William Drummond of Hawthornden |
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William Drummond's father was a gentleman-usher to James VI, and the poet was born at the family seat of Hawthornden near Roslin, Midlothian, on 13 December 1585. Drummond had close contact with the royal court until its removal to London in 1603. He graduated from Edinburgh University in 1605 and finished his education in France. When his father died in 1610 Drummond was able to retire to Hawthornden, pursuing a bookish and scholarly life somewhat in the manner of Montaigne, and including among his scientific achievements the patenting of "16 wonderful engines of war" in 1627. Drummond was widely read in the literature of his day, but adopted the continental Petrarchan manner in his madrigals and sonnets (among the best known of which are "For the Baptiste" and "Content and Resolute"), rather than the style of the Metaphysical poets who were his English contemporaries. He conducted a wide correspondence with other literary figures such as Sir William Alexander, Sir John Scott of Scotstarvit and the poets of James VI's Castalian Band. His most famous visitor at Hawthornden was the English poet Ben Jonson (1572-1637) who came in 1618 and kept a journal of their conversations.
Drummond was betrothed to Euphemia Cunningham of Barns, but she died in 1615 before their marriage. In 1630 he married Elizabeth Logan of Restalrig; he also had a mistress who bore him three children. He encountered financial difficulties in later life, and ran into political problems because of his Royalist sympathies (he was a friend of James Graham, Marquis of Montrose, who figures in Sir Walter Scott's novel of the Covenanters, "Old Mortality"). Despite writing a pamphlet against the Covenanters, Drummond belatedly signed the National Covenant in April 1639. His isolation kept him relatively immune from the turbulent events which culminated in Civil War. He died on 4 December 1649, bequeathing his library to Edinburgh University. AC Mausoleum (1613); Teares on the Death of Meliades (1613); Poems, Amorous, Funereall, Divine, Postorall in Sonnets, Songs, Sextains, Madrigals (1614); Poems (1616); Forth Feasting (1617); Flowres of Sion (1623); The Entertainment (1633); The History of Scotland (1655). William Drummond of Hawthornden: Poems and Prose, ed. R. H. Macdonald (ASLS 1976).
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