PREFACE

JOHN DONNE the younger was born while his father was living at Pyrford in Surrey in 1604. He was sent to Westminster School, and in 1623 was elected a student at Christ Church, Oxford. While there he contributed some Latin lines to Carolus Redux, to Camdeni Insignia, and to Parentalia, all of which were published at Oxford (see nos. 152 to 154). Nothing is known of his life during the next ten years except that in 1629 his father had destined him for the Church, as appears from a passage in a letter to Mrs Cockain, in which he tries to console her for the death of her son by writing: ‘ Since I am well content to send one son to the Church, the other to the Wars, why should I be loth to send one part of either son to heaven and the other to earth?’ In 1634 the younger Donne was still at Oxford and a somewhat unpleasant incident is said to have taken place there; it is related that in a fit of temper he struck a small boy with his riding whip, the child afterwards dying as the result of his injuries. He was tried at Oxford in August, 1634, for manslaughter, but was acquitted owing to the uncertainty of the medical evidence. He proceeded soon afterwards to Padua and there took the degree of D.C.L. He returned in 1637 and was incorporated a D.C.L. at Oxford on 30 June 1638. Already some years before this he had fulfilled his father's wishes by taking orders. He first held the living of Tillingham, Essex (1631), and later those of High Roding, Essex (10 July 1638), Ufford, Northants (1638), Polebrooke, Northants (1639), and Fulbeck, Lines. (1639). It seems that Ufford was an exchange for that of Tillingham, but in a letter to Sir Edward Hyde, 14 January 1640/1, Donne complained that he was ‘cozened’ by a trick out of the living of Tillingham by Thomas Nicholson, previous rector of Ufford, and the Rev. Michael Hudson. Legal proceedings followed, the rectory of Ufford being claimed by Richard Titlor or Titley, vicar of Bourne, Lincs. In spite of this he continued to rise in the Church and in 1648 was chaplain to the Earl of Denbigh, to whom he dedicated the Fifty Sermons of 1649.