Aurelian Townshend

Aurelian Townshend (* 1583 or shortly before; † after 1649 ) was an English courtier, poet and playwright who is counted among the Cavalier poets .

Townshend was the son of John Townshend from Dereham Abbey in Norfolk . A relative Roger Townshend (died 1590) was one of the wealthiest landowners in Norfolk and was reputed to be a hero in the battle against the Spanish Armada. Aurelian Townshend was first mentioned in a will in December 1583. He was temporarily the steward of Robert Cecil , some of his letters to Cecil from 1601/02 are preserved under his estate. Cecil also sent him to Europe for training. Townshend was known early on at court for his verse. In 1608 he accompanied Edward Herbert, Lord Herbert of Cherbury (later British ambassador to France), on his trip to Europe, where he made himself useful through excellent language skills (French, Spanish, Italian). They visited the court of Henry IV and were guests of the Duke of Montmorency. He married the widow Anne Whyties in 1622 or before and had several children (there are baptisms of five children from 1622 to 1632). At the court of Charles I he became gentleman of the privy chamber and a favorite of his queen Henrietta Maria , who played with her ladies-in-waiting in his mask play Tempe restored. In 1631 he succeeded Ben Jonson as the author of mask games at court, where he served as the librettist for the productions of the architect Inigo Jones . In 1632 his mask games Albion's Triumph and Tempe restored were performed at the court. He lived in St. Giles Cripplegate near the residence of John Egerton, 1st Earl of Bridgewater.

He later became impoverished and his trail is lost in the late 1640s. There is a petition to Parliament from 1643, in which he seeks protection from persecution by a believer and is described as poor and pocky (poor and pockmarked).

He is best known today for some of his poems, which were also included in the Oxford Book of English Verse . TS Eliot reminded his poems, which were often set to music during his lifetime, of distant, pleasing sounds ( faint, pleasing tinkle ).

His daughter Mary married George Kirk, who was court chamberlain, and their daughter Diana married Aubrey de Vere, 20th Earl of Oxford .

literature

EK Chambers: Aurelian Townshend's Poems and Masks, Tudor and Stuart Library, Clarendon Press 1912, Archives
Peter Beale, Article Aurelian Townshend in Dictionary of National Biography 2004

Web links

Individual evidence

^ TS Eliot, Review by Herbert J. Grierson (ed.), Metaphysical Lyrics and Poems of the Seventeenth Century: Donne to Butler, Times Literary Supplement, October 1921, online

personal data
SURNAME	Townshend, Aurelian
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	English poet
DATE OF BIRTH	before 1583
DATE OF DEATH	after 1649

[1] TS Eliot, Review by Herbert J. Grierson (ed.), Metaphysical Lyrics and Poems of the Seventeenth Century: Donne to Butler, Times Literary Supplement, October 1921, online