Martin Lluelyn

Born in London to a long-serving Steward of St Bartholomew's Hospital who was also an expert Cartographer, he took his degrees at the University of Oxford in the 1630s and 1640s, and remained there with a studentship until 1648, performing military service on behalf of the King, who made his college of Christ Church a headquarters during the Civil War.

During this time a substantial volume of his English poetry was published which, showing great versatility and facility in comic, satirical and elegaic moods, and a strong Royalist sympathy, gained a popular readership.

[4] In May 1554, under his Maistry, Queen Mary granted a Charter for the renewal of worship at the civic church of St Cuthbert's, Wells; Elizabeth re-granted, citing this, in 1581.

A very respectable monument was raised to him in St Cuthbert's Church, Wells, in coloured marbles, with a kneeling portrait figure in an arched surround beneath a tinctured entablature, with obelisks and Corinthian columns, surmounted by a large armorial escutcheon, the shield displaying Argent, a lion rampant sable, langued gules, crowned or.

Recognized in 1975 as the earliest known sea-atlas made by an Englishman, it was produced on the eve of the foundation of the East India Company and illustrates the sea-routes and lands from the Cape of Good Hope to Java and Japan.

[21] Llewellen's Stewardship of St Bartholomew's began soon after the return of Houtman's voyage and kept him occupied in London until his death in 1634: during that time various detailed plans of, or for, the Hospital were produced in the same hand as the atlas.

Although sources (old and new) agree that he was born in 1616, Foster's Alumni Oxonienses (compiled from the University admission registers) states his age as 18 on his matriculation at Christ Church, Oxford on 25 July 1636.

At Westminster School he was about four years junior to William Cartwright (1611–1643), a brilliant student of his time, poet, orator and philosopher, who proceeded to a studentship at Christ Church in 1628, and matriculated in February 1631/32 aged 20.

[24] Lluelyn received the degree of BA in July 1640 and MA in May 1643, but continued his studentship at Christ Church through the period of the King's residence there, and the sieges of 1643–1646, until 1648.

Among the latter, however, his Elegie on the death of Sir Horatio Vere[26] could be as early as 1635, and quite possibly some of the humorous verses, lyrics and lines addressed to various ladies (found in the earlier pages of the book) are youthful productions.

Certainly his Latin poem Reginarum optima, ignoscas tandem agresti Lucinae addressed to Queen Henrietta Maria, in the Oxford collection Musarum Oxoniensium Charisteria published in 1638[27] shows already a facility of style and metre, linguistic proficiency and maturity of voice quite equal to other contributions, including those of his friends William Cartwright and Edward Gray[28] in the same volume.

Graduating BA in June 1640, Lluelyn's three-year term of residency leading to his MA award in May 1643 witnessed the onset of civil hostilities, in which Christ Church itself was soon to become a principal scene of action.

If the arrest of Archbishop Laud in December 1640 did not yet prompt Lluelyn to a Lament, his vein for Occasional verses, elegies and satires, increasingly responded to public events as they unfolded.

[28] Lluelyn declared allegiance to Royalist principles in his Elegie on the death of Sir Bevill Grenvill, who died at the Battle of Lansdowne in July 1643.

[37] Lluelyn's contribution was cut down to merely 8 of its 58 lines, serving as end-piece to the Grenvill memorial, but he printed it complete in 1646, describing how Grenvill surveyed the opposing forces in the field:"The Kingdomes Law is the pretence of each,Which these by Law preserve, these by its breach:The Subjects Liberty each side mainetaines,These say it consists in freedome, these in Chaines:These love the decent Church, but these not passeTo dresse our Matron by the Geneva Glasse.These still enshrine their God, but these adoreHim most, at some Arauna's Threshing flore.Each part defends their King a severall way,By true Subjection these, by Treasons they.

[38] Lluelyn wrote an elegy for William Cartwright, who died of fever in November 1643,[24] and for Sir John Smith (1616–1644), who had saved the King's Standard at the Battle of Edgehill in 1642:[39][40] both were buried in the Cathedral.

[49] However, his many pages of Royalist Satire (including that printed separately in 1645),[50] and the imputation of Treason, directed against the rebels (whatever Posteri, vestra res agitur), rapidly became inconvenient in the hour of the city's capitulation.

These included the long 22nd section of the title-poem which, in Hudibrastic vein and metre, borrowed the human grotesques from the tales in Mandeville's Travels and from Thomas Coryat[51] in preparation for his impenetrably absurd culminating narrative.

[52] On 5 May 1646 the last dramatic production in Oxford before the city surrendered was the play, The King found at Southwell, which survived anonymously in a unique copy but is apparently by Lluelyn.

[67] Anthony à Wood described his medical progress as follows: "In 1653 he obtained the favour of the men in power, then in the university, to be admitted doctor of physic, and so consequently took the oaths that were then required, and afterwards became fellow of the College of Physicians.

"[1] That is to say, the university awarded him the degree of Doctor of Medicine on 15 July 1653,[16] and he then had to take certain oaths of conformity to the prevailing authorities before being admitted a Candidate to the Royal College of Physicians on 24 September 1653.

The text is prefaced by a long verse encomium by Lluelyn, To the incomparable Dr. Harvey, On his Books of the Motion of the Heart and Blood, and of the Generation of Animals.

[72] Even were Lluelyn not the translator, the choice of his encomium to introduce such a work was an outstanding recognition, at a time when the College itself was raising a statue to Harvey as the most distinguished anatomist and physician of his age.

The fourth, by Lluelyn, Medicorum Sagacissime, Cujus Vestibulum plura Quam aliorum Ædes, & Prædia continet, is by far the most polished and literary of them, and for once is signed off in his own name, as "Mart.

on the title-page, since parts of the content might still be thought inflammatory: but some comic verses were chosen by Sir John Mennes for inclusion, anonymously, in his Facetiæ: Musarum Deliciæ, a 1656 update of a 1640 collection called Wit's Recreations.

Buckinghamshire had been, and in many ways remained, strongly sympathetic to the cause of the Dissenters, and in particular with the nearby Quaker communities at Jordans and the Chalfonts, associated with Isaac Pennington, William Penn and other early luminaries of the Society of Friends.

Lluelyn was, on the contrary, decidedly loyal to the Court and his royal patron, became at once friendly with the Rector Isaac Milles, and maintained a watchful eye over potential fomentors of unrest, whom he considered to be fanatics.

[95] On 11 November it was necessary to elect a new Master for the Free Grammar School, and the Mayor and council agreed to pay a pension to the widow of the former Schoolmaster on condition that she did not turn Quaker or otherwise become a Sectary and depart from the liturgy of the Church of England.

There was apparently still some appetite for Lluelyn's poetic style and conceits, for Man-Miracles appeared in its fourth and final lifetime edition in 1679, Lluellin being now identified in full on the title page.

[1] His last great moment was on 24 August 1681 when, on behalf of the Mayor, Aldermen, Bailiffs, Burgesses and other inhabitants of the Corporation, he presented a loyal address to the King.