John Taylor and William Fennor

It is perhaps no more than coincidence that the next extant, full-blown domestic flyting is conducted between rivals who seem on one level to be reincarnations of the allies Dycar and Watreman. In this verse pamphlet war John Taylor, the poet and waterman, and William Fennor (whose name like Dycar’s - derived from Daw the ditcher or ditch digger in Piers Plowman ²⁴⁹ -coincidently also suggests a profession involving drainage) argue about the arrangements for an aborted public flyting or competitive verse performance that had been meant to take place at the Hope Theatre supposedly on October 14^th 1614. ²⁵⁰

The combatants are conscious that they are engaging in a practice that has close associations with the court. By undersigning himself “his Maiesties Riming Poet”, Fennor portrays Taylor as an outsider and challenger like Garnish and, like Skelton, he presents himself as laureate to, and defending champion of, the king. ²⁵¹ Fennor probably responds here to a similar claim that Taylor had made recently while attempting to provoke a literary feud with Thomas Coryate. ²⁵² Appealing for James to intervene upon his behalf in the dispute, he identified himself as his “Majesty’s poor Water-Poet”. ²⁵³ The poets may also have had in mind the flyting between Polwart and Montgomerie, singled out as an example

²⁴⁹ See n.231.
²⁵⁰ Taylor’s credentials as an all-round flyter reach beyond the reputation of his occupation. He exhibits the typical characteristics of a flyter as someone who, as his biographer Capp (1994) points out, was “patriotic [and] intensely loyal to both king and church” and highly vocal about his patriotism, p.1.
²⁵¹ Fennors Defence: Or, I Am your First Man (printed for Roger Barnes, 1615), sig. Bvi^v, STC 10783. Subsequent references for this text are given in parentheses following quotations.
²⁵² Taylor was persistent in his attempts to draw Coryate into a literary feud, beginning with his scurrilous ‘To Tom Coryat’ followed by several other attacks and ending with Odcombs Complaint. Coryate was reportedly infuriated, but neglected to repay Taylor in kind, and he even continued to suffer Taylor’s abuse after his death in 1617. See Noel Malcolm, The Origins of English Nonsense (HarperCollins, 1997), pp.18-19.
²⁵³ Capp (1994), p.13.