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- He wrote satirical and scandalous verse and at least one play under the pseudonym "Thomas Cutwode". The identification of Cutwode with Tailboys Dymoke was made by Leslie Hotson in the essay "Marigold of the Poets" in Essays by Divers Hands, being the Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature of the United Kingdom (new ser., 17 (1938), 47–68).
More about his 1601 play The Death of the Lord of Kyme here.
As with his father, we find it surpassingly strange that exactly none of the non-genealogical literature about him or his alter ego Thomas Cutwode so much as mentions that his maternal grandmother was Elizabeth Blount, the only mistress by which Henry VIII had an acknowledged illegitimate child.
From the Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 13:
CUTWODE, THOMAS (fl. 1599), poet, published in 1599 a very curious poem entitled 'Caltha Poetarum: or The Bumble Bee,' 8vo, consisting of 187 seven-line stanzas. Prefixed is a prose address 'To the Conceited Poets of our Age,' which is followed by some verses headed 'G. S. in commendation of the author.' The poem shows some skill of versification and archness of fancy; but as the veiled personal allusions are now unintelligible, it is tedious to read through the 187 stanzas. Occasionally Cutwode is somewhat licentious. His lapses from the path of modesty are not so serious as Warton represents (Hist. of Engl. Poetry, ed. Hazlitt, iv. 370); but the Archbishop of Canterbury disapproved of the poem, and in June 1599 ordered it to be committed to the flames, with Marston's 'Pygmalion' and Marlowe's translation of Ovid's 'Epistles.' In 1815 a reprint of 'Caltha Poetarum' was presented to the Roxburghe Club by Richard Heber.
From the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography:
He was entered at Lincoln's Inn on 26 May 1584. […] Dymoke and his brother Sir Edward were engaged in a bitter feud with their uncle, Henry Clinton, earl of Lincoln. In the autumn of 1590 the earl brought an accusation against the Dymokes that they had written a slanderous poem about him and his relatives. Dymoke's brother-in-law admitted that he had heard the poem and Dymoke's brother John said that he once had a copy of it and had read it to his family. Dymoke himself did not give evidence. The poem, titled 'Faunus his Four Poetical Furies', is not extant.
In 1599 Dymoke published Caltha poetarum, or, The Bumble Bee, an allegorical poem of 187 seven-line stanzas, under the pseudonym Thomas Cutwode. The pseudonym was derived from a translation of Dymoke's first name—the French taille-bois meaning ‘cut wood’. The identification of Cutwode and Dymoke was first made by Leslie Hotson in 1938. The text opens with a poem by G. C., stating that Caltha is to be decoded, and real people to be matched to the allegorical figures. Few contemporaries can now be extracted from this obscure tale of a bumble-bee (Dymoke himself) who is in love with a marigold (one of Elizabeth's maids of honour) and metamorphosed into the figure of Musaeus at the court of Diana (Elizabeth). It has been suggested that Samuel Daniel was meant by the figure of Musaeus, and the two had spent time together in 1592, when Daniel was living with his then patron, Sir Edward Dymoke. In Dymoke's preface to Caltha, titled 'To the Conceited Poets of our Age', Daniel is one of four modern poets mentioned with admiration, alongside Sidney, Spenser, and Tasso. On 1 July 1599 the archbishop of Canterbury and the bishop of London ordered the Stationers' Company to burn a number of satires, epigrams, and licentious poems. Caltha was included in the list, although for some reason, Caltha and the satires of Joseph Hall were spared the flames.
In a bill of complaints dated 23 November 1601 the earl of Lincoln laid a number of charges against the Dymoke brothers. Tailboys had been overheard making slanderous statements against the earl in the street and scurrilous verses by him had been pinned on a maypole; the Dymoke brothers were also charged with riot and unlawful assembly (the result of a drunken clash in Coningsby) and 'for contriving and acting a stage play … containing scurrilous and slanderous matter'. The play in question was 'The Death of the Lord of Kyme', written by Dymoke, and staged in August 1601 at the maypole in Kyme. Dymoke took the principal role of Lord Kyme himself and was carried off by the Devil at the play's end. Afterwards one John Craddock came on, dressed as a priest, and delivered a mock sermon on the death of 'their lord', written by Tailboys and Edward Dymoke some time before, and recycled for this occasion.
By January 1602 a number of the actors in this performance had been subpoenaed. Dymoke, described by the earl as 'a Common contriver and publisher of infamous pamphelites and libells' and 'a man of verie disordered and a most dysolute behaviour and condicion', gave his evidence on 7 December 1602. He denied that he had 'counterfeited' his uncle in the play and claimed that the play had been a regular part of the May game festivities. The case was eventually decided in the earl's favour, with severe penalties handed out to those involved. Dymoke, however, escaped the judgment. In February 1603 he was referred to as 'now deceased'; it is not known how or when he died.
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Nielsen Hayden genealogy
Bef 1561 - Bef 1603 (< 41 years)
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