John Taylor, the water-poet, verse, competition, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, Sir John Suckling

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read it are a typical feature of flyting. ²⁵⁷ In the case of this flyting, according to Fennor, one of his conditions of attendance was that he be allowed access to Taylor’s part in the competition beforehand so that he could prepare a relevant response, and this might have been the custom at such events (sig. Aiii^v). It seems reasonable that competitors would require access to their adversary’s accusations beforehand in order to be able to compose pertinent answers. As it is doubtful that the Taylor-Fennor flyting was ever really intended to take place, however, this point of debate may well be a literary convention suggested to them by other flytings with which they were familiar. In his answer to Taylor, Fennors Defence: Or, I Am your First Man, Fennor mentions a further public verse competition that had been arranged between himself and one Kendal at the Fortune, but apparently this was also aborted when Kendal failed to arrive on the appointed day (sig. Biii). The appeal of the idea of such organised verse competitions persists well into the seventeenth century, but there is little evidence to suggest that they ever really took place. ²⁵⁸

While there is no concrete evidence to suggest that such flytings were actually performed publicly, there are numerous precedents for commercially driven paper quarrels between poets, and as Capp comments, “one way for a newcomer to attract attention was

²⁵⁷ See, for instance, Bawcutt (1992), pp.233-4. See also ‘The Answer quhilk Schir Dauid Lindesay maid to the Kingis Flyting’, beginning “Redoutit Roy, your ragment I haue red”, The Works of Sir David Lindsay of the Mount, 1490-1555, ed. Douglas Hamer, STS, 4 vols (London and Edinburgh: Printed for the Society by Blackwood, 1931-6), I. (1931), pp.101-4. Thomas Smyth and William Gray similarly stress the literary aspect of their quarrel. In An Enuoy Smyth writes “I have recyued, your lewde lybell” (l.4) and in Gray’s answer, The Returne of M. Smythes Enuoy, he writes, “I haue receyued your enuyous and proude enterpryse” (l.4). For other examples see Cat. Anon 52-3 and S 253.

²⁵⁸ See, for instance, Sir John Suckling’s ‘The Sessions of the Poets’ and John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester’s (?) ‘A Session of the Poets’. In these fictional competitions Suckling and Rochester pit their respective contemporary town wits against one another in verse competitions for the title of laureate. See The Works of Sir John Suckling, ed. L. A. Beaurline and Thomas Clayton, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), I. The Non-Dramatic Works, ed. Thomas Clayton (1971), pp.71-6 and The Poems of John Wilmot Earl of Rochester, ed. Keith Walker (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984), pp.133-5.

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