Henry Constable
Henry Constable | |
---|---|
Born | 1562 Newark-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire, England |
Died | 9 October 1613 (aged 50–51) Liège, Prince-Bishopric of Liège, Holy Roman Empire |
Father | Sir Robert Constable |
Mother | Christiana Dabridgecourt |
Henry Constable (1562 – 9 October 1613) was an English poet, known particularly for Diana, one of the first English
Family
Henry Constable, born in
Career
Henry Constable matriculated as a fellow commoner at St John's College, Cambridge at Easter 1578, and took his BA on 29 January 1580.[7] His contemporary at Cambridge was Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex.[8] He was enrolled at Lincoln's Inn on 21 February 1583, but there is no further record of his legal studies.[9] On 12 September of that year Constable was in Scotland. He was then posted to Paris on the recommendation of his father's friend, Sir Francis Walsingham,[10] serving under the English ambassador there, Sir Edward Stafford, between 14 December 1583 and April 1585. In May 1585 he was at Heidelberg, and he may have travelled to Poland. During this period, according to Sullivan, Constable acted as a spokesperson for Protestant causes.[11]
Constable was probably at the English court during 1588–9, as he is recorded as having attended the funeral of his kinsman,
He was sent to
In 1591 Constable went to
On James's accession Constable hoped to return to England, and wrote first to friends in Scotland for support, and on 11 June 1603, to his kinsman, Roger Manners, 5th Earl of Rutland, and to Sir Robert Cecil. By December of that year he was back at court, and was granted a warrant on 8 February 1604 by which he obtained possession of his inherited lands.[20] However his continued pursuit of plans to influence King James towards toleration of Catholics resulted in his imprisonment in the Tower, where he remained from 14 April to 9 July 1604.[21] The Venetian ambassador Nicolò Molin heard that Constable had written letters to the Papal nuncio or envoy in Paris, which were intercepted, leading to his arrest.[22]
Constable was subsequently placed under house arrest,
Literary accomplishments
In 1592 Diana, a sequence of twenty-three sonnets by Constable, was published in London by Richard Smith, one of the first
The Todd manuscript contains additional love sonnets by Constable, and Harleian MS 7553 contains seventeen 'Spirituall sonnettes, to the honour of God: and hys saintes'.[32]
Constable's verse is characterised by fervour and richness of colour. Of the numerous sonnets he wrote, the twenty-eight of the sonnet sequence Diana, and the four prefixed to
Constable was highly reputed as a poet in his own day.[33] In the censure of contemporary poets in Act I, Scene ii, of the anonymous Elizabethan play, The Return From Parnassus, Iudicio passes judgment favourably on Constable, saying that:[34]
Sweete Constable doth take the wondring eare
And layes it up in willing prisonment.
Ben Jonson also pays tribute to Constable's verse in Underwood:[35]
Hath our great Sydney Stella set,
Where never star shone brighter yet?
Or Constable's ambrosiac muse
Made Diana not his notes refuse
Constable is known to have written two theological tracts in 1596 and 1597 which are no longer extant. He also responded to A Conference about the Next Succession, generally attributed to Robert Persons. Constable's Discoverye of a Counterfecte Conference … for Thadvancement of a Counterfecte Tytle, which supported King James' claim to the English crown, was printed in Paris in 1600, although the title page falsely claimed that it had been printed in Cologne.[36]
Footnotes
- ^ Richardson I 2011, p. 529.
- ^ Shaw 1906, p. 74.
- ^ Sullivan states that he was Master of the Ordinance, although Ambrose Dudley, 3rd Earl of Warwick, was Master of the Ordinance from 1558 to 1590; Sullivan 2004.
- ^ Lemon 2005, pp. 555, 583, 593, 589, 611, 666.
- ^ Jack Binns, 'Constable, Henry, first Viscount Dunbar (1588–1645)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004
- ^ Claire Walker, 'Lawson , Dorothy (1580–1632)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 11 June 2017
- ^ "Constable, Henry (CNSL578H)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
- ^ Hammer 1999, p. 176.
- ^ Sullivan 2004.
- ^ Stockard 2012, p. 209.
- ^ Sullivan 2004.
- ^ Sullivan 2004.
