15 Facts About Edmund Waller

Edmund Waller, FRS was an English poet and politician who was Member of Parliament for various constituencies between 1624 and 1687, and one of the longest serving members of the English House of Commons.

Son of a wealthy lawyer with extensive estates in Buckinghamshire, Waller first entered Parliament in 1624, although he played little part in the political struggles of the period prior to the First English Civil War in 1642.

Edmund Waller returned to Parliament after The Restoration in 1660 of Charles II; known as a fine and amusing orator, he held a number of minor offices.

Best remembered now for his poem "Song ", Edmund Waller's earliest writing dates to the late 1630s, commemorating events that occurred in the 1620s, including a piece on Charles's escape from a shipwreck at Santander in 1625.

When he died, Edmund Waller was considered a major English poet, but his reputation declined over the next century, one view seeing him as a 'fairweather Royalist, an expedient Republican and mercenary bridegroom'.

Edmund Waller is regarded as a minor author, whose primary significance was to develop a form adapted and improved by later poets like Alexander Pope.

Edmund Waller came from a family of 15, many of whom survived to adulthood, including Elizabeth, Anne, Cecilia, Robert, Mary, Ursula and John.

Edmund Waller left without a degree, and as was common in this period did a course in law at Lincoln's Inn, graduating in 1622.

Edmund Waller was first elected in 1624 as MP for Ilchester, when he was the youngest person in the Commons, then for Chepping Wycombe in 1626.

Hyde recorded Edmund Waller became a poet at the age of thirty, "when other Men give over writing Verses".

Edmund Waller travelled with John Evelyn in Switzerland and Italy; unlike many Royalists, he lived in some comfort using money sent to him by his mother.

When Charles II returned to the throne after The Restoration, Edmund Waller commemorated the occasion with his 1660 poem To the King, upon his Majesty's Happy Return.

Edmund Waller played a prominent role in the impeachment and exile of Clarendon in 1667, and thereafter held a number of positions under the Cabal ministry.

Edmund Waller was admired by contemporaries including John Dryden and Gerard Langbaine, although his extravagant praise for members of the court and Royal family was later parodied by Andrew Marvell in "Last Instructions to a Painter".

Edmund Waller was strongly influenced by Thomas Hobbes, whose Leviathan he admired, and whose De Cive he at one point proposed to translate.