Henry Wriothesley
(3rd E. Southampton)
Born: 6 Oct 1573, Cowdray, Sussex, England
Acceded: 1581
Died: 10 Nov 1624,
Bergen-op-Zoom, Holland
Buried: 28 Dec
1624, Titchfield, Hampshire, England
Notes: Knight of
the Garter. Baron Wriothesley. The Complete Peerage vol.XIIp1,p.128-131.
Father: Henry
WRIOTHESLEY (2° E. Southampton)
Mother: Mary
BROWNE (C. Southampton)
Married:
Elizabeth
VERNON (C. Southampton) BEF 30 Aug 1598
Children:
1. Thomas
WRIOTHESLEY (4° E. Southampton)
2. Penélope
WRIOTHESLEY
Henry
Wriothesley, third Earl of Southampton c. 1601-1603
John de Critz the Elder
(1555-1641)
Boughton House, Northamptonshire
Son of Henry Wriothesley, 2nd Earl of Southampton, by
Mary, dau. of Anthony Browne,
Viscount Montague, was born at Cowdray House, near Midhurst. The
elder Henry Wriothesley was brought up as a Roman Catholic and spent four
years imprisoned in the Tower of London following implications in
plots to depose Elizabeth I.
Young Henry's
father died two days before his eighth birthday, making him third
Earl of Southampton at a very young age and a royal ward under
the care of Lord Burghley in his capacity as master of the court
of wards. At the age of twelve, in autumn 1585, Henry was
admitted to St. John's College, Cambridge, where Nash and Greene
held forth. The following summer he sent his guardian an essay in
Ciceronian Latin on the somewhat cynical text that "All men
are moved to the pursuit of virtue by the hope of reward."
He remained at the university for four years, graduating M.A. at
the age of sixteen in 1589. BEF leaving college he entered his
name as a student at Gray's Inn, and soon afterwards took into
his "pay and patronage" John Florio, the well-known
author and Italian tutor. According to Florio, the Earl quickly
acquired a thorough knowledge of Italian.
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About 1590, when he
was hardly more than seventeen, Henry was presented to Queen
Elizabeth,
who received him kindly. Her favorite, the Earl of
Essex, also displayed a brotherly interest in young Henry's welfare. But in the autumn of 1592 the precocious
Southampton was in the throng of noblemen that accompanied
Elizabeth to Oxford. Henry was recognized as the most handsome
and accomplished of all the young lords who frequented the royal
presence. In 1593 the twenty-year-old Earl was mentioned for
nomination as a knight of the garter, and although he was not
chosen the compliment of nomination was unprecedented at his age,
outside the circle of the sovereign's kinsmen. |
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From the hour that
he joined the court and made London his chief home as a handsome
and accomplished lad, literature was a chief interest of Southampton's life, and he enjoyed a wide reputation as a patron
of poets, who acknowledged his appreciation of literary effort of
almost every quality and form, including drama.
His great wealth was
freely dispensed among his literary eulogists. In 1593 Barnabe
Barnes appended a sonnet in his honor to his
collection of sonnets called "Parthenophil and
Parthenophe"; Thomas Nash described
him in his dedication to him his romance of "Jack
Wilton", (1594) as "a dear lover and cherisher as well of the lovers of poets
as of the poets themselves". About this time, Nash seems to have penned a
lascivious poem entitled "The Choosing of Valentines" which opens and closes
with a sonnet "to Lord S."
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Christopher Marlowe
also curried Southampton's favor. A recent (1992) critic of
"Shakespeare" claims that the "aggressively
homosexual Marlowe, targeted the young Earl in his poem Hero and
Leander... The uncut, dangling tresses seen in the portraits,
the fair-skinned aristocratic straightness, inflamed his
imagination. To touch [Leander's/Henry's] neck, wrote Marlowe,
was delicious meat; smooth breast, white belly--whose immortal
fingers, he asked, did imprint the heavenly path, 'with many a
curious dint that runs along his back?" (O'Connor, TLS,
"Festering Lilies"). Marlowe dedicated his first
published poem as "Shakespeare," Venus and Adonis in
1592 to Southampton, and one year later his dedication to
"The Rape of Lucrece," the language suggests devoted
friendship.
