bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Medwall,Henry
Authors: Wakelin Daniel
Published: May 2017

Henry Medwall (1462–after 1501) was, from 1475, educated at Eton College, a school established a few decades earlier by Henry VI and, from 1480 to 1483, at its sister institution of higher education, King's College, part of the University of Cambridge. After ordination as a deacon, he studied canon law, held benefices and worked as a chaplain to Cardinal John Morton, archbishop of Canterbury (Emden 1963; Nelson 1980b). Little is known of his life beyond a few legal dealings and visits to his old college in Cambridge (Nelson 1980a; MacLean & Nelson 1997), but the ambience of Morton's household calls to mind the ambitious men, often learned or with interests in thestudia humanitatis(the humanist study and imitation of antiquity), among whom Medwall's plays are thought to have been written and first performed. The household at various times included the grammarian John Holt, the ecclesiast and book‐owner Robert Sherborne, and Thomas More (Wakelin 2007).
M
eres,
F
rancis
Authors: Marino James J.
Published: May 2017

Francis Meres (1565–1647), a writer, translator, and clergyman, is best known as a witness to other writers’ careers, because of a brief section of his
Palladis tamia
(1598). Meres was born in 1565 in Holland, Lincolnshire, to a long‐established family of local gentry. He entered Pembroke College, Cambridge, as a sizar in 1584, proceeded to a BA in 1587, and took his MA in 1591. He returned to Lincolnshire and unsuccessfully sought preferment with the assistance of influential local relatives John and Lawrence Meres. He was incorporated MA at Oxford in 1593.
M
iddleton,
E
lizabeth
Authors: Trapedo Shaina
Published: May 2017

Elizabeth Middleton (b.1619) was once believed to be a poet of devotional verse. Even though that claim has been convincingly challenged, Middleton's involvement with religious writings is important in that it offers an insight into patronage and literary circulation by women in England during the seventeenth century.
M
offett,
T
homas
Authors: Hodgson Elizabeth
Published: May 2017

Thomas Moffett (or Moffet, Muffet, or Moufet) (1553–1604) is known today for three different bodies of work: published treatises on medical and scientific topics, largely in Latin; two somewhat more populist English works, one on health and one on silkworms; and a recently discovered manuscript Latin biography and eulogistic poem about Sir Philip Sidney.
M
ore,
T
homas
Authors: Lander Jesse M.
Published: May 2017

Thomas More (1478–1535) was a lawyer, politician, and humanist. Born in London, More was educated at Oxford and had established himself as a lawyer before entering the service of Henry VIII, under whom he was appointed lord chancellor, the highest legal office in the realm. Despite a demanding career, More's household was a model of humanist learning, and his children, notably including his daughters, were all trained in Latin and Greek. His eldest child, Margaret Roper, proved to be an exceptional scholar. More's refusal to countenance the king's divorce from his first wife, Katherine of Aragon, led to his resignation of the chancellorship in 1532. After the passage of the Act of Supremacy in 1534, More faced increasing pressure to declare his support for the king. He remained silent, and in 1535 he was indicted, tried, convicted, and executed for treason. More is best known as the author of
Utopia
, a brilliant work of fiction that expresses a Christian humanist hope for social, political, and religious renewal; less famous, but also deeply influential, his unfinished
History of Richard III
is a central document in the development of English historiography. These two major works are part of a varied literary output which includes poetry, translations, religious polemic, and devotional works.
Morison,Richard
Authors: Woolfson Jonathan
Published: May 2017

Richard Morison (c.1513–56) was a humanist, member of parliament, and diplomat who rose from modest means to become the English ambassador to the Holy Roman emperor Charles V during the reign of Edward VI. Originally a protégé of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, in the 1530s Morison became a committed Protestant and servant of Henry VIII's chief minister Thomas Cromwell. He died as a religious exile in 1556 in Strasbourg.
M
oulsworth,
M
artha
Authors: Aydelotte Laura
Published: May 2017

Martha Moulsworth (née Dorsett) (1577–1646) authored one extant poem, ‘The memorandum of Martha Moulsworth, widdowe’, an autobiographical piece that remained unknown until it was discovered in the back of a commonplace book in Yale's Beinecke Library (Osborn MS, fb. 150) and published for the first time in 1993 along with extensive notes and commentary (Evans & Wiedemann 1993). Since its publication, Moulsworth's poem has attracted critical attention for its literary merits and for its historical and cultural interest; one of the first autobiographical poems in English, it offers a rare account of an early modern woman's life, in which she advocates strongly for the education of women and the founding of a women's college.
M
oulton,
T
homas
Authors: Sullivan Erin
Published: May 2017

Little is known about Thomas Moulton (
fl
. 1530s), a Dominican friar. He would have faded into obscurity had he not published a small octavo treatise in England on the maintenance of health, which became one of the best‐selling medical books of the Tudor period (Slack 1979). Entitled
The myrrour or glasse of helth
(c.1531), the book advertises itself as a manual to help avoid the pestilence, but the bulk of its pages focus on remedies for various physical ailments. It is among the earliest printed books in English on medical issues (O'Malley 1968), and its popularity reflected a growing appetite among readers for practical advice about the preservation of the body. Though it includes references to ancient and medieval medical authorities, such as Hippocrates and Avicenna, as well as discussion of humoral qualities like heat, cold, dryness, and wetness, its account of illness draws largely on astrology and religion. Such an eclectic approach to health and healing was common in this period (Siraisi 1990), and it probably contributed to the book's success.
N
eville,
F
rances
Authors: Archer Jayne Elisabeth
Published: May 2017

