DownloadThe Portobello Bookshop Gift Guide 2024

Robert Herrick Author & Editor

Robert Herrick (1591-1674) was perhaps the greatest poet to have worked in Devon. Born in London, the son of a goldsmith, he studied at Cambridge and later fell in with the London poets who had gathered around the magnetic figure of Ben Jonson. In order to make a living - since he had not pursued the family trade - he entered the Church and in 1627 was appointed chaplain to the Duke of Buckingham, whom he accompanied on an unsuccessful military expedition in 1627. In 1629 he was appointed to the living of Dean Prior, a village on the edge of Dartmoor, about half way between Exeter and Plymouth. He was to remain there for the rest of his life, with the exception of the Cromwellian period from 1647-1660, during which he was expelled for his royalist sympathies and, no doubt, also doctrinal disagreements.