'Ad dominum Joannem Aelmerum …'
Verses in Latin on the death of John Aylmer, Bishop of London, and in praise of John Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury by the calligrapher Peter Bales. 25 June 1594
MS 4246 item 1
Acquired with the assistance of the Friends of Lambeth Palace Library, the MGC/V & A Purchase Grant Fund, the Friends of the National Libraries, Trinity College, Cambridge, and the Whitgift Foundation, 1998.
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Peter Bales was considered to be one of the greatest calligraphers in England, indeed a year after penning this Latin panegyric to Archbishop Whitgift, he competed against his rival Daniel Johnson, winning a golden pen worth £20.
Translation by Edward Taylor:
To that loss of bishops which the Church of England has suffered, 1594
Death appears now to be more frenzied than normal;
it cruelly kills bishops everywhere.
But such violence appears less fearsome
while the first of bishops is permitted to survive.
Therefore, may God grant that he complete his own years happily
– of our primate, who is outstanding in his work.
May the foremost of priests, Whitgift, flourish, I say,
and may the times of his virtue be long.
The immediate cause of this poem in praise of Whitgift was the death of John Aylmer, Bishop of London, on 3 June 1594. The gloomy opening lines also have in mind, Thomas Cooper, Bishop of Winchester and Edmund Scambler, Bishop of Norwich who had died in April and May respectively. Following the epitaph to Aylmer, Bales extols Whitgift’s leadership as Primate of the Church and wishes him a long life. In the event, Whitgift lived another 10 years becoming the longest-serving Archbishop of Elizabeth’s reign.
It is highly likely that Bales presented the verse to Whitgift, as he may have done with the copy of The writing schoolemaster (1590) that formed part of Whitgift’s Library. The book contained a section on the Arte of Brachygraphie, a pioneering attempt at writing in shorthand.
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