Richard Crashaw

CRASHAW, Richard. b. London, 1612/13; d. Loreto, Italy, 1648. The son of a Puritan clergyman, Crashaw was educated at Charterhouse and Pembroke College, Cambridge (BA 1634). At Cambridge he acquired a reputation as a neo-Latin poet, and as a supporter of the high church practices of Archbishop Laud. He became a Fellow of Peterhouse, where he was associated with John Cosin*. In 1643 he left England as a consequence of the Civil War, living at first at Leiden in Holland and then at Paris. He became a Roman Catholic, and was presented at the court of Queen Henrietta Maria, who arranged for him to go to Rome to seek employment. He died at the shrine of Loreto, sometime in 1648, and was buried...