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IMPROVEMENT AND EPISTEMOLOGIES OF LANDSCAPE IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH FOREST ENCLOSURE*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 October 2016

ELLY ROBSON
ELLY ROBSON*
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
*
Wolfson College, Barton Road, Cambridge, cb3 9bbedr22@cam.ac.uk
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Abstract

This article challenges readings of seventeenth-century English ‘improvement’ that are confined to a literate, elite sphere and thereby take printed claims of ‘economic betterment’ at face value, bestowing brief mention on ‘losers’ as a regrettable, but necessary, consequence of progress. Through examining Charles I's ‘disafforestation’ of the western royal forests of Gillingham, in Dorset, and Braydon, in Wiltshire, this article contends that improvement was not simply a triumphal narrative of material advancement articulated in print, but rather was forged in active conflicts situated within the landscape. Disafforestation was one of the Stuart crown's first major forays into enclosure and ‘improvement’, facilitated by surveyors applying newly geometric techniques to inscribe exclusive ownership so that each might ‘know and have their own’. Resulting riots reveal the contestation of empirical perspectives, improving ideals, and exclusive boundaries by commoners defending customary ways of seeing and using the forest commons rooted in collective memory, practice, and the landscape itself. Via the framing concept of ‘epistemologies’, improvement is examined as a spatial process in which different ways of knowing and using the landscape became pivotal to the production, contestation, and reconfiguration of social relations mapped across royal forests.

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Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 60 , Issue 3 , September 2017 , pp. 597 - 632
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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Footnotes

*

This article began its life as an M.Phil. thesis and I am grateful to Clare Jackson for her insightful comments on earlier drafts. This research was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

References

1 This article draws extensively on court of exchequer depositions (E134), exchequer commissions for disafforestation (E178), and state papers, domestic (SP), which are held at the National Archives, Kew (TNA), as well as surveyors’ printed tracts and manuscripts held at the British Library, London (BL). All pre-1800 works were published in London, unless otherwise stated.

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6 Deposition of Sir John Crook, TNA E134/3Chas1/East17, fo. 3.

7 Dorset History Centre, D.1366/1.

8 Deposition of John Copp, husbandman, TNA E134/3Chas1/East17, fo. 6.

9 Decree in attorney-general (a-g) v. Braydon tenants, 10 June 1630, TNA E126/3, fo. 380; E134/11Chas1/Mich23.

10 TNA E134/11Chas1/Mich23; interrogatories on behalf of Sir John Hungerford et al., E134/4Chas1/East26, fo. 1.

11 For the 1627 exchequer case and subsequent commission, see TNA E134/3Chas1/East17 and E178/3732 respectively.

12 William Bowles, yeoman, TNA E134/3Chas1/East17, fo. 9.

13 Injunction to quiet possession in a-g v. Gillingham tenants, 9 Nov. 1626, TNA E126/3, fos. 111–12; decree in a-g vs. Gillingham tenants, 28 May 1627, E125/3, fos. 250–1.

14 TNA E125/3, fos. 250–1.

15 TNA E126/3, fos. 111–12 (my italics).

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32 Blomley, Nicholas, ‘Making private property: enclosure, common right and the work of hedges’, Rural History, 18 (2007), pp. 1–24 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 14.

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41 Thompson, Customs, p. 7. Norden also observed this antagonism; Dialogue, p. 98.

42 TNA E178/2470.

43 Norden, Dialogue, p. 34.

44 John Norden, ‘Observations concerning crown lands and woods (1613)’, BL Lansdowne MS 165, fo. 238; Anon., ‘Discourse touching the surveying of his Majesty's lands (1606)’, BL Lansdowne MS 171, fo. 395r–v.

45 Norden, Dialogue, p. 102.

46 On royal forests, see Pettit, Philip A. J., The royal forests of Northamptonshire: a study in their economy, 1558–1714 (Gateshead, 1968)Google Scholar; Cox, J. Charles, The royal forests of England (London, 1905)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For Braydon forest courts, see: Manley, ‘Braden’, p. 552.

