Barnabe Googe
Barnabe Googe, born 11 June 1540 (St Barnabas Day), in Alvingham, Lincolnshire,[1] was the son of Robert Googe (d. 5 May 1557) of Chilwell, Nottinghamshire, Recorder of Lincoln during the reign of Queen Mary, son of John Goche of London and Newland, Gloucestershire, in the Forest of Dean, by Jane Bridges, daughter and heir of James Bridges of the Forest of Dean.
[10][4] By his father's second marriage to Ellen Gadbury, widow of a husband surnamed Parris, and daughter of a London goldsmith,[5] he had a half brother, Robert Googe.
[5][11] By licence dated 21 May 1563, Ellen (née Gadbury) married William Burnell (d. 1570), esquire, of Winkburn, Nottinghamshire, Auditor to Henry VIII.
[10] At his father's death on 5 May 1557, Googe inherited the manor of Horkstow and the lands of Alvingham Priory in Lincolnshire, and a house in London formerly owned by his grandfather.
It may have been due to Cecil's encouragement that Googe accompanied the Elizabethan humanist scholar Sir Thomas Challoner on a diplomatic embassy to Spain in 1562.
Googe had begun writing poetry, and found himself in an exciting creative coterie with other young writers, such as Jasper Heywood and George Turberville.
On his return, Googe learned of Blundeston's actions and reluctantly gave his consent to their publication when he discovered that the printer had already paid for the paper for the print run and the composition was underway.
More to the point, recent research has shown that Thomas Darrell was a recusant who harboured Jesuit priests in his manor house of Scotney, near Lamberhurst in Kent.
[3] Further service in Ireland awaited him in 1582 when Googe was appointed to the position of provost-marshal of the court of Connaught;[23] some twenty letters of his in this capacity are preserved in the Public Record Office.
He had finished the first three books by 10 March 1560, when he wrote the Latin dedication to three Kentish squires who had given him support : William Cromer, Thomas Honywood, and Ralph Heyman.
New poems by Christopher Carlile, Googe’s step-uncle, Jacobus Itzuertus (presumably a relative of the queen's French secretary, Nicasius Yetsweirt), David Bell, and Richard Stephens.
Petrarchan love poetry (much of the work of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, Sir Philip Sidney, Thomas Campion and others) was decorative, metaphorical and often exaggerated; it also involved a more fluid mastery of iambic English poetry than the alliterative Native Style: Googe's tonic accents are heavy, the unaccents light; the result is sometimes deliberately blunt and plodding.
In the third "Eglog", for instance, he laments the decay of the old nobility and the rise of a new aristocracy of wealth, and he gives an indignant account of the sufferings of his co-religionists under Mary I of England.
The English pastoral poem "Phyllida was a fayer maid" (from Tottel's Miscellany of 1558) has been doubtfully ascribed to Googe, despite showing little stylistic rapport with his acknowledged works.
Part of the book's appeal, in addition to its poetical astronomy, was its notoriety as a Reformist text: Palingenius was placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum by the Inquisition, and consequently enjoyed popularity in Protestant regions across Europe.
