John Beaumont (poet)

Beaumont coat of arms. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

John Beaumont, 1st Baronet Beaumont
Born	ca. 1582 Thringstone]], Leicestershire
Died	ca. 1627 (aged c. 45)
Nationality	English
Occupation	poet
Notable works	Bosworth Field

Sir John Beaumont, 1st Baronet (1583 - 16 April 1627) was an English poet.

Life

Beaumont was born at Grace Dieu Manor, Thringstone, in Leicestershire, in 1583, the 2nd son of Anne (Pierrepont) and Sir Francis Beaumont, a judge of the Court of Common Pleas. Playwright Francis Beaumont was his younger brother. The deaths of his father (in 1598) and of his elder brother, Sir Henry Beaumont (in 1605), made the poet the head of this brilliant family.

John went to the University of Oxford on 4 February 1596/1597, and entered as a gentleman commoner matriculated in Broadgate's Hall (later Pembroke College). He was admitted to the Inner Temple in 1598 or 1600, but when his brother Henry died he is thought to have returned to Grace-Dieu to manage the family estates.

He lived in Leicestershire for many years as a bachelor, before eventually marrying Elizabeth Fortescue (died after 16 April 1652), daughter of John Fortescue and paternal granddaughter of 1 of the only 2 married daughters of Sir Geoffrey Pole and Constance Pakenham. The family were Roman Catholics. Beaumont and his wife were fined for recusancy in 1607, and in 1625 he was again in trouble on that score.

They had 4 sons, the eldest of whom, another John, was considered one of the most athletic men of his time.

After long retirement, Beaumont was persuaded by the Duke of Buckingham to return to society; he attended court and on 31 January 1626/1627 was made the 1st Baronet Beaumont, of Gracedieu, in Belton, co. Leicester, in the Baronetage of England.

On 16 April 1627 Beaumont died intestate, and his estate was administered on 3 January 1628/1629.

Writing

Beaumont began to write verse early, and in 1602, at the age of 19, he published anonymously his Metamorphosis of Tabacco, written in very smooth couplets, in which he addressed Michael Drayton as his loving friend.

His son, John, succeeded him as baronet. The new Sir John published in 1629 a volume entitled Bosworth Field; with a taste of the variety of other poems left by Sir John Beaumont, and wrote an enthusiastic elegy on him, but was himself killed in 1643 at the Siege of Gloucester. Another of Beaumont's sons, Gervaise, died in childhood, and the circumstances of his death are recorded in one of his father's most touching poems.

The elder John Beaumont's major work is a poem in 12 books, entitled The Crown of Thornes, which was greatly admired in manuscript by the Earl of Southampton and others, but lost for centuries. Scholars have established that a long poem in 12 books contained in a British Library manuscript was Beaumont's lost major work.

The peculiarities of Beaumont’s prosody have drawn attention to his work. He wrote using the heroic couplet, which was his favorite measure, with almost unprecedented evenness. Bosworth Field, the scene of the battle of which Beaumont’s principal poem gives a vaguely epical narrative, lay close to the poet’s house of Grace-Dieu. He writes on all occasions with a smoothness which was very remarkable in the opening quarter of the 17th century, and which marks him, with Edmund Waller and George Sandys, as a pioneer of the classic reformation of English verse.

Recognition

Beaumont was buried on 19 April 1627 at Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey. His grave is unmarked.

Beaumont's poems were included in Alexander Chalmers's English Poets, vol. vi (1810). An edition, with memorial introduction and notes, was included (1869) in Dr AB Grosart's Fuller Worthies Library; and the Metamorphosis of Tobacco was included in JP Collier's Illustrations of Early English Popular Literature, vol. i. (1863).

His poem "Of His Dear Son, Gervase", was included in the Oxford Book of English Verse (1215-1900).

Publications

Poetry

• The Metamorphosis of Tabacco. London: Felix Kingston, for Iohn Flasket, 1602.
• Bosworth-field: With a taste of the variety of other poems, left by Sir Iohn Beaumont, Baronet, deceased (edited by his son). London: Felix Kingston, for Henry Seile, 1629.
• Bosworth-field: A poem; written in the year 1629. London: H. Hills, 1710.
• The Poems of Sir John Beaumont, bart.] (edited by Alexander Balloch Grosart). Blackburn, Lancashire, UK: privately published, printed by C. Tiplady, 1869.
• The Shorter Poems (edited by Roger D. Sell). Turku, Finland: Åbo Akademi, 1974.

Play

• The Theatre of Apollo: An entertainment written in 1625 (edited by W.W. Greg). London, F. Etchells & H. Macdonald, 1926.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

• List of British poets

References

 Gosse, Edmund (1911). "Beaumont, Sir John". In Chisholm, Hugh. Encyclopædia Britannica. 3 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 591-592. . Wikisource, Web, Feb. 22, 2020.

External links

Poems

• "Of His Dear Son, Gervase"
• "The Shepherdesse"
• Sir John Beaumont at Poetry Nook (10 poems)
• Sir John Beaumont at PoemHunter (13 poems)

Books

• The Poems of Sir John Beaumont at Amazon.com

About

• Sir John Beaumont (1583-1627) at English Poetry, 1579-1830
• Beaumont, John (1583-1627) in the Dictionary of National Biography

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the 1911 Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. Original article is at "Beaumont, Sir John"