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48 For Braydon common rights, see TNA E 178/2408. For illicit commoning, see E134/6Chas1/Trin5, fo. 1; E134/4Chas1/East8, fo. 8.

49 ‘interˈcommon, v.’, OED online (Oxford, Mar. 2014).

50 For discussion of pre-enclosure forest boundaries, see Langton, John, ‘Forest fences: enclosures in a pre-enclosure landscape’, Landscape History, 35 (2004), pp. 5–30 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51 Deposition of Christofer Gabbett, yeoman, TNA E134/4Chas1/East8, fo. 9.

52 Earl of Pembroke v. Barter, Nov. 1624, TNA STAC8/183/46.

53 For earlier attempts to make royal forests profitable, see Hoyle, ‘Disafforestation and drainage’, pp. 356–8.

54 Enquiry into spoil and waste within Braydon Forest, Wiltshire, 1610–11, TNA DL44/855.

55 Churche, Thrift, p. 4.

56 Norden, Dialogue, p. 102.

57 ‘Preface’, Sir John Davies, Les reports des cases et matters en ley (1674). For Davies's role in Irish plantation, see Donlan, Sean Patrick, ‘“Little better than cannibals”: Sir John Davies and Edmund Burke on property and progress’, Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly, 54 (2003), pp. 1–24 Google Scholar.

58 Articles of instruction to commissioners for Braydon disafforestation, n.d., TNA E178/2470, fo. 25.

59 TNA E126/3, fo. 380; interrogatories on behalf of Sir John Hungerford et al., E134/4Chas1/East26, fo. 1.

60 Interrogatories on behalf of a-g, TNA E134/6Chas1/Trin8, fo. 1.

61 Interrogatories on behalf of Edward Pleydell, TNA E134/4Chas1/East8, fo. 4.

62 Deposition of Thomas Hardinge, yeoman, TNA E134/4Chas1/East8, fo. 8.

63 Interrogatories on behalf of Thomas Trinder, TNA E134/6Chas1/Trin5, fo. 5; deposition of John C, yeoman, E134/4Chas1/East8, fo. 7; deposition of John Maw, gentleman, E134/4Chas1/East26, fo. 3.

64 Depositions of George Penn, gentleman, and Christofer Gabbett, yeoman, TNA E134/6Chas1/Trin8, fo. 2.

65 Deposition of William Messenger, yeoman, TNA E134/4Chas1/East26, fo. 3.

66 Churche, Thrift, p. 3.

67 Deposition of Henry Rutter, yeoman, TNA E134/4Chas1/East26, fo. 8.

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70 Deposition of Anthony Hale and interrogatory on behalf of Thomas Warnford, TNA E134/4Chas1/East8, fos. 6, 3.

71 Deposition of William Messenger, TNA E134/4Chas1/East26, fo. 3.

72 Ibid., fo. 3.

73 Hindle, Steve, ‘Beating the bounds of the parish: order, memory and identity in the English local community, c. 1500–1700’, in Halvorson, Michael J. and Spierling, Karen E., eds., Defining community in early modern Europe (Aldershot, 2008), pp. 205–27Google Scholar.

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76 Deposition of Thomas Sadler, yeoman, TNA E134/6Chas1/Trin8, fo. 7.

77 Transcribed in Maskelyne, T. S., ‘Perambulation of Purton, 1733’, WANHM, 40 (1918), pp. 119–28Google Scholar, at p. 124.

78 Sharp, Buchanan, ‘Common rights, charities and the disorderly poor’, in Eley, Geoff and Hunt, William, eds., Reviving the English revolution (London, 1988), pp. 107–38Google Scholar, at pp. 125–6; Sharp, In contempt, pp. 159–60.

