3: _Barak_. The only borrowing in the poem from a popular seventeenth
century jest book, _Wits Recreations_ (1640), "Epigrams," no. 46,
"On Sir Fr. Drake": "The sun itself cannot forget/His fellow
traveller."
11: a _Jewish_ Renegade. Cardinal Philip Thomas Howard (B).
13: a Breaden God. Either a reference to transubstantiation (see also
II Kings 2-3 and II Chron. 34) or an allusion to the Meal Tub Plot
(1679).
16: a Cake of _Shew-bread_. In addition to the Biblical allusion,
perhaps a reference to the poisoning of the Holy Roman Emperor
Henry VII by the communion wafer.
17: in Possession. As this legal term is opposed to "reversion"
emendation is unnecessary.
19: to bear. There was a belief that Jeffreys was connected with
the Duchess of Portsmouth (B). The "Golden Prize" was perhaps
protestantism, to be suppressed under a secret provision of the
Treaty of Dover (1670).
19: Court-Drugster. Sir George Wakeman.