The ongoing cataloguing project of the early printed books in Queens’ Old Library has unveiled a very intriguing poem, written on a loose leaf and laid in a copy of Etienne Bellengard’s Sententiarum volumen absolutissimum (Geneva: Jean de Tournes, 1587) [I.5.21].
Beginning with the verse: ‘As soon as Charles left his native shores, every angel was filled with tears’, the poem refers to an interesting episode in British history, the Spanish Match, when the future King Charles I left Britain to secure a marriage between him and the Infanta Maria Anna of Spain.
Read more about this story on the Old Library’s blog: https://queenslib.wordpress.com/2017/12/14/the-spanish-match/
