WHEN THE KING ENJOYS HIS OWN AGAIN.
BY MARTIN PARKER.
It is with particular pleasure that the editor is enabled to restore to the public the original words of the most famous and popular air ever heard of in this country. Invented to support the declining interest of the royal martyr, it served afterward, with more success, to keep up the spirits of the cavaliers, and promote the restoration of his son; an event it was employed to celebrate all over the kingdom*. At the revolution it of course became an adherent of the exiled family, whose cause it never deserted. And as a tune is said to have been a principal mean of depriving king James of the crown, this very air, upon two memorable occasions, was very near being equally instrumental in replacing it on the head of his son. It is believed to be a fact, that nothing fed the enthusiasm of the Jacobites, down almost to the present reign, in every comer of Great Britain, more than “The king shall enjoy his own again;” and even the great orator of the party, in that celebrated harangue which furnished the present laureat with the subject of one of his happiest and finest poems, was always thought to have alluded to it in his remarkable quotation from Virgil of
Carmina Tum Melius Cum Venerit Ipse Cavemus!
The following song is given from a collection, intitled “The Loyal Garland, containing choice Songs and Sonnets of our late unhappy Revolutions.” Lond. 1671. 12mo. black letter. Corrected by
* There was a new get of words written on this occasion, which it has not been the editors fortune to meet with: he is only able to recollect, from the performance of an old blind North-country crowder, that the concluding lines of each stanza were—
Away with this curs’d rebellion!
O the twenty-ninth of May, it was a happy day. 
When the King did enjoy his own again.
VOL. II. S another copy in ” A Collection of Loyal Songs.” 1750. 8vo. The original title is ” Upon defacing of Whitehall.” In the year 1711 appeared a small pamphlet, intitled ” The Ballad of The King shall enjoy his own again: with a learned Comment thereupon, at the Request of Capt. Silk, dedicated to Jenny Man. By the Author of Tom Thumb” (i. e. Dr. WagstafT). From this pamphlet a few notes have been extracted, which will be given at the end of the Song. This Silk appears to have been an officer of the City Militia, and to have given great offence by having this tune played as a march ” before his heroic company, in their perambulation to the Artillery Ground.”

What Booker doth prognosticate
Concerning kings or kingdoms ‘fate,’
I think myself to be as wise
As ‘he’ that gazeth on the skyes:
My skill goes beyond
The depth of a Pond,
Or Rivers in the greatest rain:
Whereby I can tell
All things will be well,
When the king enjoys his own again. 10

There’s neither Swallow, Dove, nor Dade,
Can sore more high or deeper wade;
Nor ‘show’ a reason, from the stars,
What causeth peace or civil wars.
The man in the moon
May wear out his shoo’n,
But all’s to no end,
By running after Charls his wain:
But all’s to no end,
For the times will not mend
Till the king enjoys his own again. 20

Full forty years this royal crown
Hath been his fathers and his own*;
And is there any one but he
That in the same should sharer be?
For who better may
The scepter sway
Than he that hath such right to reign?
Then let’s hope for a peace,
For the wars will not cease
Till the king enjoys his own again. 30
* This fixes the date of the song to the year 1643.

Though for a time we see White-hall
With cobweb-hangings on the wall,
Instead of gold and silver brave,
Which, formerly, ’twas wont to have,
With rich perfume
In every room,
Delightful to that princely train;
Which again shall be,
When the time you see
That the king enjoys his own again. 40

Did Walker no predictions lack,
In Hammonds bloody almanack?
Foretelling things that would ensue,
That all proves right, if lies be true;
But why should not he
The pillory foresee
Where in poor Toby once was ta’en i
And, also, foreknow
To th’ gallows he must go,
When the king enjoys his own again. 50

Then [fears] avaunt! upon ‘the’ hill
My Hope shall cast’ her’ anchor still,
Untill I see some peaceful Dove
Bring home the Branch I dearly love;
Then will I wait
Till the waters abate,
Which ‘now disturb’ my troubled brain,
Else never rejoyce
Till I hear the voice
That the king enjoys his own again. 60

