Jasper Mayne was a Caroline academic--poet, dramatist, and translator--who during the English Civil War preached sermons and wrote pamphlets in the cause of Royalism; was expelled from Oxford University and deprived of his Christ Church benefices by Parliament; and after the Restoration was appointed a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, archdeacon of Chichester, and chaplain to King Charles II. Mayne has been best known for his plays, which are amusing, but his even more noteworthy poems and translations have on insufficient grounds been slighted, ignored as misattributions, or branded as forgeries. Though some of his work is mediocre, Mayne was capable and did on many occasions rise to poetry, as in his commendatory poems for William Shakespeare, John Donne, Ben Jonson, and William Cartwright.

Mayne's parents, Jasper and Mary Mayne, baptized him at Hatherleigh, an old market town in northwest Devonshire, on 23 November 1604. Perhaps his was the family...