Richard Adams (1619–1661) was an English lawyer remembered as the compiler of an early collection of verse.

Biography

Richard Adams, the second son of Sir Thomas Adams, alderman of London, was born on 6 January 1619; admitted fellow-commoner of

Catherine Hall, Cambridge St Catharine's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. Founded in 1473 as Katharine Hall, it adopted its current name in 1860. The college is nicknamed "Catz". The college is located in the historic city-centre ...

, 28 April 1635; died 13 June 1661. Among the

Harleian Collection The Harleian Library, Harley Collection, Harleian Collection and other variants () is one of the main "closed" collections (namely, historic collections to which new material is no longer added) of the British Library in London, formerly the libra ...

is a thin

quarto Quarto (abbreviated Qto, 4to or 4º) is the format of a book or pamphlet produced from full sheets printed with eight pages of text, four to a side, then folded twice to produce four leaves. The leaves are then trimmed along the folds to produc ...

(No. 3889) lettered on the outside ‘R. Adams. Poems.’ One or two short pieces of inferior merit are signed ‘R. Adams,’ or ‘R. A.,’ but most of the poems in the collection are accessible in print. Like so many of the manuscript collections of the seventeenth century, Harl. MS. 3889 is no doubt a medley of verses by various hands. Adams certainly cannot be the author of the delightful song, ‘Pan, leave piping, the gods have done feasting’ (sometimes called ‘The Green Gown,’ or ‘The Fetching Home of the May’), for the words of that song were composed, according to the best authority, not later than 1635. The capital verses on ‘Oliver Routing the Rump, 1653,’ beginning ‘Will you heare a strange thing never heard of before?’ were first printed in the ''Merry Drollery'', 1661, p. 53; they reappeared in ''Wit and Drollery'', 1661, p. 260; and in ''Merry Drollery Compleat'', 1670, and again in ''Loyal Songs'', 1731; oddly enough, they are not in the ''Rump Collection''. This song is unsigned in Adams's commonplace book; and, according to A. H. Bullen in the ''

Dictionary of National Biography The ''Dictionary of National Biography'' (''DNB'') is a standard work of reference on notable figures from British history, published since 1885. The updated ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (''ODNB'') was published on 23 September ...

'', "judging from the signed verses it is far better than anything he could have written".

Notes

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Adams, Richard 1619 births 1661 deaths 17th-century English poets 17th-century English male writers 17th-century English lawyers English lawyers Younger sons of baronets