- ^ Sullivan 2004; Stockard 2012, p. 209.
- ^ Roderick J. Lyall, Alexander Montgomerie: Poetry, Politics, and Cultural Change in Jacobean Scotland (Arizona, 2005), p. 179.
- ^ Sullivan 2004; Hammer 1999, p. 176.
- ^ Patterson 1997, p. 51.
- ^ Lodge 1838, p. 497.
- ^ Hammer 1999, p. 176; Hazlitt 1859, pp. x–xii.
- ^ Sullivan 2004.
- ^ Sullivan 2004.
- ^ Patterson 1997, pp. 50–2; Stockard 2012, p. 210.
- ^ Horatio Brown, Calendar State Papers, Venice: 1603–1607, vol. 10 (London, 1900), p. 146 no. 213.
- ^ Horatio Brown, Calendar State Papers, Venice: 1603–1607, vol. 10 (London, 1900), p. 174 no. 259.
- ^ McClure 1939, p. 255.
- ^ McClure 1939, p. 319.
- ^ Questier 2006, p. 384.
- ^ Sullivan 2004.
- ^ Sullivan 2004; Stockard 2012, p. 209.
- ^ Hazlitt 1859, p. vii; Drabble 1985, p. 226; Sullivan 2004.
- ^ Hazlitt 1859, p. vii; Drabble 1985, p. 226.
- ^ Hazlitt 1859, p. vi.
- ^ Sullivan 2004.
- ^ Stockard 2012, p. 210.
- ^ Hazlitt 1859, p. xv; Macray 1886, pp. 84–5.
- ^ Hazlitt 1859, p. xvi.
- ^ Sullivan 2004.
References
- Drabble, Margaret, ed. (1985). The Oxford Companion to English Literature (5th ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-866130-4
- Grundy, Joan (1960). The Poems of Henry Constable. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.
- Hammer, Paul E. J. (1999). The polarisation of Elizabethan politics : the political career of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, 1585–1597. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. OCLC 39539158.
- Hazlitt, William Carew (1859). Diana: The Sonnets and Other Poems of Henry Constable. London: Basil Montagu Pickering. Retrieved 23 December 2012.
- Lemon, Robert, ed. (2005). Calendar of State Papers Domestic Series of the Reign of Elizabeth 1581–1590 (Searchable text ed.). Burlington, Ontario: TannerRitchiePublishing. ISBN 1-55429-368-5
- Lodge, Edmund (1838). Illustrations of British History, Biography and Manners. Vol. II (2nd ed.). London: John Chidley. Retrieved 27 December 2012.
- McClure, Norman Egbert, ed. (1939). The Letters of John Chamberlain. Vol. I. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society.
- Macray, William Dunn (1886). The Pilgrimage to Parnassus With the Two Parts of The Return from Parnassus. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Retrieved 27 December 2012.
- Questier, Michael C. (2006). Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Patterson, W.B. (1997). King James VI and I and the Reunion of Christendom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521793858. Retrieved 26 December 2012.
- Pérez-Jáuregui María Jesús, ed. (2024). Henry Constable. The Complete Poems. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. ISBN 978-0-88844-232-1
- Richardson, Douglas (2011). Magna Carta Ancestry: A Study in Colonial and Medieval Families, ed. Kimball G. Everingham. Vol. I (2nd ed.). Salt Lake City.
{{
ISBN 1449966373 - Sullivan, Ceri (2004). "Constable, Henry (1562–1613)". doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/6103. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- Stockard, Emily E. (2012). "Constable, Henry". In Sullivan, Garrett A.; Stewart, Alan (eds.). The Encyclopedia of English Renaissance Literature. Chichester, Sussex: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. p. 209. ISBN 978-1-4051-9449-5. Retrieved 22 December 2012.
- Shaw, William A. (1906). The Knights of England. Vol. II. London: Sherratt and Hughes.
- Stephen, Leslie, ed. (1887). . Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 12. London: Smith, Elder & Co. pp. 34–5.
Further reading
- Gosse, Edmund William (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 6 (11th ed.). p. 982.
- Ceri Sullivan, "The Physiology of Penance in 1590s Weeping Texts", Cahiers Élisabéthains 57 (2000), pp. 31–48, examines Constable's religious verse.