Neptune to the Common-wealth of England (1652): the republican Britannia and the continuity of interests

In the seventeenth century, John Kerrigan reminds us, “models of empire did not always turn on monarchy”. In this essay, I trace a vision of “Neptune’s empire” shared by royalists and republicans, binding English national interest to British overseas expansion. I take as my text a poem entitled “Neptune to the Common-wealth of England”, prefixed to Marchamont Nedham’s 1652 English translation of Mare Clausum (1635), John Selden’s response to Mare Liberum (1609) by Hugo Grotius. This minor work is read alongside some equally obscure and more familiar texts in order to point up the ways in which it speaks to persistent cultural and political interests. I trace the afterlife of this verse, its critical reception and its unique status as a fragment that exemplifies the crossover between colonial republic and imperial monarchy at a crucial moment in British history, a moment that, with Brexit, remains resonant

Early English miscellanies, in prose and verse,

Ten selections from the Porkington Manuscript, including: The vision of Philibert regarding the body and the soul, Earth upon earth, The mourning of the hare, The friar and the boy, A treatise on planting and grafting, the crafte of the lymnynge of bokys, etc., etc.Mode of access: Internet

Tarlton's jests, and news out of purgatory. With notes, and some account of the life of Tarlton

More or less fictitious anecdotes, many of them far older than Tarlton, who probably was in no way responsible for either work. Cf. Dict. nat. biog., and introd.Original ed. issued in series: Shakespeare Society Publications, no. 20.Mode of access: Internet.Recon29

A hand-list of the drawings and engravings illustrative of the life of Shakespeare, preserved at Hollingbury Copse, near Brighton.

Mode of access: Internet

Torrent of Portugal. An English metrical romance. Now first published from an unique manuscript of the fifteenth century, preserved in the Chetham library at Manchester.

Manuscript note on fly-leaf: Six copies only printed on thick paper. August 5th, 1842. No. 3. John Russell Smith.Mode of access: Internet

Memoranda on the Midsummer night's dream, A.D. 1879 and A.D. 1855.

"Printed for private circulation exclusively."Mode of access: Internet

Outlines of the life of Shakespeare, Vol 2.

"Biographical index": v. 2, p. [419]-432.Mode of access: Internet

Memoranda on All's well that ends well, The two gentlemen of Verona, Much ado about nothing, and on Titus Andronicus.

"Printed for private circulation."Mode of access: Internet

Two essays. I. An inquiry into the nature of the numerical contractions, found in a passage on the abacus, in some manuscripts of the geometry of Anicius Manlius Torquatus Severinus Boetius. II. Notes on early calendars.

"Will form an appendix to the Rara mathematica."--Advertisement.Mode of access: Internet

The Archaeologist and journal of antiquarian science.

Edited by James Orchard Halliwell.Mode of access: Internet