Frances Neville, Lady Bergavenny (d. 1576) was a Protestant writer and compiler of prayers and meditations in prose and verse. Born Frances Manners, she was the third daughter of Thomas Manners, first earl of Rutland (d.1543), and his second wife, Eleanor Paston (d.1550). By 1554 she had married Henry Neville, fourth Lord Bergavenny (d.1587), and together they had one surviving daughter, Mary (1554–1626), who married Sir Thomas Fane. There is reason to believe that Frances Neville and her husband may have differed on matters of conduct and religious observation, for whilst her writings evince a strict Protestant faith, Lord Bergavenny was denounced by the Puritan preacher Edward Dering for ‘ungodly talke’, ‘unclennes’, and ‘riot’ (Collinson 2001).
N
iccols,
R
ichard
Authors: O'Callaghan Michelle
Published: May 2017

Richard Niccols (1583/84–1616), poet and editor of the 1610 edition of the
Mirour for magistrates
, is an avowedly Elizabethan Jacobean poet. Writing in the early seventeenth century, he idealized Elizabeth's reign as the age of heroes not for the purposes of nostalgia but for political satire and complaint. When just a boy of 12, Niccols sailed on the 1597 Cadiz expedition, under the command of Lord Charles Howard of Effingham, later earl of Nottingham – a defining event to which he returns twice in the
Mirour for magistrates
. Six years later, in 1602, he matriculated at Magdalen College, Oxford, and the following year he produced his first work,
Epicedium
, a volume of elegies marking the death of Elizabeth I, in which he declared his poetic allegiance to Spenser and Michael Drayton.
Pace,Richard
Authors: Woolfson Jonathan
Published: May 2017

A diplomat and humanist, Richard Pace (c. 1483–1536) was from an early age the servant of Thomas Langton, bishop of Winchester. From 1498 Langton facilitated Pace's decade‐long education at the universities of Padua, Bologna, and Ferrara under leading Italian scholars, including the philosopher Niccolò Leonico Tomeo. Pace acquired a deep knowledge of the Greek and Latin classics and a highly developed and advanced humanistic sensibility, placing him among a very small group of English scholars. His learning, eloquence, and ability in languages were praised by prominent humanist friends at home and abroad, who included Thomas More, Cuthbert Tunstall, Reginald Pole, Thomas Lupset, and most significantly Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam. Pace became a priest in an age when senior clerical figures habitually served as diplomats and administrators, and in 1509 entered the service of Christopher Bainbridge, archbishop of York, newly appointed as Henry VIII's representative in Rome. After Bainbridge's death in 1514, allegedly by poisoning, Pace returned to England to the service of the new archbishop of York, Thomas Wolsey, and by 1516 was one of Henry VIII's principal secretaries. There followed almost a decade of diplomatic missions all over Europe until ill health, both physical and mental, forced his definitive return to England in 1525 and his death in relative obscurity in 1536. In the meantime he accumulated a fine library and many ecclesiastical benefices, including, in 1518, the prestigious deanship of St Paul's Cathedral in succession to John Colet.
P
arker,
M
artin
Authors: McShane Angela
Published: May 2017

Martin Parker (
fl
. 1624–38; d. ?1654) is the most renowned black‐letter ballad writer of the seventeenth century, as William Elderton is of the sixteenth century. He was remarkably prolific and turned his hand to all kinds of writing, including pamphlets, newsbooks, and translations of classical poetry. The most reliable catalogue of his work – Susan Newman's unpublished thesis (1975) – dates and attributes to his name 74 extant ballads and 14 prose pamphlets, in addition to a further 14 lost works. Although the vast majority of ballad writers remained anonymous, Parker insisted on ‘signing’ his works with his initials, and deplored the anonymity of his peers in his pamphlet
The poet's blind mans bough
(1641). His celebrity may be explained partly by this self‐advertisement, a trait that he shared with John Taylor the Water Poet; even for contemporaries, Parker's name became virtually synonymous with balladry. His ballads were declared as dangerously pernicious in a Puritan petition to the Long Parliament and he was frequently mentioned, if only satirically, by other authors in plays, pamphlets, and poems. In his dedication to
Five new plays, viz … by Richard Brome
(1659), contemporary songwriter Alexander Brome, whose own compositions were printed in books or anonymously in roman letter for a more elite readership, disapprovingly wrote:
Percy,William
Authors: Nardizzi Vin
Published: May 2017

