- citizen and a miserable souldiour; brieflye touching the commodyties and discommodyties of warre and peace. By W. Warren.’ This is licensed to Richard Jones in the ‘Stationers' Register,’ 7 Nov. 1578. No copy is known to exist (Arber, Transcript, ii. 340).
- ‘A pleasant new Fancie of a fondlings device. Intitled and cald the Nurcerie of Names, wherein is presented (to the order of our Alphabet) the brandishing brightnes of our English Gentlewomen. Contrived and written in this last time of vacation, and now first published and committed to printing this present month of mery May. By Guillam de Warrino. Imprinted at London by Richard Jones, dwelling over against the signe of the Faulcon, neere Holburne Bridge,’ 1581, 4to, b.l.
In the ‘Stationers' Register’ the ‘Nurcerie of Gentlewomans Names’ is ‘tollerated unto’ Richard Jones on 15 April 1581 (ib. ii. 391). The prefatory matter of the volume consists of some short Latin poems and a euphuistic ‘Proæme to the Gentleman Readers,’ signed ‘W. Warren, Gent.,’ as well as an ‘Address to the Gentlewomen of England.’ In the latter Warren speaks of himself as ‘your poor Poet and your olde friend.’ The poems, in fourteen-syllable verse, on women's names are extravagant and conceited, but the versification is unusually true. The poem on Elizabeth is an excellent example of the contemporary style of compliment to the queen. Each page of the poems has a woodcut border. Only two copies are known to exist, one at Britwell and the other in the Huth Library. The interest if not the merit of the volume, which Corser very emphatically insists upon, makes it surprising that it has never been reprinted.
[Corser's Collectanea Anglo-Poetica, v. 359; Hazlitt's Handbook, p. 643.]
WARRINGTON, Earls of. [See Booth, Henry, first earl, 1652-1694; Booth, George, second earl, 1675-1758.]
WARTER, JOHN WOOD (1806–1878), divine and antiquary, born on 21 Jan. 1806, was the eldest son of Henry de Grey Warter (1770–1853) of Cruck Meole, Shropshire, who married, on 19 March 1805, Emma Sarah Moore (d. 1863), daughter of William Wood of Marsh Hall and Hanwood, Shropshire. Upon leaving Shrewsbury school (under Samuel Butler) Warter matriculated from Christ Church, Oxford, on 14 Oct. 1824, and graduated B.A. 1827, M.A. 1834, B.D. 1841.
Warter was an intimate friend of Robert Southey, whose eldest daughter, Edith May Southey (b. 1 May 1804, d. 25 July 1871), he married at Keswick on 15 Jan. 1834. Many letters from Southey to him, beginning on 18 March 1830, are in the sixth volume of ‘Southey's Life and Correspondence.’ From 1830 to 1833 he was chaplain to the English embassy at Copenhagen, and became an honorary member of the Scandinavian and Icelandic Literary societies. During these years he travelled through Norway and Sweden, was intimate with the leading scholars of Northern Europe, including Professor Rask, and was supplied with books from the royal library of Denmark. By this means he became an expert in ‘Danish and Swedish lore, and in the exquisitely curious Icelandic sagas,’ and read ‘German literature of all sorts, especially theological.’ An interesting letter by him, written at Southey's house on 17 Sept. 1833, is printed in the life of Bishop ‘Samuel Butler’ (ii. 62–3). He was then studying the literature of Spain and Italy and the treatises of the old English divines. In 1834, just before his marriage, he had been appointed by the archbishop of Canterbury to the vicarage of West Tarring and Durrington, Sussex, a peculiar of the archbishopric, to which the chapelries of Heene and Patching were then annexed. He remained the vicar of West Tarring from 1834 until his death. For some years to 31 Dec. 1851 he was the rural dean.
From the date of his appointment to this benefice he devoted his leisure ‘to the pleasant task of rescuing from oblivion every fact that had the remotest bearing upon the history of Tarring’ (Elwes and Robinson, Western Sussex, p. 231). The result was the publication of a valuable antiquarian work, ‘Appendicia et Pertinentiæ: Parochial Fragments on the parish of West Tarring and the Chapelries of Heene and Durrington,’ 1853; and two delightful volumes on ‘The Seaboard and the Down; or my parish in the South. By an Old Vicar,’ 1860, describing the social life of its inhabitants. These books displayed his wide reading.
Warter died on 21 Feb. 1878, and was buried with his wife in West Tarring churchyard (the epitaphs are printed in ‘Notes and Queries,’ 6th ser. vii. 306, 517). A window under the tower of the church was erected by Mrs. Warter as a memorial to Southey (Murray, Sussex Handbook, p. 77). Warter was an old-fashioned churchman of the ‘high and dry’ school, and had a perpetual difference with the ecclesiastical commissioners. He published many tracts and sermons. His other more important works included:
- ‘The Acharnians, Knights, Wasps, and
