- Suckling, Sir John
- (1609-1642)Born in Twickenham, Middlesex, the son of Sir John Suckling, secretary of state and comptroller of the household under James I, he was educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge, but did not graduate. His father's death in 1627 made him heir to rich estates in Suffolk, Lincolnshire, and Middlesex. He was knighted in 1630 and briefly became a soldier between 1631 and 1632, but his life seems to have been a round of entertainment; he is said to have invented the game of cribbage. Suckling took part as a Royalist in various military actions early in the Civil Wars, including the unsuccessful Scottish campaign of 1639 and the abortive plot to rescue the Earl of Strafford from the Tower of London. He fled to the Continent and soon, reduced to poverty and misery, died in Paris, by poison, so it is said. Two of his plays are the tragedy Aglaura (1637) and the comedy The Goblins (1638). Some of his poems: "A Barber," "A BarleySwain Break," "Brennoralt," "Love Turned to Hatred," "Proffered Love Rejected," "The Careless Lover," "The Goblins," "Upon Christ His Birth."Sources: A New Canon of English Poetry. James Reeves and Martin Seymour-Smith, eds. Barnes and Noble, 1967. Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). English Poetry: A Poetic Record, from Chaucer to Yeats. David Hopkins, ed. Routledge, 1990. The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk). The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. The Works of Sir John Suckling in Prose and Verse. A. Hamilton Thompson, ed. Reprint Services, 1910.
British and Irish poets. A biographical dictionary. William Stewart. 2015.