Thomas Farnaby

Thomas Farnaby(orFarnabie) (c. 1575 – 12 June 1647) was an Englishschoolmasterand scholar. He operated a successful school in theCripplegateward ofLondonand enjoyed great success with his annotations of classic Latin authors and textbooks onrhetoricand Latin grammar.

Early life

He was the son of a London carpenter. His grandfather had been mayor ofTruroand his great-grandfather an Italian musician.^[1]He may have been related toGiles Farnaby(1563–1640), the musician and composer, whose father was ajoiner.^[1]

Between 1590 and 1595 he appears successively as a student ofMerton College, Oxford,a pupil in a Jesuit college in Spain, a student atCambridge,^[2]and a follower ofFrancis DrakeandJohn Hawkins.After some military service in the Low Countries he made shift, saysAnthony Wood,to be set on shore in the western part of England; where, after some wandering to and fro under the name of Thomas Bainrafe, the anagram of his surname, he settled atMartock,inSomersetshire,and taught the grammar school there for some time with success.^[1]

Schoolmaster

He opened his own school in Goldsmiths Rents,Cripplegate,London at the beginning of the seventeenth century. This school was a success, in terms of reputation and also financially, and had many pupils, drawing on the sons of nobility. He had boarders as well as day scholars, held his classes in a large garden-house, and joined several houses and gardens together to meet the needs of his establishment. He had a small staff at work with him; in 1630William Burton(1609–1657), a well-known antiquarian scholar, was one of his assistants.Sir John Bramston the younger,with his brothers, Mountfort and Francis, were among his boarders, and he described the school in his autobiography.Sir Richard Fanshawe,Alexander Gill,andHenry Birkheadwere also Farnaby's pupils.^[3]

From this school, which had as many as 300 pupils, there issued, says Wood, more churchmen and statesmen than from any school taught by one man in England. In the course of his London career he was mademaster of artsofCambridge,and soon after was incorporated at Oxford.^[1]

Such was his success that he was enabled to buy an estate atOtfordnearSevenoaks,Kent, to which he retired from London in 1636, while carrying on as schoolmaster. In course of time he added to his Otford estate and bought another nearHorshamin Sussex.^[1]

Later life

In politics he was a royalist; and, suspected of participation in the rising nearTunbridge,1643,^[1]he was arrested by the parliamentarians, and was committed toNewgate Prison.He was placed on board ship with a view to his transportation to America, but was ultimately sent toEly House,Holborn,where he was detained for a year. He was allowed to return to Sevenoaks in 1645, and he died there 12 June 1647, being buried in the chancel of the church.^[3]

The details of his life were derived by Anthony Wood from Francis, Farnaby's son by a second marriage.^[1]^[4]

Works

Farnaby was a leading classical scholar as well as the outstanding schoolmaster of his time. His works chiefly consisted of annotated editions of Latin authorsJuvenal,Persius,Seneca,Martial,Lucan,Virgil,OvidandTerence,which enjoyed great popularity.^[1]He is also the author of textbooks on rhetoric and Latin grammar. His editions of the classics, with elaborate Latin notes, were very popular throughout the seventeenth century. He edited Juvenal's and Persius's satires (Lond. 1612, dedicated to Henry, prince of Wales, 1620, 1633, 1685 tenth ed.); Seneca's tragedies (Lond. 1613, 1624, 1678 ninth ed., 1713, 1728); Martial's 'Epigrams' (Lond. 1615, Geneva, 1623, Lond. 1624, 1633, 1670, seventh ed.); Lucan's 'Pharsalia' (Lond. 1618, 1624, 1659, seventh ed.); Virgil's works (1634, dedicated toWilliam Craven, Earl of Cravenof Hamsted, and 1661); Ovid'sMetamorphoses(Lond. 1637, 1650, 1677, 1739); Terence's comedies, ed. Farnaby andMeric Casaubon(Amsterdam, 1651, 1669, 1686, 1728, Saumur, 1671).^[3]

Farnaby's other works are:^[3]

Index Rhetoricus Scholis et Institutioni tenerioris ætatis accommodatus,London, 1625; 2nd ed. 1633; 3rd ed. 1640; 4th ed. 1646; 15th ed. 1767; reissued in 1640 asIndex Rhetoricus et Oratoricus cum Formulis Oratoriis et Indice Poetico,and epitomised by T. Stephens in 1660 for Bury St. Edmunds school under the titleTροποσκηματολογία.
Phrases Oratoriæ elegantiores et poeticæ,London, 1628, 8th ed.
Ἡ τῆς Ἀνθολογίας Ἀνθολογία, Florilegium Epigrammatum Græcorum eorumque Latino versu a variis redditorum,London, 1629, 1650, 1671.
Systema Grammaticum,London, 1641; the authorised Latin grammar prepared by royal order.
Phrasiologia Anglo-Latina,London, n.d. 6.Tabulæ Græcæ Linguæ,London, n.d.
Syntaxis,London, n.d.

A patent dated 6 April 1632 granted Farnaby exclusive rights in all his books for twenty-one years, and on the back of the title-page of the 1633 edition of theIndex Rhetoricuspenalties are threatened against any infringement of Farnaby's copyright.^[3]

Letters fromG. J. Vossiusto Farnaby appear in Vossius'sEpistolæ;and four of Farnaby's letters to Vossius are printed in Vossius'sEpistolæ Clarorum Virorum.Other letters appear inJohn Borough'sImpetus Juveniles(1643), and inBarten Holyday'sJuvenal.Farnaby prefixed verses in Greek with an English translation toThomas Coryat'sCrudities,and he wrote commendatory lines forWilliam Camden'sAnnales.Ben Jonsonwas a friend of Farnaby, and contributed commendatory Latin elegiacs to his edition ofJuvenalandPersius.John Owenpraises Farnaby's Seneca in hisEpigrams.He is highly commended in Dunbar'sEpigrammata,1616, and inRichard Bruch'sEpigrammatum Hecatontades duæ,1627.^[3]

Family

Farnaby married, first, Susan, daughter of John Pierce ofLancells,Cornwall; and secondly, Anne, daughter ofJohn Howson,bishop of Oxford, afterwards of Durham. By his first wife he had (besides a daughter Judith, wife to William Bladwell, a London merchant) a son, John, captain in the king's army, who inherited his father's Horsham property, and died there early in 1673. By his second wife he had, among other children, a son Francis, born about 1630, who inherited the Kippington estate, Sevenoaks, and was a widower on 26 January 1663, when he obtained a license to marry Mrs. Judith Nicholl of St. James, Clerkenwell.^[3]

Notes

^^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^hChisholm 1911.
^"Thomas Farnaby (FNBY590T)".A Cambridge Alumni Database.University of Cambridge.
^^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^gStephen, Leslie,ed. (1889)."Farnaby, Thomas".Dictionary of National Biography.Vol. 18. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
^Wood,Athenae Oxonienses,ed. Bliss, iii. 213.

Sources

This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain:Stephen, Leslie,ed. (1889). "Farnaby, Thomas".Dictionary of National Biography.Vol. 18. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain:Chisholm, Hugh,ed. (1911). "Farnaby, Thomas".Encyclopædia Britannica.Vol. 10 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 182.