Lodowick Bryskett

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Lodowick Bryskett (1547–1612 ca., active 1571–1611) was a poet, translator, diplomat and English official who worked in Ireland. He also served as Special Ambassador from England to Tuscany in 1600–01. He is believed to be the son of a native Italian, possibly Antonio Bruschetto, a Genoa merchant who settled in Hackney, London; but little is known about his early life. He likely had connections in Florence and sent and received many letters there.

Bryskett was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge as a pensioner in 1559, but he left the university without taking a degree. In 1571 he briefly filled the role of clerk of the Privy Council of Ireland under Sir Henry Sidney. He became a close friend of Philip Sidney, Henry Sidney’s son, and accompanied the young Sidney on a three-year continental tour (1572–1575) through Germany, Italy and Poland. In 1577 he became clerk of the chancery for the faculties in Ireland, later being succeeded in that post by Edmund Spenser.

Around 1582 he was appointed secretary of the council of the Lord President of Munster by Arthur Grey, 14th Baron Grey de Wilton. It was during this period that he met Spenser, who taught him Greek. Bryskett stayed in Munster for many years. His estates suffered during the Munster rebellion of 1598, and he left Ireland for a time to pursue diplomacy, returning sometime after 1602.

In 1594 he sought to be reappointed as clerk of the Irish Privy Council but did not get the post; instead he was given the “clerkship of the casualties” in 1595–96 and served as High Sheriff of Wexford in 1595–96. He owned an estate at Macmine near Enniscorthy, bought around 1581, which he described as pleasant and fertile. He earned a reputation as an efficient administrator, though he delegated much work to others.

In 1600 Sir Robert Cecil praised him in a letter to Sir George Carew as “an ancient servitor of the realm of Ireland,” referring to his new role as the first English Special Ambassador to Ferdinando I, Grand Duke of Tuscany, a position he held from 1600 to 1601. While in this capacity he was imprisoned in Flanders in 1601–02. He also showed an interest in Bridgetown Abbey, Castletownroche, County Cork, which Cecil asked Carew to secure for him; it was granted to him in 1595 for 50 years. By 1606 he was said to hold large estates in County Dublin, County Cavan, and County Cork, as well as Macmine.

Bryskett married Ellen Fox and had two children, a son named Anthony and a daughter. He is thought to have remained alive in 1611, but probably died in 1612, as his widow later brought a lawsuit over cattle trespass that damaged crops on the Macmine property.

Bryskett is often noted more for his friendships with Sidney and Spenser than for his work in Ireland. His main literary work was a translation from Italian: Baptista Giraldo’s philosophical treatise A Discourse of Civill Life, containing the Ethike Part of Morall Philosophie. It was published in 1606, though written about twenty years earlier. The 1606 edition appeared in two versions.

The book’s dedication is to Lord Grey and its introduction is of particular interest. Bryskett describes a late-1580s gathering at his Dublin-area cottage with friends such as Dr. John Longe, Christopher Carleill, Sir Thomas Norris, Warham St Leger, and Edmund Spenser. He explains how Italians have popularized moral philosophy by translating and explaining Plato and Aristotle, and he urges English writers to follow that example. He asks Spenser to give a philosophical lecture on the spot, but Spenser declines because he is already working on The Faerie Queene. Still, Spenser invites Bryskett to read his Italian translation of Giraldo, which Bryskett does. The published work includes some remarks made by Spenser during the reading.

After Sidney’s death, Spenser published elegies in Astrophel (1586; collected with Colin Clouts Come Home Again in 1595). Bryskett contributed two elegies: “A Pastorall Æclogue” (signed) and “The Mourning Muse of Thestylis.” These were entered in the Stationers’ Register in 1587 but do not seem to have appeared separately. In Spenser’s Amoretti and Epithalamion (1595), Sonnet 33 is addressed to Bryskett, with Spenser apologizing for the delay in completing The Faerie Queene.