William Alabaster
Channel: all the knowledge of the universe PRINCIPIA
Date: 2022-01-20

William Alabaster, by Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1010547 / CC BY SA 3.0

#1567_births
#1640_deaths
#People_educated_at_Westminster_School,_London
#Converts_to_Roman_Catholicism_from_Anglicanism
#Alumni_of_Trinity_College,_Cambridge
#17th-century_English_poets
#17th-century_English_male_writers
#English_dramatists_and_playwrights
#People_from_Hadleigh,_Suffolk
#English_Roman_Catholics
William Alabaster from a contemporary etching.
William Alabaster （also Alablaster, Arblastier） （27 February 1567 – buried 28 April 1640） was an English poet, playwright, and religious writer.
Alabaster became a Roman Catholic convert in Spain when on a diplomatic mission as chaplain.
His religious beliefs led him to be imprisoned several times; eventually he gave up Catholicism, and was favoured by James I. He received a prebend in St Paul's Cathedral, London, and the living of Therfield, Hertfordshire.
He died at Little Shelford, Cambridgeshire.
Title page of Alabaster's Roxana, c.
 1595.
Alabaster was born at Hadleigh, Suffolk, the son of Roger Alabaster of the cloth merchant family from Hadleigh in Suffolk, and Bridget Winthrop of Groton, Suffolk.
According to Fr.
John Gerard, an underground Roman Catholic priest of the Society of Jesus who briefly served as Alabaster's spiritual director, Alabaster was, "raised in Calvin's bosom,
" and, "was used to having his own way over other people." He was educated at Westminster School, and Trinity College, Cambridge from 1583.
He became a fellow of Trinity, and in 1592 was incorporated of the university of Oxford.
In June 1596 Alabaster sailed with Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, on the expedition to Cadiz in the capacity of chaplain, and, while he was accompanying a subsequent diplomatic mission in Spain, Alabaster converted to Roman Catholicism.
An account of his change of faith is given in an obscurely worded sonnet contained in an manuscript copy of Divine Meditations, by Mr Alabaster.
He defended his conversion in a pa...