Taylor, John

(1580-1623)

   Born of humble parents from Gloucester, he saw service as a pressed man in the Navy at the siege of Cadiz (1596) and at Flores in the Azores (1597). He then spent many years on the River Thames and dubbed himself "The Water Poet." When the English Civil Wars began, Taylor moved to Oxford, where he wrote royalist pamphlets, and when Oxford surrendered (1645) he returned to London and kept a public house until his death. He was buried in the churchyard of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. He composed the water pageant on the Thames at the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth in 1613, later Queen of Bohemia, and the pageant with which Charles I was welcomed on his return from Scotland in 1641. He was active in writing about the watermen's disputes of the early 17th century. A prolific and colorful popular writer, he gives a unique picture of England from James I to the Civil War through the eyes of a London waterman. Some of his poems: "My Defence Against Thy Offence," "Roses Gone Wild," "Taylor's Travels from London to Prague," "The Mill," "The Trumpet of Liberty," "To My Despiteful Foes."

   Sources: All the Workes of John Taylor, the Water Poet. Scolar Press, 1973. Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). From A to Z: 200 Contemporary American Poets. David Ray, ed. Ohio University Press, 1981. The National Portrait Gallery. (www.npg.org.uk). Poems of the Old West: A Rocky Mountain Anthology. Levette J. Davidson, ed. University of Denver Press, 1951. The Chatto Book of Nonsense Poetry. Hugh Haughton, ed. Chatto and Windus, 1988. The Oxford Book of Travel Verse. Kevin CrossleyHolland, ed. Oxford University Press, 1986. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. Works of John Taylor, the Water Poet, Spencer Society, 1869.