Broadside entitled 'A Congratulatory Poem'

Commentary

This poem begins: 'IN Autumn when Seges decores the Fields, / And Phoebus all plentiful Desierds yeelds. / These Creatures who did formerly bewail / Their hard Estate, sing now in Annandale'. The wedding between Charles, 1st Earl of Hopetoun, and Henrietta, daughter to the Rt Hon. Earl of Annandale, took place on 31st August, 1699.

Charles Hope's father bought the Hopetoun Estates just outside Edinburgh, in 1678. Charles and his mother, Margaret, commissioned Sir Willliam Bruce, with the help of Robert Adam, to build Hopetoun House in 1699. Charles became 1st Earl of Hopetoun in 1703. He and Henrietta had at least two children. Nowadays Hopetoun House is open to the public.

Broadsides are single sheets of paper, printed on one side, to be read unfolded. They carried public information such as proclamations as well as ballads and news of the day. Cheaply available, they were sold on the streets by pedlars and chapmen. Broadsides offer a valuable insight into many aspects of the society they were published in, and the National Library of Scotland holds over 250,000 of them.

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