Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 55.djvu/149

 Virgin”’. The success was probably due in large measure to the novelty of the scenery, rarely, if ever, seen before on the stage, except in the production of masques. It was revived at the Restoration, when Pepys called it ‘a mean play,’ and Flecknoe, scarcely more polite, said that it seemed ‘full of flowers, but rather stuck in than growing there’ (Short Discourse on the English Stage). ‘Aglaura’ was published in folio in 1638 with some prefatory verses by Brome. The wide margins provoked the derision of the wits, who compared the text to ‘a child in the great bed at Ware’ (University Poems, 1656, p. 57; Musarum Deliciæ, 1817, p. 53).

In January 1639, when the Scottish campaign was first mooted, Suckling and his friend George Goring [q. v.] offered and undertook to bring a hundred horse each to the rendezvous within three days if necessary. Suckling's contingent was duly raised at a cost, it is said, of 12,000l., and accompanied Charles on his march to the border in May 1639. Though he shared in Holland's precipitate retreat from Kelso, no special act of cowardice can be laid to the poet's share. What exposed him in particular to the raillery of the rhymesters was the costly bravery of scarlet coats and plumes and white doublets with which he bedecked his troopers. The maker of the sprightly verses ‘Upon Sir John Suckling's Most Warlike Preparations for the Scottish War’ (ib. p. 81; cf. Vox Borealis, 1641, ap. Harl. Misc. 1809, iii. 235) would have been still more sarcastic had he known how Leslie had captured Suckling's private coach containing a quantity of sumptuous clothes and 300l. in money (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1640–1, p. 178). But Suckling seems to have gained rather than lost ground in the king's esteem by his conduct in this campaign. On 22 Feb. 1639–40 he was given a commission as captain of carabineers (ib. 1639–40, p. 481), and about this time appeared in quarto his play ‘The Discontented Colonel’ [1640], in which the disloyalty of the Scots was reflected upon not obscurely. This was the first draft of the play which was printed in 1646 as ‘Brennoralt.’ It must have been shortly after this, or at any rate during the winter of 1640–1, that he drew up his letter of counsel to the king in the form of a letter to the queen's confidant, Sir Henry Jermyn (it was printed in 1641 as ‘A Coppy of a Letter found in the Privy Lodgeings at Whitehall,’ and subsequently included in the ‘Fragmenta’ of 1646; cf. Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1640–1, p. 521). His vague advice to Charles was primarily to quit his passive attitude and ‘doe something extraordinary.’ The king was to outbid the parliamentary leaders by granting all, and more than all, that was desired. About the middle of March the poet supplemented his advice by a scheme for a coup de main. This was the ‘first army plot’ or plan to secure the command of the army for the king. But dissensions took place among its promoters, and one of them, George Goring, communicated as much of the design as it suited his purpose to reveal to the leaders of the opposition (see Diary ap. Harl. MS. 163, f. 316; see, (1608–1657)). A committee was promptly appointed to investigate the plot. The leaders of the opposition were specially exasperated against Suckling, as he was known during the past fortnight to have been busily engaged in enlisting pretended levies for Portugal. On 2 May the king's agents had tried to procure admission for a hundred of these men into the Tower, with a view, it was believed, to the liberation of Strafford. On the same day Suckling had brought sixty armed men to a tavern in Bread Street (, iv. 250; Diary, ap. Harl. MS. 477, f. 26;, Hist. of England, ix. 349). On 6 May it was expected that Suckling and his associates would be charged before the lords' committee, but they failed to put in an appearance, and on 8 May a proclamation was issued against them.

The king had promised the parliament to detain the courtiers; but Suckling was already beyond the seas, and his friends had found concealment. Shortly after his escape there appeared ‘A Letter sent by Sir John Suckling from France deploring his sad Estate and Flight, with a Discoverie of the Plot and Conspiracie intended by him and his adherents against England,’ a metrical tract containing a burlesque account of the poet's life in forty-two stanzas, the manner being very much that of Sir John Mennes. This trifle was printed in quarto at London, though dated from Paris, 16 June 1641, and is important as proving that Suckling was living at Paris in June 1641. A singular pamphlet in prose also appeared in 1641, entitled ‘Newes from Sir John Sucklin, being a relation of his conversion from a Papist to a Protestant; also what torment he endured by those of the Inquisition in Spaine; and how the Lord Lekeux, his Accuser, was strucken dumbe, hee going to have the Sentence of Death passed upon him. Sent in a letter to the Lord Conway, now being in Ireland. Printed for M. Rookes, and are to be sold in Grub Street, 1641.’ This rare tract deserves small measure of credit, but some por-