Faithful Teate (c. 1626 – 1666) was a Protestant clergyman and poet from

County Cavan County Cavan ( ; ) 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 Northern and Western Region. It is named after the town of Cavan and is based on the hi ...

, Ireland. He is sometimes known as ''Faithful Tate'' or ''Faithfull Teate''. He was the father of the poet laureate,

Nahum Tate Nahum Tate ( ; 1652 – 30 July 1715) was an Anglo-Irish poet, hymnist, and lyricist, who became Poet Laureate in 1692. Tate is best known for '' The History of King Lear'', his 1681 adaptation of Shakespeare's ''King Lear'', and for his libr ...

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 approximately north-northeast of Cavan and 11 km, via the N54, from the border with County Fermanagh in Northern Ireland. The River Annalee flows near the village. ...

, Co. Cavan, and purchased lands in and around Ballyhaise during the

Plantation of Ulster The Plantation of Ulster (; Ulster Scots dialects, Ulster Scots: ) was the organised Settler colonialism, colonisation (''Plantation (settlement or colony), plantation'') of Ulstera Provinces of Ireland, province of Irelandby people from Great ...

. Reports that he had informed on the rebels during the

Irish Rebellion of 1641 The Irish Rebellion of 1641 was an uprising in Kingdom of Ireland, Ireland, initiated on 23 October 1641 by Catholic gentry and military officers. Their demands included an end to anti-Catholic discrimination, greater Irish self-governance, and ...

, 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.

Career and poetry

Faithful Teate the younger entered

Trinity College Dublin Trinity College Dublin (), officially titled The College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin, and legally incorporated as Trinity College, the University of Dublin (TCD), is the sole constituent college of the Unive ...

in 1641 at age fourteen and was later ordained into the

Church of Ireland The Church of Ireland (, ; , ) is a Christian church in Ireland, and an autonomy, autonomous province of the Anglican Communion. It is organised on an all-Ireland basis and is the Christianity in Ireland, second-largest Christian church on the ...

. He moved to England and studied at

Pembroke College, Cambridge Pembroke College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. The college is the third-oldest college of the university and has over 700 students and fellows. It is one of the university's larger colleges, with buildings from ...

before being appointed minister at

Sudbury Sudbury may refer to: Places Australia * Sudbury Reef, Queensland Canada * Greater Sudbury, Ontario ** Sudbury (federal electoral district) ** Sudbury (provincial electoral district) ** Sudbury Airport ** Sudbury Basin, a meteorite impact cra ...

Suffolk Suffolk ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East of England and East Anglia. It is bordered by Norfolk to the north, the North Sea to the east, Essex to the south, and Cambridgeshire to the west. Ipswich is the largest settlement and the county ...

in 1648. 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 ejected. 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 Four Courts Press is an independent Irish academic publishing house, with its office at Malpas Street, Dublin 8, Ireland. Founded in 1970 by Michael Adams, who died in February 2009, its early publications were primarily theological, notably ...

in 2007.

Family

This second Faithful Teate was the father of the poet laureate

, 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.Samuel H. Golden, ‘The three Faithful Teates’, ''Notes and Queries'', 200, new series, 2:9 (September 1955), 374-80, https://archive.org/details/sim_notes-and-queries_1955-09_2_9/page/374.

Background

Career and poetry

Family

References

Further reading