Faithful Teate (c. 1626 – 1666) was a Protestant clergyman and poet from
County Cavan
County Cavan ( ; gle, Contae an Chabháin) is a Counties of Ireland, county in Republic of Ireland, Ireland. It is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Ulster and is part of the Border Region. It is named after the town of Cavan and is base ...
, Ireland. He is sometimes known as ''Faithful Tate'' or ''Faithfull Teate''. He was the father of the poet laureate,
Nahum Tate.
Background
He was the son of Faithful Teate, a doctor of divinity with whom he has often been confused. The elder Teate was made rector at
Ballyhaise
Ballyhaise (; ) is a village in County Cavan, Ireland. It is situated some north-northeast of Cavan Town. It is approximately a 15-minute drive or 11 km via the N54 to the border with County Fermanagh in Northern Ireland. The River Annalee ...
, Co. Cavan. Reports that he had informed on the rebels during the
1641 Rebellion
The Irish Rebellion of 1641 ( ga, Éirí Amach 1641) was an uprising by Irish Catholics in the Kingdom of Ireland, who wanted an end to anti-Catholic discrimination, greater Irish self-governance, and to partially or fully reverse the plantation ...
, resulted in his house being burned. Two or three (sources vary) of Teate's children are reported to have died as a result of hardships endured in that period.
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Career and poetry
Faithful Teate the younger entered
Trinity College Dublin in 1641 at age fourteen and was later ordained into the
Church of Ireland. He moved to England and studied at
Cambridge before being appointed minister at
Sudbury Sudbury may refer to:
Places Australia
* Sudbury Reef, Queensland
Canada
* Greater Sudbury, Ontario (official name; the city continues to be known simply as Sudbury for most purposes)
** Sudbury (electoral district), one of the city's federal e ...
in
Suffolk
Suffolk () is a ceremonial county of England in East Anglia. It borders Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south; the North Sea lies to the east. The county town is Ipswich; other important towns include Lowes ...
. He was back in Dublin by 1660 and was rector of St. Werburgh's Church in Dublin, but his puritan principles did not allow him to accept the new restoration government's policy on episcopacy and he was sacked. He died at the age of forty in 1666.
While at Suffolk he composed a long meditative poem ''Ter Tria: or the Doctrine of the Three Sacred Persons, Father, Son and Spirit...'' (1658). The poem enjoyed considerable success in its day. It was reprinted in 1669 and a German edition and translation followed in 1699.
He also wrote didactic prose including ''A Scripture Map of the Wilderness of Sin and Way to Canaan'' (1655). The first modern edition of his complete poetical works was published by
Four Courts Press in 2007.
Family
This second Faithful Teate was the father of the poet laureate
Nahum Tate, who went by 'Tate' rather than 'Teate' only in adulthood. Nahum was the second of seven children born to Faithful and his wife Katherine Kenetie. The eldest of these children was also called 'Faithful'. As noted above, there is considerable confusion in earlier accounts of the family, where it was stated that the first Faithful Teate was the father, instead of the grandfather, of Nahum. There are, in fact, three 'Faithful' Teates, the grandfather, father and brother of Nahum Tate.
[S.H. Golden, 'The Three Faithful Teates', Notes and Queries, 1955, vol. 200, page 374]
References
Further reading
* Teate, Faithful, ''Ter Tria by Faithful Teate'', ed. Angelina Lynch (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Teate, Faithful
Irish poets
Alumni of Trinity College Dublin
17th-century Irish Anglican priests
Year of birth uncertain
1666 deaths
English male poets
1626 births