The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #9164   Message #59141
Posted By: Bruce O.
18-Feb-99 - 01:34 PM
Thread Name: Sir Walter Raleigh Songs
Subject: RE: Sir Walter Raleigh Songs
On Euing # 334 at the end of the text, and just before the 'Printed for J. Conyers...' is "This May be Printed. R. L. S.", so it is again a 1685 copy. The J. Conyers here is John Conyers, and I don't have specific dates for his publications, but I don't think he published anything before about 1670, or a little later. His son Joshua finished his apprenticesship in Nov. 1692. It wasn't necessary to license a new reprint of an old broadside, so I take the 1685 date to be the original issue. That doesn't mean that some ballad writer didn't rework an old song that wasn't on a broadside and publish his new version. That did happen.

The usually form of the licensing statement for Roger LeStrange was 'With Allowance' or, occasionally 'With Priviledge' and this lasts to early June of 1685. Then the 'This many be Printed' appears, and this lasts to the end of Lestrange's tenure (c Dec. 1685) and through Richard Pocock's term (ending soon after the time James II left England).