Nielsen Hayden genealogy

Francis Quarles

Male Bef 1592 - Bef 1644  (< 52 years)


Personal Information    |    Notes    |    Sources    |    All

  • Name Francis Quarles  [1, 2
    Birth Bef 8 May 1592  [3, 4, 5, 6
    Baptism 8 May 1592  Romford, Essex, England Find all individuals with events at this location  [3, 4, 5, 7
    Gender Male 
    Alternate death 8 Sep 1644  Ridley Hall, Essex, England Find all individuals with events at this location  [4, 7
    Death Bef 11 Sep 1644  [5, 6
    Burial 11 Sep 1644  St. Olave, Silver Street, London, England Find all individuals with events at this location  [5
    Person ID I16231  Ancestry of PNH, TNH, and others | Ancestor of DDB
    Last Modified 30 Sep 2020 

    Father James Quarles   d. 25 Sep 1599 
    Mother Joan Dalton   d. Bef 9 Oct 1606 
    Family ID F9965  Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

    Family Ursula Woodgate,   b. 1601   d. Bef 22 Nov 1652 (Age < 51 years) 
    Marriage 28 May 1618  St. Andrew's, Holborn, London, England Find all individuals with events at this location  [4, 5, 7, 8
    Children 
    +1. Joanna Quarles,   b. Bef 17 Jun 1633, Roxwell, Essex, England Find all individuals with events at this location
    Family ID F9966  Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
    Last Modified 9 May 2019 

  • Notes 
    • Seventeenth-century poet best known for the emblem book entitled, appropriately, Emblems (1634), fantastically popular in its time. Another of his works remembered today is A Feast for Wormes, Set Forth in a Poeme of the History of Jonah (1620). Lost his nose to syphillis. Mocked by Pope in the Dunciad.

      According to a well-known literary anecdote, he discovered in conversation with one of the Fletchers that by total coincidence, they were both working on epic-length poems describing the geography of the British Isles in terms of the human anatomy.

      He has been said to have been an ancestor of the abolitionist Charles Henry Langston and thus also of Langston's grandson, the Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes (1901-1967), but we've been unable to find proof of this. Hughes himself appears to have believed it. Hughes was definitely a descendant of early Virginians surnamed Quarles, but it seems more likely that he was descended from the poet's great-great grandparents John Quarles and Amy Plumstead.

  • Sources 
    1. [S2148] Clifford L. Stott, "In Search of 'Mr.' Overton: The Ancestry of Rev. Valentine Overton and His Connections to New England Immigrants." The New England Historical and Genealogical Register 172:222, Summer 2018; 172:323, Fall 2018; 173:82, Winter 2019.

    2. [S2505] John G. Hunt, "The Identity of Joanna Quarles of Boston, Mass." The New England Historical and Genealogical Register 111:72, Jan 1957.

    3. [S2149] Alexander B. Grosart, "Introduction." The Complete Works in Prose and Verse of Francis Quarles ed. Alexander B. Grosart. Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, 1880.

    4. [S2506] Cameron F. MacRae, "A Line from Francis Quarles, the Poet." The American Genealogist 51:166, 1975.

    5. [S3214] Robert Battle, "Who Was Ursula Woodgate? Identifying the Wife of Francis Quarles and Mother of Joanna1 (Quarles) Smith of Boston, Massachusetts, and Lyme, Connecticut." The New England Historical and Genealogical Register 173:101, Spring 2019.

    6. [S4342] Norfolk Families by Walter Rye. Two volumes, 1911-13., year only.

    7. [S2507] Edward J. Sage, "The Quarles Family." The East Anglian, Or, Notes and Queries on Subjects Connected with the Counties of Suffolk, Cambridge, Essex and Norfolk 3:170, 1869.

    8. [S147] David H. Kelley, Don C. Stone, and David C. Dearborn, "Among the Royal Servants: Welby, Browne, Quarles and Related Families." Foundations, journal of the Foundation for Medieval Genealogy, volume 3, number 4, July 2010., year only.