BEN JONSON. 1573-1637. THE family of Jonson, or Johnson, appear to have been originally settled at Annandale, in Scotland, from whence they removed to Carlisle, in the reign of Henry VIII. The first member of the family of whom any notice has been preserved was in the service of the king, and, as may be inferred from subsequent circumstances, embraced the Protestant faith. Nothing more is known of him, except that he possessed an estate, which descended to his son, the father of the poet. The religious persecutions which followed the accession of Queen Mary fell heavily on this gentleman, who was thrown into prison, and deprived of his estate. At a later period he entered the Church, and for the rest of his life exercised the functions of a minister of the Gospel. He died in 1573. A month afterwards Ben Jonson was born in Westminster.+ Fuller in vain endeavoured to ascertain the exact locality of his birth, but traced him, while he was yet a little child,' to 'Harts-horn lane, near Charing Cross, where,' he adds, 'his mother married a bricklayer for her second husband.' The name is spelt Johnson wherever it occurs in the parish registers, recording the christenings or burials of the poet's children. See Collier's Memoirs of Actors, xxiii. It also appears on the titlepage of Bartholomew Fair, 1631; although in The Devil's an Ass, printed in the same year, it is spelt Jonson. A correspondent of Notes and Queries, ii., 167, draws attention to an autograph poem, amongst the papers of the Digby family, entitled the Picture of the Mind of Lady Venetia Digby,' and signed 'Ben Johnson.' This poem is, no doubt, the same as that which forms part of Eupheme.' See post, p. 529. Mr. Laing + Gifford maintains that Jonson was born in 1574. has shown how this mistake arose. See Conversations with Drummond. p. 39. Malone concludes, from an entry in the registry of St. Martin's church, that this second union took place in November 1575, when a Mrs. Margaret Jonson was married to Mr. Thomas Fowler; and Gifford, convinced that the person here named was unquestionably the poet's mother,' fuses Fuller's statement into Malone's speculation, and describes Mr. Fowler (whom he erroneously calls Jonson's father-in-law) as a master bricklayer. Later researches have shown that there is no foundation for any of these assumptions. Jonson's mother was certainly living in 1604 or 1605;* and the Mrs. Margaret Fowler supposed by Malone to be his mother was buried in St. Martin's church, on the 2nd of April, 1590.† Mr. Thomas Fowler died in 1595, and the inscription upon his tomb in the old church sets forth that he survived his three wives, Ellen, Margaret, and Elizabeth; it also informs us that he was comptroller and pay-master of the works under Queen Mary, and for the first ten years of Queen Elizabeth.‡ It is clear, therefore, that as this gentleman outlived all his wives, he could not have been married to a lady who was undoubtedly alive some nine or ten years after his death. The statement that Jonson's mother married again, and that her second husband was a bricklayer, rests mainly on the authority of Fuller ;§ but who the bricklayer was, remains yet to be ascertained. Jonson was first sent to a parish school in St. Martin's, and afterwards placed at Westminster by the friendship of Camden, at that time holding the appointment of secondmaster. The obligation was never forgotten by the poet, who retained to the end of his life the most affectionate regard for his early benefactor and instructor.]] See post, p. 269. † See Shakspeare Society's Papers, i. 11, Art. iii., communicated by Mr. Peter Cunningham. These particulars appear in a note on Collier's Shakspeare, fur. nished by Mr. Peter Cunningham. The inscription is published in Strype's edition of Stow's Survey. § Worthies of England, ii. 424. Ed. 1840. He dedicated to Camden his first play, Every Man in his Humour. -See also Epigram xiv., post, p. 287. Drummond tells us that Jonson was taken from school, and 'put to one other craft, I think [it] was to be a wright or a bricklayer.' There can be no doubt that the 'craft' was that of a bricklayer. The fact was current amongst Jonson's contemporaries;* and Fuller says that he helped in the structure of Lincoln's Inn, when, having a trowel in his hand, he had a book in his pocket.' Fuller and Aubrey state that he was afterwards sent to Cambridge; but they differ in the order of circumstances, and in the name of the college. Jonson makes no reference to Cambridge in his communications to Drummond; and he would scarcely have omitted so conspicuous a circumstance if it had occurred. On the contrary, according to his own relation, there was no interval between his schooling and his first step in life, when it was possible he could have gone to the University. The story about Cambridge is still further discredited by the silence of the University Register. No such name occurs on the books. Jonson did not continue to work long at his step-father's business; and the aversion with which he regarded it led him to avail himself of the earliest opportunity of embracing a more congenial occupation. The army, then serving in Flanders, presented the only accessible opening; and he entered it as a volunteer. During the short period he served with the troops he distinguished himself by his gal lantry, on one occasion killing an enemy in single combat, and carrying off the spoils, in the presence of the two hostile camps. To that brief experience of the career of a soldier of fortune he often afterwards referred with pride, and has left Amongst the numerous allusions to Jonson's early occupation (the most remarkable of which occurs in a letter of Henslowe's, see post, p. 265), there is one in a volume of epigrams, published in 1613, entitled, Laquei Ridiculosi, or Springes to Catch Woodcocks, by H. P. The initials H. P. are supposed to be those of Henry Parrot, and it was, probably, in consequence of this petty lampoon that Jonson made a contemptuous reference to Parrot, coupled with the name of Pooly, another obscure poetaster, in one of his epigrams.-See post, p. 321. |