Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 40.djvu/23

 also stated that he disapproved of Cromwell's government, but there is no evidence of this, and he represented Shropshire in the first parliament called by Cromwell (Old Parliamentary Hist. xx. 302).

Mytton died in London in 1656, and was interred on 29 Nov. in St. Chad's Church, Shrewsbury ( and, ii. 223). His portrait is given in 'England's Worthies,' by John Vicars, 1647, p. 105.

Mytton left a son, Richard, who was sheriff of Shropshire in 1686, and a daughter, Mary, married to the royalist Sir Thomas Harris of Boreatton (Collections for the History of Montgomeryshire, viii. 299, 309). Another daughter is said to have married Colonel Roger Pope, a parliamentarian (, Life of John Barwick, p. 50).

[Phillips's Civil War in Wales, 1874; Pennant's Tour in Wales, ed. Rhys, i. 303, ii. 121, 158, 184, 277, iii. 29, 126, 246; Owen and Blakeway's Hist. of Shrewsbury, 1825; Blakeway's Sheriffs of Shropshire, 1831. A collection of Mytton's correspondence is in the hands of Mr. Stanley Leighton, and has been printed by him in the Collections for the History and Archæology of Montgomeryshire, vii. 353, viii. 151, 293; cf. Hist. MSS. Comm. 10th Rep. iv. 374. Other letters of Mytton's are to be found in 5th Rep. pp. 104, 421, and 4th Rep. pp. 267–9, in the Old Parliamentary Hist. xiv. 355, xv. 2, 171, and in the Calendar of Domestic State Papers. The Tanner MSS. in the Bodleian Library contain twenty-two letters.]  MYVYR, OWAIN (1741–1814), Welsh antiquary. [See .]

NAAS,. [See, sixth , 1822–1872.]

NABBES, THOMAS (fl. 1638), dramatist, born in 1605, belonged to a humble Worcestershire family. On 3 May 1621 he matriculated from Exeter College, Oxford (Oxf. Univ. Reg. Oxf. Hist. Soc. II. ii. 387), but left the university without a degree. He seems to have been employed subsequently in the household of a nobleman near Worcester, and he describes in a poem ‘upon the losing of his way in a forest’ a midnight adventure in the neighbourhood of his master's mansion after he had indulged freely in perry. Another spirited poem ‘upon excellent strong beer which he drank at the town of Wich in Worcestershire’ proves Nabbes to have been of a convivial disposition.

About 1630 Nabbes seems to have settled in London, resolved to try his fortunes as a dramatist. He was always a stranger to the best literary society, but found congenial companions in Chamberlain, Jordan, Marmion, and Tatham, and was known to many ‘gentlemen of the Inns of Court’ (cf. Bride, Ded.) About January 1632–3 his first comedy, ‘Covent Garden,’ was acted by the queen's servants, and was published in 1638 with a modest dedication addressed to Sir John Suckling. In the prologue he defends himself from stealing the title of the piece—in allusion doubtless to Richard Brome's ‘Covent Garden Weeded,’ acted in 1632—and describes his ‘muse’ as ‘solitary.’ His second comedy, ‘Totenham Court,’ was acted at the private house in Salisbury Court in 1633, and was also printed in 1638, with a dedication to William Mills. A third piece, ‘Hannibal and Scipio, an hystorical Tragedy,’ in five acts of blank verse, was produced in 1635 by the queen's servants at their private house in Drury Lane. Nabbes obviously modelled his play upon Marston's ‘Sophonisba.’ It was published in 1637, with a list of the actors' names. A third comedy, ‘The Bride,’ acted at the private house in Drury Lane, again by the queen's servants, in 1638, was published two years later, with a prefatory epistle addressed ‘to the generalty of his noble friends, gentlemen of the severall honorable houses of the Inns of Court.’ One of the characters, Mrs. Ferret, the imperious wife, has been compared to Jonson's Mistress Otter. An unreadable and tedious tragedy, entitled ‘The Unfortunate Mother,’ was published in 1640, with a dedication to Richard Brathwaite, a stranger to him, whom he apologises for addressing. It is said to have been written as a rival to Shirley's ‘Politician,’ but was never acted, owing to the refusal of the actors to undertake the performance. Three friends (E[dward] B[enlowes], C. G., and R. W.) prefixed commendatory verses by way of consoling the author for the slight thus cast upon him.

Langbaine reckons Nabbes among the poets of the third rate. The author of Cibber's ‘Lives of the Poets’ declares that in strict justice ‘he cannot rise above a fifth.’ This severe verdict is ill justified. He is a passable writer of comedies, inventing his