The most horrible and tragical murder of the right honourable, the virtuous and valorous Gentleman, john Lord Bourgh, Baron of Castille connel.  
Committed by Arnold Cosby, the fourteenth of januarie.  
Together with the sorrowful sighs of a sad soul, upon his funeral: written by W. R. a servant of the said Lord Bourgh.  Tempus, fortuna, flent.  printer's or publisher's device 
Printed by R. R. 1591.   

The most horrible and tragical murder, of the right Honourable john Lord Bourgh: Baron of Castle connel, committed by Arnold Cosby the 14. of januarie.  
NOt to paint it out with vainglorious terms of a large Exordium in a matter where throbbing sorrow breaketh of superfluous circumstances, and over werying plaints abbreviate the liberty of speech: nor to use the choice invention of a pleasing discourse, where nothing but heavy misfortunes minister cause of melancholic and pensive contemplations: But to explain a tragical truth, and set forth the lamentable order, of a premeditated murder, I will briefly prosecute my own grief, and the general wailing of every gentle mind. Wherein as well superiors, as inferiors, (cast from the quiet stay of their former affects) seem to bear their indifferent parts.  
If the loss of true nobility, whereon as upon a rock of safe protection, consisteth the happy government of every flourishing common weal, though by honourable service in war, or by sickness at home, the appointed scourge of humane frailty: be a grievous maim to the state, inferring a common lament through every part thereof. Then much more may the state complain, and every private person shed tears of sorrow, when the one looseth the hope of expected virtues, and the other is bereft the strength of their peaceable fortunes, yet not by repulsing the injuries of foreign pride, or natural summons of divine election, but by the poisoned rancour of domestical treachery, as by this horrible murder executed on the right honourable the Lord Bourgh may well appear, whose virtuous desires, were steadfastly fixed upon true honours exercises, and whose heroical constitution, ever abhorred the base practices of vicious and ignoble qualities. But as the fairest rose is apt to be consumed by a canker, so Envy the malicious handmaid of honour, continually seeketh the ruin of noble personages.  
For in the court amongst the princelike train of her majesties followers, there wandered (as the purest wheat is associated with infectious weeds) one Arnold Cosby, a man of proud conceit, borne to mischief, and predestinated to destroy that which his loathed life is too far unable to redeem.  
This Cosby, what for country's sake being an Irish man, or for the courteous affability of the Noble man (whose ingenuous towardness carried a good conceit of every one) was so favoured and well esteemed of him as he thought nothing lost wherein he might pleasure him, till at last (as is the custom, of overbold inchroching upstartes) by too much familiarity he grew contemptuous, and the more to manifest his arrogancy and the malice of his swelling spirit, took a slight quarrel, (after sundry despiteful disgraces offered) to provoke and challenge the Lord Bourghe by a vile and impudent letter, which one night under sign of fawning subtlety, secretly he clapped into his hand. And though the offence did not proceed by him, but principally rose by the reports of an other gentleman of Cosbyes' acquaintance, which offered to maintain them to his teeth, daring him to the field, yet did he refuse to fight with him, bending the force of his conceived hatred, only against the Lord Bourgh, and would not forsooth otherwise be pacified, but with his life and ruin of his carcase, for such were his words in his impudent letter, stuffed with a rabble of bombasted braves, scornful terms, and odious comparisons, binding him upon his honour and manhood, the next morning to meet him in Wansworth fields.  
The noble gentleman whose modest ears did glow at the immodest and shameless lines, as his mild and courteous demeanour, was never seen to injure the simplest, so being impatient of the least wrong smiled at his folly, and thought, though he were no way his equal, yet in so much as he was a Soldier and in that respect a gentleman, it would not be much prejudicial to his honour, if he met him, and with the chastesment of his sword taught him his duty with better manners, and therefore not in hatred of soul, thirsting after blood, as it appeared by his oppribrious letter he did: but in sobriety sent him word back he would meet him, which resolution I suppose was contrary to Cosbeyes expectation, who imagined be like the Lord Bourghe would have stood upon terms of superiority with him, or else he would not have been so liberal in his challenge.  
But the night drew on, and Cosbyes' stomach that of late did blow forth from his windy puffed breast the sound of horror and death, began now to quail, at the hearing, of two or three words, spoken in a mild and temperate vain, and therefore as fitted the opportunity of time he entered into counsel, with the cursed ruler of darkness, how he might work mischief, and yet defend his own credit from blot of infamy. Well somewhat was devised and concluded upon, as after by his actions might be gathered: for the day no sooner appeared, but as prefiguring some dismal accident, it covered the earth with a lowering countenance, and black clouds in sign of ensuing miseries, distilled repentant tears from their watery brows. When Cosby well studied for his purpose, and pricked forward with a desire of deceiving hope, which his wicked thoughts had before hatched in his brain, left his lodging and came to the Lord Bourghe with a case of Rapiers, bidding him take his choice, for those should be the instruments of life or death betwixt them.  
