William Alexander, later the first Earl of Stirling, was born about 1567 at Menstrie in Clackmannanshire, near Stirling, Scotland, and died in London on 12 February 1640. He belonged to that distinctive early Stuart class of men for whom poetry, government service, courtly advancement, religious reflection, and colonial ambition were not separate callings but overlapping forms of public life. In his own century he wa…
“We here go to cause preach the Gospel where it was never heard, and not to subdue but to civilize the Savages, for their ruin could give us neither glory nor benefit.”
Neighbourhood:
Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Dramatic Poets, Love Poets, Renaissance Poets, Scottish Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
Sir John Davies, born on 16 April 1569 and dying on 8 December 1626, was one of the most unusually gifted figures of the late Elizabethan and early Stuart world: a poet of intellectual elegance, a lawyer of formidable technical ability, a parliamentarian, an administrator of colonial Ireland, and a man whose life repeatedly exposed the tension between self-command and ambition. His literary reputation rests principal…
“I dare affirm that for the space of five years last past there have not been found so many malefactors worthy of death in all the six circuits of this realm as in one circuit of six shires, namely the western circuit, in England.”
Neighbourhood:
Devotional Poets, Elizabethan Poets, Metaphysical Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Wonder, Peace
