Richard Crashaw - Life

Life

Born in London, Richard Crashaw was the son of a strongly anti-Catholic divine, Dr William Crashaw. (1572–1626); his father was, however, attracted by Catholic devotion, for he translated several Latin hymns of the Jesuits. Richard Crashaw was originally put to school at Charterhouse, but in July 1631 he was admitted to Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he took the degree of B.A. in 1634. The publication of Herbert's Temple in 1633 seems to have finally determined the bias of his genius in favour of religious poetry, and next year he published his first book, Epigrammatum sacrorum liber, a volume of Latin verses.

In March 1636 he removed to Peterhouse, was made a fellow of that college in 1637, and proceeded to take his M.A. in 1638. Ordained in the Church of England he served as the minister for the Church of St Mary the Less, Cambridge from 1638 to 1643. It was about this time that he made the acquaintance and secured the lasting friendship of Abraham Cowley. He was also on terms of intimacy with Nicholas Ferrar, and frequently visited him at his house at Little Gidding. In 1641 he is said to have gone to Oxford, but only for a short time; for when in 1643 Cowley left Cambridge to seek a refuge at Oxford, Crashaw remained behind, and was forcibly ejected from his fellowship in 1644. In the confusion of the civil wars he escaped to France, where he finally embraced the Catholic faith, towards which he had long been tending and was never ordained a priest in the Church of Rome.

During his exile his religious and secular poems were collected by an anonymous friend, and published under the title of Steps to the Temple and The Delights of the Muses, in one volume, in 1646. The first part includes the hymn to St Teresa and the version of Marini's Sospetto d'Herode. This same year Cowley found him in great destitution at Paris, and induced Queen Henrietta Maria to extend towards him what influence she still possessed. At her introduction he proceeded to Italy, where he became attendant to Cardinal Giovanni Pallotta at Rome and stayed at the famous Venerable English College. In 1648 he published two Latin hymns at Paris.

He remained until 1649 in the service of the cardinal, to whom he had a great personal attachment; but his retinue contained persons whose violent and licentious behaviour was a source of ceaseless vexation to the sensitive English mystic. At last his denunciation of their excesses became so public that the animosity of those persons was excited against him, and in order to shield him from their revenge he was sent by the cardinal in 1649 to Loreto, where he was made a canon of the Holy House. In less than three weeks, however, he sickened of fever and died, not without grave suspicion of having been poisoned. He was buried in the Lady chapel at Loreto. A collection of his religious poems, entitled Carmen Deo nostro, was brought out in Paris in 1652, dedicated at the dead poet's desire to the faithful friend of his sufferings, the countess of Denbigh. The book is illustrated by thirteen engravings after Crashaw's own designs.