Thomas Farnaby
Thomas Farnaby (or Farnabie) (c. 1575 – 12 June 1647) was an English schoolmaster and scholar. He operated a successful school in the Cripplegate ward of London and enjoyed great success with his annotations of classic Latin authors and textbooks on rhetoric and Latin grammar.
Early life
He was the son of a London carpenter. His grandfather had been mayor of
Between 1590 and 1595 he appears successively as a student of Merton College, Oxford, a pupil in a Jesuit college in Spain, a student at Cambridge,[2] and a follower of Francis Drake and John Hawkins. After some military service in the Low Countries he made shift, says Anthony Wood, to be set on shore in the western part of England; where, after some wandering to and fro under the name of Thomas Bainrafe, the anagram of his surname, he settled at Martock, in Somersetshire, and taught the grammar school there for some time with success.[1]
Schoolmaster
He opened his own school in Goldsmiths Rents,
From this school, which had as many as 300 pupils, there issued, says Wood, more churchmen and statesmen than from any school taught by one man in England. In the course of his London career he was made
Such was his success that he was enabled to buy an estate at Otford near Sevenoaks, Kent, to which he retired from London in 1636, while carrying on as schoolmaster. In course of time he added to his Otford estate and bought another near Horsham in Sussex.[1]
Later life
In politics he was a royalist; and, suspected of participation in the rising near Tunbridge, 1643,[1] he was arrested by the parliamentarians, and was committed to Newgate Prison. He was placed on board ship with a view to his transportation to America, but was ultimately sent to Ely House, Holborn, where he was detained for a year. He was allowed to return to Sevenoaks in 1645, and he died there 12 June 1647, being buried in the chancel of the church.[3]
The details of his life were derived by Anthony Wood from Francis, Farnaby's son by a second marriage.[1][4]
Works
Farnaby was a leading classical scholar as well as the outstanding schoolmaster of his time. His works chiefly consisted of annotated editions of Latin authors
Farnaby's other works are:[3]
- Index Rhetoricus Scholis et Institutioni tenerioris ætatis accommodatus, London, 1625; 2nd ed. 1633; 3rd ed. 1640; 4th ed. 1646; 15th ed. 1767; reissued in 1640 as Index Rhetoricus et Oratoricus cum Formulis Oratoriis et Indice Poetico, and epitomised by T. Stephens in 1660 for Bury St. Edmunds school under the title Tροποσκηματολογία.
- Phrases Oratoriæ elegantiores et poeticæ, London, 1628, 8th ed.
- Ἡ τῆς Ἀνθολογίας Ἀνθολογία, Florilegium Epigrammatum Græcorum eorumque Latino versu a variis redditorum, London, 1629, 1650, 1671.
- Systema Grammaticum, London, 1641; the authorised Latin grammar prepared by royal order.
- Phrasiologia Anglo-Latina, London, n.d. 6. Tabulæ Græcæ Linguæ, London, n.d.
- Syntaxis, London, n.d.
A patent dated 6 April 1632 granted Farnaby exclusive rights in all his books for twenty-one years, and on the back of the title-page of the 1633 edition of the Index Rhetoricus penalties are threatened against any infringement of Farnaby's copyright.[3]
Letters from
Family
Farnaby married, first, Susan, daughter of John Pierce of Lancells, Cornwall; and secondly, Anne, daughter of John Howson, bishop of Oxford, afterwards of Durham. By his first wife he had (besides a daughter Judith, wife to William Bladwell, a London merchant) a son, John, captain in the king's army, who inherited his father's Horsham property, and died there early in 1673. By his second wife he had, among other children, a son Francis, born about 1630, who inherited the Kippington estate, Sevenoaks, and was a widower on 26 January 1663, when he obtained a license to marry Mrs. Judith Nicholl of St. James, Clerkenwell.[3]
Notes
Sources
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Stephen, Leslie, ed. (1889). "Farnaby, Thomas". Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 18. London: Smith, Elder & Co.- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Farnaby, Thomas". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 10 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 182.
Further reading
- R. W. Serjeantson, "Thomas Farnaby," Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 236: British Rhetoricians and Logicians, 1500–1660, First Series, Detroit: Gale, 2001, pp. 108–16.
- R. Nadeau, The Index Rhetoricus of Thomas Farnaby, Ph. D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1950.
- W. S. Howell, Logic and Rhetoric in England, 1500–1700, Princeton: University Press, 1956.