The literary portfolio of William Percy (1574–1648), third son to the eighth earl of Northumberland, demonstrates amateurism, eclecticism, and unfulfilled aspiration. After matriculating at Oxford in 1589, where he seems not to have taken a degree, but where he befriended Barnabe Barnes and Charles Fitzgeoffrey, among others, Percy debuted on the literary scene withCoelia(1594), a sequence of 20 sonnets in the vein of Sir Philip Sidney. The collection opens with a promise for the publication of another poem, which never materialized, and closes with a madrigal addressed to Parthenophil, the nom de plume of Barnes, and, along with other such friendly traces in the works of Barnes, Thomas Campion, and Fitzgeoffrey, the collection's concluding poem partially outlines the contours of a literary coterie. Near the end of Elizabeth's reign, as his eldest brother, the ninth earl, helped secure James I's accession, Percy turned to drama, writing five generically diverse and densely plotted plays –The cuck‐queanes and cuckolds errants(1600–1),Arabia sitiens(1601),The aphrodysial(1602),A forrest tragaedye in Vacunium(1602), andThe faery pastorall(1603) – that were probably performed at the family's estates. But in the early years of Jacobean England, and especially after the ninth earl was imprisoned for his involvement in the Gunpowder Plot, this flurry of dramatic activity ceased; it was momentarily revived in 1632, when Percy marked the investment of his nephew as the tenth earl with a sixth play,Necromantes, or the two supposed heds. This time‐line suggests that Percy's theatrical compositions, none of which were printed during his lifetime, correspond to the ebb and flow of his family's political fortunes: they mark its higher points. Yet from some precise evidence about staging in the three holograph manuscripts containing Percy's drama, it is clear that this master of the family revels also intended the handful of early plays for presentation by the Children of Paul's and/or the Children of the Revels. There is no corroborating evidence, however, to indicate that either company mounted productions of Percy's plays. Percy died and was buried in Oxford in 1648.
P
ettie,
G
eorge
Authors: Stewart Alan
Published: May 2017

George Pettie (c.1548–89), romance writer and translator, was born the fourth son of John Pettie of Tetsworth and Stoke Talmage in Oxfordshire, and Mary Charnell. By 1564 he was a scholar at Christ Church, Oxford, where he graduated BA in 1569. After leaving Oxford, Pettie apparently served as a soldier on the Continent. He is the author of A
petite pallace of Pettie his pleasure
(?1576), and translator of Stefano Guazzo's
Civile conversatione
(1582). Aside from these facts, little is known of his life. According to his great‐nephew Anthony a Wood, Pettie lived to be ‘a captain and a man of note’. He died in July 1589 at Plymouth; the fact that he left his lands to his brother (Moore 2004) may suggest he was childless and possibly unmarried.
Philips,Katherine
Authors: Nevitt Marcus
Published: May 2017

Katherine Philips (1632–64), lyric poet and translator, was born in London into a family with strong Puritan and Parliamentarian connections. Born Katherine Fowler, she was the niece of both Sir John Oxenbridge, an intimate acquaintance of John Milton and Andrew Marvell, and Oliver St John, eminent Parliamentarian, kinsman of Oliver Cromwell, and future member of the Council of State. Educated at home until the age of eight, she then attended a Puritan boarding school in Hackney where she met Mary Aubrey and Mary Harvey, whose lifelong friendship exercised an important influence on her poetry and whose connections probably introduced her to London Royalist literary and musical circles in adulthood. At 15 she moved to Wales as a consequence of her mother's third marriage to a Pembrokeshire aristocrat, Sir Richard Phillipps, and within a year was married herself. Her husband, James Philips, was a supporter of the Parliamentarian and Cromwellian cause in the Civil Wars and Interregnum and served as member of parliament during the Commonwealth, Protectorate, and Restoration. Philips lived most of her adult life in the Welsh town of Cardigan, but made frequent trips to London when visiting friends or accompanying her husband on parliamentary business. She moved to Dublin for a year in 1662 where her translation of Pierre Corneille'sDeath of Pompeywas performed and published to much critical acclaim. The vast majority of her poetry before this period circulated in manuscript and was first printed in an apparently unauthorized octavo version by Richard Marriott in 1664 and then in Henry Herringman's grand posthumous folio edition ofPoems by the most deservedly admired Mrs Katherine Philips, the matchless Orinda(1667), a venture orchestrated by her friends.
P
orter,
H
enry
Authors: Kathman David
Published: May 2017

Henry Porter (d.1599) was an Elizabethan playwright who wrote one extant play,
The two angry women of Abington
, plus several others known only from their titles. The title page of
The two angry women
calls him ‘Gent.’, and he refers to himself in the prologue as a ‘poor scholar’, but further biographical information about Porter has proved elusive, partly because the name was so common. The play shows some familiarity with the countryside around Oxford, suggesting that Porter may have attended the university there. Rosetta Shear (1927) identifies the playwright with a Henry Porter who matriculated at Oxford in 1589, but Mark Eccles (1982) points out that the two men's signatures are totally different, and E. H. C. Oliphant's (1928) suggestion of an earlier Cambridge man is treated with justified scepticism by Eccles and Marianne Evett (1980). Eccles (1982) notes several records from the 1590s involving a London musician named Henry Porter, but it seems doubtful that such a man would be called a gentleman or call himself a ‘poor scholar’.
P
reston,
T
homas
Authors: Stewart Alan
Published: May 2017

Thomas Preston was billed on the title page as the author of
Cambises
(first published in 1570), one of the most important mid‐sixteenth century English plays. It was long assumed that he was the Thomas Preston (1537–98) from Simpson, Buckinghamshire, who had a distinguished academic career at Cambridge. After attending Eton College, this Preston moved to King's College, Cambridge, graduating BA in 1557, MA in 1561, acting as university proctor in 1565, and proceeding as LLD, probably in 1576. Resigning his King's fellowship – presumably to marry – he was elected master of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, in 1586, and was the university's vice chancellor in 1589–90. His civil law training led to his admission to the College of Advocates in 1586, and his position as advocate in the court of arches in 1591. He died in 1598, by which time he had three residences, and was a wealthy man (Shepard 2004). The Cambridge Preston had theatrical credentials, performing before Elizabeth I in a tragedy based on the Dido story during the queen's 1564 visit to the university, when he was noted for his ‘gracefull gesture … and propernesse of person’ (Shepard 2004). David Bevington (1962) also notes that the Cambridge Preston's authorship might explain ‘some surprisingly esoteric learning concerning the Greek tragedian Agathon, accurately translated from the
Eclogue
of Stobaeus’ in
Cambises
.
Puttenham,George
Authors: Craik Katharine A.
Published: May 2017

