Lord Delamere [Child 207]

DESCRIPTION: The king wants a new tax. Delamere asks for charge of all the poor, to hang them; better they hang than starve. A French lord says he deserves death, but Devonshire, fighting for Delamere, kills the lord and finds he is wearing the king's hidden armor
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1827 (Lyle)
KEYWORDS: royalty nobility trick money death accusation
FOUND IN: Britain
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Child 207, "Lord Delamere" (4 texts)
Dixon-AncientPoemsBalladsSongsOfThePeasantryOfEngland, Ballad #7, pp. 80-85, "Lord Delaware" (1 text)
Bell-Combined-EarlyBallads-CustomsBalladsSongsPeasantryEngland, pp. 284-287, "Lord Delaware" (1 text)
Roud #88
NOTES [477 words]: This sort of gesture of defiance (compare Swift's "A Modest Proposal") is much more common in story than truth; there is no reason to believe that the events here ever took place. Child gives what background there can be.
The one interesting point I observe (to put my own take on Child's summary) is that the lords involved were mostly active at the time of the Glorious Revolution (1688) -- and, what's more, Lord Delamore (1652-1694) and William Cavendish, Earl of Devonshire (1641-1707; Duke of Devonshire from 1694) both gave open support to William of Orange. Delamere, in fact, went on to be one of the Lords of the Treasury.
Perhaps this originated as some sort of Williamite broadside? Or, perhaps, an attempt to save Devonshire from protests? (He is said to have been poor about paying tradesmen.)
Dixon (followed by Bell) had a different hypothesis. The lord in his version was not Lord Delamere but Lord Delaware -- and Dixon conjectured that that should be Lord Delamare. Obviously this was a very intelligent conjecture, since it fit the other versions -- but then Dixon suggested that this Lord Delamare was not the one at the time of James II but rather Thomas de la Mare (correctly Peter de la Mare) speaker of the House of Commons in the "Good Parliament" of 1376. This was certainly a memorable Parliament -- it tried to clean up abuses and also regulated the succession after the death of the Prince of Wales, Edward the Black Prince -- but none of the other characters make any sense in that context. And de la Mare wasn't a lord. The song is a much better fit for the Glorious Revolution.
As a footnote, the title of Duke was still brand-new in 1376 (it had been created by the then-monarch, Edward III, for his sons), and there was no Devonshire Dukedom.
It might seem strange to see a trial by combat at that late date, but judicial combat was not formally eliminated in Britain until 1818! (see MacEdward Leach, editor, Amis and Amiloun, Early English Text Society/Oxford University Press, 1937, p. lxxxi).
The idea of the French lord wearing the King's armor (concealed) while Delamare is un-armored is interesting in a Glorious Revolution context, since the French would naturally have favored the Catholic James VII and II over lord who favored William and Mary; although there is no real evidence that James II was pro-French, he would have been so portrayed. Wearing concealed armor is self-explanatory, but why the King's armor? One possibility is that a French lord would have to come to England without his full panoply; another is that the King's armor would be kept in ideal condition. But it probably wouldn't fit the French lord very well....
All of which fits well with the title of Child B, which explicitly dates the contest to 1687; James II reigned 1685-1688/1689, and the Glorious Revolution took place in 1689. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.2
File: C207

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