CHURCHYARD, THOMAS (1520?-1604)

—Poet and miscellaneous writer, began life as a page to the Earl of Surrey, and subsequently pa ed through many vici itudes as a soldier in Scotland, Ireland, France, and the Low Countries. He was latterly a hanger-on at Court, and had a pension of eighteen pence a day from Queen Elizabeth, which was not, however, regularly paid. He wrote innumerable pamphlets and broadsides, and some poems, of which the best are Shore's Wife (1563), The Worthine of Wales (1587) repub. by the Spenser Society (1871), and Churchyard's Chips (1575), an autobiographical piece.