John Cleveland

The most popular English poet and political satirist in the mid-17th century was John Cleveland, who grew up in Hinckley where his father, Thomas, was the vicar.

He was born in Loughborough, Leicestershire in 1613 but the family moved to Hinckley in 1621 after his father's appointment. In 1627 he was accepted at Christ's College, Cambridge and stayed at university for 16 years until the outbreak of the English Civil War, whereupon he joined the Royalist camp. At the end of the war, and with the Royalists defeated, he disappeared from sight and died a few years later in 1658.

His best-known work was The Rebel Scot (1644). Though his contemporary fame was great, and his works originally went through 20 editions, he is known today chiefly for the lyrics “Fuscara” and “Mark Antony.”

Points of Interest

Cleveland was considered in his day to be a "decadent" poet in that he tended to use language and words in unconventional ways. Dryden said he "disfigured" language, but even though his colleagues and critics of the time didn't think much of him, Cleveland was quite popular among the reading public.

Cleveland wrote a poem once that was stolen by another poet known as M. Randolph, who published Cleveland's poem as his own work in a book.

Since copyright issues and lawsuits were largely unknown entities in Cleveland's day, he had no real legal recourse, but reclaimed the poem after M. Randolph's death by writing another poem about the incident (at least he had a sense of humour about it!); that poem ended with these two lines:

"Wee'l part the child, and yet commit no slaughter,

So shall it be thy Son, and yet my Daughter."

What Cleveland is saying here is that both he and M. Randolph could be considered the original poem's authors, since it was credited at different times to both of them.

Cleveland was pretty well known for throwing in words in his poems not because they actually made sense or fit with the poem that well, but because they rhymed with a previous word he wanted to use.
For instance, here's a line from one of his poems:

"Had sly Ulysses, at the sack/Of Troy, brought Thee his Pedler's pack/And weapons too to know Achilles/From King Lycomedes Phillis…"

Now in Greek mythology, Achilles was considered invincible because, when he was born, his mother dipped his body in the River Styx (across which the dead were carried to the underworld). However, she held him by his heel, so that was the only part of his body that could be pierced by an arrow.

A psychic woman forecast that Achilles would be killed at the sack, or destruction, of the city of Troy, and so he disguised himself as a woman to escape the battlefield. However, Ulysses disguised himself as a peddlar and offered the "maiden" a choice between a sewing needle and a sword; Achilles betrayed himself by choosing the sword. In the myth, however, King Lycomedes' daughter's name was not Phyllis, it was Pyrrha. In his poem, Cleveland changed the name so it would rhyme with Achilles.)