Timothy Kendall - Tudor Poet

[Thumper GT]

We're nearing publication on a new book covering the history of North Aston village in Oxfordshire, and we have a number of eminent characters who've either been born here, or lived here, over the centuries. One such is Timothy Kendall; a Tudor poet of modest repute but, we are assured, of some influence on William Shakespeare.

In a nutshell, all we know so far is that Timothy was the son of William Kendall, owner of North Aston manor in the early 16th century. William was occasionally described as a "yeoman". He was clearly wealthy, and in his will left instructions that rent from certain lands in the parish be given annually to the poor. William died in 1570, but his generosity lasted two hundred years.

We believe Timothy would have been born around 1530-1540. He was educated first at Eton and then Magdalen College Oxford. He completed his studies at Staple Inn in London, where we assume he studied law. In 1557 he published his most enduring work; a collection of poems entitled Flowers of Epigrammes. He dedicated this to Lord Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester and one-time favourite of Elizabeth I, possibly because Dudley was Kendall's patron.

It's not quite genealogy, but if anyone happens to know more about the Kendall family, or can correct errors in our assumptions, we'd be very grateful.

(Originally posted 21-08-2007, 03:13 PM)

[Thumper GT]

Just a brief follow-up to say that we managed to find out enough about Kendall to be able to include a brief paragraph in the book, which has now gone to print.

Although no replies here (but thanks to all those who looked) we did get responses from the Oxford University Archives (very helpful, and have records of students going back over 500 years), Magdalen College (to tell us that Kendall was actually at Magdalen Hall, which became Hertford College in the late nineteenth century, and unrelated to the current Magdalen), Staple Inn (regrets, but no info as he predates their records), Gray's Inn archives (ditto), and eminent professors from Reading and Newcastle universities, who helped with pointers and background.

It seems Kendall, despite being a woeful poet, didn't persue his career in the law, which probably makes sense, since he didn't even finish his degree at Oxford either! However, we did manage to establish that he was of some influence on Shakespeare, and is acknowledged to have inspired some passages in As You Like It and Timon of Athens.

Kendall was also not as old as we thought. He was still a student when he published his book in 1577, so was probably born in the mid 1550s. That would make him only ten or fifteen years older than Shakespeare, who was born in 1564.

The little we have unearthed suggests there's enough of a life here to be worthy of some more investigation. If you imagine he was probably five or six when he was packed off to Eton from a tiny rural village in medieval Oxfordshire. From there he went to Oxford University, probably in his late teens. His father, William, was (we think) murdered in 1570. Timothy left Oxford in 1572 and went to London to study law, where he fell in with the literary crowd and met the right people. Moving in high society, he published a book (probably in his early 20s) which would later be used by the top showbiz celebrity of the era as reference for some of his plays. Maybe the two met? Perhaps we'll never know, but if anyone comes across any references to Timothy Kendall, we'd be fascinated to learn more.