Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 60.djvu/456

 a tenement called ‘The Three Gilded Anchors’ in Westcheap, and five messuages in Gutter Lane. His mother was Margaret, sister and coheiress of Francis Bernard of Suffolk. The father, Robert Whetstone, died in 1557, leaving five sons: Robert (aged 17), Bernard, George, Francis, and John (, Illustrations of Shakespeare, i. 222). The second son, Bernard, who, like his brothers Robert and Francis, was admitted student of Gray's Inn, was father of Sir Bernard Whetstone of Woodford, Essex (Visitation of Essex, 1634, pp. 520, 617;, Essex, i. 38).

The author, who was apparently born about 1544, claimed kinship with William Fleetwood, recorder of London (Promos and Cassandra, 1578, dedication). As a young man he tried his fortune at court. He seems to have haunted gambling houses and brothels, and dissipated his patrimony by reckless living. He subsequently devoted much energy to denunciations of the depravity of London, and declared that he was fraudulently deprived of his property. For three years or more he conducted a costly lawsuit against those whom he charged with robbing him of his possessions, but he gained little beyond the satisfaction of knowing that ‘foure notable couseners, the instrumentes of his greatest troubles … in the prime of their mischievous enterprises, with soudaine death and vexation, were straungelie visited’ (Rocke of Regarde, 1576, ad fin.; Touchstone for the Time, 1584, ad fin.)

When he was nearly overwhelmed by his anxieties, he left England for France. Afterwards he entered the army, apparently joining in 1572 an English regiment on active service in the Low Countries against Spain. He held an officer's commission. In Holland he seems to have made the acquaintance of George Gascoigne and Thomas Churchyard, who had passed at home through experiences resembling his own. He distinguished himself in the field and was awarded additional pay, but he returned to London in 1574 without prospects of promotion or means of support. He sought help from his kinsmen, but they proved niggardly. As a last resort he followed the example of his friends Gascoigne and Churchyard, and turned for a livelihood to literature. He read the romances of France and Italy and summarised them in English verse and prose, and he endeavoured to attract the attention of men and women of influence at court by addressing to them poetic panegyrics. He first appeared in print as author of lines ‘in praise of Gascoigne and his posies,’ which were prefixed to Gascoigne's ‘Flowers,’ 1575. In 1576 he collected his varied literary efforts into a volume which he entitled the ‘Rocke of Regard, divided into foure parts. The first, the Castle of Delight. … The second, the Garden of Unthriftinesse. … The thirde, the Arbour of Vertue. The fourth, the Ortchard of Repentance: wherein are discoursed the miseries that followe dicing, the mischiefes of quarrelling, the fall of prodigalitie …’ (London, for R. Waley, 1576, 4to). The first part is dedicated to ‘all the young gentlemen of England’ from the author's lodging in Holborn under date 15 Oct. 1576. The third part was dedicated to Jane Sibilla, daughter of Lord Grey de Wilton, and the last part to Sir Thomas Cecil. The separate pieces number sixty-eight in all; most of them are tales in verse or prose drawn from the Italian, but there are numerous occasional poems addressed to friends, and the last section narrates under fictitious names Whetstone's sufferings at the hands of his enemies (cf., Censura Literaria, 1807, v. 1–13). An imperfect copy of the rare volume is in the British Museum. A reprint was issued by J. P. Collier in 1870.

In 1577 Whetstone invited Gascoigne to join him on a visit to his friends near Stamford, and Gascoigne died on 5 Oct. 1577, while he was Whetstone's guest. Whetstone commemorated the sad episode in a volume of verse (in six-line stanzas) under the title ‘A Remembraunce of the wel imployed life and godly end of George Gaskoigne, Esquire. The report of Geor. Whetstons, gent, an eye witnes of his godly and charitable end in this world. Imprinted at London for Edward Aggas’ [1577]. The only copy known is in the Malone collection at the Bodleian Library. It was reprinted in Chalmers's ‘English Poets,’ 1810, ii. 457–466; separately at Bristol in 1815; with Gascoigne's ‘Princely Pleasures,’ London, 1821; and in Arber's reprints of Gascoigne's works in 1868.

In 1577 some verses by Whetstone prefaced Kendall's ‘Flowres of Epigrammes.’ Next year he contributed a poem called ‘Twenty Good Precepts’ to a new edition of Edwards's ‘Paradise of Dainty Devices.’ At the same time he essayed a more ambitious form of literature. He wrote a play entitled ‘The right excellent and famous Historye of Promos and Cassandra: devided into two Commicall Discourses,’ London by R. Jhones, 1578 (a copy is in the British Museum; it was reprinted in Nichols's ‘Six Old Plays,’ 1779, and in ‘Shakespeare's Library,’ edited by Collier and Hazlitt, 1875, II. ii. 201–304). The play is in two parts, each of five acts, and is throughout in rhymed verse, with songs interspersed; the story is drawn