Mathew Roydon (abt. 1555 - 1622)

Born about 1555 in England

Died 1622 at about age 67 in England

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Biography

Mathew Roydon is Notable.

Mathew Roydon was born in England.

Mathew Roydon is an English Author.

Mathew was an Elizabethan poet.

Mathew Roydon was possibly the son of Owen Roydon.^[1]

Mathew Roydon graduated as a Master of Arts, Oxford University, in 1580.^[2]

Mathew Roydon is often grouped in with Christopher Marlowe, and he, Thomas Harriot, and George Chapman are mentioned among those companions of the dramatist who shared his freethinking.

Research Notes

I believe this should be a Notable profile as there is a wikipedia article. Please feel free to adjust. Romaine-132 12:39, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

In Literature

• "The Phoenix Nest (sometimes written as Phœnix Nest, and sometimes including a possessive apostrophe after the "x") was an anthology of poetry by various authors which was "set foorth" by an as-yet unidentified "R. S. of the Inner Temple Gentleman", in 1593 (possibly Ralph Starkey, known as Infortunio, who had contributed a dedicatory verse to Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene in 1590. Identified writers who contributed to the volume include Edward de Vere, Edward Dyer, Robert Greene, Thomas Lodge, George Peele, Walter Raleigh, Mathew Roydon, William Smith, and Thomas Watson."^[3]
• "In 1594, George Chapman penned two fine poems, "The Shadow of Night: containing two poetical hymnes devised by GC Gent and dedicated it to his deare and most worthy friend master Mathew Roydon. They have been reprinted by Mr. Singer in his edition of “ Chapman’s Hymns of Homer.” (Chiswick, 1818.) In the following year (1595) appeared ‘‘ Ovid’s Banquet of Sence, a Coronet for his Mistresse Philosophie, and his amorous Zodiacke: with a translation of a Latine Copre (sc. of verses) written by a fryer, Anno Dom. 1400,” 4to. This was also dedicated to Mathew Roydon, with commendatory verses, &c. It was reprinted in 1639, 12mo. without the dedication and verses. John Davis of Hereford has an epigram “ To the right-well-deserving Mr. Mathew Roydon.””^[4]"
• "As to the authorship we are fortunate in possessing quite first-rate testimony. Thomas Nashe, in his address 'To the Gentlemen Students of both Universities' prefixed to Greene's Menaphon' in the course of commending various English poets mentions Mathew Roydon, Thomas Atchelow, and George Peele, adding (1589, sig. A2V): & for the last, thogh not the least of them all, I dare commend him to all that know him, as the chiefe supporter of pleasance nowe living."^[5]
• "In 1583 George Chapman was in the service of Sir Ralph Sadler and it is possible that he served as a soldier in the Netherlands. In 1594 he began his public career as a poet with The Shadow of Night, a poem which is based on Natalis Comes and connects Chapman with Mathew Roydon and the Raleigh circle. The volume of poetry containing Ovids Banquet of Sence is also dedicated to Roydon.
• The_School_of_Night, was largely synonymous with Sir Walter Rawleys School of Atheisme’, which the Jesuit pamphleteer Robert Parsons had once mentioned (and ‘where in’, as Parsons alleged, ‘both Moyses and our Saior, the olde, and the new Testamente are iested at, and the schollars taughte, amonge other thinges, to spell God backwarde’).According to Quiller-Couch and Dover Wilson’s hypothesis, Ralegh ‘headed and patronised’ this intellectual coterie, a group interested in subjects including ‘astronomy and mathematical calculations’. In addition to Chapman, the Earls of Derby and Northumberland were alleged to have been members, as were George Carey, Thomas Hariot, Matthew Roydon and ‘poor Marlowe’^[6]

Poems

• Lament for Sir Philip Sidney
• An Elegy on a Friend’s Passion for His Astrophill

Sources

1. ↑ https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography,_1885-1900/Roydon,_Matthew
2. ↑ https://www.british-history.ac.uk/alumni-oxon/1500-1714/pp1277-1295
3. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Phoenix_Nest
4. ↑ The Odysseys of Homer. United Kingdom: J. R. Smith, 1857. Page xv. https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Odysseys_of_Homer/mr1fAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PR15&printsec=frontcover
5. ↑ Peele, George, and Harold Hannyngton Child. The Arraignment of Paris, 1584. [Oxford : Printed for the Malone society by H. Hart, M.A., at the Oxford university press], 1910. Page n8. http://archive.org/details/arraignmentofpar00peelrich.
6. ↑ Quiller-Couch and Dover Wilson, pp. xxxiii and xxxi.

• Gatti, Hilary. “Giordano Bruno: The Texts in the Library of the Ninth Earl of Northumberland.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 46, no. 1 (January 1983): 63–77. https://doi.org/10.2307/751114.
• Peele, George. The Arraignment of Paris, 1584 .... United Kingdom: Malone society, 1910. Page v. https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Arraignment_of_Paris_1584/Z_Q_AAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover&bsq=Roydon
• Matthew, H. C. G., and B. Harrison, eds. “The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.” In The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ref:odnb/24238. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/24238.
• Webb, Susanne S. “Raleigh, Hariot, and Atheism in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England.” Albion 1, no. 1 (January 1969): 10–18. https://doi.org/10.2307/4048171.

See also

• Wikipedia: Mathew_Roydon
• Wikidata: Item Q6787038