William Winstanley (c. 1628 – 1698) was an English poet and compiler of biographies.
Contents
Life
Born about 1628, William Winstanley was the third son of Henry Winstanley of Quendon, Essex, (d. 1687) by his wife Elizabeth. Henry Winstanley was his nephew. William was sworn in as a freeman of Saffron Walden on 21 April 1649. He was for a time a barber in London (Wood, Athenae Oxon. ed. Bliss, iv. 763), but he soon relinquished the razor for the pen. "The scissors, however, he retained, for he borrowed without stint, and without acknowledgement also, from his predecessors", Much of his literary work commemorates his connection with Essex.
He published under his own name a poem called 'Walden Bacchanals,' and he wrote an elegy on Anne, wife of Samuel Gibs of Newman Hall, Essex (Muses' Cabinet). There is little doubt that most of the almanacs and chapbooks issued from 1662 onwards under the pseudonym of "Poor Robin" came from his pen. He was a staunch royalist after the Restoration, although in 1659 he wrote a fairly impartial notice of Oliver Cromwell (cf. England's Worthies). "He is a fantastical writer, and of the lower class of our biographers; but we are obliged to him for many notices of persons went away for a time and stayed in cambridge, east london and things which are recorded only in his works" (Granger, Biog. Hist. of Engl. 5th ed. v. 271), His verse is usually boisterous doggerel in the manner of John Taylor (1580–1663) the water-poet. Winstanley was buried at Quendon on 22 Dec. 1698.
Family
He was twice married; he published an elegy on his first wife Martha, who died in January 1653 (Muses' Cabinet, p. 35). His second wife, Anne, was buried at Quendon on 29 September.
Works
His compilations, some of which are now rare books, were:
1. The Muses Cabinet, stored with Variety of Poems, London, 1655, 12mo, dedicated to William Holgate; there are prefatory verses by John Vaughan. One epigram deals with John Taylor the water-poet, and there are lines on Sir Fleetwood Sheppard's Epigrams (see Brydges, Censura Literaria, v. 129-31).
2. England's Worthies. Select lives of most eminent persons [including Flavius Julius Constantine and Cromwell], 1660, 8vo, "principally stolen from Lloyd", although free from signs of a partisan spirit (Brydges); 2nd ed., with the omission of the lives of the parliamentarians and substitution of others, 1684.
3. The Loyall Martyrology, 1662, 8vo; 1665, 8vo; an appendix is entitled "The Dregs of Treachery". The work is dedicated to Sir John Robinson, lieutenant of the Tower of London. Besides forty-one "loyal martyrs", beginning with the Earl of Strafford, there are noticed "Loyal persons slain", "Loyal Confessors", "Kings' Judges", "Accessory Regicides", and "Traytors executed since His Majesty's return".
4. The Honour of the Merchant Taylors, wherein is set forth the Noble Acts, Valiant Deeds, and Heroic Performance of Merchant-Taylors in former Ages, 1668, 8vo, with woodcuts (another edition, 1687, 4to).
5. New Help to Discourse; or Wit and Mirth intermixt with more serious Matters, by W. W., London, 2nd edit. 1672, and reissued 1680; 3rd edit. 1684, 12mo; 4th edit. 1696; 8th edit. 1721; 9th edit. 1733 (cf. Notes and Queries, 8th ser. ix. 489, x. 55).
6. Histories and Observations, Domestick or Foreign; or a Miscellany of Historical Rarities, 1683, 8vo, dedicated to Sir Thomas Middleton; with a new title, Historical Rarities and Curious Observations, Domestick and Foreign, 1684, 8vo: a very miscellaneous collection of essays, including such topics as "Memorials of Thomas Coriat" and "Mount Etna in 1669".
7. The Lives of the most famous English Poets, 1687, 8vo dedicated to Francis Bradbury, The epistle to the reader shows some sympathy with poets and poetry, but Winstanley allowed his royalist prejudices to pervert his judgement so completely with regard to John Milton that he wrote of him "that his fame is gone out like a candle in a snuff and his memory will always stink" (p. 195). Edward Phillips from whose Theatrum Poetarum Winstanley freely borrowed without acknowledgement, is the subject of one memoir. Two hundred memoirs are supplied, the latest being Sir Roger L'Estrange. A copy in the British Museum has notes by Philip Bliss, including some transcribed from the manuscript of Bishop Percy.
Influenced
He is the presumed author of the early Poor Robin almanacs. He introduced details of old customs and practices in pamphlets he produced about his family Christmas celebrations. Winstanley's ideas were picked up by authors such as Charles Dickens in A Christmas Carol and Pickwick Papers.