Robert Hayman's book of epigrams, Quodlibets, published in London in 1628 and never reprinted, is probably the first book of verse in English to be written in what is now Canada. The quality of the verse falls far below that of Ben Jonson's epigrams and even below that of John Harington's but the book is valuable in that it supplies information, not available elsewhere, about people who settled, or promoted settlements, in Newfoundland in the second and third decades of the seventeenth century.

Hayman, the second of five children and eldest son of Nicholas and Alice Gaverocke Hayman, was baptized at Wolborough, Devon, on 14 August 1575. The Haymans and Gaverockes were prosperous landowners. Robert's mother died when he was a child; she was buried on 3 April 1578. Four months later, on 4 August, Robert's father married Amis Balle. Sometime between the late summer of 1578 and the early summer of 1579 the Haymans moved...