Thomas Flatman was born on 21 February 1635 in London, probably in or near Aldersgate Street, though older accounts also associate his family with Red Cross Street. He died on 8 December 1688 in Three-leg Alley, in the parish of St. Bride’s, London, and was buried there. His name is not usually placed beside those of John Dryden, Andrew Marvell, John Milton, or the Earl of Rochester, yet Flatman is an unusually revea…
Compare Poets
Pick two poets who seem to have nothing to do with each other — a Gothic American and a pastoral Englishman, say — and see where the catalogue actually joins them: overlapping years, shared ground, distinctive themes, and the poems that secretly rhyme.
Poet A
Thomas Flatman
Poet B
Thomas, Lord Vaux
Compare two related contemporaries
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Kindred spirits
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 74%
Poems 88%
Blended 80%
Swap sides
Another related pair
In the grand tapestry of English Renaissance poetry, few figures occupy such a fascinating yet underexplored position as Thomas Vaux, 2nd Baron Vaux of Harrowden. Born into privilege and immersed in the turbulent court life of Henry VIII, Vaux emerged as one of the early Tudor poets whose work would bridge the medieval and modern worlds of English verse. His life, spanning the transformative years from 1509 to 1556,…
“I humbly require you to be good unto me. I have as I perceive a great many more foes than friends, and am like, your goodness reserved, to be trodden under the feet and to be made a slave.”
In time
Thomas Flatman
Thomas, Lord Vaux
1509
1688
Their lives did not overlap.
79 years separate the earlier death from the later birth.
On the map
About 101 km separate Deptford, London, England from Harrowden, Northamptonshire, England. Shared ground: United Kingdom.
Thomas Flatman
Themes they return to
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Shared
Thomas Flatman only
From the biographies
Thomas Flatman: london, aldersgate street, three-leg alley, winchester college, new college oxford, royalist, anglican, poems and songs. Thomas, Lord Vaux: northamptonshire, henry viii, catherine parr, cambridge university, cardinal thomas wolsey, francis i, knight of the bath, isle of jersey.
Poems that secretly rhyme
The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.
The world around them
Thomas Flatman
Thomas, Lord Vaux
1556
Death of Thomas Vaux
Emotional landscapes
Thomas Flatman: Sorrow, Despair, Fear. Thomas, Lord Vaux: Despair, Sorrow, Longing.