The writer and literary critic George Puttenham (1529/30–1590/91) is best remembered as the author ofThe arte of English poesy, a treatise on the history and practice of verse composition. Anonymously published in 1589,The arteis also a committed defence of poetry written in English rather than Latin. Puttenham believed that poetry was a direct, effective method of self‐improvement andThe artetherefore explores at length the relationship between verse‐making and the morals and manners of English gentlemen. Mastering the art of poetry enables poets, or ‘makers’, to achieve grace and beauty but also to attain the courtly virtues of dignity, nobility, and honour. Puttenham's formidably detailed advice to poets is interwoven with a narrative which reveals much about Elizabethan court culture as well as the aspirations of those who lived on its fringes. A unique blend of technical obscurity and emotional intensity,The artealso suggests the power of poetry – largely lost to us – to advance men's social and political ambitions. Less well known than Sir Philip Sidney'sThe defence of poesie, Puttenham'sThe arteis no less original and accomplished.
R
alegh,
W
alter
Authors: Lorimer Joyce
Published: May 2017

Sir Walter Ralegh (or Raleigh) (1554–1618) is now generally seen as a man of action and a ‘utilitarian’ writer, who imagined and reimagined his poetry and prose, just as he fashioned and refashioned himself, to take advantage of every opportunity to advance his own and his family's interests (Green‐blatt 1973; Beer 1997). The works produced during the reign of Elizabeth I, whether courtly poetry, voluntary political and military advice, commissioned propaganda in the service of the state, or attempts to raise support for his dreams of empire in Guiana, reflect his overriding purpose to achieve status, political influence, and personal wealth. During his long years of imprisonment in the Tower of London under James I, Ralegh turned to writing advice treatises and public universal history as the only means of political agency available to him. Immediately, and through the centuries after his death, as recent studies of the transmission and reception of his work have demonstrated, successive audiences appropriated Ralegh's voice, constantly constructing and reconstructing both the man and his canon to serve their own political agendas.
R
astell,
J
ohn
Authors: Rycroft Eleanor
Published: May 2017

John Rastell (c. 1475–1536) was a dramatist, barrister, member of parliament, crown servant, pageant‐maker, New World venturer, briefly a coroner, and among the first of the English printers. Born in Coventry, he was brother‐in‐law to Sir Thomas More, and father‐in‐law of the playwright John Heywood. His son, William Rastell, was also a printer and would publish many of Heywood's plays in the early 1530s. Rastell enjoyed a variety of careers in a dramatic life which included a failed attempt to sail to America, the establishment of one of the earliest printing presses in London, and a late conversion to Protestantism. His conversion alienated him from the More circle to whom he was tied by both blood and belief. He died in debt and out of favour, while imprisoned for unknown reasons.
R
avenscroft,
T
homas
Authors: Williams Deanne
Published: May 2017

Thomas Ravenscroft (b. 1591/92) was a composer, collector, and editor of music. He was the first publisher of traditional and popular English music. His collections reflect the broad spectrum of popular and religious music in the Elizabethan and Jacobean period, and some of the collected songs, such as ‘Three blind mice’, are still well known today. Ravenscroft's collections are a particularly important source for theatrical songs. Some of the songs he collected, for example, appeared in the plays acted by the Children of Paul's between 1597 and 1604. Study of Ravenscroft's publications thus reveals the extent to which the theatre both drew upon and contributed to popular music.
R
owley,
W
illiam
Authors: Nicol David
Published: May 2017

The actor and playwright William Rowley (d.1626) is best known as the co‐author, with Thomas Middleton, of
The changeling
(1622), a powerful tragedy that is still frequently performed today. However, Rowley's career spanned 20 years and included plays of solo authorship in addition to other collaborative works, five of which were with Middleton, while others were with such notable playwrights as Thomas Dekker, John Fletcher, John Ford, Thomas Heywood, and John Webster. In addition, Rowley was familiar to contemporary audiences as an actor who specialized in clown roles, as well as being a leading figure in the organization of a playing company, Prince Charles's Men. His obscurity today is due in part to the collaborative nature of much of his writing, which makes it difficult to differentiate him from his fellow writers. Furthermore, even when they have been able to identify his contribution, critics have traditionally been dismissive of his work, because of Rowley's tendency to specialize in comic subplots, the perceived awkwardness of his verse, and the vulgarity of his comedy. However, these views are changing: authorship attribution studies are gradually creating a consensus about Rowley's canon that contests easy definitions of his work. He seems, for example, to have written more than half of
The changeling
, including not only the comic subplot, but also the much‐praised tragic climax.
R
ussell,
L
ucy, countess of
B
edford
Authors: Tigner Amy L.
Published: May 2017

