Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 59.djvu/411

  by ‘sending them some heads’ as a demonstration of the punishment of the authors (ib. 1675–6, p. 228). Warner's cause was, however, warmly espoused by the colonists in Antigua; early in 1676 he was sent for trial to Barbados, where he was acquitted; but by an order in council, dated 18 May 1677, he was ‘put out of the government of Antigua and any other employment or trust in the king's service.’ The colonists, however, still placed confidence in him, and on 29 Jan. 1679 he was elected speaker of the Antiguan assembly. He died on 23 Oct. 1689, and was buried at St. Paul's, Antigua. When in the Tower of London he delivered to Sir Robert Southwell an ‘Account of the Caribee Islands,’ dated 3 April 1676. It is now in the Record Office (Cal. State Papers, Amer. and W. Indies, 1675–6, pp. 367, 368). By his wife Henrietta, sister and heiress of Colonel Henry Ashton, Warner had two sons and four daughters. The eldest son, Colonel Thomas Warner (d. 1695), had by his wife Jane Walrond three sons: Edward Warner, a colonel in the army and member of the council of Antigua; Ashton Warner (1691–1752), speaker and attorney-general, whose son was Joseph Warner [q. v.]; and Henry Warner (1693–1731), clerk of the assembly.

[The primary authorities for the settlement of St. Christopher's and Nevis are the account given by John Hilton, storekeeper and chief gunner of Nevis (dated 29 April 1673), in Egerton MS. 2395, ff. 503–8 (in Brit. Mus.). A Brief Discourse of Divers Voyages made into Guiana, and The Beginning and Proceedings of the New Plantation of St. Christopher's by Captain Warner, The Works of Captain John Smith, ed. Arber, chaps. xxiv. xxv., contributed by some of Warner's crew, and the Manuscript Account by Col. Philip Warner in the Record Office, mentioned in the text. Next in importance is Antigua and the Antiguans, 1844, by a resident in the island who had access to the records and received information from the Rev. Daniel Francis Warner among others. The pedigree given in Burke's Landed Gentry, 4th ed. pt. ii., is inaccurate in the early part (cf. Laurence-Archer MSS. in Brit. Mus.). T. Southey's Chron. Hist. of the West Indies, vols. i. ii., and Bryan Edwards's Hist. of the British West Indies, vol. i. chap. iv., are founded on the early English authorities as well as Dutertre's Histoire des Antilles and Labat's Nouveau Voyage and Iles de l'Amérique. A clearly written modern account is in A Young Squire of the Seventeenth Century, 1878, vol. i. chaps. i.–v., edited from the papers of Christopher Jeaffreson by Mr. J. C. Jeaffreson. Some additional information may also be gleaned from the Hon. Nicholas Darnell Davis's Cavaliers and Roundheads of Barbados, 1650–2, Georgetown, British Guiana, 1887, chap. ii. The Calendars of Colonial State Papers, America and West Indies, edited by W. Noel Sainsbury, are invaluable.]  WARNER, WILLIAM (1558?–1609), poet, born in London about 1558, was educated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, but did not take a degree. According to Wood he was ‘more a friend to poetry, history, and romance than to logic and philosophy.’ Settling in London, he followed the profession of an attorney, and, while acquiring some reputation in the court of common pleas, managed to secure a more prominent position as a man of letters. He was acquainted with Marlowe and other writers of his day in London; Drayton claimed him as an old friend. Henry Carey, first lord Hunsdon, lord chamberlain [q. v.], and his son George, second lord Hunsdon, who was also lord chamberlain, proved encouraging patrons. Warner died suddenly on 9 March 1608–9 at Amwell in Hertfordshire, and was buried there. The entry in the parish register runs: ‘1608–9. Master William Warner, a man of good yeares and of honest reputation; by profession an attornye of the common pleas, author of “Albion's England,” diynge suddenly in the night in his bedde without any former complaynt of sicknesse on Thursday night, beinge the 9th daye of March; was buried the Saturday following, and lyeth in the church at the corner under the stone of Walter Ffader.’

Tanner mentions that an English translation of the ‘Novelle’ of Bandello was issued by a writer who only used his initials ‘W. W.’ in 1580. No such work is now known, but it may possibly be a first venture by Warner in the field of romance (cf., Hist. of English Poetry, 1824, iv. 312).

Warner's earliest extant publication is a collection of tales in prose, somewhat in the manner of Heliodorus's ‘Æthiopica,’ entitled ‘Pan his Syrinx, or Pipe, compact of seuen Reedes; including in one, seuen Tragical and Comicall Arguments, with their diuers Notes not impertinent. Whereby, in effect, of all thinges is touched, in few, something of the vayne, wanton, proud, and inconstant course of the World. Neither, herein, to somewhat praiseworthie, is prayse wanting. By William Warner. At London, by Thomas Purfoote’ [1585], 4to. This was dedicated to Sir George Carey (afterwards second Lord Hunsdon). The seven tales are entitled respectively: ‘Arbaces,’ ‘Thetis,’ ‘Belopares,’ ‘Pheone,’ ‘Deipyrus,’ ‘Aphrodite,’ and ‘Opheltes.’ Another edition, in 1597, bore the title ‘Syrinx, or a Seauenfold Historie, handled with Varietie of pleasant and profit-