Huntingdon, to whom in 1553 it had been granted by the king, released to her. By this lady (named Elizabeth, and daughter of Sir William Hastings, knight; younger son of William, Lord Hastings) Beaumont had two sons, of whom the elder was Francis [see Beaumont, Francis, d. 1598]. Of the younger, Henry, nothing seems to be known except that he was a member of the Inner Temple, died at the early age of forty-two, and was buried in the Temple Church. The family acquired further distinction in a legal aspect by a celebrated case decided in Lord Coke's time between Barbara, daughter of Sir Henry Beaumont, the eldest son of Sir Francis, the judge, and John, the second son of Sir Francis. Sir Henry had settled Grace-Dieu upon his heirs male, with remainder to his brother John and his heirs male. Accordingly on Sir Henry's death, John took possession, but Barbara being of tender years and ward to the king (James I) the question whether she was not entitled as tenant in tail under the original settlement was raised and elaborately argued with the result that a new point in the law of settlement was established, viz. that the barring of an entail by one of two joint tenants in tail, while it is inoperative to put an end to the entail, is yet sufficient to preclude the issue from inheriting.
[Nicolas's Hist. Peerage of England; Nichols's County of Leicester, i. part ii. 274, 391, 393; Dugdale's Orig. 164, 170, 178; Dugdale's Chron. Series, 89; Rot. Pat. 4 Edward VI, p. 6, m. 24; Hardy's Cat. of Lords Chancellors, 62; King Edward's Journal in Burnet's Hist. Ref. Church Eng. Appendix, under date 1552, 9 Feb., 4, 16, and 20 June; Hayward's Life of Edward VI in Kennet's Hist. ii. [319].]
BEAUMONT, Sir JOHN (1583–1627),
poet, was the second son of Francis Beaumont, judge [see Beaumont, Francis]. His
mother was Anne, daughter to Sir George
Pierrepoint, knt., of Holrne-Pierrepoint, Nottinghamshire, and relict of Thomas Thorold,
of Marston, Lincolnshire. He was born (probably) at the family seat of Grace-Dieu,
Leicestershire, in 1582. There are no entries
of the baptisms of the Beaumonts at Grace-Dieu, the explanation being that the rite
would most naturally be administered in the
metropolis, where the judge resided permanently. According to the funeral-certificates
in the College of Arms, John Beaumont, 'second sonne,' was 'at the tyme of the death
of his father [22 April 1598] of the age of
fourteen years or thereabouts' (Nichols,
Leicestershire). He proceeded to Oxford in
1596, and entered as a gentleman commoner
at Broadgates Hall 4 Feb. 1596-7, when,
according to Wood, he was 'aged fourteen'
(Athen. Oxon. ed. Bliss, ii. 437, also 434-5).
Broadgates Hall, now Pembroke College, was
the principal nursery in Oxford for students
of the civil and common law. With his
brothers Henry and Francis, who went with
him to Oxford, John quitted the university
without taking a degree on the death of his
father in 1598. Henry succeeded to his father's estates in Leicestershire; was knighted
in 1603, but died in 1605, aged twenty-four
(Dyce, p. xxi), when John succeeded his
brother. John, with his brother Henry,
was admitted student of the Inner Temple
in November 1547 (List of Students admitted to Inner Temple, 1571-1625, pp. 80, 82).
But it appears that he soon gave up residence – in all likelihood on coming into possession on the death of Sir Henry.
During his college residence, and while in London, he must have begun his poetic studies. 'In his youth,' say Wood and the 'Biographia Britannica' and other authorities, 'he applied himself to the muses with good success' (Biogr. Brit. (1747) i. 621). While in his twentieth year (1602) he published anonymously his 'Metamorphosis of Tobacco' – a mock-heroic poem; and prefixed to it, among others, were dedicatory lines to Michael Drayton and the first printed verses of his brother Francis [q. v.].
In the same year (1602) appeared Francis Beaumont's 'Salmacis and Hermaphroditus,' and among the commendatory verses prefixed is a little poem signed 'I. B.' – doubtless by his elder brother.
The Duke of Buckingham was his patron, and introduced his poems to the king. A cavalier and a royalist, he was made a baronet in 1626. But he was a puritan in religion.
He died, according to Anthony à Wood and all the old authorities, 'in the wintertime of 1628;' but in the register of burials in Westminster Abbey it is stated that he was buried 19 April 1627, 'in the broad aisle on the south side' of the Abbey. William Coleman, in his appendix to his 'La Dance Machabre, or Death's Duell,' has some fine lines dedicated to his memory.
He married a lady of the family of Fortescue, whose brother, George Fortescue, added a grateful and graceful poem to the posthumously published volume of Sir John's poems (1629). By her he had four sons – John, Francis, Gervase, and Thomas. The first, who succeeded his father, and lovingly edited his poems, fell at the siege of Gloucester in the service of the king in 1644. Francis – sometimes confounded with his uncle – be-