Lucy Russell (née Harington), countess of Bedford (baptized 1581, d.1627), courtier and patroness of the arts, was the eldest daughter of John Harington, first Baron Harington of Exton, Rutland (1539/40–1613) and his wife Anne, née Kelway (1554–1620). In 1594, at the age of 14, Lucy made a prestigious marriage to 21‐year‐old Edward Russell, third earl of Bedford (1572–1627). In the 1590s the couple led a profligate court life that caused them to incur large debts, and in 1601 the earl made the grave mistake of supporting Essex's rebellion and as a result had to pay an enormous fine. Their luck changed, however, when Queen Elizabeth died and James VI of Scotland was enthroned in 1603: the resourceful countess quickly endeared herself to the new queen by accompanying her from Scotland. She secured a coveted position as one of the ladies of the bedchamber, and her influence on the queen appears to have facilitated her parents' new position as guardians of the Princess Elizabeth. Thus established, the countess of Bedford became arguably the most powerful patroness (save for the queen herself) in the Jacobean court. In her role as facilitator and patron, she was a significant figure in shaping the literary production of Jacobean England.
Scot,Reginald
Authors: Davies S. F.
Published: May 2017

Reginald Scot (1538–99) was the first English author to write a treatise on witchcraft, and one of the most radically sceptical about its existence in all Europe during the early modern period. He was born, probably in 1538, the first son of Richard Scot, a Kentish landowner, and his wife Mary. Scot was educated at Oxford, but did not obtain a degree. He spent the remainder of his life in Kent, as an amateur scholar and holding various positions: for a number of years he worked as surveyor of flood defences on Romney Marshes; in 1586–87 he was collector of subsidies for the lathe of Shepway; he served as an infantry captain in the levies raised by his cousin Sir Thomas Scot at the time of the Spanish Armada in 1588; and in 1589 he was elected member of parliament for Romney. He died in 1599.
S
cott,
A
lexander
Authors: van Heijnsbergen Theo
Published: May 2017

Alexander Scott (?1520–1582/83) was the leading Scottish vernacular poet during the reign of Mary Queen of Scots (1542–67). While conclusive evidence is lacking, critics agree that he was probably the musician of that name who was employed from the early 1530s until at least around 1550 by the Scottish Chapel Royal which, based in Stirling Castle, provided music for both sacred and secular occasions at the Scottish court. In 1548 the musician, as one of a select group of those loyal to the royal family, was employed by the Erskine family, guardians of the infant Mary, to accompany the young queen on her journey to France, escaping from the advancing English army.
S
exby,
E
dward
Authors: Foxley Rachel
Published: May 2017

Edward Sexby (c.1616–58) was a political radical who spoke strongly at the Putney Debates in 1647 and was involved in conspiracy against the Cromwellian regime in the 1650s. His 1657 tract
Killing noe murder
made a bold and witty case for the legitimacy of tyrannicide and urged the killing of the lord protector Oliver Cromwell as a tyrant.
Shakespeare,William
Authors: Smith Emma
Published: May 2017

William Shakespeare (1564–1616), playwright, actor, and poet, has so shaped what we mean by ‘English’, ‘Renaissance’, and ‘literature’ that he is this encyclopedia's inevitable touchstone. A writer of powerful and resonant drama and poetry described by his contemporary Ben Jonson as ‘not for an age, but for all time’, Shakespeare traverses and transgresses dramatic genres of comedy, tragedy, and history as well as poetic genres such as the sonnet and the epyllion; invents memorable characters, phrases, and dramatic moments; and continues to inspire the creativity and scholarship of critics, writers, and directors.
Shepherd,Luke
Authors: Rankin Mark
Published: May 2017

Luke Shepherd (fl. 1548), Protestant poet and satirist, was one of the most important writers active during the reign of Edward VI (1547–53). In their vituperative critique of Roman Catholic doctrine, Shepherd's writings afford outstanding examples of the verse complaint written in the Skeltonic mode, a form characterized by alliterative, extended rhyme sequences and abrupt lines marked by vigorous diction.
S
idney,
R
obert, Earl of
L
eicester
Authors: Marino James J.
Published: May 2017

Robert Sidney (1563–1626), better known as the brother and father of famous poets than for his own poetry, led (albeit on a less outsized scale) the life of courtier, soldier, diplomat, and patron of the arts that his brother Philip proposed and left unfinished.
S
outhwell,
R
obert
Authors: Kuchar Gary
Published: May 2017

The Jesuit poet and prose stylist Robert Southwell (1561–95) is generally recognized as having played a significant role in the development of early modern English devotional writing. One of England's first metaphysical poets, Southwell helped popularize styles and genres of devotional literature that flourished in late Elizabethan and Stuart England. In terms of genre, he is best known for popularizing the ‘literature of tears’, in which sinners undergo conflicts of conscience, and for helping develop ‘the poetry of meditation’ more commonly associated with the work of John Donne (Martz 1962). In terms of rhetorical technique, Southwell influenced subsequent uses of both plain and grand styles in English religious poetry, not only in the work of fellow Catholics, but also in the ‘Anglican plain style’ of George Herbert and perhaps even in the ‘Protestant baroque’ of John Milton.
S
peed,
J
ohn
Authors: Knight Jeffrey Todd
Published: May 2017

