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HISTORICAL REFERENCES: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 (7 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)
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 [163 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).
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.
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

Butler: Raymond Reagan Butler, Is Paris Lost? The English Occupation 1422-1436, Spellmount, 2003
OxfordCompanion: John Cannon, editor, The Oxford Companion to British History, Oxford, 1997
Reid: Peter Reid, By Fire and Sword: The Rise and Fall of English Supremacy at Arms: 1314-1485, Constable, 2007

Last updated in version 6.6
File: Perc2238

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