Richard Corbett, Anglican bishop of Oxford and Norwich, was one of the most fashionable of the minor poets in the reigns of James I and Charles I. A friend of Ben Jonson, acquainted with John Donne; George Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham; and Archbishop William Laud, he was associated with Oxford University for more than thirty years, during which time he gained recognition for the many commendatory and memorial verses he wrote on the deaths of prominent contemporaries. He was also a well-known wit, satirist, bon vivant, and anti-Puritan, who was often criticized for his disposition to flatter the powerful and prominent but also admired for his good nature and conviviality. In his History of the Worthies of England (1662) Thomas Fuller describes Corbett as "a high wit and most excellent poet; of a courteous carriage, and no destructive nature to any who offended him, counting himself plentifully repaid...