Edmund Waller

Edmund Waller was born on 3 March 1606 at Stocks Place, Coleshill, Buckinghamshire, eldest son of Robert Waller (1560–1616) and Anne Hampden (1589-1658). He came from a family of 15, many of whom survived to adulthood, including Elizabeth (1601-?), Anne (1602-1642), Cecilia (1603-?), Mary (1605-1660), Robert (1606-1641), Ursula (1610-1692) and John (1616-1667). Cecilia married Nathaniel Tomkins, executed for his part in the 1643 plot, while Mary married Adrian Scrope, executed in 1660 as a regicide.[3]

Hall Barn, circa 1898; Waller family home near Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire

In addition, Waller was related to several prominent Parliamentarians; through his mother, he was distantly connected to Oliver Cromwell, while he and John Hampden were grandchildren of Griffith Hampden (1543-1591).[4] On his father's side, he was related to the Parliamentarian generals Sir Hardress and Sir William Waller.[5]

In 1631, he married Anne Banks, orphaned heiress of a wealthy merchant; contracted in defiance of the Privy Council of England, the marriage was eventually approved by Charles I. Anne died in childbirth in 1634, leaving two children, Robert (1633-1652?) and Elizabeth (1634-1653).[6]

In 1644, he re-married, this time to Mary Bracey (died 1677) and they had numerous children; since their eldest son Benjamin was mentally disabled, he was succeeded by Edmund (1652-1700), MP for Amersham from 1689 to 1698.[7] His youngest son Stephen (1676-1708) was one of the Commissioners who negotiated the 1707 Treaty of Union.[8] On his death, his estate was valued at the then considerable sum of £40,000; he left legacies to his children Margaret (1648-1690), who acted as his secretary and Benjamin's guardian, Mary, Elizabeth, Anne, Cicely, Octavia, Dorothy and William.[9]

Viscount Falkland, killed fighting for the Royalists in 1643; Waller was deeply influenced by his moderation and tolerance

Waller attended Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe, followed by Eton and King's College, Cambridge. He left without a degree, and as was common in this period did a course in law at Lincoln's Inn, graduating in 1622. He was first elected in 1624 as MP for Ilchester, when he was the youngest person in the Commons, then for Chepping Wycombe in 1626. On coming of age in 1627, he inherited an estate worth up to £2,500 a year, making him one of the wealthiest men in Buckinghamshire.[5]

Returned for Amersham in 1628, he made virtually no impact on Parliament before it was dissolved in 1629, when Charles I instituted eleven years of Personal Rule.[5] During this period, he became friends with George Morley, later Bishop of Worcester, who guided his reading and provided advice on writing, while Waller apparently paid his debts. Morley also introduced Waller to Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount Falkland; he became a member of the Great Tew Circle, which included Edward Hyde, and was greatly influenced by Falkland's moderation and tolerance.[9]

Nineteenth century biographers dated his earliest work to the 1620s, largely because they commemorate events occurring in that period, but modern scholars suggest they were actually written in the mid to late 1630s in an attempt to build a career at court. As well as Charles himself, many of his works are addressed to members of the extended Percy family, such as the Countess of Carlisle, the Countess of Sunderland [lower-alpha 1] and the Earl of Northumberland.[10] Hyde recorded Waller became a poet at the age of thirty, "when other Men give over writing Verses". [11]

When Charles recalled Parliament in April 1640 to approve taxes for the Bishops' Wars, Waller was re-elected for Amersham, then for St Ives in November. Despite general consensus attempts by Charles to govern without Parliament had gone too far, moderates like Hyde and Falkland were also wary of changing the balance too much the other way.[12] John Pym, who headed the Parliamentary opposition to Charles, gave Waller responsibility for the impeachment of Sir Francis Crawley, one of the Ship Money judges, but he confirmed his Royalist sympathies by voting against the execution of Strafford in April 1641, and the removal of bishops from the House of Lords.[5]

Unlike Hyde and Falkland who joined the king when the First English Civil War began in August 1642, Waller remained in London, apparently with Charles' permission, where he continued to support moderates like Denzil Holles who wanted a negotiated peace. In May 1643 a plot was uncovered, allegedly organised by Waller along with his brother-in-law Nathaniel Tomkins, and wealthy merchant Richard Chaloner; what apparently began as a plan to force Parliament into negotiations by withholding taxes turned into an armed conspiracy intended to allow the Royalist army to take control of London.[9]