NOTES.
V. 1. “This Booker was a great Fishing-tackle maker in king Charles the Firsts time, and a very eminent proficient in that noble art and mystery, by application to which he came to have skill in the Depth of Ponds and Rivers*, as is here wisely observ’d.. ..He liv’d at the house in Tower-street, that is now the sign of the Gun, and being us’d to this sedentary diversion.. .he grew mighty cogitabund, from whence a frenzy seiz’d on him, and he turn’d enthusiast like one of our French prophets, and went about prognosticating the downfall of the King and Popery, which were terms synonymous at that time of day. ‘Tis true) Cornelius a Lapide, Anglice Con. Stone, has given him the title of a Star-gazer; but I have it from some of his contemporaries that he was nothing of a Conjuror, only one of the moderate men of those times, who were tooth and nail for the destruction of the King and Royal Family, which put him upon that sort of speculation.”
* Pond and Rivers are printed as proper names in all the copies.

V. 11. “Swallow, Dove, and Dade, were as excellent at this time of day in the knowledge of the astronomical science, as either Partridge, Parker, or.. Dr. Case is now, and bred up to handicraft trades as all these were. The first was a Corn-cutter in Gutter-lane, who, from making a cure of Alderman Pennington’s wife’s great toe, was cry’d up for a great practitioner in physick, and from thence, as most of our modern quacks do, arriv’d at the name of a Cunning Man*… The Second was a Coblerm White-cross-street, who, when Sir William Waller passed by his stall in his way to attack the King’s party in Cambridgeshire, told him, The Lord would fight his battles for him; and upon Sir William’s success, was taken into the rebels pay, and made an Almanack maker of. The last was a good innocent Fiddle-string seller,… who being told by a neighbouring teacher that their musick was in the stars, set himself at work to find out their habitations, that he might be instrument-maker to them; and having with much ado got knowledge of their place of abode, was judg’d by the Round-heads fit for their purpose, and had a pension assign’d him to make the Stars speak their meaning, and justify the villainie they were putting in practice.”
V. 41. “Toby Walker (Note, I don’t affirm that he was grand, father to the famous Dr. Walker, governor of Londonderry, who was kill’d at the battle of the Boyn, and happen’d to be overseer of the market at Ipswich in Suffolk, on account of giving false evidence at an assize held there) was a creature of Oliver Cromwell’s, who, from a basket-maker on Dowgate-hill, on account of his sufferings, as was pretended in the cause of truth, was made colonel in the rebels army, and advane’d afterwards to be one of the committee of safety. He was the person that at the battle of Marston Moor, broke into the King’s head quarters, and seiz’d upon his Majesty’s private papers, which afterwards were printed in order to render him odious to his subjects; and not without some reason, judg’d to be that abandon’d Regicide that sever’d the head of that Royal Martyr from his shoulders on a public stage before his own pallace gate.”

V. 42. “Hammond the Almanack maker, was no manner of relation to colonel Hammond who had the King prisoner in the Isle of Wight, but one of that name, that always put down in a Chronological table when such and such a Royalist was executed, by way of reproach to them; by doing of which his almanack was said to be bloody. He was a butcher by trade, and for his zeal to the then prevailing party, made one of the inspectors of the victualling office.

REPRINT OF:
Ancient Songs AND Ballads FROM THE REIGN OF KING HENRY THE SECOND 
TO THE REVOLUTION. COLLECTED BY JOSEPH RITSON, ESQ. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. II. I love a ballad but even too well. Shakspeare. LONDON: PRINTED FOB PAYNE AND FOSS, PALL-MALL; BY THOMAS DAVISON, WHITEFBIABS. 1829. P. 257-262.

Some think that the British may have played “When the King Enjoys his Own Again” at the Yorktown surrender.*

*Chappell, William. The Ballad Literature and Popular Music of the Olden Time. 1859. Reprinted. New York: Dover Publications, 1965