A Cuckoo in the Nest? William Forrest, the Duke of Somerset, and the Certaigne Psalmes of Dauyd. Issue 1 (2nd January 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Wort, Oliver
• Is Part Of: Reformation. Volume 21:Issue 1(2016)
• Page Start: 25
• Page End: 46
• Publication Date: 2016-01-02
• Subjects: William Forrest -- Edward Seymour -- Psalms -- English Reformation; Reformation -- Great Britain -- Periodicals; Reformation -- Periodicals; Church history -- 16th century -- Periodicals; Europe -- Civilization -- 16th century -- Periodicals; Europe -- History -- 1492-1648 -- Periodicals; Periodicals; 940.23
• DOI: 10.1080/13574175.2016.1160564
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1357-4175

Abstract

Abstract : He may be largely unknown today, but in his own time William Forrest was a poet of real ambition. This we can tell from his manuscripts, which are variously dedicated to William Parr, Protector Somerset, Queen Mary, and Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of Norfolk. With these men and women we are brought right into the center of mid-Tudor politics in its various guises, which is a remarkable achievement for an obscure poet who seems never to have held an official position at court. But making sense of Forrest's career is not always straightforward, not least because he has always been thought of as a conservative in religion, unlike many of his dedicatees. My aim in this essay, therefore, is to begin to address some of the complexities of Forrest's career. In particular my focus is the problem of Forrest's association with Edward Seymour, the Duke of Somerset, to whom the poet dedicated his Certaigne Psalmes of Dauyd in New Year 1551. In this essay I examine this book in relation, first, to Forrest's other poetry, a sense of his literary practice being crucial to any understanding of his individual works, and second in relation to some of the broader political and literary contexts within which the poet operated. Not only is the Certaigne Psalmes of Dauyd a book that seems to place Forrest's commitment to Somerset beyond doubt, but his decision to paraphrase the psalms at all also associates him with what had already become a preferred genre of reformers at the mid-Tudor court. However, as I go on to show, Forrest's interest in the psalms actually spanned the rupture of Reformation, a reality that leaves its imprint on his book, and his voice did not simply replicate the voice of the evangelical psalmist. What this suggests is that though, in the search for patronage, Forrest's poetry may have been motivated by the concerns of the center, his voice was not uncomplicatedly of the center, at least not in this case.