Execution of Nathaniel Tomkins and Chaloner, July 1643; an episode that permanently damaged Waller's reputation

After Waller was arrested, he made a full confession, implicating a number of his co-conspirators; he escaped the death penalty, allegedly by paying bribes, while Chaloner and Tomkins were executed on 5 July 1643.[13] Many moderates were forced to disavow support for a peace settlement to avoid suspicion of involvement and reaffirm their backing for military action. After spending 18 months in prison without trial, Waller was fined £10,000 and permitted to go into exile in November 1644, accompanied by his new wife Mary; however, the affair caused lasting damage to his reputation.[9]

Waller travelled with John Evelyn in Switzerland and Italy; unlike many Royalists, he lived in some comfort using money sent to him by his mother. Probably with the support of his near-relations Cromwell and Scrope, the Rump Parliament allowed him to return home in January 1652. He established good relations with Cromwell, writing him a 'Panegyrick' in 1655, and later supporting proposals to make him king; in a poem written after the capture of the Spanish treasure fleet in 1658, he suggested "let the rich ore be forthwith melted down, and the state fixed by making him a crown'.[14]

When Charles II returned to the throne after The Restoration, Waller commemorated the occasion with his 1660 poem To the King, upon his Majesty's Happy Return. Reconciling past support for the Commonwealth with the restored monarchy was a problem faced by many, but in his 1779 biography Samuel Johnson wrote it showed that "a prostituted mind may retain the glitter of wit, but has lost the dignity of virtue".[15] In 1661, he was elected to the Cavalier Parliament as MP for Hastings; he became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1663, although does not appear to have contributed papers himself. He played a prominent role in the impeachment and exile of Clarendon in 1667, and thereafter held a number of positions under the Cabal ministry.[5]

Edmund Waller's tomb, Beaconsfield

Originally viewed as a supporter of the Court, after 1674 he gained a reputation for independence and was still regarded as one of the best speakers in the Commons. Generally an advocate of religious tolerance, especially for Protestant Nonconformists, he was however convinced of the truth of the Popish Plot in 1678 and withdrew from active politics during the 1679 to 1681 Exclusion Crisis. On the accession of James II, he was elected for Saltash in 1685.[5]

He wrote two poems to the new king, urging reconciliation and national unity, but James suspended Parliament in November after it refused to pass his Declaration of Indulgence.[9] Waller died at his London house in St James's on 21 October 1687, and was buried in the churchyard of St Mary and All Saints Church, Beaconsfield; his tomb is now grade II* listed.[16]

1717 engraving; Geoffrey Chaucer (centre), surrounded by Waller, Samuel Butler, John Milton and Abraham Cowley

Widely admired by contemporaries including John Dryden and Gerard Langbaine, who considered his writings "fit to serve as a Standard, for all succeeding poems", nevertheless his habit of effusively commemorating great events by praising court and royalty was parodied by the likes of Andrew Marvell in his "Last Instructions to a Painter". Although Francis Atterbury called him "the Parent of English Verse, and the first that shew'd us our Tongue had Beauty and Numbers in it", by the nineteenth century his work was out of favour.[17] In 1911 Edmund Gosse, author of his biography in the Encyclopædia Britannica, wrote 'his lyrics were at one time admired to excess...but with the exception of "Song (Go, lovely rose)" and one or two others, have lost their popularity'.[18]

By 1995, the protagonist of 'The Information', a novel by Martin Amis, dismisses him as a 'seat-warmer, air sniffer and mediocrity'.[19] However, H.M Redmond argued 'immoderate censure of his life' had combined with 'interest-killing appreciation' of his verse to 'prevent a dispassionate assessment'.[20] One suggestion is while his writing is limited, he played an important role in developing a format and style adapted and improved by Alexander Pope among others.[21]

Much of his early poetry was written for the Caroline court, while he was famous for his 'Panegyricks', written in support of Cromwell, then both Charles II and his brother James, as well as other members of the Royal family.[lower-alpha 2] His longest and most ambitious work of this type portrayed the inconclusive 1665 Battle of Lowestoft; [lower-alpha 3] presenting it as an heroic victory and heaping praise on James, it was widely ridiculed.[9]

