Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 04.djvu/58

 50l. a year was granted to each of the six daughters.

Beaumont's portrait, by Michael Dahl, is in the Painted Hall at Greenwich, to which it was presented by King George IV; it is that of a comely young man, who might have become very stout if he had lived.



BEAUMONT, FRANCIS (d. 1598), judge, was the eldest son of John Beaumont, sometime master of the rolls, by his second wife Elizabeth, daughter of William Hastings. His father was removed from the bench in 1552 for scandalously abusing his position [see ]. Of Francis's early education nothing is recorded. He appears as a fellow-commoner of Peterhouse, Cambridge, when Elizabeth visited the university. There is no entry of his matriculation, nor of his having graduated. He studied law in the Inner Temple, was called to the bar, and practised with success and reputation. He represented Aldborough in the parliament of 1572. In 1581 he was elected autumn reader in the Inner Temple. In 1589 he was called to the degree of serjeant-at-law ('s Leicestershire, iii. 655). He was promoted to the bench as a judge of the common pleas on 25 Jan. 1592-3. He was never knighted: he is described in his will, made the day before his death, as 'Esquire.'

He married Anne, daughter of Sir George Pierrepoint, knt., of Holme-Pierrepoint, Nottinghamshire, and widow of Thomas Thorold, of Marston, Lincolnshire. She predeceased him. They had a family of three sons and one daughter. The sons were Henry, who was knighted in 1603 and died in 1605, ætat. 24; John [see ];, the great dramatist [q. v.]. The daughter was Elizabeth, wife of Thomas Seyliard, of Kent. Beaumont died at Grace-Dieu on 22 April 1598, and was buried on 12 June following, with heraldic attendance, in the church of Belton, within which parish Grace-Dieu lies. Burton, the historian of Leicestershire, who was three-and-twenty when Beaumont died, calls him a 'grave, learned, and reverend judge.'



BEAUMONT, FRANCIS (1584–1616), dramatist, was the third son of Francis Beaumont, the judge of the common pleas, and younger brother of Sir John Beaumont [see, d. 1598, and 1583-1627]. He was doubtless born at Grace-Dieu, Leicestershire, the family seat. The baptismal registers of Grace-Dieu and Belton contain, however, no Beaumont entries of service to us; but the rite may have been administered in the metropolis, where was the father's permanent residence. Thomas Bancroft (in his Epigrams, 1639, B. i. Ep. 81), expressly connects all the well-known members of the family with Grace-Dieu in the lines: :Grace-dieu, that under Charnwood stand'st alone &hellip; :That lately brought such noble Beaumonts forth, :Whose brave heroick Muses might aspire :To match the anthems of the heavenly quire. The entry of Francis's matriculation in the Oxford university register establishes the date of his birth. It runs: Broadgates [afterwards Pembroke College], 1596-[7], Feb. 4. Francisc. Beaumont Baron, fil. ætat. 12. The age is dated by the last birthday, so that he must have been born in 1584.

In the second year of his academic course at Oxford his father died (22 April 1598), and, with his brothers Henry and [q. v.], he then abruptly left the university without taking a degree. Beaumont was 'entered a member of the Inner Temple, 3 Nov. 1600;' but no evidence remains that he pursued his legal studies. Judging from after-events and occupations, he was (it is to be suspected) more frequently within the 'charmed circle' of the Mermaid than in chambers. Very early both his elder brother Sir John and himself were bosom friends of Drayton and Ben Jonson. The former, in his epistle to Reynolds 'Of Poets and Poetry,' thus boasts of their friendship: :Then the two Beaumonts and my Browne arose, :My dear companions, whom I freely chose :My bosom friends; and in their several ways :Rightly born poets, and in these last, days :Men of much note and no less nobler parts, :Such as have freely told to me their hearts, :As I have mine to them.

Francis's earliest known attempt in verse was the little address placed by him before Sir John Beaumont's 'Metamorphosis of Tobacco' (1602). It already shows the inevitable touch of a master, but is mainly interesting for its timorous entrance into