Literature, war and politics, 1642-1668
Dzelzainis, Martin
A Companion to Literature from Milton to Blake (Oxford, 2002)
Abstract
On 12 March 1642, the Prince of Wales (the future Charles II) attended a lavish reception at Trinity College, Cambridge. After dinner there was a performance of The Guardian, a comedy composed at just a week’s notice by one of the fellows, Abraham Cowley (1618-87). Among those attending were George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham (1628-1687), and his 
younger brother Francis (1629-48). Taken into the royal family after their father, the king’s favourite, was assassinated in 1628, the Villiers brothers had been educated by the prince’s own governors, Brian Duppa, Bishop of Chichester, and William Cavendish, Earl of Newcastle, before furthering their studies at Trinity in 1641. Fellow-poets at Cambridge who would have been keen to see Cowley’s latest work included his friend, Richard Crashaw (1612-49), and Thomas Stanley (1625-78). Like Cowley and Crashaw, Andrew Marvell (1621-78), another Trinity poet, had contributed verses to Συνωδια, sive Musarum Cantabrigiensium Concentus et Congratulatio (1637), a volume congratulating the king and queen on the birth of their fifth child (see Marvell 1972: 199-202). But by 1642 Marvell was living in London and so probably missed the event.
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