[q. v.] ‘a pious reverend old gentleman, and an excellent poet.’ His poetry was supposed to have perished until in 1868 a transcript turned up in a sale at Sotheby's, with the title of ‘Observations and Instructions, Divine and Morall.’ This was printed, under the editorship of James Crossley, by the Chetham Society in 1869. The verses, which are not without vigour or point, are arranged in five ‘centuries.’ Heywood died in 1645, aged 71.
[Crossley's Notes, op. cit.; James's Iter Lancastrense, in Chetham Soc. vol. vii.]
HEYWOOD, SAMUEL (1753–1828), serjeant-at-law and Welsh judge, son of Benjamin Heywood of Liverpool, afterwards banker at Manchester, was born at Liverpool in 1753. He was educated at the Warrington academy from 1768 to 1772, and at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Being a unitarian he absented himself from chapel, and incurred the censure of the authorities, which he would have resisted but for his father. He was called to the bar at the Inner Temple on 2 July 1772, and was made serjeant-at-law in 1794. He had considerable practice on the northern circuit. On 8 March 1807 he received the appointment of chief justice of the Carmarthen circuit. He was a personal friend and warm defender of Charles James Fox. He was seized with paralysis while on circuit at Haverfordwest on 27 Aug. 1828, and died at Tenby on 11 Sept., and was buried at Bristol. He married Susan, daughter of John Cornwall, by whom he had several children. He wrote:
- ‘The Right of Protestant Dissenters to a Compleat Toleration asserted. … By a Layman,’ 1787; 2nd edit. 1789; 3rd edit. 1790. This is said to have converted Dr. Parr, who termed it the only good book produced by the dissenters.
- ‘High Church Politics’ (in answer to Bishop Horsley), 1790.
- ‘Digest of the Law concerning County Elections,’ 1790.
- ‘Digest of the Law respecting Borough Elections,’ 1797 (reprinted 1818).
- ‘Vindication of Mr. Fox's History of the Early Part of the Reign of James II,’ 1811, 4to; favourably reviewed by Sydney Smith in the ‘Edinburgh Review,’ and by Roberts in the ‘Monthly Review,’ lxix. 364.
- ‘A Dissertation upon the Distinctions in Society and Ranks of the People, under the Anglo-Saxon Governments,’ 1818, 8vo.
Just before his death he was engaged on lives of the Duke of Monmouth and of William, Lord Russell.
[Woolrych's Eminent Serjeants-at-Law, 1869, ii. 701; Monthly Repository, 1814, p. 387; Foster's Lancashire Pedigrees; Lord Holland's Introd. to Fox's James II, p. xxxviii; Howell's State Trials, xii. 257, note; Allibone's Dict. of Authors, i. 839.]
HEYWOOD, THOMAS (d. 1650?), dramatist, was, according to his own account, a native of Lincolnshire (see his verses prefixed to James Yorke's Book of Heraldry, and his funeral elegy on Sir George St. Poole of Lincolnshire, his ‘countreyman,’ in Pleasant Dialogues and Dramas); but Mr. Symonds has found no Heywood pedigree in the ‘Visitations’ of the county. In the dedication of the ‘English Traveller’ Heywood speaks of a Sir William Elvish as his ‘countreyman.’ From his reference (ib.) to ‘that good old Gentleman, mine vnkle (Master Edmund Heywood), whom you’ (Sir Henry Appleton, bt.) ‘pleased to grace by the Title of Father,’ he may be concluded to have been of good family. He can hardly have been born much later than 1575. In the ‘Apology for Actors’ (bk. i.) he incidentally mentions ‘his residence at Cambridge;’ and William Cartwright (d. 1687) [q. v.], in the dedication to the ‘Actor's Vindication,’ 1658, says that Heywood was a fellow of Peterhouse. There is, however, no record of him at Cambridge.
Heywood is first mentioned in ‘Henslowe's Diary,’ p. 78. Among a list of sums lent to Edward Alleyn and others since 14 Oct. 1596 occurs: ‘Lent unto them for Hawode's booke xxxs.’ In a memorandum (ib. p. 260) of 25 March 1598, attested by Anthony Munday, Gabriel Spencer, and others, ‘Thomas Hawoode’ is regularly engaged by Henslowe as a member of his, the lord admiral's, company. As no wages are mentioned he presumably had a share in the profits. In the preface to his ‘Four Prentices of London’ (printed 1601) he says that this was his first play, written ‘some fifteen or sixteen years ago.’ According to a statement in his elegy on the death of James I (cited in Introduction to Apology, p. v), Heywood was also for a time one of the theatrical retainers of Henry Wriothesley, third earl of Southampton. His ‘Edward IV’ was played several times by the servants of William Stanley, sixth earl of Derby. He was afterwards a member of the company belonging to Edward Somerset, fourth earl of Worcester, which, upon the accession of James I, became the queen's servants, and performed at the Red Bull in St. John Street, Smithfield, and at the Cockpit (see Collier, i. 336–7). Heywood had attended the queen's funeral in 1619 as ‘one of her Majesty's players,’ and afterwards seems to have re-entered the service of the Earl of Worcester (see the dedication to Worcester of the Nine Books of Various History concerning Women, 1624). His literary labours embraced every form of literature, and were not confined to the drama. Shakerley Marmion speaks of him as writing upon
