Page:Lives of Poets-Laureate.djvu/125

Rh work of serious comment by writers of credit and position, who have inclined to favour the insinuation. There exist not, however, the slightest grounds for such an imputation, which is falsified by all we know of the mother of Sir William Davenant, and jars with our well-grounded belief in the irreproachable moral character of our great national dramatist.

Davenant, in very early life, gave promise of a taste for literature, and one of his first attempts at composition was "An Ode in Remembrance of Master William Shakespeare." He acquired the rudiments of knowledge at the grammar school of his native parish, then flourishing under the management of Edward Sylvester, and in 1621, he matriculated at Lincoln College, his father being Mayor of the city that year. He pursued his studies there for some little time, but did not proceed to his degree. Wood, who terms him the "sweet swan of Isis," tells us "he obtained some smattering of logic," so "that, though he wanted much of University learning, yet he made as high and noble flights in the poetical faculty as fancy could advance without it." On quitting the University, he went to London; and we first hear of him as page to the famous Frances, Duchess of Richmond. The eccentric career of this lady had acquired for her considerable notoriety, and in her household she observed all the etiquette and ceremony of a court. She was the grand-daughter of the third Duke of Norfolk, had been thrice married, and, to complete her ambition, aspired to the august dignity of Queen of England. Her first match, which appears to have been made through affection or caprice, was with "one Prannel, a vintner's son," for which, in her after days of grandeur and magnificence she was frequently and sharply twitted. Her second husband was Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford. During her widowhood, she had inspired one Sir George Rodney, a Somersetshire