William Scott

• SCOTT, William (c.1579-aft.1611), of Godmersham, Kent.
• b. c.1579, 2nd s. of Charles Scott (d.1596) by Jane, da. of Sir Thomas Wyatt, of Allington Castle. educ. I. Temple June 1595.
• Offices Held
  • ?Clerk in the ordnance office bef. 1601.
• Scott was the great-grandson of Sir Thomas Wyatt the elder, whose sister was the mother of Sir Henry Lee, the high steward of New Woodstock, and probably the grandmother of Elizabeth, first wife of Lawrence Tanfield, the senior burgess for Woodstock in 1601. Scott was admitted to the Inner Temple at ‘Mr. Tanfield’s request’ in June 1595, a few months before the death of his father. Like John Lee, another of Sir Henry Lee’s relations, Scott may have obtained a post in the ordnance office. Either he or a namesake was a servant to the surveyor of the ordnance, Sir John Davis, and was involved with Davis in Essex’s rebellion. The burgess for Woodstock may also have been the man alleged in 1605 to have lampooned Sir Robert Cecil. He certainly had literary pretensions, dedicating to Sir Henry Lee a composition called The Model of Poesy and translating a religious work by a Huguenot poet. As ‘a sharer in his blood as well as in many his honourable favours’, he was privileged in 1611 to compose the inscription for the tomb of Sir Henry Lee, whose education he attributed to the Wyatts. Scott witnessed Lee’s will and sent a man to the funeral. Nothing is known of his subsequent career.
• Vis. Kent. (Harl. Soc. xlii), 127; E. K. Chambers, Sir Henry Lee, 20, 248, 268-9, 298, 305; PCC 37 Drake; HMC Hatfield, x. 100; xvi. 14-15; CSP Dom. 1598-1601, p. 549; APC, xxxi. 160.
• From: http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1558-1603/member/sc... ____________

William Scott (c.1571–c.1617)

~A great deal of this material is lifted directly from Gavin Alexander’s introduction to _The Model of Poesy_, which may be found here: http://assets.cambridge.org/97805211/96116/frontmatter/978052119611...

William Scott, barrister and author, has gained some attention in recent years with the discovery of his treatise on poetry, _The Model of Poesy_, written when Scott was a law student. The only known copy of the manuscript was discovered in 2003.

_The Modell of Poesye: Or The Arte of Poesye drawen into a short or Summary Discourse_ (to give its full title in the manuscript) is written in a scribal italic hand (not Scott’s hand, but that of a scribe). It contains a theoretical description of what poetry is, and practical guidelines about how to write well.

It also contains one of the earliest serious criticisms of Shakespeare, if not the earliest. [1]

William Scott was born in the early 1570s, possibly in 1571. We know that he had been born by 1574, because the visitation of Kent in 1574 recorded a William as the second son of Charles Scott and Jane Wyatt. [2] He was born into a literary family; George Wyatt was his uncle, his mother was the daughter of poet Sir Thomas Wyatt, and Reginald Scott (author of _The discoverie of witchcraft_ [1584]) his father’s cousin.

The baptism of a William Scott on 20 April 1571 is recorded in the parish register (and the Bishop’s transcript of the same) for Boughton Aluph parish, but this child is described as a son of Sir Thomas Scott (Charles Scott’s older half-brother).[3] There is no other record of a son of Sir Thomas Scott named William,[4] and that this William should be baptised in Boughton Aluph is perplexing, since it is close to where Charles Scott was living at this time (it is the parish between Challock and Godmersham) and rather further from Scot’s Hall, where Sir Thomas lived. The William Scott born at Boughton Aluph is more likely to be the son of the as yet itinerant Charles Scott, living in that area, than of Sir Thomas Scott, firmly ensconced in Scot’s Hall several parishes away. But that would require a slip of the pen from the parson. William Scott, then, may have been born in 1571 and was certainly born no later than 1574. He was brought up at Eggarton in Godmersham.

William Scott went to the Inns of Court in London, a typical path for a gentleman. He was admitted to the Inner Temple on 21 May 1595, and the admission was confirmed by the Inner Temple Parliament on 1 June 1595. [5]

In the visitation of Kent of 1619–21, Scott is recorded in his family tree as ‘s.p.’ or sine prole, without issue, and therefore also dead.[6] But he did attempt to start a family in what turned out to be his last years.

Scott married Barbara Tomlyn. Her father, William Tomlyn, was a brewer and jurat (a Kentish alderman) in the town of Faversham, half a dozen miles north of Godmersham.

