Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 12.djvu/40

   CONSTABLE, HENRY (1562–1613), poet, was son of Sir Robert Constable of Newark, by Christiana, daughter of John Dabridgecourt of Astley or Langdon Hall, Warwickshire, and widow of Anthony Forster. A niece of his mother, also called Christiana Daubridgcourt, married William Belchier, and was mother of Daubridgcourt Belchier [q. v.] His father, the grandson of Sir Marmaduke Constable (1480–1545) [q. v.], and son of Sir Robert Constable of Everingham, by Catharine, sister of Thomas Manners, earl of Rutland, was knighted by the Earl of Essex while serving with the English army in Scotland in 1570; a letter from him to his wife's kinsman, the Earl of Shrewsbury, dated in the same year, describes some military operations (, Illustrations, ii. 42). Subsequently he became one of Queen Elizabeth's pensioners, and in 1576 drew up a treatise on the 'Ordering of a Camp,' two copies of which remain in manuscript at the British Museum (Harl. MSS. 836, 837). He was marshal of Berwick from 1576 to 1678, and died in 1591.

Henry was born in 1662 and matriculated at the age of sixteen as a fellow-commoner of St. Joan's College, Cambridge. On 15 Jan. 1579-80 he proceeded B.A. by a special grace of the senate. Wood appears to be in error in asserting that Constable 'spent some time among the Oxonian muses' (Athenæ Oxon, ed. Bliss, i. 14). There is much obscurity about Constable's later life. At an early age he became a Roman catholic, and took up his residence in Paris. Verse by him was meanwhile circulated, apparently in manuscript, among his English friends and gave him a literary reputation. Letters of his addressed to Sir Francis Walsingham from Paris in July 1584 and April 1585 point to his employment for a short time in the spy-service of the English government. In 1595 and the following year he was in communication with Anthony Bacon, Essex's secretary, and his correspondent admitted that his religion was the only thing to his discredit. He was clearly anxious at this period to stand well with Essex, probably with a view to returning home. In a letter addressed to the earl (6 Oct. 1595) he denied that he wished the restitution of Roman Catholicism in England at the risk of submitting his country to foreign tyranny, and begged for an introduction from Essex to the king of France, or for some employment in Essex's service. In October 1597 he had definitely thrown in his lot with the French government. 'One Constable, a fine poetical wit, who resides in Paris,' wrote an English agent from Liège (21 Oct. 1597), 'has in his head a plot to draw the queen to be a catholic' A few months later Constable wrote to Essex that he was endeavouring to detach English catholics from their unpatriotic dependence on Spain. In 1598 Constable was agitating for the formation of a new English catholic college in Paris, and was maturing a scheme by which the catholic powers were to assure King James of Scotland his succession to the English throne, on the understanding that he would relieve the English catholics of their existing disabilities. In March 1598-9 Constable arrived in Edinburgh armed with a commission from the pope; but his request for an interview with James I was refused. He entered into negotiations, however, with the Scottish government in behalf of the papacy, and remained in Scotland till September. After his return to Paris Constable declared that James preferred to rely on the English puritans, and that he had no further interest in the king's cause. He made James a present of a book, apparently his poems, in July 1600. Meanwhile Constable became a pensioner of the king of France, but on James I's accession in England he resolved to risk returning to his own country. He wrote without result (11 June 1603) for the necessary permission to Sir Robert Cecil; came to London nevertheless, and in June of the following year was lodged in the Tower. He petitioned Cecil to procure his release; protested his loyalty, and before December 1604 was set free (, Memoriall, ii. 36). Nothing is known of his later history except that he died at Liège on 9 Oct. 1613. Constable was the friend of Sir Philip Sidney (cf. Apologie for Poetry, 1695), of Sir John Harington (cf. Orlando Furioso, p. xxxiv), and of Edmund Bolton.

On 22 Sept. 1592 there was entered in the Stationers' Company Registers a book by Constable entitled 'Diana.' This work, containing twenty-three sonnets, was published in the same year, but only one copy, in the possession of Mr. Christie Miller of Britwell, is now known to be extant. Its full title runs: 'Diana. The praises of his Mistres in certaine sweete Sonnets, by H. C. London, printed by I. C. for Richard Smith, 1592.' The book opens with a sonnet to his absent Diana, and is followed by a brief prose address 'To the Gentlemen Readers' (not reprinted). Each of the next twenty sonnets 18 headed sonnetto primo, secundo, and so on. The last sonnet but one is entitled 'A Calculation upon the Birth of an Honourable Lady's Daughter; born in the year 1588 and 