79 Sharp, In contempt, pp. 170–1.

80 Hindle, On the parish?

81 Sharp, In contempt, p. 159.

82 Deposition of Anthony Hungerford, gentleman, TNA E134/6Chas1/Trin8, fo. 9.

83 Depositions of Stephen Cradocke, gentleman, and John Gatehouse, yeoman, TNA E134/3Chas1/East17, fos. 9, 8; Recommendations of commission, n.d., E178/3732, fo. 15.

84 Depositions of Anthony Hale, carpenter, and John Maw, gentleman, TNA E134/4Chas1/East8, fo. 6, fo. 7.

85 Rathborne, The surveyor, A4r sig.

86 Smyth, William J., Map-making, landscapes and memory: a geography of colonial and early modern Ireland c. 1530–1750 (Cork, 2006), pp. 25–8Google Scholar. On sixteenth-century surveyors, see Richeson, A. W., English land measuring to 1800: instruments and practices (Cambridge, 1966), pp. 43–90Google Scholar.

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89 Norden, Dialogue, p. 18.

90 Ibid., p. 14. According to Hoyle, there was little demand for surveyors’ services before 1600: ‘“Shearing the hog”’, p. 213.

91 Robert Johnson, ‘Discourse on surveying (1607)’, BL Add. MS 12497, fo. 346r; Radulph Agas, ‘Note by R. A., of what he is able to perform (1606)’, BL Lansdowne MS 169, fos. 177r–179v.

92 Anon., ‘His Majesty's lands’.

93 Hoyle, ‘“Shearing the hog”’, pp. 220–5; Lawrence, ‘John Norden’, pp. 54–6.

94 Hoyle, ‘Introduction: aspects of the crown's estate’, in Hoyle, ed., Estates, p. 24.

95 See Graham Haslam, ‘Jacobean Phoenix: the duchy of Cornwall in the principates of Henry Frederick and Charles’, in Hoyle, ed., Estates, pp. 263–96.

96 Hoyle, ‘Disafforestation and drainage’, p. 368.

97 For James I's dislike of disafforestation, see ‘James I: volume 6: January–March, 1604’, in Green, Mary-Anne Everett, ed., Calendar of state papers domestic (London, 1857)Google Scholar. For Cranfield's attempts, see Hoyle, ‘Disafforestation and drainage’, pp. 363–7.

98 TNA E125/3, fos. 250–1. Disafforestation of Braydon was also seriously considered in 1613: TNA LR2/194.

99 Shaw-Taylor, Leigh, ‘The rise of agrarian capitalism and the decline of family farming in England’, Economic History Review, 65 (2012), pp. 1–35 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, at p. 1. On agrarian capitalism, see Aston, T. H. and Philpin, C. H. E., eds., The Brenner debate: agrarian class structure and economic development in pre-industrial Europe (Cambridge, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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104 Norden, Dialogue, p. 29.

105 Ibid., pp. 29, 189, 198.

106 Ibid., *4v sig. Book 5 of Norden's Dialogue, and parts 1 and 2 of Churche's Thrift were dedicated to husbandry.

107 John Fitzherbert, Boke of surueying and improumentes (1523); idem, Boke of husbandry (1623).

108 Norden, Dialogue, *2r sig.

109 Norden, ‘Observations’.

110 Norden, Dialogue, pp. 185–6.

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112 Churche, Thrift, p. 39. For contemporary pro- and anti-enclosure arguments, see Sharp, ‘Common rights’, pp. 109–11; Anon., ‘A debate on enclosure addressed to privy council (1607)’, in Thirsk, Joan and Cooper, J. P., eds., Seventeenth-century economic documents (Oxford, 1972), pp. 107–9Google Scholar; Lord Treasurer Cranfield, ‘Suggestions for improving royal revenues (1621)’, in Thirsk and Cooper, eds., Economic documents, pp. 607–8.

113 Ro. Churche et al., ‘The king's surveyor on the improvement of the forests (1612)’, in Thirsk and Cooper, eds., Economic documents, pp. 115–19, at p. 117.