After this they mounted themselves and road on towards Wansworth, neither of them having made any one privy to their intent the one would not, in regard of his honour, the other in fear his villainons' pretence should be discovered: I need not aim at the thoughts of Cosby by the way, they may be conjectured to be such, as commonly proceed from a mind premeditating murder. When they were come to the place appointed, Cosby as it should seem, being first arrived, had made himself ready to fight, the Lord Bourgh coming somewhat later, was not altogether so ready, yet had cast of his cloak, tied his horse, and drawn his rapier.  
Now mark the fear, wherewith treacherous hearts do continually tremble, though they have never so perfectly studied the platform of their pernicious devices. For Cosby although he had trained this fresh springing hope of chivalry and honour, into a solitary place far from resort, and early in the morning when few had occasion to be in the fields, yet did he (as ministers of devilish stratagems use) faint and gladly would have been at home again, as by his delays is evident, for first he entreated the L. Bourgh to measure rapiers, the equal length whereof he knew sufficiently for himself provided them.  
Then did he request him to break his rapiers point (avouching it was trial enough of their manhoods, in that they had met in field) and to scar their faces, and so return and say they had fought. But the L. Bourgh as one that loathed his former brags, and detested that dastardlike motion, told him flatly, he scorned such pusillanimity, nor came he to play boys play. Why then quoth Cosby my L. 'twere best put of your spurs lest they chance to hinder you.  
Now had the devil which all this while had been absent from his servant, fitted him at length with a policy to work his will and endamage his own soul. And now, even now, the fatal hour was come, wherein the bloody homizide gaped to quench his thirst in blood, and to act the tragedy of his former scelerous inventions. For as the L. Bourghe (whose noble mind suspecting no treachery) kneeled down, putting his rapier in his left hand, and with his right, intended to unbuckle his spurs, the monstruous treachetour, taking the advantage as it fell, not like a Soldier, or a Gentleman, but like a brutish manqueller, and murderous conspirator, void of all virtue and humanity, with all the violence his coadjutor the devil could lend him, ran his rapier twelve intches into his breast, which stuck so fast, as he was constrained to set his foot upon him and pluck it forth, and being cast down with the force of the thrust, Cosby, that wicked and bloody Cosby, could not be content with one mortal wound, nor might his insatiate fury be staunched, except his vital blood streamed in sundry conduits, to gorge the fell outrage of his greedy maw, therefore letting fall his rapier, took his dagger in his right hand, and therewithal gave him three and twenty wounds more. Which scarce could suffice, for that he feared, if any breath remained in his body his tongue might bewray the manner of that horrible murder, and therefore would not have left so, but that he saw rescue near, which made him take his horse to escape, which was when he came unto that place, a lusty strong gelding as any is in England, but he was no sooner on his back, but he presently fell lame, and was not able to carry him, such is the just judgement of God that abhorreth murderers, and will not their villainy be concealed.  
Besides for all those wounds, which the Lord Bourghe had received, it pleased God he should live two or three hours after, time enough to commit himself to his mercy, and to reveal the treacherous manner of his death, which he did in the hearing of the right honourable the earls of Essex Essex and Ormewood, in a house in Wansworth, whether he was conveyed by the means of one john powel yeoman of the bottles in her majesties house, who coming to the rescue, pursued the murderer until he shrouded himself in a thick wood, where he might easily have kept himself close a long time, but that the providence of God having nowtaken place to punish, where before the devil had kept possession, for sin he would not suffer him to rest, but so soon as it was night, brought him back to Wansworth, and the first house he came to was the house wherein the breathless body of the Lord Bourgh lay, whereunto he was no sooner approached (which is a thing especially to be noted,) but his wounds bled more freshly then when the were first given, whereby the people in the house being aghast at that sudden and strange spectacle made forth to search, for surely they supposed the murderer was not far off, he hearing the noise of their coming, fled to Newinton, where he was apprehended and carried to N●wgate, and from thence brought the five and twentieth day of januarie to the Session's house in Southwark, where he was arraigned and condemned of wilful murder, which murder he had committed the fourth day of the same month. And thus have I disburdened the heavy clog of my grieved conscience, and done my latest duty to him dead, whom whilst he lived, I loved and honoured.  
Then Noble minds, whose hearts full of lenity harbour no suspicion of treachery, banish all secure, mildness from your souls, that suffers every base, and ignoble Sicophante to enchroche into the leniry of your favourable conceit. And nourish not with your courteous countenance, the contemptuous aspirers of inferior reputation: For thereby groweth such boasting vanity from the baset insolent, that would frame nobility to the inferior type of their unworthiness. As well is manifested by the sudden death of this noble gentleman, and the published villainy of this tragical murder, a sufficient caveat for every mistrustless mind to be admonished.   

