Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 37.djvu/157

May through three editions in eight years. May followed it up by composing a continuation of Lucan (1630), both in Latin and English verse, which carried the story down to the death of Cæsar. The translation was unstintingly praised by Ben Jonson, and May was permitted to dedicate his continuation to Charles I. An epigram addressed to May compares his fortunes with those of Lucan:

Thou son of Mercury whose fluent tongue Made Lucan finish his Pharsalian song, Thy fame is equal, better is thy fate, Thou hast got Charles his love, he Nero's hate. Wit's Recreations, p. 12, 1640.

By the king's command May wrote two narrative poems on the reign of Henry II (1633) and Edward III (1635). Charles gave him other proofs of his favour. In January 1634, at a masque performed by the gentlemen of the Inns of Court before the king, May came into collision with the lord chamberlain, the Earl of Pembroke. Pembroke, who did not know him, broke his staff across his shoulders, but the king called May 'his poet,' and rebuked Pembroke. Next morning Pembroke sent for May, excused himself for his violence, and presented the poet with 50l. (Strafford Papers, i. 207; Secret History of James I, 1811, i. 222). The death of Ben Jonson in August 1637 left vacant the posts of poet-laureate and chronologer to the city of London. Suckling mentions 'Lucan's translator' among the candidates for the first, and the Earls of Dorset and Pembroke and the king himself wrote to the lord mayor recommending May for the second (, Works, ed. Hazlitt, i. 7; Index to Remembrancia, pp. 305–6). But D'Avenant was appointed poet-laureate, and the post of chronologer seems to have remained vacant until the appointment of Francis Quarles in February 1639.

Contemporaries attributed to this disappointment May's subsequent adoption of the parliamentary cause during the civil wars. 'Though he had received much countenance and a considerable donative from the king,' says Clarendon, 'upon his majesty's refusing him a small pension, which he had designed and promised to another very ingenious person, whose qualities he thought inferior to his own, he fell from his duty' (Life, i. § 32). Wood (Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, iii. 810), Winstanley (Lives of the most famous English Poets, 1687, p. 164), and Edward Phillips (Theatrum Poetarum, 1675, ii. 179) all make the same statement. In a poetical tract, published in 1645, entitled 'The Great Assizes holden in Parnassus by Apollo,' 'Mercurius Aulicus' is represented as bringing the charge of ingratitude against May, a charge which Apollo dismisses as arising from mere malice.

During the war May lived in the parliament's quarters. He was probably the Thomas May of Allhallows the Great, assessed at 40l. by the committee for advance of money on 2 Oct. 1644 (Calendar, p. 473). On 19 Jan. 1645–6 May and Sadler were appointed by the House of Commons to draw up a declaration 'for vindicating to the world the honour of the parliament, in this great cause of religion and liberty undertaken and maintained by the parliament.' They are styled 'secretaries for the parliament,' promised a salary of 200l. a year jointly, and granted 100l. at once as a reward for past services (Commons' Journals, iv. 410). In 1647 May published his 'History of the Long Parliament' (licensed 7 May 1647; cf. Commons' Journals, v. 175). This was followed by the 'Breviary of the History of the Parliament of England,' published in 1650, first in Latin and then in English.

May has been wrongly identified with a certain Thomas May, servant to Mr. John Clement, who was arrested in February 1649 for 'raising false rumours concerning the parliament and general,' and it is hence inferred by Guizot that the poet was towards the end of his life opposed to Cromwell and the independent party (, Memorials, 1853, iii. 146; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1649–50 pp. 495, 525, 1650 p. 75;, Portraits Politiques des Hommes de différents partis, p. 114). Up to the time of his death May was still actively employed in the service of the parliament. On 2 July 1650 the council of state ordered that the 'declaration of the parliament of England upon the marching of their army to Scotland be sent to Thomas May to be translated into Latin, that it may be sent into foreign parts' (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1650, p. 228). Personally May was most closely connected with the free-thinking and free-living section of the republican party. 'He became,' says Wood, 'a debauchee ad omnia, entertained ill principles as to religion, spoke often very slightly of the holy Trinity, and kept beastly and atheistical company, of whom Thomas Chaloner the regicide was one' (Athenæ, iii. 810; cf. Original Letters and Papers of State addressed to Oliver Cromwell, ed. by John Nickolls, 1743, p. 43).

May died on 13 Nov. 1650. According to Wood, 'going well to bed, he was therein found next morning dead, occasioned, as some say, by tying his nightcap too close under his fat chin and cheeks, which choked him when he turned on the other side.'