114 Sheffield University Library, Hartlib papers 26/66. As MP for Wootton Bassett, near Braydon Forest, in 1624, Banks may have drawn on direct observation: Christopher W. Brooks, ‘Bankes, Sir John (1589–1644)’, ODNB.

115 Norden, Dialogue, p. 103.

116 TNA LR2/194; fos. 304–7(my italics).

117 Rathborne, The surveyor, A5r sig.

118 Norden, Dialogue, p. 27.

119 Ibid., p. 2.

120 Churche, Thrift, pp. 14, 28.

121 Ibid., pp. 12, 40.

122 Norden, Dialogue, p. 3.

123 For the Midlands’ Revolt in contemporary imagination, see Hindle, Steve, ‘Imagining insurrection in seventeenth-century England: representations of the Midland Rising of 1607’, History Workshop Journal, 66 (2008), pp. 21–61 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Churche, Thrift, pp. 32–3.

124 Churche et al., ‘Improvement of the forests’, p. 119.

125 Churche, Thrift, pp. 33, 40.

126 TNA E178/2470, fo. 25.

127 Depositions of Peter Greene, gentleman, and Gregory Greene, husbandman, TNA E134/11Chas1/Mich23, fo. 4.

128 Ibid.

129 Churche, Thrift, p. 33. Sharp has examined the persistence of this vision of enclosure in the 1640s and 1650s in ‘Common rights’, pp. 111–16.

130 Churche et al., ‘Improvement of the forests’, p. 117.

131 TNA DL44/1099, fo. 1.

132 TNA E178/2470, fo. 4; order in a-g v. Gillingham tenants, 26 June 1626, TNA E125/1, fos. 270–1; TNA E126/3, fo. 380.

133 TNA E178/2470, fo. 17.

134 Anon., An ease for overseers of the poor (1601). On English poor laws, see Hindle, Steve, ‘A sense of place? Becoming and belonging in the rural parish, 1550–1650’, in Shepard, Alexandra and Withington, Phil, eds., Communities in early modern England: networks, place, rhetoric (Manchester, 2000), pp. 96–114 Google Scholar; Slack, Paul, The English poor law, 1531–1782 (Basingstoke, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

135 Rathborne, The surveyor, p. 211; Norden, Dialogue, p. 3.

136 Norden, Dialogue, p. 46.

137 Hutchins, Dorset, p. 225.

138 TNA E178/2470, fo. 25.

139 Hutchins, Dorset, p. 225.

140 Rathborne, The surveyor, pp. 153–4.

141 Norden, Dialogue, pp. 14, 117.

142 Ibid., p. 117.

143 Ibid., p. 23.

144 TNA E178/2470, fo. 4.

145 Interrogatories on behalf of a-g, TNA E134/6Chas1/Trin8, fo. 1.

146 Deposition of John Bath, husbandman, TNA E134/4Chas1/East26, fo. 7.

147 These documents remained in the church chest until 1783: Hutchins, Dorset, p. 222.

148 Deposition of Anthony Bound, husbandman, TNA E134/3Chas1/East17, fo. 10.

149 Deposition of John Gatehouse, husbandman, E134/3Chas1/East17, fo. 3.

150 Ibid.

151 Hoskins, W. G., Provincial England: essays in social and economic history (London, 1963), p. 222CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Helgerson, Richard, ‘The land speaks: cartography, chorography, and subversion in Renaissance England’, Representation, 16 (1986), pp. 51–85 Google Scholar. And, in an Irish context, William J. Smyth, Map-making, landscapes and memory; Klein, Bernhard, Maps and the writing of space in early modern England and Ireland (Basingstoke, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

152 Norden, Dialogue, pp. 15–16. On Norden's unfinished county atlas, Speculum Britanniae, see Mendyk, Stan A. E., ‘Speculum Britanniae’: regional study, antiquarianism, and science in Britain to 1700 (Toronto, 1989)Google Scholar. On sixteenth-century estate maps, see Harvey, P. D. A., ‘Estate surveyors and the spread of the scale-map in England, 1550–1580’, Landscape History, 15 (1993), pp. 37–49 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

153 Norden, Dialogue, p. 16.

154 Ibid.

155 Disafforestation map of Braydon Forest, c. 1630, TNA MPC1/51; E178/2470, fos. 3, 25.

156 On the forest's division, see Manley, ‘Braden’, pp. 560–1.

157 On cartographic ‘silence’, see Harley, J. B., ‘Silences and secrecy: the hidden agenda of cartography in early modern Europe’, Imago Mundi, 40 (1988), pp. 57–76 Google Scholar.

