John Quarles

QUARLES, John. b. (?) London, 1624 or 1625; d. London, 1665. The precise dates of John Quarles’s birth and death are unknown. He was the son of Francis Quarles*, and probably born in London before his father took the family to Ireland on becoming secretary to Archbishop Ussher of Armagh (on whom John wrote an elegy in 1655). John Quarles entered Exeter College, Oxford, in 1643, finding himself there in the middle of the Civil War, when Oxford was a stronghold of the King. John is believed to have served in the Royalist army; after the defeat of the king in 1645, he retired to London, leaving for Flanders after the execution of the king in 1649. He returned to England at the Restoration, but...