He was strongly influenced by Thomas Hobbes, whose Leviathan he admired, and whose De Cive he at one point proposed to translate. His early work proved far more popular than his later efforts and during his exile an unlicensed collection of his poems was published in 1645.[lower-alpha 4] Reprinted in 1664, 1668, 1682, and 1686, they were popular in part because they were easily set to music; two volumes of previously uncollected writings, "The Maid's Tragedy Altered" and "The Second Part of Mr Waller's Poems" were published after his death in 1690.[17] They included his 'Divine Poems'; originally published by Waller himself in 1686, the majority of critics view them as 'indifferent' and a demonstration of his decline as a writer.[22]

• Allison, Alexander (1962). Toward An Augustan Poetic: Edmund Waller's 'Reform' of English Poetry (2014 ed.). University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 978-0813150994.
• Amis, Martin (1995). The Information (2008 ed.). Vintage. ISBN 978-0099526698.
• Chernaik, Warren (2004). "Waller, Edmund". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/28556. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
• Cruickshanks, Eveline; Handley, Stuart (2002). WALLER, Edmund (1652-1700), of Hall Barn, Beaconsfield, Bucks in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1690–1715. Boydell & Brewer.
• Gosse, Edmund (1911). Waller, Edmund in Encyclopædia Britannica. Hooper.
• Greenwood, Douglas (1999), Who's Buried where in England (Third ed.), Constable, p. 128, ISBN 0-09-479310-7
• Harris, Tim (2014). Rebellion: Britain's First Stuart Kings, 1567–1642. OUP. ISBN 978-0-19-920900-2.
• Hillyer, Richard (1999). "Edmund Waller's Sacred Poems". Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900. 29 (No. 1, The English Renaissance). JSTOR 1556310.
• Johnson, Samuel (1905). Edmund Waller; Lives of the English Poets, Volume I. OUP. ISBN 978-0192500830.
• Kyle, Chris; Sgroi, Rosemary (2010). Thrush, Andrew; Ferris, John P. (eds.). Waller, Edmund (1606–1687), of Hall Barn, Beaconsfield, Bucks.; later of St. James's Street, Westminster in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1604–1629. Cambridge University Press.
• Maclagan, Michael (1946). The Family of Dormer in Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Oxoniensia, vol. 11–12.
• Pritchard, Will (1998). "The Invention of Edmund Waller". Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture, 1660-1700. 22 (1). JSTOR 43293954.
• Raylor, Timothy (2006). "The Early Poetic Career of Edmund Waller". Huntington Library Quarterly. 69 (2). doi:10.1525/hlq.2006.69.2.239.
• Richmond, HM (1971). Keast, William R (ed.). The Fate of Edmund Waller in Seventeenth Century Poetry; Modern Essays in Criticism. OUP. ISBN 978-0195013917.
• Roberts, Keith (2003). First Newbury 1643: The Turning Point (illustrated ed.). Osprey Publishing. ISBN 9781841763330.
• Royle, Trevor (2004). Civil War: The Wars of the Three Kingdoms 1638–1660. Abacus. ISBN 978-0-349-11564-1.
• Struthers, John (1827). The history of Scotland, from the Union to the abolition of the heritable jurisdictions in MDCCXLVIII. Blackie, Fullarton, & Co.
• Virgoe, Roger (1981). Hasler, PW (ed.). HAMPDEN, Griffith (1543-91), of Great Hampden, Bucks; in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1558–1603. Boydell & Brewer.

• Baldwin, James, ed. (1892). Six Centuries of English Poetry. kindle ebook. ASIN B004TREH7W.
• Cibber, Theophilus (1753). The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland: to the time of Dean Swift. II. London: R. Griffiths. pp. 240–264.
• Gilfillan, George (1857). Poetical Works of Edmund Waller & Sir John Denham. Retrieved 26 January 2021.
• Thorn-Drury, G, ed. (1893). Poetical Works; A critical edition with a careful biography.
• Waller, Edmund (1690). The maid's tragedy altered with some other pieces / by Edmund Waller, Esq. ; not before printed in the several editions of his poems. Jacob Tonson. Retrieved 26 January 2021.