Top pop from seventeenth-century England. Broadside ballads were single-sheet songs that sold for a penny a piece. This website concentrates on over 100 resoundingly successful examples that you can investigate through recordings, images and a wealth of other materials. Whether you are interested in music, art, love, gender, tragedy, politics, family life, crime, history, humour or death, you will find something to engage you here. See also User’s Guide.

Politics - Controversy  

Showing 1 to 20 of 21

3 The Catholick Ballad:/ OR AN/ INVITATION/ TO/ POPERY [Euing 24]
4 A lamentable Dittie composed upon the death of/ Robert Lord Devereux late Earle of Essex, who was beheaded in the/ Tower of London, upon Ashwednesday in the morning [Huntington Britwell 18290]
5 The Ballad of the CLOAK:/ Or, The Cloaks Knavery [Pepys 2.218]
7 THE/ Sale of Esau's Birth-right;/ OR,/ The New Buckingham Ballad [Crawford 3537]
8 A NEW SONG [Pepys 4.312]
11 THE/ Rare Vertue of an Orange;/ Or, Popery purged and expelled out of the Nation [Pepys 2.259]
21 A True Relation of the Life and Death of/ Sir Andrew Barton, a Pyrate and Rover on the Seas [Pepys 1.484-85]
26 The Whig Rampant:/OR, EXALTATION [Euing 389]
31 The SUCCESS of/ Two English Travellers;/ Newly Arrived in London [Pepys 2.232]
32 The Seamans Song of Captain Ward the famous Pyrate of the world, and an/ English man born [Euing 327]
33 The most Rare and Excellent History,/ Of the Dutchess of Suffolks Callamity [Euing 228]
41 The Woful Lamentation of Mistris Jane Shore, a Goldsmiths Wife/ in London, sometime King Edward the Fourth's Concubine [Euing 394]
50 A New Song of Lulla By,/ OR, Father Peter's Policy Discovered [Bodleian Wood E25 (110)]
73 The lamentable fall of Queen Elenor, who for her Pride/ and wickedness by Gods judgements sunk into the ground at Charing=Cross and rose at/ Queen hive [Euing 184]
78 John ARMSTRONG's Last Good-Night [Pepys 2.133]
79 Win at first, lose at last; or, a New Game at Cards [Bodleian Wood 401 (149v-150r)]
89 Private Occurrences,/ OR,/ The Transactions of the four Last Years [Pepys 4.317v]
96 Young Jemmy,/ OR,/ The Princely Shepherd [Roxburghe 2.556]
97 A Turn-Coat of the Times [Pepys 2.210]
112 Rebellion given over House-keeping:/ OR,/ A General Sale of Rebellious Houshould stuff [Pepys 2.209]

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