The sighs of a sad soul upon the unfortunate death of the Right Honourable the virtuous and valorous gentleman the Lord Bourgh.  

The sighs of the Night.  

THe gorgeous Sun hath spent his holy fire,  
& scowling clouds are wrapped arm in arm,  
The morning to the salt sea doth retire,  
& deadly sleep doth cast an endless charm:  
Forefiguring some everlasting harm.  
The Night's fair Queen doth bend her ivory brows  
And gleams a gloomy beaming on the boughs.   

And Mercury forerunner of the evening,  
Hath bathed his golden wings in clotted blood,  
And every gentle planet sitteth grieving,  
And that doth move that ever firmly stood:  
A pitchy fog doth cover every flood.  
And while the day break striveth with the stars  
The Sun and Moon maintain continual wars.   

The mountains sink unto the valleys deep,  
And rivers swell unto the mountains hight,  
No pleasance doth his wont order keep:  
A wind removes the waves: there tears do sigh  
And liquid moisture turns to sulphering dryth:  
So sorrow burns when dreirie tears are spent:  
And over heat doth make a soft relent.   

A swannish tune becomes my morning song,  
And in my sight her feathers turned to black,  
No day is seen, but night is overstrong:  
For still the morning blush is turned back,  
Because no mourning eye shall sorrow lack,  
A choir of Owls instead of Nightingales,  
With Elegies my fainting sorrow quails.   

The dew that falls is like the sent of death,  
And brings a mortal Serene with the fall,  
A grave is all the pleasure of the earth,  
and springing bliss is but as barren gall,  
and with our feet we dig our burial,  
What booteth all the pride of boasting lust  
When martial armour is a tomb of dust.   

Buried alive within the grave of Night,  
Where darkness guideth my lamenting grief,  
I lie bereaved of my former light,  
As one that in distress did find relief,  
And placed sorrow in his soul for chief,  
For that sweet lamp of life that I so loved,  
Is from my wont guidance quite removed.   