John Speed (1551/52–1629) was a cartographer and antiquarian whose printed output – both his own works and his contributions to others' – helped to advance the Stuart historiographic project of defining Great Britain as a political entity with a unified cultural, and therefore literary, history. Speed was born at Farndon, Cheshire, to a merchant tailor John Speed (b.1526) and was married in 1570 or 1571 to Susanna Draper (1557/58–1628), with whom he had 18 children. Speed was made free of the Merchant Taylors' Company in 1580, after which he developed interests in theology and history. His association with controversial scholar and divine Hugh Broughton led him to oversee the printing of Broughton's
Concent of Scripture
in 1588–89 and to print his own
Genealogies recorded in the sacred Scriptures
in 1592, both of which incorporated maps, charts, and heraldic devices. A number of theological works followed before Speed embarked upon the cartographic and historiographic productions for which he is best known. In 1598 he was made customs waiter by Queen Elizabeth; in 1605 he was commissioned to make maps for King James; and in 1606 he was granted a coat of arms. Speed died in 1629 in London.
Speght,Rachel
Authors: Luckyj Christina
Published: May 2017

Rachel Speght (1597–1647/61) is best known for her vigorous polemicA mouzell for Melastomus(1617), the first and only definitely female‐authored response to Joseph Swetnam's popular misogynistic pamphletThe araignment of lewde, idle, froward and unconstant women(1615). Born in London in 1597, Rachel was the daughter of James Speght, Puritan minister and author of two Calvinist sermons. Probably educated both outside her home and within it by her erudite father, Speght had by the age of 18 acquired knowledge of basic Latin, history, theology, rhetoric, and classical and vernacular texts. In 1621 she married William Procter, Calvinist author of the apocalyptic sermonThe watchman warning(1624). After moving to Suffolk in 1631, she maintained her reputation for oppositional politics within her husband's parish, though she did not continue to write. She probably died sometime between 1647 and 1661.
Stafford,Dorothy
Authors: Jacobs Nicole A.
Published: May 2017

Dorothy Stafford (1600–36) was a literary patron and poet associated with the Catholic coterie at Tixall in Staffordshire. She was born into great privilege and wealth as Dorothy Devereux, the youngest daughter of Elizabeth's notorious former favourite Robert Devereux, the second earl of Essex (1565–1601), and Frances Walsingham (1567–1632), daughter of Elizabeth's adviser Sir Francis Walsingham and widow of Sir Philip Sidney. She was only two months old when her father was executed for high treason. However, upon the accession of James I, her brother Robert was restored to his position as third earl of Essex, and in 1623 he awarded his sister an annuity of £1,000.
Stanyhurst,Richard
Authors: Maley Willy
Published: May 2017

Richard Stanyhurst (Stanihurst) (1547–1618), Irish historian and Catholic controversialist, was born in Dublin. His father, James Stanyhurst, was speaker of the Irish parliament and recorder of Dublin, and his grandfather Nicholas had been mayor of Dublin. He was schooled first at Kilkenny, then in England at University College, Oxford (1563–68), and Furnival's Inn and Lincoln's Inn (1568–70). Returning to Ireland he was mentored by fellow Oxford graduate Edmund Campion, whose Irish history of 1571 influenced Stanyhurst's contribution to Raphael Holinshed'sChronicleson the same topic in 1577. Stanyhurst travelled widely, spending time in France, the Spanish Netherlands (by 1582 he was studying medicine at Leiden), and, in the mid‐1590s, at the court of Philip II of Spain. Returning to Brussels, the seat of the Spanish Netherlands, he joined the Society of Jesus and entered the priesthood after the death of his second wife in 1602. As an Oxford‐educated Dubliner and a distinguished Latin scholar who died in Brussels (in 1618), Stanyhurst is an example of a truly European humanist.
T
ofte,
R
obert
Authors: Burton John R.
Published: May 2017

Robert Tofte (1562–1620), poet and translator, is particularly known for his love sequence
Alba
. He was baptized in the parish of St Magnus the Martyr, London on 15 January 1562, and buried at St Andrew's, Holborn on 24 January 1620. During his life he published two volumes of poetry and several works of translation. Despite his immediate family's lack of financial stability, his grandfather provided means for him to attend and graduate from Oxford and to travel to Europe, where he developed his long‐standing taste for French and Italian poetry. His first published works appeared in 1597: a sonnet sequence entitled
Laura. The toyes of a traueller
, several sonnets of which appear to have been written during his years in Italy, and
Two tales, translated out of Ariosto
, also composed during his Italian tour.
T
ownshend,
A
urelian
Authors: Williams Deanne
Published: May 2017

Aurelian Townshend (
fl
. 1583–1649?) was a poet and dramatist known for his 1632 masques,
Albions triumph
and
Tempe restord
. Townshend worked with Inigo Jones, and succeeded Ben Jonson as a writer of masques for the Stuart court when Jonson temporarily fell out of favour. Townshend also wrote many poems that circulated in manuscript, a number of which were set to music. Reflecting the attitudes and aesthetic of Stuart court culture, Townshend's poems were dismissed by T. S. Eliot as a ‘faint, pleasing tinkle’. In recent years, however, his dramatic work has been found to offer a codification of the doctrine of royalism and a space for critiques of royal policy, as well to provide some key examples of women's dramatic performances and theatricality in the Caroline period.
T
raherne,
T
homas
Authors: Sullivan Ceri
Published: May 2017

