His relative, John Meres, was high sheriff of Lincolnshire in 1596, and apparently helped him in the early part of his career.
[2] Both his son Francis and his grandson Edward received their BA and MA from Cambridge and became rectors.
Meres is especially known for his Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury (1598), a commonplace book that is important as a source on the Elizabethan poets, and more particularly as the first critical account of the poems and early plays of William Shakespeare.
The Palladis Tamia also contained moral and critical reflections borrowed from various sources, and embraced sections on books, on philosophy, on music and painting, and a "Comparative Discourse of our English poets with the Greeke, Latin, and Italian poets."
This chapter enumerates the English poets from Chaucer to Meres's own day, and in each case a comparison with some classical author is instituted.