158 In Gillingham: TNA E125/3, fos. 250–1.

159 TNA E134/6Chas1/Trin8.

160 Depositions of Edmond Howes, yeoman, and Christopher Gabbett, yeoman, TNA E134/6Chas1/Trin8, fos. 7, 6.

161 Depositions of Thomas Sadler, yeoman, and Richard Kemble, gentleman, TNA E134/6Chas1/Trin8, fos. 6, 7.

162 TNA MPC1/51.

163 On ‘inhabited’ landscapes, see Jackson, John Brinckerhoff, Discovering the vernacular landscape (New Haven, CT, 1984), pp. 42–3Google Scholar.

164 A resultant decree authorized extensive amendments, though some denied that they were ever affected: TNA E178/3732, fos. 13, 15; E134/3Chas1/East17, fo. 7; Hutchins, Dorset, p. 224.

165 Hoyle, ‘“Shearing the hog”’, pp. 226–7. For Jenkins in Hatfield Level, see TNA E178/5969.

166 Deposition of Thomas Banister, yeoman, TNA E134/3Chas1/East17, fo. 11.

167 Deposition of John Woolridge, yeoman and bailiff of Gillingham Manor, TNA E134/3Chas1/East17, fo. 10.

168 Deposition of Thomas Banister, TNA E134/3Chas1/East17, fo. 11.

169 Depositions of Thomas Humber, yeoman, and John Cave, yeoman, TNA E134/3Chas1/East17, fo. 11.

170 Deposition of Henry Morgan, yeoman, TNA E134/3Chas1/East17, fo. 11.

171 Deposition of John Hinde, gentleman, TNA E134/3Chas1/East17, fo. 11.

172 Deposition of William Bowles, TNA E134/3Chas1/East17, fo. 9; E125/3, fos. 250–1.

173 Deposition of William Bowles, TNA E134/3Chas1/East17, fo. 9.

174 Richard Shepheard, yeoman, TNA E134/3Chas1/East17, fo. 11.

175 ‘Mr Pory’, p. 453.

176 Penfold, P. A., ed., Acts of the privy council of England (APCE), 1630–1631 (London, 1964), p. 383 Google Scholar.

177 Cited in Kerridge, E., ‘The revolts in Wiltshire against Charles I’, WANHM, 57 (1958–9), pp. 64–75 Google Scholar, at p. 70. Suspicions rested on a document entitled ‘Exami[n]ation of Henry Hoskins of Gillingham’: SP16/193, fo. 119.

178 Allan, D. G. C., ‘The rising in the West, 1628–1631’, Economic History Review, 5 (1952), pp. 76–85 Google Scholar; Kerridge, E., The agricultural revolution (London, 1967)Google Scholar.

179 Sharp, In contempt, pp. 97–8.

180 The examination of William Gough, 21 June 1631, SP16/194, fo. 101.

181 Bacon, Francis, The works of Lord Bacon, i (London, 1838), p. 273Google Scholar. Bacon was probably responding to the Midlands’ Revolt: Patterson, Annabel, Fables of power: aesopian writing and political history (Durham, c. 1991), p. 123CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

182 TNA E159/475, Hil 11 Chas I, rot. 65; TNA E159/472, Trin 8 Chas I, rot. 38.

183 Ibid. This contradicts David Underdown's emphasis on the role of ‘substantial’ yeomen and husbandmen in Braydon: Revel, riot, and rebellion: popular politics and culture in England, 1603–1660 (Oxford, c. 1985), p. 110Google Scholar.

