Lord Willoughby

DESCRIPTION: "The fifteenth day of July... A famous fight in Flanders was foughten in the field... But the bravest man in battel Was brave Lord Willoughby." In a fierce contest with the Spanish, Willoughby's bravery encourages the English to victory
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1765 (Percy); tune known from 1603 (Robinson's "Schoole of Musick"); a song with this name was in William Thackeray's broadside catalog by 1690
KEYWORDS: battle nobility soldier
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
1587 - Peregrine Bertie, Lord Willoughby of Eresby, takes command of the English forces in the Netherlands
1601 - Death of Willoughby
FOUND IN: Britain(England)
REFERENCES (8 citations):
Percy/Wheatley-ReliquesOfAncientEnglishPoetry II, pp. 238-241, "Brave Lord Willoughbey" (1 text)
Chappell-PopularMusicOfTheOldenTime, pp. 115-116, "Lord Willoughby" (1 text, 1 tune)
Chappell/Wooldridge-OldEnglishPopularMusic I, p. 152, "Lord Willoughby, or Lord Willoughby's March, or Lord Willoughby's Welcome Home" (1 text, 1 tune)
Simpson-TheBritishBroadsideBallad, pp. 467-471, "Lord WIlloughby" (2 tunes)
Dallas-TheCruelWars-100SoldiersSongs, pp. 116-117, "Brave Lord Willoughby" (1 text, 1 tune)
Sidgwick-BalladsPoemsIllustratingEnglishHistory, pp. 106-108, "Brave Lord WIlloughby" (1 text)
Olson-BroadsideBalladIndex, ZN895, "The fifteenth day of July"
ADDITIONAL: Vivian de Sola Pinto and Allan Edwin Rodway, _The Common Muse: An Anthology of Popular British Poetry XVth-XXth Century_, Chatton & WIndus, 1957, pp. 40-42, "Lord Willoughby" (1 text)
ST Perc2238 (Full)
Roud #V18836
SAME TUNE:
Give ear you lusty Gallants/A famous Sea-fight. Hollander..Spaniard..September 1639. (Olson-BroadsideBalladIndex ZN969)
Now comfortable Tydings is come unto England/Joyfull News for England [Peace.. April 6, 1654] (Olson-BroadsideBalladIndex ZN3422)
Gallant Fighting Joe ("On old Virginia's sacred soil") (Wolf-AmericanSongSheets p. 46)
NOTES [283 words]: This is probably just another broadside that "made it big" without entering oral tradition, but the number of references seemed sufficient for me to include it in the Index. (Note the regular use of the tune in broadsides).
Peregine Bertie, Lord Willoughby was a famous swordsman, and performed well in the Netherlands, but this report of his exploits against the Spanish is certainly blown out of proportion. Davies, p. 181, says of him:
"Peregrine Betrie, thirteenth Baron Willoughby de Eresby, held one of England's oldest titles. He owed his then unusual Christian name to the peregrinations of his parents, Protestant exiles in the reign of the Catholic Mary Tudor. He became one of the greatest English generals of his day, serving as commander-in-chief successively in the Netherlands and Normandy. His bravery was a byword: he commanded the heroic English charge at the Battle of Zutphen in 1586. 'Testy and choleric' in his own words, but also witty and intellectual, Peregrine Bertie was hugely respected by his enemy, the Duke of Parma, his ally, King Henry IV of France, and his queen, Elizabeth I."
The Willoughbys had a strong martial record. The first one I've heard of was a baron who helped lead an English army to France in 1423; he successfully commanded the vanguard of the army in the British victory at Cravant in that year (Butler, pp. 23-24; Reid, p. 306.) Another was a Lancastrian peer killed at the Battle of Towtown in 1461 (Reid, p. 416).
There was a later Willoughby, Francis Willoughby de Parham, a royalist during the Civil Wars who was governor of Barbados in the 1660s, but he died at sea in a hurricane during a war with the French (OxfordCompanion, p. 991). - RBW
Bibliography Last updated in version 7.1
File: Perc2238

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