Jacob on Edmund Waller

Edmund Waller was born in 1606 at Coleshill between the borders of Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire. He was born into a wealthy family, including Sir Hardress Waller, Sir William Waller, and her mother who was the sister to John Hampden. Most of Wallers early childhood was spent attending High Wycombe grammar school learning from the Eton scholar Gerard Dobson. After furthering his education at Eton and Cambridge he finished his gentleman’s education at Lincoln’s Inn in 1622. Waller began his career by entering parliament for Amersham and then, shortly after, “gained a seat at Chipping Wycombe in his native Buckinghamshire”. Only to then return to Amersham. During that time Waller inherited an estate estimated to be worth up to £3,500 a year and, 4 year later, married a wealthy London heiress by the name of Anne Banks. However, their marriage was short lived as Banks died during the birth of Dorothy Sidney who Waller would take care of for the remainder of the decade. Dorothy would be an inspiration to some of his poems as she would be referred multiple times in his poems as Sacharissa. Waller also wrote poems over past events that took place including when Prince Charles escaped a shipwreck on the Spanish coast in 1623 and the duke of Buckingham’s assassination in 1628. He would also go on to join the literary circle of the 2nd Viscount Falkland at Great Tew to publish several different political works. This would also help him become an orator for John Aubrey and the 1st Earl of Clarendon Edward Hyde who claimed he had “‘a graceful way of speaking” and an “excellence and power of wit”. This would continue on until 1643 when Waller would become involved in a conspiracy to take over London which would become known as the “Waller’s Plot”. However, he would soon make a full confession of the plot and buy his way out of execution. Then, after being exiled for 8 years, Waller returned to France and Switzerland. After returning to Parliament for Hastings in 1661 and Saltash in 1685, Waller died of dropsy on October 21^st, 1687. He was buried in Beaconsvile and various portraits of him are preserved at the National Portrait Gallery and at Rousham House located in Oxfordshire.

Sources:

http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1604-1629/member/waller-edmund-1606-1687