Page:Lives of Poets-Laureate.djvu/197

 

THOMAS SHADWELL.

Thomas Shadwell was a descendant of the younger branch of a Staffordshire family of great antiquity. He was born at the paternal seat, Santon Hall, in Norfolk, about 1640. His father had been a member of the Middle Temple, but having declined to compete for the more splendid prizes of the law, his ambition was satisfied with the performance of the lowlier, though important duties, connected with the local magistracy. He was in the commission of the peace for the counties of Middlesex, Norfolk and Suffolk. He espoused the side of the King during the times when loyalty was something more than lip-homage, and exhausted his patrimony through his devotion to the royal cause. The subject of this memoir was sent to Caius College, Cambridge, where his father had graduated before him, and afterwards to the Middle Temple, in the hope that his success at the bar might be a means of restoring the shattered fortunes of the house. Shadwell, however, felt little inclination to undergo the drudgery necessary for advancement in that most arduous of all the professions, and he deserted his law-books for others more congenial to his tastes. After a few years