Charles Fitzgeoffrey
Encyclopedia
Early life and education
Fitzgeoffrey was born in CornwallCornwall
Cornwall is a unitary authority and ceremonial county of England, within the United Kingdom. It is bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Cornwall has a population of , and covers an area of...
, the son of a Protestant clergyman named Alexander Fitzgeoffrey (a surname sometimes spelled Fitzgeffrey), who was Rector of the parish of St. Fimbarrus, Fowey
Fowey
Fowey is a small town, civil parish and cargo port at the mouth of the River Fowey in south Cornwall, United Kingdom. According to the 2001 census it had a population of 2,273.-Early history:...
. His father died during Charles' childhood, perhaps while he was around eight years old, and his mother then married into the distinguished Mohun family, which gave her son financial and social security. After early schooling under the Rev. Richard Harvey, at seventeen Fitzgeoffrey went up to Oxford University, matriculating at Broadgates Hall on 3 July 1593. Fitzgeoffrey was admitted B.A. in 1597 and M.A. in 1600, but had apparently left Oxford by 1599. It is not immediately clear where he went or what he did, though verses in Affaniae make reference to a time spent in Wiltshire
Wiltshire
Wiltshire is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire. It contains the unitary authority of Swindon and covers...
, where he had relatives named Bellott; and also to a severe illness which he suffered about this period. Elsewhere in his verse Fitzgeoffrey also alludes to a disability:he had the sight of only one eye.
Writings
Fitzgeoffrey was only twenty and still at Oxford when he produced Sir Francis Drake, His Honorable life's commendation, and his Tragical Deathes Lamentation,(1596) which was popular enough to go through a second printing. Fitzgeoffrey is mentioned by Francis MeresFrancis Meres
Francis Meres was an English churchman and author.He was born at Kirton in the Holland division of Lincolnshire in 1565. He was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he received a B.A. in 1587 and an M.A. in 1591. Two years later he was incorporated an M.A. of Oxford...
in his 1598 survey of contemporary English literature, Palladis Tamia
Palladis Tamia
Palladis Tamia, subtitled "Wits Treasury", is a 1598 book written by the minister Francis Meres. Meres calls it "A Comparative Discourse of our English Poets, with the Greek, Latin, and Italian Poets", and is important in English literary history as the first critical account of the poems and early...
, where he is admiringly described as "that high touring Falcon" for the epic quality of his verse and his patriotic choice of subject. Drake extolled the exploits of Fitzgeoffrey's fellow West Countryman, the recently-deceased sailor Sir Francis Drake
Francis Drake
Sir Francis Drake, Vice Admiral was an English sea captain, privateer, navigator, slaver, and politician of the Elizabethan era. Elizabeth I of England awarded Drake a knighthood in 1581. He was second-in-command of the English fleet against the Spanish Armada in 1588. He also carried out the...
, and other English seafaring heroes.
Of more interest to later literary historians are the kind of chatty Latin epigrams at which Fitzgeoffrey excelled, and which he eventually collected and published as Affaniae. '"Affaniae" is a non-classical Latin word meaning "trivial, trashy talk", and the epigrams in Fitzgeoffrey's book, generally light in tone, refer to a wide range of his neighbours in Cornwall, friends in Oxford and contemporary writers whose work he admired. It is this abundance of references to Elizabethan writers which chiefly makes his work interesting today. Significant authors he namechecks include Thomas Nashe
Thomas Nashe
Thomas Nashe was an English Elizabethan pamphleteer, playwright, poet and satirist. He was the son of the minister William Nashe and his wife Margaret .-Early life:...
, Ben Jonson
Ben Jonson
Benjamin Jonson was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems...
, Michael Drayton
Michael Drayton
Michael Drayton was an English poet who came to prominence in the Elizabethan era.-Early life:He was born at Hartshill, near Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England. Almost nothing is known about his early life, beyond the fact that in 1580 he was in the service of Thomas Goodere of Collingham,...
, Edmund Spenser
Edmund Spenser
Edmund Spenser was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognised as one of the premier craftsmen of Modern English verse in its infancy, and one of the greatest poets in the English...
, Sir Philip Sidney
Philip Sidney
Sir Philip Sidney was an English poet, courtier and soldier, and is remembered as one of the most prominent figures of the Elizabethan Age...
, George Chapman
George Chapman
George Chapman was an English dramatist, translator, and poet. He was a classical scholar, and his work shows the influence of Stoicism. Chapman has been identified as the Rival Poet of Shakespeare's Sonnets by William Minto, and as an anticipator of the Metaphysical Poets...
, William Camden
William Camden
William Camden was an English antiquarian, historian, topographer, and officer of arms. He wrote the first chorographical survey of the islands of Great Britain and Ireland and the first detailed historical account of the reign of Elizabeth I of England.- Early years :Camden was born in London...
, Barnabe Barnes
Barnabe Barnes
Barnabe Barnes , was an English poet. He is known for his Petrarchan love sonnets and for his combative personality, involving feuds with other writers and culminating in an alleged attempted murder.-Early life:...
, John Marston
John Marston
John Marston was an English poet, playwright and satirist during the late Elizabethan and Jacobean periods...
, Joseph Hall and Mary Sidney
Mary Sidney
Mary Herbert , Countess of Pembroke , was one of the first English women to achieve a major reputation for her literary works, poetry, poetic translations and literary patronage.-Family:...
. Other epigrams suggest the young Fitzgeoffrey was as interested in the work of Continental humanist authors as he was in native English writers.
He also includes epitaphs on contemporaries, and his verse on the satirist Thomas Nashe illustrates why Fitzgeoffrey is so valued as a source of literary and cultural history. His poem is the first contemporary reference to the death of Nashe, which was otherwise unrecorded: it indicates Nashe's work had been officially banned from publication at the time he died: and it gives an insight into how the author was viewed by his contemporaries, saluting both his irrepressible verve and combative nature.
Later life
Shortly after leaving university Fitzgeoffrey must have taken holy orders, because in 1603 the father of one of his Oxford friends presented him with the living of St Dominick's at Halton, Cornwall. Financially secure and living close to the homes of good friends who shared his cultural interests, Fitzgeoffrey settled down. He must also have married, though his wife's name has not survived, as two years before his death the living was presented to his eldest son John. Later in life Fitzgeoffrey published some of his sermons and also produced a final book of English poetry on the subject of Christ's nativity, The Blessed Birth-Day. A letter of his describing a violent storm which hit Fowey, damaging the church tower, also survives. Conventionally for the period Fitzgeoffrey interprets the storm providentiallyDivine providence
In Christian theology, divine providence, or simply providence, is God's activity in the world. " Providence" is also used as a title of God exercising His providence, and then the word are usually capitalized...
as a "warning piece from Heaven", but was somewhat troubled to find the only person injured in it was a maidservant who, he is at pains to point out, he has known "for this seven years... to be of sober, modest, religious conversation".
Charles Fitzgeoffrey died on 24 February 1638 and was buried under the communion table of his church.