Bridging the Continental divide: neo-Latin and its cultural role in Jacobean Scotland, as seen in the Delitiae Poetarum Scotorum (1637)

This poem and the four that follow show that Halkerston had a deep-seated distaste for Henri III of France (r. 1574-1589), and shared the same frustration and anger at his leniency towards French Protestants, or Huguenots, as his major French opposition. Although Henri (formerly the Duc d'Anjou) initially acceded to the throne with popular support, his policy of toleration (typified by the so-called 'Peace of Monsieur' in 1576 and the Treaty of Bergerac in 1577), and his unwillingness to employ a policy of execution against Huguenots when they failed to comply with limits to their rights of worship, led to the formation of the Guise-led 'Catholic League' against him. Henri also became the victim of a systematic and long-lived satirical campaign, which lambasted him as an effeminate and weak tyrant. It is in this tradition that Halkerston's epigrams should be located. The epigram below criticises his interest in courtly and 'bookish' pleasures (most notoriously exemplified by his maintenance of a coterie of low-born favourites or 'mignons' at court at the exclusion of traditional nobility) as his country burns around him. The fact that it is given here as part of a cycle with the poem that follows (d1_HalJ_003) suggests a possible date of around 1585. Metre: elegiac couplets.