MS. described by B. Dobell, with ten other letters, of which Dobell, followed by Schelling, prints three by Jonson, (ii) to an unnamed lord, probably Suffolk, (iii) to an unnamed earl, (iv) to an unnamed 'excellentest of Ladies', and three by Chapman, (v) to the King, (vi) to Lord Chamberlain Suffolk, (vii) to an unnamed lord, probably also Suffolk. These, with four others by Chapman not printed, have no dates, but all, with (i), seem to refer to the same joint imprisonment of the two poets. In (i) Jonson says that he and Chapman are in prison 'unexamined and unheard'. The cause is a play of which 'no man can justly complain', for since his 'first error' and its 'bondage' [1597] Jonson has 'attempered my style' and his books have never 'given offence to a nation, to a public order or state, or to any person of honour or authority'. The other letters add a few facts. In (v) Chapman says that the 'chief offences are but two clawses, and both of them not our owne'; in (vi) that 'our unhappie booke was presented without your Lordshippes allowance'; and in (vii) that they are grateful for an expected pardon of which they have heard from Lord Aubigny. Castelain, Jonson, 901, doubts whether this correspondence refers to Eastward Ho!, chiefly because there is no mention of Marston, and after hesitating over Sejanus, suggests Sir Giles Goosecap (q.v.), which is not worth consideration. Jonson was in trouble for Sejanus (q.v.), but on grounds not touched on in these letters, and Chapman was not concerned. I feel no doubt that the imprisonment was that for Eastward Ho! Probably Drummond was wrong about Marston, who escaped. His 'absence' is noted in the t.p. of Q_{2} of The Fawn (1606), and chaffed by A. Nixon, The Black Year (1606): 'Others . . . arraign other mens works . . . when their own are sacrificed in Paul's Churchyard, for bringing in the Dutch Courtesan to corrupt English conditions and sent away westward for carping both at court, city, and country.' Evidently Jonson and Chapman, justly or not, put the blame of the obnoxious clauses upon him, and renewed acrimony against Jonson may be traced in his Epistles of 1606. I am inclined to think that it was the publication of the play in the autumn of 1605, rather than its presentation on the stage, that brought the poets into trouble. This would account for the suppression of a passage reflecting upon the Scots (III. iii. 40-7) which appeared in the first issue of Q_{1} (cf. Parrott, ii. 862). Other quips at the intruding nation, at James's liberal knightings, and even at his northern accent (I. ii. 50, 98; II. iii. 83; IV. i. 179) appear to have escaped censure. Nor was the play as a whole banned. It passed to the Lady Elizabeth's, who revived it in 1613 (Henslowe Papers, 71) and gave it at Court on 25 Jan. 1614 (cf. App. B). There seems to be an allusion to Suffolk's intervention in Chapman's gratulatory verses to Sejanus (1605):
Most Noble Suffolke, who by Nature Noble,
And judgement vertuous, cannot fall by Fortune,
Who when our Hearde, came not to drink, but trouble
The Muses waters, did a Wall importune,
(Midst of assaults) about their sacred River.
