on the 8th of February, 1586. On this occasion, he stands charged with having embittered the last moments of that unfortunate princess, by his intemperate zeal to convert her to the protestant faith. He was appointed Bishop of Bristol, which preferment he is said to have obtained on condition of farming out the revenues to some of the principal courtiers, by which means he greatly impoverished the bishopric. He was translated to the see of Worcester, in 1.592, and from thence to that of London, to which he was elected the 30th of December, 1594, and confirmed the 10th of January following. A few days after, he entered into a se cond marriage' with the Lady Baker of Kent, sister to Sir George Gifford, which so highly offended Queen Elizabeth, who, in spite of her pretended attachment to the reformed religion, encouraged the celibacy of the clergy, and was peculiarly averse to the second marriage of a bishop, that she either reprimanded him personally, or forbid him to appear at court by message. He in vain applied to Lord-treasurer Burleigh to intercede with the queen in his be It is entirely unknown who was the first wife of Bishop Fletcher, and the mother of our poet. half, for he was suspended from the functions of his office, by Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury, February 23, 1594. He made, however, sufficient interest to be reinstated in his bishopric after some months, but the queen was inflexible to his solicitations to be restored to favour and readmitted at court. It is said, however, that she condescended to pay him a visit in his retirement at Chelsea, where he died suddenly, the 15th of June, 1596. Camden says that his death was occasioned by the immoderate use of tobacco. He was buried in St Paul's cathedral without any monument. In his person he was, like most of Queen Elizabeth's favourites, remarkably handsome, in his behaviour courtly, and distinguished for his eloquence. Among other qualifications, he was extremely dexterous in the management of the great horse. Fuller says that he was condemned for pride by those that did not know him, and for humility by those that did. He left no publications of any sort behind him. ́Dr Giles Fletcher, his younger brother, was celebrated for the diplomatic talents he displayed at the courts of Scotland, Germany, the LowCountries, and Russia, and for the accurate observations which he drew up respecting the lat ter country. Anthony Wood informs us, that he became an excellent poet; his poetical fame was, however, completely eclipsed by his two sons, Giles and Phineas, who are justly ranked amongst the most eminent poets of the seventeenth century. John Fletcher, thus honourably descended and related, was born in the year 1576, and educated at Cambridge, probably at Bennet college, to which his father was a benefactor by his will. He is said to have made a considerable proficiency at the university; and, indeed, his works prove him to have been a classical student of respectable acquirements. That he was master of the more fashionable modern languages, such as French, Italian, and Spanish, is also evident from his having borrowed the plots of many of his dramas from works in those languages, which had not at that time been translated. At what period he left the university we are not at present able to decide, but it does not appear that he took any honourable degree. From two entries in the manuscript of Henslowe, proprietor of the Rose theatre, preserved at Dulwich college, Mr Malone con 2 "October 14, 1596. Lent unto Martyne [Slaughter] to fetch Fleatcher, vi. s." Again, "Gave the company to give cludes, that Fletcher wrote for the stage as early as 1596, when he was only twenty years of age. If these entries really refer to our poet, which is by no means certain,3 as his name is not affixed to any of the plays enumerated by Henslowe, his earliest performances, in which, according to the custom of the time, he probably joined some of the dramatic poets of the day, are to all appearance irretrievably lost. It is equally uncertain at what period his friendship and copartnership commenced with Beaumont, of whose birth and parentage we now come to give an account. Francis Beaumont was descended from the very ancient and honourable family of the Beaumonts of Grace-dieu, in Leicestershire. * His Fleatcher, and the have promised me payment, xx. s."Shakspeare, ed. 1803, vol. III. p. 380. 3 Perhaps these entries refer to Laurence Fletcher the comedian, who appears at the head of the license granted to the king's servants, 19th May, 1603, and who died in the year 1608. In "Two Bookes of Epigramms and Epitaphs," &c. by Thomas Bancroft, London, 1639, the following address "To Grace-dieu" occurs: "Grace-dieu, that under Charnwood stand'st alone, I reverence thine old but fruitfu vorth, That lately brought uch noble Beaumonts forth, father, Francis, was appointed one of the judges of the Common Pleas, the 25th of January, 1593, and died at Grace-dieu, the 22d of April, 1598. By his wife, Ann Pierpoint, daughter of Sir George Pierpoint of Holme, he left three sons. The eldest, Henry, was knighted, April 28, 1603, and died in the year 1605. Sir John Beaumont, the second son, who was born in 1582, and who survived our author thirteen years, was a poet of very considerable talents, s Whose brave heroic muses might aspire, To match the anthems of the heavenly quire; 5 Drayton, in his Epistle "To my dearly loved Friend, Henry Reynolds, Esq. of Poets and Poesy," thus celebrates Sir John Beaumont, and his brother Francis, together with William Browne, the author of Britannia's Pastorals: "Then the two Beaumonts and my Browne arose, I must here acknowledge the obligations, for which, as the biographer of Beaumont, I am indebted to Mr Nichols's elaborate and erudite History of Leicestershire. |