184 Wrightson, Keith, ‘Two concepts of order: justices, constables and jurymen in seventeenth-century England’, in Brewer, John and Styles, John, eds., An ungovernable people: the English and their law in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (New Brunswick, NJ, 1980), pp. 21–46 Google Scholar.

185 Thompson, ‘Moral economy’, p. 78.

186 Rushworth, Collections, pp. 20–8, 73–4.

187 Simon Keble to Philip Jacobson, 2 June 1631, SP16/193, fo. 41.

188 Rushworth, Collections, pp. 20–8.

189 Petition of the mayor of Devizes, to the privy council, 12 Dec. 1631, SP16/204, fo. 43.

190 Viscount Conway to Capt. Storie, 29 May 1628, SP16/105, fo. 109.

191 ‘Mr Pory’, p. 453; Lyle, J. V., ed., APCE, 1627–1628 (London, 1938), p. 272Google Scholar.

192 Rushworth, Collections, pp. 20–8.

193 Ibid., pp. 73–4; SP16/193, fo. 41. See also Lyle, ed., APCE, 1627–1628, p. 248.

194 Lyle, ed., APCE, 1627–1628, p. 495.

195 ‘Mr Pory’, p. 453.

196 Rushworth, Collections, pp. 73–4; SP16/193, fo. 119. Allan misconstrued Lady Skimmington as the alias of a single leader of riots across the region: Allan, ‘The rising in the West’.

197 For a 1618 skimmington in near Braydon, see Cunnington, B. Howard, ‘“A skimmington” in 1618’, Folklore, 41 (1930), pp. 287–90Google Scholar. See also Cunnington, B. Howard, Records of the county of Wilts (Devizes, 1932), pp. 64–7Google Scholar, 79–80; Underdown, Revel, pp. 110–11; Ingram, M., ‘Ridings, rough music and “the reform of popular culture” in early modern England’, Past and Present, 105 (1984), pp. 79–113 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

198 Penfold, ed., APCE, 1630–1631, p. 352; SP16/203, fo. 142.

199 Rushworth, Collections, pp. 24–6.

200 ‘Mr Pory’, p. 453; Rushworth, Collections, pp. 72–4.

201 SP16/193, fo. 41.

202 Ibid.

203 Ibid.

204 Rushworth, Collections, pp. 20–8; TNA E159/472, Trin 8 Chas I, rot. 38; E159/475 Hil. 11 Chas I, rot. 65; SP16/203, fo. 142.

205 Rushworth, Collections, pp. 20–8, 73–4.

206 Ibid., pp. 73–4. Similar punishments were deployed in Gillingham: Rushworth, Collections, pp. 20–8.

207 Deposition of John Lightborne, servant to the the Fleet warden, TNA E133/139/1, fo. 3; deposition of Thomas Alford, yeoman, E134/14Chas1/East24, fo. 2.

208 Cited in Sharp, In contempt, pp. 220, 240–2. See also SP16/193, fo. 119; Braydon Forest, survey, 1651, TNA E317/Wilts/23; Sharp, In contempt, pp. 243–4.

209 Information to Major General Desborow re potential unrest in Gillingham Forest, 17 May 1651, SP25/96, fo. 187; notes of evidence to support claim of common in Gillingham Forest, 1659, SP63/287, fo. 297. In 1734, former commoners of Purton Stoke near Braydon won exclusive right to the charitable land's profits: Sharp, ‘Common rights’, p. 133. A similar dispute in Mere, bordering Gillingham, was resolved in favour of the ratepayers in 1705: a-g on behalf of poor of Mere v. Henry Clark et al., TNA E134/3Anne/East28; E134/3Anne/Trin19.

210 Slack, Improvement, p. 4.

211 Hammersley, ‘Forest laws’; James S. Hart Jr, ‘Noy , William (1577–1634)’, ODNB.