Most Shakespearean scholars believe Southampton to be the
youth addressed in many of the sonnets. In the early 1590s, when many of the
sonnets were probably written, Southampton was the center of attraction among
poetic aspirants. No other patron's favor was at the moment more persistently
sought by newcomers in the literary field. There is a possibility that
Marlowe
saw his chief rival as Barnabe Barnes, a youthful protégé of the Earl.
Barnes,
in one of his sonnets, had eulogized Southampton's virtues and inspiring eyes in
language which phrases in "Shakespeare's" sonnets seem to reflect. In
other sonnets in which Marlowe avows love for the handsome youth of wealth and
rank, there are many hints of Southampton's known character and career. The
opening sequence of seventeen sonnets, in which a youth of rank and wealth is
admonished to marry and beget a son so that "his fair house" may not
fall into decay, can only have been addressed to a young peer like Southampton,
who was as yet unmarried, had vast possessions, and was the sole male
representative of his family.
Elizabeth Vernon
(C. Southampton)
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Southampton
doubtless inspired Marlowe with genuine personal affection, but
it was in perfect accord with the forms of address that were
customary in the communication of poets with patrons for
Marlowe
to describe his relations with his Maecenas in the language of an
overmastering passion. Some exaggeration was expected of
Elizabethan sonneteers in depicting the personal attractions of a
patron. But he extant portraits of Southampton confirm the
"fair" aspect with which the sonnet's hero is credited.
Marlowe's frequent references in his sonnets to his youthful
patron's "painted counterfeit" (Sonnets 16, 24, 47, 67)
were doubtless suggested by the hero of the sonnets is at times
credited presents no difficulty. Southampton was only twenty when
Marlowe went into exile in 1593 at the age of twenty-nine. Sonnet
107, which seems to refer to the death of
Queen Elizabeth and the
accession of James I, may be regarded as a congratulatory
greeting from Marlowe on Southampton's release from prison.
At the time that
Marlowe was penning his eulogies in the 1590's, Southampton was
an eligible bachelor. When he was seventeen, Burghley
had suggested a marriage between him and his granddaughter Elizabeth
Vere, daughter of the Earl of Oxford.
Henry's mother approved the match, but her son refused to
consider it.
His intrigue with Elizabeth Vernon, cousin of
the Earl of Essex,
which ended in 1598 with a hasty marriage, brought down
Queen Elizabeth's anger on both the contracting parties, who
spent some time in the Fleet prison in consequence. Meanwhile in 1596
and 1597 Southampton had been actively employed, having
accompanied Essex
on his two expeditions to Cádiz and to the Azores, in the latter of
which he distinguished himself by his daring tactics.
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Henry
Wriothesley, third Earl of Southampton
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Henry, 3rd Earl of
Southampton, an enigmatic character but brought up as a
Protestant. In 1598 he bad a brawl at court with Ambrose Willoughby, and
later in the same year he attended
Sir Robert Cecil on an embassy to Paris. In 1599 he went to Ireland with Earl of Essex,
who made him general of his horse, but the queen insisted that the appointment
should be cancelled, and Southampton returned to London. Imprisoned like his father in the Tower, Henry was
lucky to escape execution for his part in the
Essex's
plot of 1601 and was only released with the accession of James I
in 1603. He spent large sums of money on the patronage of writers. He also maintained an interest in the colonisation of
Virginia, and was a director of the Virginia Company.
Died of pestilance (plague) 10 Nov 1624 on Bergen-op-Zoom, Holland, and
was buried 28 Dec
1624 in Titchfield, Hampshire, England.