Nothing to do with bowdlerising, but fitting the OP in some respects:
the change from the C16th patriotic song "In eighty-eight ere I was born" to the C17th anti-heroic "Sir John Suckling's campaign."

The latter is consistent with the mid-C17th debunking of the high-flown Elizabethan sentiment, cf Suckling's "Why so pale and wan fond lover."