Poets
Of poets, we have mentioned the saintly Heber. But there are others of an earlier age. John Brownswerd, a native of the shire, was born in 1540, and after graduating at Cambridge became master of the Grammar School at Macclesfield, earning fame as one of the best Latin poets of his age. A tablet was raised to the memory of this “vir pius & doctus,” who is described as
Alpha poetarum, coryphæus grammaticorum
Flos pædagogum hic sepelitur humo.
He died in 1589, a good example of the learned men of the Elizabethan age, who trained their pupils in good classic lore. There were several such schools in Cheshire—at Chester, Audlem, Northwich, and other places. Another Elizabethan poet owed his education to such schools. Geoffrey Whitney, who was born at Nantwich, learned his classics at Audlem and Northwich, graduated at Oxford, and then migrated to Leyden. There he published his Choice of Emblemes, printed in 1586 in the famous printing-press of Christopher Plantyn, and a collection of fables. Each poem is dedicated to one of the principal gentlemen in Lancashire and Cheshire. The Cheshire historian Ormerod quotes a poem addressed “to my countremen of the Namptwicke in Cheshire,” relating to a fire that had lately destroyed the town, and comparing the place to a phœnix, of which the poet gives a device. Near Northwich was born Sir John Birkenhead, poet and political writer, of humble origin, his father being either a saddler or an innkeeper. The excellence of the Cheshire schools is again shown by his ability in taking a degree at Oxford and a fellowship at Oriel College. When the Civil War broke out he started the newspaper the Mercurius Aulicus for the purpose of “communicating the intelligence and affairs of the Court of Oxon to the rest of the kingdom.” The King was pleased with this product of his fluent pen, and appointed him Reader in Moral Philosophy. When misfortune befell him with the fall of the Royal cause, he wrote poems and divers political tracts, and at the Restoration was rewarded for his loyalty with a knighthood and other lucrative appointments. He has been described as a man “of great courage in words, scoffing humour, an unscrupulous conscience, and an inexhaustible fund of arch and mischievous drollery, ... one of the most expert and successful guerilla partisans on the side of the Royalists.”
The poet Milton is connected with this county, as his third wife, Elizabeth Mynshal, a lady connected with some of the best Cheshire families, came from Cheshire and died at Nantwich. She is believed to have been a termagant, and brought the poet little pleasure, but others have described her as of “a peaceful and agreeable humour.”
The Rev. William Broome, a native of Cheshire, was a poet of some distinction, a translator of Homer, and the coadjutor of Pope in the translation of the Odyssey. He supplied all the notes to that work, but he quarrelled with Pope, and was lampooned in the Dunciad. Dr. Johnson gave him a niche in his Lives of the Poets, describing him as an excellent versifier; “his lines are smooth and sonorous, and his diction is select and elegant.” Another name must be honoured among Cheshire poets, that of Henry Birkenhead, M.D., a poet of distinction, Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, a founder in 1707 of the Professorship of Poetry in that University.