ley's 'Agamemnon,' translated from Seneca, 1566.
[Addit. MS. 24488, pp. 1, 501; Foley's Records, i. 388, iv. 678, vii. 351; Gillow's Bibl. Dict.; Lowndes's Bibl. Man. ed. Bohn, pp. 2241, 2242; More's Hist. Missionis Anglicanæ Soc. Jesu, pp. 132–5; Oliver's Jesuit Collections, p. 115; Records of the English Catholics, ii. 352, 353; Tanner's Bibl. Brit. p. 401; Tanner's Societas Jesu Apostolorum Imitatrix, pp. 295–8; Warton's Hist. of English Poetry, ed. Hazlitt, iv. 452.]
HEYWOOD, JOHN (1497?–1580?), epigrammatist, is described by Bale as civis Londinensis, and is said to have resided at one time at North Mimms, Hertfordshire. The inference that he was born at either place is hazardous (Sharman, xxxvii). According to an entry in the 'Book of Payments' of Henry VIII, 'John Haywood' was, 6 Jan. 1515, in receipt of 'wages, 8d. per day.' In 1519 he is set down as a singer, but not included among the persons forming the establishment of the Chapel Royal. It is possible that, after having been a choir-boy, he was separately retained as a singer. Collier (i. 73 n.) cites from the Cotton. MSS. his poem in praise of 'the meane,' beginning:
Longe have I bene a singinge man,
And sondrie partes ofte I have songe.
Choristers for whom there was no room in the chapel were often sent to college at the royal expense when their voices changed (see quotation from Harleian MSS. ap. Sharman, xl n.) An ancient tradition asserts Heywood to have been a member of Broadgates Hall, now Pembroke College, Oxford, where, however, there are no registers of members before 1570. In his portraits (v. infra) he wears a garment resembling an M.A. gown. His 'Epigram' 455, 'of verdingales,' suggests as the likeliest place where these fashionable enormities would get in 'Brodegates,' in Oxford. In February 1521 an annuity of ten marks was granted to Heywood as the king's servant, chargeable on the rentals of two manors in Northamptonshire (State Papers, Henry VIII, iii. 1186). In 1526 'John Heywood, player of the virginals,' is entered in a book of wages paid by the king for the sum of 6l. 13s. 4d. among those whose wages were paid quarterly (Collier, i. 94); and in the king's 'Books of Payments' for 1538–1542 he is mentioned only as a 'pleyer on the virginals,' but his quarterly allowance is given as 2l. 10s. (ib. i. 116). Collier suggests that the reduction may have been due to his appointment as master of a company of children who played before the court. In March 1538 he is actually stated to have received 40s. for 'pleying an interlude with his children bifore' the Princess Mary (Madden, p. 62). He is said to have been first introduced to her by Sir Thomas More, whose niece Eliza Rastell (sister of William Rastell [q. v.]) he had married. Heywood is said to have met the princess at Gobions, More's seat at North Mimms (Thorne, Environs of London, p. 433), where, according to Henry Peacham (Thalia's Banquet, 1620), Heywood produced his 'Epigrams' (see Park ap. Warton, iv. 80, n. 2). In Jan. 1537 a payment is entered in the accounts of Mary's 'Privy Purse Expenses' to Heywood's servant for bringing of her 'regalles' from London to Greenwich (Madden, p. 12). The very pleasing lines entitled 'A Description of a most noble Ladye, advewed by John Heywoode,' profess to portray her at the age of eighteen, and, if so, must (to his credit) have been written when she was in disgrace (Madden, Introductory Memoir, p. cliii, quotes these stanzas from Harl. MS. 1703; they were printed anonymously in 'Tottel's Miscellany,' 1557, and are given entire in Park's edition of Walpole's 'Royal and Noble Authors,' i. 81. The opening and the prettiest passage of the poem are borrowed from Surrey). Under Edward VI Heywood is said, thanks to the 'honest motion' of a gentleman of the king's chamber, to have escaped hanging, and thus to have been saved from 'the jerke of the six-string'd whip' (Harington, Metamorphosis of Ajax, 1596, cited, with Oldys's reference, ap. Fairholt, vii.) Heywood's sincere catholicism proves that the Six Articles Act must be here confounded with the Supremacy Act. In 1544 he had been charged with having denied the royal supremacy, but was allowed to atone for his rashness by a public recantation on 6 July at St. Paul's Cross (given in Sharman, pp. xlii–iii, from Bonner Register, fol. 61, Lambeth MSS.; cf. Foxe, Acts and Monuments, ed. 1853, v. 528). George Puttenham (Of Poets and Poesie, bk. i. ch. xxxi.) states that Heywood came into reputation in Edward VI's time, and was 'well benefited by the king' for 'the myrth and quicknesse of his conceits.' His fortunes were at their highest, however, under Mary, who had a highly cultivated intelligence, and was fond of innocent fun (cf. Madden, p. xlvi). He was in complete sympathy with her policy in church and state. On her coronation he sat in St. Paul's churchyard 'in a pageant under a vine, and made to her an oration in Latine' (Stow, Annals, ed. 1617, p. 617, ap. Madden, p. 239). He celebrated her marriage in a ballad of which the allegory recalls that of Chaucer's 'Assembly of Fowls' (repr. in 'Harleian Miscellany,' ed. Park, x. 255–6).
