Dryden's Dominican Son: Father Thomas (Sir Erasmus Henry) Dryden, O.P.

Extract

According to Edmond Malone, the poet’s most considerable biographer, Dryden’s family after being long established at Staff hill in Cumberland migrated south about the middle of the sixteenth century and settled in Northamp- shire, where the then head of the family, John Driden, married the daughter and heiress of Sir John Cope, through whom he became possessed of the estates and manor of Canons Ashby which had been seized from the Austin Canons by Henry VIII some twenty years before. His eldest son Erasmus, who was created a baronet by James I in 1619, had three sons, of whom Erasmus the youngest became the father of the poet born in 1631. As this Erasmus had thirteen other children to provide for, it is not surprising to read that on his death in 1654 he left John but a small patrimony, although he was the eldest child. This was the inconsiderable property of Blakesley, about three and a half miles from Canons Ashby, reckoned as bringing in an annual sum of -£60, of which a portion had to be paid by John to his widowed mother, so that he had to look elsewhere for a living. Already at Cambridge he had shown ability in literature, and now he embarked seriously upon the career of a poet and dramatist with such success that before he had completed his thirtieth year he was already accepted as a writer of eminence and had even attracted the notice of the newly restored Stuart king, Charles II.