A devotional prose and verse writer who takes a sharp departure from Protestant concerns with sin and death, Thomas Traherne (1637–74) is popularly known as the poet of felicity. Largely unknown as an author in his own lifetime he came to notice at the turn of the twentieth century after the discovery of two of his manuscripts; many more have since been found.
T
rapnel,
A
nna
Authors: Baker Naomi
Published: May 2017

Anna Trapnel (
fl
. 1642–60) was a sectarian visionary whose six prophetic and autobiographical works, four of which were published in 1654, were incendiary interventions in the religious and political debates of mid‐seventeenth‐century England. The daughter of a shipwright from Poplar, Stepney, Trapnel was brought up within Puritan circles. After early despair regarding her salvation, she had her first visionary experience of grace in 1642, while listening to the sermon of an Independent minister, John Simpson. Her spiritual assurance was tested following the death of her mother, whose last words were ‘Lord! Double thy spirit upon my child.’ Trapnel subsequently experienced raptures, in which God shone ‘hot upon [her] spirit… melting [her] into tears’, alongside bouts of suicidal despair.
T
yler,
M
argaret
Authors: Uman Deborah
Published: May 2017

Little is known about Margaret Tyler (
fl
. 1578) other than the information she discloses in the remarkable preface to her 1578 translation of Diego Ortúñez de Calahorra's Spanish romance,
The mirrour of princely deedes and knighthood
. She hints at her identity in the ‘Epistle dedicatorie’ by addressing her translation to the Right Honourable Lord Thomas Howard and referring to his parents who had recently died. Based on this information, Moira Ferguson (1985) has suggested that Tyler may have been a member or servant in the household of the earlier Thomas Howard, fourth duke of Norfolk (1538–72). Another possibility is that Tyler was Margaret Tyrrel, a member of another prominent Catholic family and sister‐in‐law to the Howard family. Louise Schleiner (1992) speculates that Tyler was a waiting woman in the house of Lord Norfolk and his second wife, Margaret, née Audley, and she suggests that in this situation, Tyler most likely produced her written translation after orally reading and translating romances to her mistress. In both parts of her preface, the ‘Epistle dedicatorie’ and ‘MT to the reader’, Tyler repeatedly draws attention to her gender; she imagines an audience critical of her choice to translate and publish a romance and preemptively challenges this audience by asking why, when so many romances are dedicated to women, it would be inappropriate for a woman to pen her own. Scholars read in Tyler's challenge to the conventions that allowed women to read romance but not ‘to farther wade in them to the search of a truth’ a dramatic example of early feminism. As Tyler seems to realize, the translation itself, although a relatively faithful rendition of Ortúñez's prose, is daring in that she chose to translate a romance at a time when other English women translators decided upon religious material, conforming to the notion that a woman's education should promote pious living. Hers was also the first complete Spanish romance translated into English. Despite the success of her translation (the initial publication was followed by two later editions), Tyler was the only Englishwoman to produce a romance until Mary Wroth published
Urania
in 1621 (Coad 1996).
T
yndale,
W
illiam
Authors: Betteridge Thomas
Published: May 2017

William Tyndale (c. 1495–1535) has been viewed in the past as a key figure in the early history of the English Reformation, and his translation of the New Testament has been seen as a potentially revolutionary work bringing Scripture to the people for the first time. Recent scholarship has, however, been far more sceptical about these claims. Historians have pointed out that Tyndale seems to have had relatively little influence on the course of the English Reformation, while a number of scholars have stressed the apparently authoritarian nature of Tyndale's political thought. This debate over Tyndale and the nature of his work needs to be seen in the more general context of the revisionist historiography of scholars like Eamon Duffy (1992) who have mounted a persuasive critique of the whiggish assumptions underlying the work of earlier historians, notably A. G. Dickens and G. R. Elton. This revisionist movement has successfully demonstrated that the English Church was not in a state of decay in the early years of the sixteenth century and that the process of the Reformation was uneven and contested. Revisionist historiography has, however, found it difficult to explain why many people living in Tudor England were attracted to the writings of men like Tyndale, when, at least until the death of Henry VIII in 1547, it was dangerous – at times fatal – to be found in possession of them. Tyndale's written work exemplifies the strengths and weaknesses of the early English Protestantism. It is full of violent polemics and vitriolic denunciations of the religious establishment of the day (Simpson 2007). It is also, however, rhetorically skilled and witty. Indeed Tyndale's religious writings embody a radical and liberating rejection of the existing models of religious piety; their iconoclasm is destructive but it is also informed by a desire for religious reform and social renewal (Betteridge 2010).
U
dall,
N
icholas
Authors: Mottram Stewart
Published: May 2017

Nicholas Udall (1504–56) is a key figure in the development of English comedy. His
Roister Doister
(often known as
Ralph Roister Doister
) (c.1552?) is one of the earliest plays in English to take its structure directly from the Roman comedies of Terence, and Udall thus anticipates the five‐act comedies of Shakespeare and Jonson.
Roister Doister
blends classical form with English humour, translating into a native idiom the structural principles of Latin comedy. As a translator as well, Udall was interested in rendering Latin into everyday English. Written for the classroom, his
Floures for Latine spekynge
(1534) translates selections from Terence into a deliberately homely English style. Alongside
Roister Doister
, Udall wrote the biblical play
Ezechias
(now lost), composed dramatic verse for Anne Boleyn's coronation in 1533, and has been credited with authorship of two other extant plays,
Thersites
(1537) and
Respublica
(1553). Recent scholarship has focused on the thorny issue of Udall's Protestant beliefs. Beneath ‘secular’ comedies like
Thersites
and
Roister Doister
critics have uncovered a distinctly reformist agenda, one that echoes the tone of some of Udall's more overtly Protestant prefaces to his translations of works by Desiderius Erasmus and Peter Martyr.
V
aughan,
T
homas
Authors: Wilcher Robert
Published: May 2017

