beaumont and Ursula lived, and where his children were born, has long since disappeared. But the old church, just north of the Place, with its Early English and Perpendicular architecture still stands much as in their day. The old brass tablets to the Isleys of two centuries are there, and the altar-tomb of the John Isley and his wife who died a century before Beaumont was born. Near this memorial we may imagine that Beaumont and Ursula sat of a Sunday; and through this same picturesque graveyard, breathing peace, they would pass home again. Some days they would take the half-hour stroll across the forks of the Darenth, by Combebank in the chalk hills and through the woods, to Chevening House, and drink a cup with old Sampson Lennard and his son, Sir Henry, and Fletcher's stepsister Chrysogona (Grisogone), now Lord and Lady Dacre, and make merry with their seven youngsters; and, coming back by the Pilgrim's road that makes for the shrine of the "holy blissful martir," Beaumont would quote, from Speght's edition of Chaucer which had appeared but thirteen years before, something merry of the
Well nyne and twenty in a companye,
Of sondry folk, by aventure y-falle
In felawshipe, and pilgrims were they alle,
That toward Caunterbury wolden ryde.
Or sometimes they would tramp across to Squerries and fish in the Darenth for the bream of which Spenser had written; perhaps, visit their sister Seyliard that same evening.
Another summer day, Francis would ride the ten miles north toward Chislehurst (ashes of Napoleon le petit!), and turn aside to pay his compliments to the proprietor of Camden Place, Ben Jonson's friend the antiquary. But we may suppose that more gladly and frequently than to any other spot, this dramatist-turned-squire, and settled down for health and leisure, would head his horse for Knole; and, galloping the hills through Chipstead and Sevenoaks up to the old church that crowns the height, would steady to a trot along the stately avenue of the Park amid its beeches and sycamores,—resting his eye on broad sweeps of pasture-land and distant groves, and thinking poetry,—to be greeted within one short half-hour from the time he left the Place, by that most hospitable nobleman of the day, the noblest patron of poetry and art, Richard Sackville, third Earl of Dorset. They would pace—these two lovers of Ben Jonson, and worshippers of the first dramatist-earl—the Great Hall, together, talking of plays, of the burning of the Globe while Henry VIII was on the boards, or of the opening of the new Blackfriars, or of Overbury's poisoning, and the scandalous marriage of Rochester and Lady Essex, or of Sir Henry Nevill's chances in the matter of the Secretaryship, or of Winwood's appointment, or of Raleigh's grievances, or of the new favourite, young Villiers of Brooksby, or of the long existing grievance of Beaumont's Catholic cousins, in and after 1614 all the more acute because of the hopes and fears thronging that other subject of discussion which doubtless would occupy a place in any conversation, the negotiations of Don Diego Sarmiento for a Spanish Marriage. Perhaps they would stretch their legs out to the fire before the old andirons that had once been Henry VIII's, and talk of the tragic romance of young William Seymour and Lady Arabella Stuart, the cousin alike of Robert Pierrepoint and his majesty, James I; or of the indictment and fall of Somerset. Or they would stroll to the chapel, and decipher the carvings of the Crucifixion which Mary, Queen of Scots, had given to the Earl's brother, now dead. Or the Earl would point out some new portrait of that wonderful collection, then forming, of literary men in the dining-room, and Beaumont would pass judgment upon the presentment of some of his own contemporaries.
Then down the drive by which the sheep are browsing and the deer, like Agag delicately picking their way, and back to Sundridge of the Isleys, and to Ursula; maybe to an afternoon of lazy writing on scenes that Fletcher has called for—perhaps the posset-night of Sir Roger and Abigail for the beginning of The Scornful Ladie.