I loathe the cheerful joy the day doth bring,  
because the day maintains the thing I hate:  
Sweet is the music that the Screchowles' sing  
And in good time are Minutes overlate,  
For in my fancy love is black debate,  
And when I see my withered senses strive,  
Then do I think my sorrows are alive.   

I look and see the daughters of great jove,  
That loud his noble virtues that I love,  
Sat sighing in a melancholy grove:  
and to combine a coronet have strove,  
Of all the plants that in the field do rove,  
For that sweat Lord I hold the world in scorning  
& hate day, night, the evening & the morning.    

The sighs of the Morning.  

Now as a mourning gods comes the Morn,  
Like to a wretched Pilgrim clothed in grey,  
Her lowering looks like one that was forlorn,  
Gushed showers of tears upon that dismal day:  
And when she saw his deep & mortal harms,  
She took my Lord within her loving arms.   

Meeting the Lark that mounted with her notes,  
Her Crystal body brushed upon her breast:  
& by that summonce tuned their warbling throats  
To sing the burden of my great unrest:  
And when I sigh the birds with heavy heigh,  
Treble their sonnets, and approach me nigh.   

If she had lost her glimcing Lucifer,  
That is familiar with her bright uprise:  
No sorrow could such grievousness infer,  
As now departed from her tearful eyes.  
And if hereafter I do see her clear,  
I'll fly from her, as an inconstant fere.   

Her crimison Mantle fell into the Sea,  
And almost made the Lordly Neptune mad,  
But when he knew the mourning of the day  
His royal hall with misty fog was clad,  
And understanding of this sadfull end,  
He sighed, and said that he had lost a friend.   

When as the Nymph did know this cursed hap  
& what bruit soul did act that damned deed,  
a heavy clangor of her arms did clap,  
To bid all true Nobility take heed,  
How they did trust to flearing sycophants,  
Or favoured proud contemptuous miscreants.   

Between their brows see mischief fyrmlie knit,  
And yet a fawning sweetness in their lips:  
Within there hearts doth ugly treason sit,  
And Adder's venom from their pleasure sips.  
Take heed fair Lords, and fear ye to embrace:  
The mark of nature in a flattering face.   

The Goddess ending with a grievous sob,  
Went up, to tell within her stately court:  
How vice the noble did of virtue rob,  
And there did write his honours rare report.  
When I beheld it I was well content,  
And yet me thought I wished the Night's assent,    

The Third sigh of Winter.  

My fire is greater than whole Forests flames,  
Eternal Winter kindleth in my breast:  
And in my heart a Register of names,  
Of baleful storms the season hath impressed.  
Sometimes the winds do dive in to my heart,  
And call them forth to renovate my smart.   

Then every storm doth take a several limb,  
And in those limbs possesseth several veins:  
And like Saturnus makes my body grim,  
By letting forth my blood in painful streynes.  
And when I sigh I raise a bremie storm,  
So all my joys are spent in winter's form.   

This winter cometh by that flowers fade,  
Whose colour brought bright comfort to my sight:  
Whose sweet perfume my joyful pleasure made,  
Whose leaves reflexed like a starry light.  
The coward malice cropped it from the ground,  
And now in summer is no pleasure found.   

As heavy as the frosty grayberdes' weight,  
Lieth congealed sorrow on my heart:  
And yet my burden seemeth but a sleight,  
Lightning, and thunder griefs and sighs do part  
The one with sudden flashes blinds mine eyes,  
The other with a wasting terror flies.   

A frost of care hath nipped my springing youth,  
My Sun is down should make the ice relent:  
And heaps of snow are gathered by my ruth,  
All which are hillocks of cold discontent  
And if this wintering chilnes ever burst,  
A washing storm must waste the frozen crust.   

Then from the brazen prison breaks the winds,  
And from their swelling mouths do send out showers:  
And drive me to the thought of that which binds,  
Bundles of thorns to build up darksome bowers  
Under that gloomy shade I sit and sing,  
The grievous loss of such a precious thing.   

