Nicholas Grimald

Poet and playwright, born in Cambridgeshire, EC England, UK. He studied at Oxford and Cambridge, became Ridley's chaplain, but recanted under Queen Mary I. He contributed 40 poems to Tottel's Songes and Sonettes (1557), known as Tottel's Miscellany, and translated Virgil and Cicero. He also wrote two Latin verse tragedies on religious subjects.

Nicholas Grimald (or Grimoald) (1519-1562), English poet, was born in Huntingdonshire, the son probably of Giovanni Baptista Grimaldi, who had been a clerk in the service of Empson and Dudley in the reign of Henry VII.

He was educated at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he took his B.A. In 1547 he was lecturing on rhetoric at Christ Church, and shortly afterwards became chaplain to Bishop Ridley, who, when he was in prison, desired Grimald to translate Laurentius Valla's book against the alleged Donation of Constantine, and the De gestis Basiliensis Concilii of Aeneas Sylvius (Pius II). Grimald contributed to the original edition (June 1557) of Songes and Sonettes (commonly known as Tottel's Miscellany), forty poems, only ten of which are retained in the second edition published in the next month.

He translated (1553) Cicero's De officiis as Marcus Tullius Ciceroes thre bokes of duties (2nd ed., 1556); Archipropheta sive Johannes Baptista, printed at Cologne in 1548, probably performed at Oxford the year before, and Christus redivivus (Cologne, 1543), edited by JM Hart (for the Modern Language Association of America, 1886, separately issued 1899).

It cannot be determined whether Grimald was familiar with Buchanan's Baptistes (1543), or with Jacob Schoepper's Johannes decollatus vel Ectrachelistes (1546). Grimald provides a purely romantic motive for the catastrophe in the passionate attachment of Herodias to Herod Antipas, and constantly resorts to lyrical methods. As a poet Grimald is memorable as the earliest follower of Surrey in the production of blank verse.

See C.