John Dennys (died 1609), a poet and fisherman, pioneered Angling poetry in England. His only work The Secrets of Angling was the earliest English poetical treatise on fishing. John Dennys may have been an acquaintance of Shakespeare.
John Dennys (died 1609), a poet and fisherman, pioneered Angling poetry in England. His only work The Secrets of Angling was the earliest English poetical treatise on fishing. John Dennys may have been an acquaintance of Shakespeare.
John Dennys was son of Hugh Dennis (died 1559) [1] [2] [nb 1] of "Plucherchurch" and Katherine, daughter of Thomas Trye of Hardwicke, Gloucestershire. [3] [4] [nb 2] [nb 3] [2] [nb 1] Hugh's father John had been the heir of Hugh Denys of Osterley, Middlesex (died 1511), Groom of the Stool to Henry VII. [8] [9] [nb 4] John's elder brother Henry, died without having fathered any children. [2] [4] [nb 1]
His only work The Secrets of Angling was the earliest English poetical treatise on fishing. [11] [nb 5] In it he wrote of a brook, River Boyd, formed from streams in his hometown of Pucklechurch, which met downstream with the River Avon: [1]
It was first published in 1613. [12] [13] Dennys's book was published after his death, the author identified by the initials J.D., and had been attributed to up to 6 poets. In 1811 the authorship was determined from Stationers' Registers, which showed that Dennys authored the book. [1]
A didactic pastoral poem in 3 books, totalling 151 verses each of 8 lines, in the style of Virgil's Georgics, it was published in 4 editions until 1652, examples of which are amongst the rarest books in existence. [13] Verses from the book have been quoted in other works, [14] such as Izaak Walton in the first part of the first chapter of his 1653 edition of The Compleat Angler . [15] [nb 6]
Dennys received at the hand of Thomas Westwood (1814–1888), the epithet "The Fisherman's Glorious John". [16] The appellation was received from Walter Scott. [17]
He married Eleanor, daughter of Thomas Millett of Warwickshire [3] [4] [nb 7] and had the following children: [2] [nb 1]
Between 1572 and 1608, he was the lord of the manor at Oldbury-sur-Montem, Pucklechurch, Glocestershire. [1] [3] [21] He had other places in the same county. [3]
Rev. Henry Nicholson Ellacombe wrote Shakespeare as an Angler, in which he argues that The Bard and John Dennys (Dennis) may have known each other. William Shakespeare lived for a while at Dursley, not too far from Dennys's manor of Oldbury-on-Hill, north of Pucklechurch. [21] [22]
He died 30 July 1609[ citation needed ] and was buried 7 August 1609 at the ancient Pucklechurch, [3] [19] [nb 9] The family was buried in the Pucklechurch's "ancient" church on the north aisle. [1] [3] John Dennys's will was dated 1609, without month, proved 14th. Oct. 1609. [23]
Thomas Westwood wrote the following epitaph for John Dennys:
Calm be his sleep in the old aisle of Pucklechurch! or if any sound reach him from the outer world, may it be only the soughing of the sweet south wind, and the ripple of Boyd, that with "crooked winding way" past cliff and meadow, "Its mother Avon runneth soft to seek". [24]
Izaak Walton was an English writer. Best known as the author of The Compleat Angler, he also wrote a number of short biographies including one of his friend John Donne. They have been collected under the title of Walton's Lives.
Sir Henry Billingsley was an English scholar and translator, merchant, chief Customs officer for the Port of London in the high age of late Elizabethan piracy, and moneylender, several times Master of the Haberdashers' Company, an alderman, Sheriff and Lord Mayor of London, and twice Member of Parliament for the City. His 1570 translation of Euclid's Geometry, the first from Greek into English, with a lengthy opening essay by Dr John Dee, was a classic of its time and a landmark in mathematical publishing. It appeared only two years after his translation, from the Latin, of the compendious and seminal Commentary, by the leading Reformation theologian Pietro Martire Vermigli, on the Epistle of St Paul to the Romans, which had been dedicated by its author to the Reformation scholar Sir Anthony Cooke. Both of these important publications were printed by John Daye. Billingsley was for long associated with St Thomas's Hospital in London and was a prominent, worthy and wealthy London citizen, reflecting the examples of his stepfathers Sir Martin Bowes and Thomas Seckford. He was listed in 1617 as a deceased member of the Elizabethan Society of Antiquaries.
John Still was Master of two Cambridge colleges and then, from 1593, Bishop of Bath and Wells. He enjoyed considerable fame as an English preacher and disputant. He was formerly reputed to be the author of an early English comedy drama, Gammer Gurton's Needle.
