D. ‘Lord Delaware,’ Thomas Lyle’s Ancient Ballads and Songs, chiefly from tradition, manuscripts, and scarce works, etc., London, 1827, p. 125. ‘Lord Delamare,’ Motherwell’s MS., p. 539. Dixon, Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of the Peasantry of England, p. 80, Percy Society, vol. xvii, 1846; the same, ed. Robert Bell, 1857, p. 66.
Of D the editor says: “An imperfect copy ... was noted down by us from the singing of a gentleman in this city [Glasgow], which has necessarily been remodelled and smoothed down to the present measure, without any other liberties, however, having been taken with the original narrative, which is here carefully preserved as it was committed to us.” The air, says Lyle, was “beautiful, and peculiar to the ballad.”
E. Leigh, Ballads and Legends of Cheshire, p. 203, repeats A.
Mr E. Peacock had an imperfect manuscript copy with the title ‘Lord Delamere,’ beginning
I wonder very much that our sovereign king
So many large taxes upon this land should bring.
Notes and Queries, First Series, II, 104, 1851.
Dr Rimbault remembered hearing a version sung at a village in Staffordshire, about 1842, in which Hereford was substituted for Devonshire: Notes and Queries, First Series, V, 348, 1852.
Lord Delamere, upon occasion of the imposition of some new taxes, begs a boon of the king, in the Parliament House; it is that he may have all the poor men in the land down to Cheshire and hang them, since it would be better for them to be hanged than to be starved. A French (Dutch) lord says that Delamere ought to be stabbed for publicly affronting the king. The Duke of Devonshire offers himself to fight for Delamere, and a stage is set up for a duel to the utterance. Devonshire’s sword bends at the first thrust and then breaks. An English lord who is standing by (Willoughby, B) gives him another, and advises him to play low, for there is treachery. Devonshire drops on his knee and gives his antagonist his death-wound. The king orders the dead man to be taken away, but Devonshire insists on first examining the body. He finds that the French lord had been wearing armor, and the king’s armor, while he himself was fighting bare. He reproaches the king with the purpose of taking his life, and tells him that he shall not have his armor back until he wins it.
According to the title of B, the duel was between Devonshire and Lord Danby, and in 1687. The other party is, however, called a Dutch lord in the ballad. The king is James. Delamere is said to be under age (he was thirty-five in 1687).