Heywood, John and Jasper

(?1497-1598)

   • John, the father, ?1497-?1580

   Thought to have come from either St. Albans, Hertfordshire, or London, he was a chorister of the Chapel Royal and is said to have been educated at Broadgates Hall (now Pembroke College), Oxford. His singing and virginal playing made him a favorite both with Henry VIII and Queen Mary. He was accused of denying the king's supremacy over the church (Edward VI) and in 1554 was forced to publicly recant. Under Elizabeth, refusing to renounce his Catholicism, he fled to Belgium, where it is thought he died. Heywood wrote interludes-short plays performed separately, or preceding or following a play, or between the acts. Some of his publications: The Pardoner and the Frere, 1533. Johan the Husbande, Tyb the Wife, and Syr Jh_n the Preest, 1533. The Play of the Wether, 1533. The Four P.P., ?1534. The Spider and the Flie, 1556. Some of his poems: "A Ballad on the Marriage of Philip and Mary," "A Rose and a Nettle," "Cardinal Fisher," "Epygrams," "Of Birds and Birders," "The Cock and the Hen," "The Woodcock and the Daw," "A Ballad of the Green Willow," "A Praise of His Lady."

   • Jasper, the son, 1535-1598

   Born in London, he was one of the boy pages of honor to Princess Elizabeth. He graduated M.A. from Merton College, Oxford, in 1558, and resigned his fellowship in 1558 on account of several misdemeanors. Seven months later he was elected a fellow of All Souls' College, and again he was forced to resign on account of non-compliance with certain religious changes. Already an ordained priest, he was admitted to the Society of Jesus in Rome in 1562 and became professor of moral theology and controversy at the Jesuit college at Dillingen in Bavaria.

   He was there for seventeen years and took the degree of doctor of divinity and became a professed father of the society in 1570. In England, in 1580, he was arrested for being a priest, imprisoned first in the Clink prison, London, then in the Tower, and although others were executed he was deported to France. He eventually settled at Naples, where he died. He published his translation of Seneca's ten tragedies in 1581. One other poem is recorded, "Look or You Leap."

   Sources: A New Canon of English Poetry. James Reeves, and Martin Seymour-Smith, ed. Barnes and Noble, 1967. An Anthology of Catholic Poets. Shane Leslie, ed. Macmillan, 1952. Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Elizabethan Lyrics. Norman Ault, ed. William Sloane Associates, 1949. 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). Poet's Corner Bookshelf, Olney Hymns by William Cowper (http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/olney.html). 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 Faber Book of Epigrams and Epitaphs. Geoffrey Grigson, ed. Faber and Faber, 1977. The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk). The Oxford Book of Verse in English Translation. Charles Tomlinson, ed. Oxford University Press, 1980. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. The Penguin Book of Renaissance Verse 1509-1659. David Norbrook, ed. . Penguin Books, 1992.