The Ellacombe apparatus is a mechanism devised for performing change ringing on church bells by striking stationary bells with hammers. It does not produce the same sound as full circle ringing due to the absence of Doppler effect as the bells do not rotate, and the lack of a damping effect from the clapper after each strike.
Doynton is a village in South Gloucestershire, England. The population of this village taken at the 2011 census was 320.
Pucklechurch is a civil parish in South Gloucestershire, England, the main settlement of which is the large village of Pucklechurch. The parish also incorporates the hamlet of Shortwood to the west of Pucklechurch village, and Parkfield to the north-west. It has a current population of just over 3200 based on the 2021 census data. The village dates back over a thousand years and was once the site of a royal hunting lodge, as it adjoined a large forest.
Wick is a village in South Gloucestershire, England. It is the main settlement in the civil parish of Wick and Abson. The population of this civil parish taken at the 2011 census was 1,989.
This general annotated bibliography page provides an overview of notable and not so notable works in the English language regarding the sport of fly fishing, listed by year of first publication. Although not all the listed books are devoted exclusively to fly fishing, all these titles contain significant fly fishing content. The focus of the present page is on classic general texts on fly fishing and its history, together with notable public or university library collections dedicated to fly fishing.
The River Boyd is a river of some 7 miles (11 km) in length which rises near Dodington in South Gloucestershire, England. It is a tributary of the Bristol Avon, running in a southerly direction and joining near Bitton. The flow rate at Bitton is an average 19.8 cubic feet per second (0.56 m3/s). It was immortalised in the 1613 poem by John Dennys of Pucklechurch The Secrets of Angling, the earliest English poetical tract on fishing:
And thou sweet Boyd that with thy watry sway
Dost wash the cliffes of Deington and of Weeke
And through their Rockes with crooked winding way
Thy mother Avon runnest soft to seeke
In whose fayre streames the speckled Trout doth play
The Roche the Dace the Gudgin and the Bleeke
Teach me the skill with slender Line and Hooke
To take each Fish of River Pond and Brooke.
Hugh Denys of Osterley in Middlesex, was a courtier of Kings Henry VII and of the young Henry VIII. As Groom of the Stool to Henry VII, he was one of the King's closest courtiers, his role developing into one of administering the Privy Chamber, a department in control of the royal finances which during Denys's tenure of office also gained control over national fiscal policy. Denys was thus a vital player in facilitating the first Tudor king's controversial fiscal policies.
Sir Gilbert Denys of Siston, Gloucestershire, was a soldier, and later an administrator. He was knighted by January 1385, and was twice knight of the shire for Gloucestershire constituency, in 1390 and 1395 and served as Sheriff of Gloucestershire 1393-4. He founded the family which provided more Sheriffs of Gloucestershire than any other.
Sir Maurice Denys (1516–1563) of Siston Court, near Bristol, Gloucestershire, and of St John's Street, Clerkenwell, Middlesex, was an English lawyer and property speculator during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, at which time he served as a "powerful figure at the Court of Augmentations". He served as a Member of Parliament for Malmesbury in Wiltshire and as Treasurer of Calais. He was the builder of Siston Court in Gloucestershire, which survives largely unaltered since his time. His excessive speculation and borrowing caused the ruination of the Siston branch of the Denys family.
Henry Thomas Ellacombe or Ellicombe (1790-1885), was an English divine and antiquary. He was the inventor of an apparatus to allow a single ringer to ring multiple bells.
Thomas Barker (fl.1591–1651) was an English fishing guide and author of The Art of Angling (1651).
Henry Dennis was High Sheriff of Gloucestershire in 1629. He was lord of the manor of Pucklechurch, Gloucestershire. The Dennis family produced more Sheriffs of Gloucestershire than any other family. Like many members of the Gloucestershire gentry he refused to take a knighthood at the coronation of King Charles I in 1625, for which he paid a composition of £25.
The Denys family of Siston, also spelled Dennis, originally came from Glamorgan in Wales and in the late 14th century acquired by marriage the manor of Siston, Gloucester and shortly thereafter the adjoining manor of Dyrham. Maurice Denys re-built Siston Court in the 16th century.
The Secrets of Angling was a book written by John Dennys. It was the earliest English poetical treatise on fishing, first published in 1613 in London. A didactic pastoral poem in 3 books, in the style of Virgil's Georgics. It was published in 4 editions until 1652, examples of which are amongst the rarest books in existence.
Henry Nicholson Ellacombe (1822–1916) was a British plantsman and author on botany and gardening.
Edward Cary or Carey or Carye was an English courtier and Master of the Jewel Office for Elizabeth I and James VI and I.
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