James Yates.

About James Yates

James Yates, poet, describes himself in the dedication of his only known volume as a "serving man", and no further details of his biography have been discovered. Park conjectured that he came from Suffolk on the ground that "he addressed verses to 'Mr. P. W.' who visited Ipswich and wrote an epitaph on Mrs. Pooley of Badley.’ Mrs. Pooley was "sister to my lady Wentworth", who may have been one of the wives of Thomas, second baron Wentworth, though there were many knights in the Wentworth family. Most of them, however, belonged to Suffolk, and it is possible that "Mr. P. W." may have been Peter or Paul Wentworth. Yates has also been associated with Warwickshire on the grounds that he dedicates his work to one Henry Reynolds, who is assumed to be identical with Henry Reynolds, and that Drayton, who was a Warwickshire man, also dedicated his epistle "Of Poets and Poesie" to Reynolds. Upon this flimsy evidence is also based the theory that the "verses written at the departure of his friend W. S. when he went to dwell in London" included in Yates's volume refer to Shakespeare. It is more probable that Yates's patron was the Henry Reynolds of Belstead who married Elizabeth, daughter of Edmund Withipol of Ipswich, and that "Mr. P. W." was Edmund's brother, Paul Withipol.