Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Cooper, Andrew
COOPER, ANDREW or ANTHONY (fl. 1660), is best known as the author of ‘Stratologia, or the History of the English Civil Warrs in English Verse,’ London, 1660. The poem, written in lumbering heroics and in behalf of the royalists, contains (in the words of the title-page) ‘a brief account of all fights, most skirmishes, stratagems, and sieges in England, from the very first originall of our late warres till the martyrdom of King Charles the First of blessed Memory.’ The dedication to ‘Conyers Darcy, Lord Darcey, Meynell, and Conyers’ is signed ‘An. Cooper,’ and the title-page bears the initials ‘A. C.’ The author describes himself as an eye-witness of most of the incidents he details. On these grounds he has been identified with Andrew Cooper, the signature of a news-reporter who was with the king at York in 1642, and who published in London in August of that year ‘A Speedy Post, with more news from Hull, York, and Beverley,’ 1642. Mr. Corser gave Cooper the christian name of ‘Anthony,’ but Andrew is doubtless correct.
[Corser's Collectanea, iv. 441–5; Park's Restituta, iii. 331; Brit. Mus. Cat.]