Thomas Weaver

Son of Tho. Weav. was born in the City of Worcester, applied his poetical genie to Academical Learning in Ch. Ch. an. 1633, aged 17, took the degrees in Arts, that of Master being compleated in 1640, about which time he was made one of the Chaplains or petty-Canons of the Cathedral: from which place being ejected by the Parliamentarian Visitors in 1648, he shifted from place to place and lived upon his wits, a Specimen of which he published to the world intit.

Songs and Poems of Love and Drollery.—Printed 1654. in oct. In which book is a Ballad intit. Zeal overheated: or, a relation of a lamentable fire which hapned in Oxon in a religious brothers Shop, &c. to the tune of Chivey Chase. The said religious brother was Tho. Williams a Milliner, living sometimes against Allsaints Church where holy Cornish teached, that is Hen. Cornish a Presbyterian Minister, Canon of Ch. Ch. by Authority of Parliament, an. 1648. But the said Songs and Poems being looked upon by the godly men of those times as seditious and libellous against the Government, he was imprison’d and afterwards tried for his life. Whereupon his book being produced in open Court (after it had been proved that he was the Author of it) the Judge read some pages, and then spake to this effect,— “Gentlemen, the person that we have here before us is a Scholar and a man of wit. Our Forefathers had Learning so much in honor, that they enacted, that those that could but as much as read, should never be hanged, unless for some great crime, and shall we respect it so little as to put to death a man of parts? I must tell you, I should be very unwilling to be the person that should condemn him, and yet I must be forced to it if the Jury bring him in guilty, &c. ” So that upon this harangue, too large to be all here set down, the Jury brought him in not guilty: Whereupon being set at liberty, he was ever after highly valued by the boon and generous Royalist. He hath also certain Epigrams extant, which I have not yet seen, and wrot the copy of verses called The Archbishop of ((*))((*)) Dr. Joh. Williams. York’s revolt, printed in the Poems of Joh. Cleaveland, besides divers pieces of Poetry printed in several books published in his time. After his Majesties return in 1660 he was made Excise-man for Leiverpole in Lancashire, and was commonly called Captain Weaver, but prosecuting too much the crimes of Poets, brought him to his grave in the Church there, in the prime and strength of his years, on the third day of January in sixteen hundred sixty and two.166 [•] /3. About the beginning of the year 1656 was a book published entit. Choice Drollery, with Songs and Sonnets. Which giving great offence to the Saints of that time, who esteem’d it a lewd and scandalous thing, it was order’d by the Protectors Council to be burnt, on the 8. of May the same year. But who the Author of that book was, I cannot yet tell.