On Her Son Katherine Phillips Analysis

The Unconcernéd World: Public Conformity and the Private Grief of Katherine Philips

In May of 1655 little Hector Philips was buried in London just days after his birth. Katherine Philips’ epitaph in his memory, On Her Son H.P. at St. Sith’s Church was published on his tombstone: a mother’s narrative of her son’s brief life, death, and resurrection in Heaven engraved in stone. Particularly striking are the following lines: Therefore, as fit in Heav’n to dwell, He quickly broke the prison shell. So the subtle alchemist, Can’t with Hermes’ seal resist The powerful spirit’s subtler flight, But will bid him long good night. (Epitaph)

With these six lines, Philips expresses her belief that her son is now with God. In breaking
Souers relates that at some point Katherine Philips dispensed with the Presbyterianism in which she had been raised, and embraced the practices of the Church of England , stating that “she had become reconciled to those very bishops against whom she had prayed as a child” (Souers 25). Anyone who was loyal to the Church of England was also loyal to the crown, and works such as Upon the Double Murder of King Charles and On the Third of September, 1651 clearly identify her as a Royalist poet. More difficult to imagine, however, is the Royalist Philips married to a Parliamentarian who had actually signed the death warrant of Charles I. Her husband James Philips, thirty eight years her senior, was appointed High Sheriff for Cardiganshire in Wales in 1649, the year following their marriage, and in Parliament represented both Cardigan and Pembroke at different times in his career (Souers 27). In the summer of 1651, James Philips helped to quell an uprising of Royalists in Cardiganshire, and assisted the High Court of Justice in their inquiry of the events leading up to the rebellion (27, 28). It was only a few weeks later that Cromwell defeated Charles II at Worcester, prompting his wife, Katherine Philips, to compose On the Third of September, 1651. How the personal relationship of James and Katherine Philips was
This symbolic burial of her literary gifts was not to last. In December of that same year, Philips’ close friend, Anne Owen, the “Lucasia” of Philips’ many poems, buried her husband John. This death prompted Philips to write To my dearest Friend, Mrs. A. Owen, upon her greatest loss as a gesture of sympathy and comfort to her friend. Four months later, on April 13, 1656, “Matchless Orinda” gave birth to a daughter whom she named Katherine, a name the little girl shared with her mother the poet, and with her maternal grandmother. Was it the knowledge that she would soon give birth to another child which had allowed Philips to unearth her literary talents the previous December, in order to console a friend who had just experienced the death of her spouse? One cannot know the answer to this question; however, in the time remaining to her before her tragically early death from smallpox in 1664, Katherine Philips produced many poems on friendship and on Royalist themes as well as a much admired translation of Corneille’s Mort de Pompée, performed with great success in both Dublin and London in 1663.

Philips “gasping numbers” and diction of her elegy and her subconscious allusions to the book of Wisdom in both the epitaph and the elegy demonstrate that Philips was unable to process her grief within the Cromwellian context; neither