Thomas Vaughan (1621–66) was born at Newton by Usk in the parish of Llansanffraid, Breconshire. He and his elder twin brother, Henry, were the oldest surviving children of Thomas and Denise Vaughan, both of whom were of Welsh gentry stock. The brothers were tutored by Matthew Herbert, rector of Llangattock, and both attended Jesus College, Oxford, to which Thomas was admitted on 4 May 1638. He won a scholarship in May 1640, graduated bachelor of arts in February 1642, and continued in residence at the college intermittently until 1648. He fought in the Royalist army at Rowton Heath, near Chester, in September 1645. Probably in the same year, he was ordained and installed as rector of Llansanffraid. In 1650, he was ejected by the Puritan authorities, but by then he had moved to London, where he lived with Thomas Henshaw in Kensington and became a member of the Chymical Club set up by Henshaw and other scientific investigators associated with Samuel Hartlib. He married Rebecca Archer on 28 September 1651. They performed alchemical experiments and prepared medicines together until her death in April 1658. During the 1660s, Vaughan found a patron in Sir Robert Moray, president of the Royal Society, who helped establish a laboratory at Whitehall. To avoid the plague of 1665, they were staying near Albury, not far from Thame, when Vaughan died while experimenting with mercury on 27 February 1666. He left his books and manuscripts to Moray, who paid for his burial at Albury on 1 March.
Verse Miscellanies, Printed
Authors: Zarnowiecki Matthew
Published: May 2017

Early modern printed verse miscellanies were collections of poems that varied widely in poetic form, authorship, and subject matter. In England, the latter half of the sixteenth century was the most active period for these printed miscellaneous poetry anthologies. Almost all were first printed during the reign of Elizabeth I (1558–1603), while few or no new printed miscellanies appeared during the reigns of James I and Charles I. During the years 1640–82, however, there was a renewed vogue for printed poetic miscellanies; these took the form of compliment books and collections of courtly wit, songs, and ‘drollery’ (Smyth 2004). Among the Elizabethan printed verse miscellanies, the most popular poetic forms collected were short amorous lyrics, pastoral poetry, ballads and songs, elegies, and epigrams.
W
aller,
E
dmund
Authors: Parker Michael P.
Published: May 2017

Edmund Waller (1606–87), poet, translator, and politician, was renowned during his lifetime for perfecting the heroic couplet and making it a pliant medium for poetic discourse; his lyric poems were esteemed as models of elegance. Waller also played a prominent role in shaping English tastes in architecture and deportment: he was one of the pivotal figures in the transformation of the Renaissance aesthetic into a Restoration one. Waller's reputation remained high throughout the neoclassical period, but it declined precipitously at the end of the eighteenth century and has never completely recovered.
W
ebbe,
W
illiam
Authors: Tate Joseph
Published: May 2017

William Webbe (
fl
. 1568–91) was a poet, translator, and critic. Only one publication of Webbe's survives,
A discourse of English poetrie
, from 1586, which includes translations of two of Virgil's
Eclogues
. Webbe notes that someone unknown to him found his manuscript translation of Virgil's
Georgics
and ‘hath or wyll vnaduisedly published it’, but this publication is lost. The dedicatory epistle to
A discourse
, addressed to Edward Suliard, claims that a translation was presented to Suliard; this translation may or may not have been the
Georgics
. The only other surviving text from Webbe is a letter to Robert Wilmot (
fl
. 1568–1608) from 1591, pre‐pended to the 1592 edition of Wilmot's
Tragedie of Tancred and Gismund
. The letter, praising Wilmot for deciding to publish the tragedy, is little more than a prefacing endorsement.
W
heare,
D
egory
Authors: Stewart Robin S.
Published: May 2017

Degory Wheare (1573–1647), the first Camden professor of ancient history at the University of Oxford, is a significant figure in the institutionalization of history as a university discipline during the English Renaissance. His magnum opus,
De ratione et methodo legendi historias dissertatio
(1623) – translated into English by Edmund Bohun in 1685 as
The method and order of reading both civil and ecclesiastical histories –
is one of the last major
ars historicae
written during the Renaissance, and it served as a standard text for historical education and training in England from its publication to the beginning of the eighteenth century (Fussner 1962).
W
hetstone,
G
eorge
Authors: Austen Gillian
Published: May 2017

George Whetstone (1550–87) was an Inns of Court writer of the early Elizabethan period, and a modestly successful elegist and moralist. He is chiefly remembered today as the author of a play which was the main source for Shakespeare's
Measure for measure
, and an elegy for George Gascoigne, the most influential and innovative writer of the mid‐ to late 1570s. Whetstone is interesting because he reacted so quickly to literary developments, and he was certainly one of Gascoigne's earliest followers, although the evidence for any friendship between the two men is very slight indeed. During the 1580s Whetstone found his own direction with a series of moralizing publications.