Abraham Fleming: - Early Music Online - Royal Holloway, University ...

25 Bee a worshipper of the Lorde thy God, and in the day of thine
hunger hee will refresh thee.
55 Bee not a lier, and a forger of untruths, for such doth the Lorde
abhor: but they that deale truly please him. 143
The hardworking and godly bee was not the only rustic theme to be used in Diamond. At
times this book can seem repetitive and contrived but then it is essentially a series of long
godly sermons creatively written by a passionately anti-papist, establishment man doggedly
making his point. Look beyond the sermonising and Diamond can be seen as steeped in
literary traditions of which Fleming was well aware. Rustic metaphors and themes echo not
only Virgil but also in the popular writing of Fleming’s contemporaries and colleagues, for
example Spenser and Sydney. Fleming’s alliterative title pages seem to have been inspired
by Whetston’s Rocke of Regard (1576) which Fleming was aware of because he had
contributed poetry to Whetston’s book. 144 The floral themes in Timothy Kendall’s Flowers of
Epigrammes (1577), to which Fleming had contributed a recommendatory poem, may also
have inspired the “flowres” found in the ‘Plant of Pleasure’ within Diamond.
The first “point” or chapter in Diamond was ‘Footepath to Felicitie’. This corresponded with
the second section entitled ‘Bridge of Blessednesse’ in Footepath of Faith. The second
chapter in Diamond called ‘Guide to Godlinesse’ was made up of the third and fourth
sections in Footepath of Faith, ‘Christian exercises short sweet’ and ‘A necessarie and right
godly praier’. The third chapter entitled ‘Schoole of Skille’ is almost identical to
‘Exhortations or lessons Alphabeticall’, which form the fifth section of Footepath.
Footepath’s sixth section, a ‘Hive of Bees’ provided the text for Diamond’s fourth chapter
‘A Swarme of Bees’, although Fleming shortened the text and there were more “Bees” in
Footepath. Similarly Footepath’s seventh section ‘Graces to be said before and after meals’
formed the basis for Diamond’s fifth chapter ‘Grove of Graces’. The title of the last chapter
in Diamond was ‘Plant of Pleasure’ and this was directly copied from Footepath’s last
143 Ibid. p. 236.
144 See pp. 162-3.
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