Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 14.djvu/353

 it was smaller than Denham and his friends asserted. For a time Denham was in attendance on Henrietta Maria in Paris. On 10 May 1649 the queen sent him back to Holland with instructions as to future policy for the young king, Charles II, and with despatches for the Prince of Orange (Letters of Henrietta Maria, ed. Green, 361). In 1650 Charles II sent Denham and William, lord Crofts, to Poland, and they collected 10,000l. from Scotchmen residing there, according to Denham's versified narrative of the journey. The next two years were spent with the exiled royal family, chiefly in Holland. On 13–23 May 1652 Nicholas wrote from the Hague that Denham ‘hath here lately had very ill-luck at play.’ He was in great want of money, but was afraid, according to Nicholas, of going to England on account rather of his creditors' threats than of the rebels' (, Papers, Camd. Soc. i. 300). Later in the year, however, he was in England, and found a protector in the Earl of Pembroke. His estates had been sold 20 July 1651, and he was penniless. On 20 Sept. 1653 a royalist writing from Paris proves Denham's growing literary reputation by enclosing a French drinking song, ‘which,’ he says, ‘if Englished by one Denham, I hear to be the state's poet, truly it will be much to the instruction of our country’ (ib. i. 471). Aubrey made Denham's acquaintance while staying with Pembroke at Wilton, and Denham visited Evelyn at Wotton 6 April 1654 and 5 Jan. 1655–6; but he was more frequently in London than the authorities approved, and on 9 June 1655 an order was issued that he was to be confined to a place more than twenty miles from the metropolis chosen by himself. On 11 Jan. 1657–8 Cromwell signed a license authorising him to live at Bury in Suffolk, and on 24 Sept. 1658–9 a passport was granted to him and the Earl of Pembroke to enable them to go abroad together. His translation of Virgil (‘The Destruction of Troy; an Essay upon the second book of Virgil's Æneis’) was issued with an interesting preface on translation in 1656, and an indecent doggerel poem about a Colchester quaker in a single folio sheet in 1659.

At the Restoration Clarendon was advised to secure the services of Denham (, State Papers, iii. 644–5), and the poet was rewarded for his loyalty by several grants of land and valuable leases. In June 1660 he was made surveyor-general of works. He claimed to have received the reversion to this office from Charles I in the lifetime of its latest holder, Inigo Jones (d. 1651). Jones's nephew and assistant, John Webb, protested against the appointment on the ground that ‘though Denham may have, as most gentry, some knowledge of the theory of architecture, he can have none of the practice.’ Webb was conciliated by a promise of the reversion, and Denham entered upon his duties. He superintended the erection and alteration of many official buildings in London, designed some new brick buildings in Scotland Yard on land which he leased from the crown, and is said to have built Burlington House, Piccadilly. Evelyn, like Webb, questioned his knowledge of architecture, and describes him as a better poet than architect, but in his last years he was fortunate enough to secure the services of Christopher Wren as his deputy. In Nov. 1660 Denham published in a single sheet a prologue for a dramatic performance with which Monck entertained the king. Early in 1661 he arranged the coronation ceremony, and was made knight of the Bath. He was M.P. for Old Sarum 1661 till death.

Denham was now a widower, and on 25 May 1665 he married at Westminster Abbey his second wife, Margaret, third daughter of Sir William Brooke, K.B., a nephew of Henry Brooke, lord Cobham [q. v.] The lady was, according to Grammont, a girl of eighteen. Denham, according to the same authority, was seventy-nine, but this is a palpable falsehood, for he was little more than fifty, although his health was broken and he looked like an old man. Lady Denham soon became known as the Duke of York's mistress; her lover visited her openly at her husband's house in Scotland Yard and paid her unmistakable attentions at court (, 26 Sept. and 8 Oct. 1666). A scandal, preserved by Oldys, attributes to Denham a loathsome method of avenging himself on both his wife and the duke. While smarting under the disgrace, Denham was seized with a short fit of madness. He visited the king and told him he was the Holy Ghost. His illness, commonly attributed to the scandalous conduct of his wife, was due, according to Marvell, to an accidental blow on the head (Clarendon's House-Warming, st. vii.) When Denham was convalescent Lady Denham died (on 6 Jan. 1666–7). Lord Conway wrote two days later that she was ‘poisoned, as she said herself, in a cup of chocolate. The Duke of York was very sad, and kept his chamber when I went to visit him’ (Rawdon Papers, 1819, p. 227). Pepys roundly accuses Denham of murdering his wife; Aubrey credits the Countess of Rochester with giving Lady Denham the poisoned chocolate; the Count de Grammont accepts Pepys's version of the episode, and adds that Denham had to shut himself up in his house because his neighbours threatened to tear him to pieces if he went abroad. The fury of the populace was