This appears to be their marriage record, in Sheldwich, three miles south of Faversham:

Scot, William, of Godmersham, g., and Barbara Tomlyn of Sheldwich, v. at Sheldwich. Feb. 19, 1609. https://archive.org/stream/canterburymarria01cant/canterburymarria0...

A stillborn son was buried at Stanford on 12 April 1611, [7] and a son William was baptised at Stanford on 2 August 1612 (‘William Scot, sonne to Mr William Scot of Eggertone’).[8] The same son was, sadly, buried at Brabourne on 3 February 1614. [9]

Scott was alive on 13 June 1613 when his mother Jane made her will and left him plate, hangings, furnishings, and andirons.[10] Scott made his own will on 2 June 1615; here he is William Scott of Brabourne.[11] He leaves things to his wife ‘and to the yssue of her, and my bodye (yf any be)’, and, again, ‘to the yssue of her and me (yf god send any)’ and ‘the yssue that may be yf yt please god of our bodyes’. At this point, the Scotts were childless and, after the death of young William, evidently a little desperate, but they had a daughter later in that year: Kathryn was baptised on 10 November 1615 in Brabourne.[12]

Scott was still alive in 1616: Sir John Scott, in his will of 18 September 1616, gives ‘unto my lovinge Cosen William Scott of Brabourne, my best geldinge’.[13] Sir John Scott died almost immediately, so we can hope that Scott got the horse.[14] Scott’s mother Jane was buried at Godmersham on 3 March 1617, [15] and the will was proved on 17 April, but Scott may not have been around to collect that legacy. Scott’s own will was proved on 12 August 1617, and Scott had evidently died before June 1617. Thomas Scott’s will of 31 October 1633 includes a crucial detail. At some point in the Easter law term of James I’s fifteenth regnal year (that is, between 7 May and 2 June 1617), ‘because all my said Fathers sonnes except my selfe weare then deceasd without issue’ the various lands he had inherited from his father in fee-tail (that is, to pass to his brothers or their heirs if he died without issue) were transferred to fee-simple, making them his to bequeath without complicated entails.[16]

Footnotes:

1. http://shaksper.net/archive/2003/207-september/19281-shakespeares-q...

2. W. Bruce Bannerman (ed.), The visitations of Kent, taken in the years 1574 and 1592, Harleian Society 75 (London, 1924), 30

3. Parish register: KHLC-p36/1/5. Bishop’s transcript: CCA-dca/bt/22

4. For pedigree see Robert Hovenden (ed.), The visitation of Kent, taken in the years 1619–1621, Harleian Society 42 (London, 1898), 128–9.

5. The Inner Temple Admissions Database (www.innertemple.org.uk/archive/itad); F. A. Inderwick (ed.), A calendar of the Inner Temple records, i (London, 1896), 405.

6. Hovenden (ed.), The visitation of Kent . . . 1619–1621, 128. 34 NA-e44/263.

7. Stanford/Westenhanger parish register: CCA-u3/253/1/1, 17r

8. CCA-u3/253/1/1, 29r ; CCA-dcb/bt1/222, 15.

9. Brabourne parish register: KHLC-p41/1/1.

10. Consistory Court of Canterbury will register: CCA-dcb/prc/32/44/348a.

11. Archdeaconry Court of Canterbury will register: CCA-dcb/prc/17/60/399. See Appendix 3.

12. Brabourne parish, Bishop’s transcript, CCA-dcb/bt1/31. From Thomas Scott’s will, we can infer that she must have predeceased her father.

13. PCC, na-prob 11/131, 57v.

14. Not ‘about 28 December 1616’ (ODNB) since Robert Sidney mourns him in a letter of 25 September 1616 (see below, li); the Brabourne parish register records his burial at Brabourne as 17 September 1616, one day before [sic] the date of his will: KHLC-p41/1/1.

15. Godmersham parish register: CCA-u3/117/1/1. 50 Consistory Court of Canterbury will register: CCA-prc/32/51, 217v–19v (219r ); reproduced in G. D. Scull, Dorothea Scott (Oxford, 1883), 199–203 (201–2).

16. Consistory Court of Canterbury will register: CCA-prc/32/51, 217v–19v (219r ); reproduced in G. D. Scull, Dorothea Scott (Oxford, 1883), 199–203 (201–2).

Sources:

_The Model of Poesy_, with a detailed introduction by Gavin Alexander (including considerable biographical information on William Scott), Cambridge University Press http://assets.cambridge.org/97805211/96116/frontmatter/978052119611...

_The Model of Poesy_ (Wikipedia article) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Model_of_Poesy

http://glasgowreviewofbooks.com/2014/02/18/an-elizabethan-poetics-w...

http://shaksper.net/archive/2003/207-september/19281-shakespeares-q...