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 - Foreign Affairs  

Showing 1 to 20 of 22

1 A proper new Ballad, intituled, The wandring Prince of Troy [Pepys 1.84-85]
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]
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]
12 The True LOYALIST/; OR,/ The Obedient SUBJECT,/ A Loyal SONG [Pepys 2.223]
18 An excellent Ballad of a Prince of England's Courtship to the/ King of France’s Daughter, and how the Prince was disasterously slain [Roxburghe 1.102-03]
21 A True Relation of the Life and Death of/ Sir Andrew Barton, a Pyrate and Rover on the Seas [Pepys 1.484-85]
22 The Spanish Ladies Love [Euing 340]
27 A Pleasant Song of the Valiant Deeds of Chivalry,/ Atchieved by that Noble Knight Sir Guy of Warwick [Roxburghe 3.50-1]
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]
51 The Loyal English Man's WISH/ For the Preservation of/ The King and Queen [Pepys 5.63]
56 A CARROUSE/ TO THE/ Emperour, the Royal Pole,/ And the much-wrong'd DUKE of LORRAIN [Roxburghe 4.2]
62 The Honour of a London Prentice [Pepys 3.252]
72 A Lamentable Ballad of Fair Rosamond, King Henry the Second’s Concubine,/ Who was put to death by Queen Elinor, in Woodstock Bower near Oxford [Pepys 1.498-99]
76 Saint Georges commendation to all Souldiers [Pepys 1.87]
89 Private Occurrences,/ OR,/ The Transactions of the four Last Years [Pepys 4.317v]
111 The Famous Fight at Malago,/ Or, The Englishmen's Victory over the Spaniards [Pepys 4.204]
116 Love and Honour: Or,/ The Lovers Farewel to Calista [Roxburghe 2.306]
117 The Protestant Court of England:/ OR, THE/ Joyful Coronation of K. William III. and Q. Mary II [Pepys 2.275]