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Charles Fitzgeoffrey, (1576 - 1638)

Charles Fitzgeoffrey was a minor Elizabethan poet and clergyman. In his 1598 survey of contemporary English literature, Palladis Tamia, Francis Meres grandly describes him as "that high touring Falcon", for the young Oxford undergraduate had already gained quite a reputation for the quality of his verse. His first published poem, Drake,( Sir Francis Drake, His Honorable life's commendation, and his Tragical Deathes Lamentation, 1596), patriotically extolled the seafaring exploits of his fellow West Countryman; but Fitzgeoffrey particularly excelled in the kind of Latin epigrams he eventually collected and published as Affaniae (Caroli Fitzgeofridi affaniae, sive, Epigrammatum libri tres, ejusdem cenotaphia, 1601).

'"Affaniae" is a non-classical Latin word meaning "trivial, trashy talk", and the epigrams in Fitzgeoffrey's book, generally light in tone, refer to a wide range of neighbours in Cornwall, friends in Oxford and literary persons in whose work he took an interest. He also includes epitaphs on contemporaries. Persons he namechecks include Thomas Nashe, Ben Jonson, Michael Drayton, Edmund Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney, Barnabe Barnes, John Marston, Joseph Hall and Mary Sidney. Other epigrams suggest the young Fitzgeoffrey was as interested in the work of Continental humanist authors as he was in native English writers.

Charles Fitzgeoffrey was born in Cornwall, the son of a Protestant clergyman named Alexander Fitzgeoffrey (a surname sometimes spelled Fitzgeffrey), Rector of the parish of St. Fimbarrus, Fowey. His father died during Charles' childhood and his mother then married into the distinguished Mohun family. After early schooling under the Rev. Richard Harvey, at seventeen he went up to Oxford University, matriculating at Broadgates Hall on July 3rd, 1593. While still at Oxford he published Sir Francis Drake, His Honorable life's commendation, and his Tragical Deathes Lamentation, which was popular enough to go through a second printing. He was admitted B.A. in 1597 and M.A. in 1600, but had apparently left Oxford by 1599. It is not immediately clear where he went or what he did, though his verses make reference to a time spent in Wiltshire, where he had relatives named Bellott, and also to a severe illness which he suffered about this period. Elsewhere in his verse Fitzgeoffrey also alludes to a disability:he had the sight of only one eye.

Somewhere about this time Fitzgeoffrey must also have taken holy orders, because in 1603 the father of one of his Oxford friends presented him with the living of St Dominick's at Halton, Cornwall. Financially secure and living close to the homes of good friends who shared his cultural interests, Fitzgeoffrey settled down. He must also have married, though his wife's name has not survived, as two years before his death the living was presented to his eldest son John.

Later in life Fitzgeoffrey published some of his sermons. They criticize corn-hoarders and those who failed to contribute towards the relief of the families of English captives taken by Turkish pirates. He also produced a final book of poetry, on the subject of Christ's nativity, The Blessed Birth-Day (The blessed birth-day celebrated in some pious meditations on the angels anthem, 1636). A letter of his describing a violent storm which hit Fowey, damaging the church tower, also survives. Interpreting the storm providentially as a "warning piece from Heaven" he was somewhat troubled to find the only person injured in it was a maid servant who, he is at pains to point out, he has known "for this seven years... to be of sober, modest, religious conversation".

Charles Fitzgeoffrey died on 24th February 1638 and was buried under the communion table of his church.

Professor Dana Sutton's biographical sketch of Fitzgeoffrey in his introduction to Affaniae:

• http://www.philological.bham.ac.uk/affaniae/intro.html

Anne Duffin, ‘Fitzgeffry , Charles (c.1575–1638)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004

• Professor Dana Sutton's text of Affaniae, with translations and notes: http://www.philological.bham.ac.uk/affaniae/

• Professor Dana Sutton's text of Sir Francis Drake..., with notes: http://www.philological.bham.ac.uk/drake