Woe is my Winter for so great a miss,  
And in that season on his sadful hearse:  
A hermitage I'll build shall be my bliss,  
And call on age my yongnes to reverse  
And in his worthy praise my pen shall dwell  
Whose virtue did all base contempt expel.   

I'll sit until my breath engrave this grace  
Upon the stone doth cover his sweet corpse.  
Here virtue in a milkewhite mildness stays  
Until eternal glory by his force,  
Conjoin his body to his precious soul  
In his sweet bosom that doth all control.    

The fourth sigh of the Spring.  

The Sovereign of the Planets never rose,  
But in a cloudy vale did shroud his head,  
His Chariot covered like a mourning hearse  
Rejected quit his golden furniture,  
Ceres and Flora suffered such a dearth,  
as never happened on the barren earth.   

When first the cursed hand, by coward's watch  
Did separate that life that loud my light,  
The spring did sprout, but black was all her sap  
The violet turned to a tawny hue,  
Dim was the rose, yet yellow were the seeds,  
For mourning minds, betokening mournful weeds.   

The wind with tragic music wiffeth sighs,  
Thorough the linnow stalks that shook the flowers,  
and Ajax blood that breed the Hyacinth,  
Congealeth care upon the grassy banks,  
But then the dainty Lily lost her leaves,  
& they were bound amongst the reapers sheaves.   

The lofty Pines did pine within the valleys,  
and stood like stripped champions in a storm.  
They that are cut & dance upon the billows,  
are careless in the cold extremest chances.  
and as the deepest brooks do murmur least,  
So they say little, that did love him best.   

Upon a springing oak doth keep Jove's bird,  
That letteth fall a feather every flight:  
His sorrow lets the ivy have his growth,  
That turns the Eagle to the bird of night,  
When Okes and Eagles die for grief not age  
There fear and ruin run in equipage.   

Tmolus herself whereas the Safron grows,  
Hath intermixed her spice with loathsome weds,  
Black will doth grow on the Arabian shrubs,  
as hard as are the quills of Porcupins,  
Of Ravons colour looks the Cotton tree,  
a glorious spring again shall never be.   

Thus is my spring become the leaves decay,  
Where Characters of endless grief are writ.  
The dewfull tears do trickle from the boughs  
That lost their clothing when I lost my love,  
and aye to me my sorrow writs the worst,  
My joys are barren and myself accursed.   

If any care be buried in the earth,  
Some quaking fury send it from her breast,  
and lead my lump that being over priest,  
I may conucie this dead time to my rest,  
Where wrapped up in bright archangel's wings  
I may behold that which my comfort brings.    

The Grace's Funeral.  

Since first the morning & the evening mourned  
Since winter and the spring time are bereaved,  
Of all the joys my inward losses breathed,  
angels rejoice my love is now received,   

The Graces have his lovely body balmed.  
and have the centure of the earth perfumed,  
Whereas that body shall not be consumed,  
& that which wrents the ground is ever calmed   

Their golden robs his body now hath covered,  
& Diane's Doves their ivory breasts have plumed,  
Which by his body yet alive have hovered,  
●nd his fair resting is by heaven assumed.   

Four moral virtues have his soul conveyed  
And spiteful fates his virtues have deceived,  
And great jehovah hath his work surveyed,  
And with that blessed sacrifice is pleased.   

Who knew my noble lover whilst he lived,  
And will not say his virtues have deserved,  
In fame's huge books to have his name described  
And every honour that he had revived.   

My wandering wit in sorrows source is drowned  
& when I wrought his praise the Muses frowned  
My shallow brain his noblesse hath not sounded,  
Nor hath my pen his worthiness renowned.   

Now hath immortal sorrow near approached,  
And on my mazing wretchedness hath ceased:  
And hath my ruler night again conducted,  
whose gaping horour cannot be appeased.   

Then of his souls sweet safety assured,  
Which our redeemer by his death procured,  
And since my sorrows cannot be redressed,  
They are embrac'te as evermore distressed.   
FINIS.