Burying Mountjoy and Penelope Rich: King James, the Heralds and a Counter-statement from the Poet Samuel Daniel

Abstract

Bourdieu’s concept of ‘symbolic capital’ has been used to study various kinds of elites. This article shows how it can help us understand the status and privileges of early modern English courtiers—and how these could be won and lost. The discussion focuses on the funeral, burial and commemoration of the most successful of contemporary generals, Charles Blount, 1st Earl of Devonshire, 8th Baron Mountjoy (1563–1606), and sets these in the context of the Jacobean court’s concern with symbolic capital. It demonstrates that the ceremonies normally accorded someone of Mountjoy’s rank and military success were not observed properly. He was penalised because he had married his long-standing lover, Lady Penelope Rich (1563–1607), the ‘Stella’ of Sir Philip Sidney’s sonnets. King James I showed the couple great favour until their marriage, which he declared unlawful and annulled. The heralds accepted his ruling, after disagreeing among themselves. The article shows that though the funeral was held in Westminster Abbey, Mountjoy was not buried there but in another London church, formerly known as Greyfriars, where a monument was erected to him. Lady Rich was personally and symbolically excluded from the funeral. Also discussed is the privately printed poem that Mountjoy’s client Samuel Daniel (1562–1619) wrote for the funeral, which defends Mountjoy and alludes, in a half-hidden way, to Penelope’s exclusion. The article concludes by considering how the symbolic capital of the whole court sank in this period. Most of the archival evidence considered has not been published before, some of it illustrated in figures, the rest in appendices (an armorial description of Mountjoy’s arms at his funeral, bills from the Westminster Abbey funeral and a translated extract from a contemporary history in Latin).