John Hoskins (poet)
Serjeant John Hoskins (1566–1638) was an English poet, scholar of Greek, lawyer, judge and politician.
Life
He was the son of John and Margery Hoskins born in Mownton-upon-Wye, Llanwarne, Herefordshire. His father, impressed by his memory and mental abilities, arranged for him to be taught Greek at the age of ten. He attended Westminster School for a year before going to Winchester College in 1579. From 1584 to 1588 he attended their sister foundation New College, Oxford, arriving alongside Henry Wotton.
Hoskins was expelled from Oxford University before he became Regent master: the authorities did not appreciate his biting satire. He became a teacher in Ilchester, Somerset, where he worked on a Greek lexicon which went as far as the letter M. Through a fortuitous meeting with Benedicta Moyle, he then gained entrance to the Middle Temple to study for the bar.
Hoskins was elected to parliament for Hereford in 1604 and 1614. In 1614, in parliament, he spoke his mind about the Sicilian Vespers and consequently was imprisoned for a year in the Tower of London with Sir Charles Cornmwallis. After his release he was elected Lent Reader in 1619, and became a Judge in 1623. He was re-elected MP for Hereford in 1628.
Hoskins was an intimate of John Selden, Sir Walter Raleigh and Ben Jonson. He fought a duel with Sir Benjamin Rudyard, but they subsequently became great friends. When he was a Serjeant-at-law, and was indicted for not keeping the pavement in front of his door in good repair, he successfully defended his case arguing that the charge did not specify how he was liable, whether he owned a property at that location, whether he lived there, or even whether he had a tenant who had legally assumed such responsibilities. He is buried in Abbey Dore, Herefordshire. His son Bennet Hoskyns was created a Baronet in 1676.
Works
The poem Absence, Hear thou my Protestation (Printed anonymously in Francis Davison's A poetical rhapsody containing diverse sonnets, odes, [etc.] (V. S. for J. Baily, 1602)) was at one time attributed to John Donne. Herbert Grierson has argued persuasively that it should be attributed to Hoskins.[1]
Hoskins is noted for painting an image of the Trusty Servant as an emblem outside the kitchen of Winchester College in 1579. The emblem was accompanied by verse in both Latin and English providing a reading of the image.[2]
References
Lee, Sidney, ed. (1891). "Hoskins, John (1566-1638)". Dictionary of National Biography 27. London: Smith, Elder & Co. - Biographical information
- Lives of Eminent Serjeants-At-Law of the English Bar by Humphry William Woolrych, Wm. H. Allen & Co., 1869
- ↑ Absence, Hear thou my Protestation, Representative Poets Online, accessed 29 March 2007, See also Herbert J.C. Grierson, ed. (1886–1960). Metaphysical Lyrics & Poems of the 17th Century (1921).
- ↑ Pattern Histories: The Trusty Servant accessed 29 May 2007
Further reading
- Baird W. Whitlock, John Hoskyns, Sergeant-at-Law, Washington, D.C.: University of America Press, 1982.
- Brent L. Nelson, "John Hoskyns," The Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 281: British Rhetoricians and Logicians, 1500-1660, Second Series, Detroit: Gale, 2003, pp. 154–166.
- Louise Brown Osborn, The Life, Letters, and Writings of John Hoskyns, 1566-1638, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1937.
- Gary R. Grund, John Hoskyns, Elizabethan Rhetoric, and the Development of English Prose, New York: Garland, 1987.
- David Colclough, "'The Muses Recreation': John Hoskyns and the Manuscript Culture of the Seventeenth Century," Huntington Library Quarterly, vol. 61, nos. 3-4, 2000, pp. 369–400.
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