verse; The Prisoner's Plea, 1662, prose). While still a prisoner he also resumed his prophetic mantle in his medley of prose and verse called ‘A Proclamation, in the name of the King of Kings, to all the Inhabitants of the Isles of Great Britain. … Whereto are added some Fragments of the same Author's omitted in the first impression of the booke intitled “Scraps and Crums”’ (1662, 8vo). From Newgate on 8 March he dated, too, his prose ‘Paralellogrammaton: an Epistle to the three Nations of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Whereby their sins being parallel'd with those of Judah and Israel, they are forewarned and exhorted to a timely repentance’ (3 May 1662, 8vo). ‘Verses intended to the King's Majesty. By Major George Wither, whist [sic] he was prisoner in Newgate,’ bore the date 22 March 1662[–3], (two octavo editions).
After his release in July 1663 Wither issued ‘Tuba Pacifica: Seasonable Præcautions, whereby is sounded forth a Retreat from the War intended between England and the United Provinces of Lower Germany. … Imprinted for the Author, and are to be disposed of rather for Love than Money,’ 1664 (8vo, in verse). He remained in London during the great plague of 1665, and drew from it many pious morals in his verse ‘Memorandum to London occasioned by the Pestilence,’ 1665, with a ‘Warning piece to London,’ 8vo. In 1665 there also appeared ‘Meditations upon the Lord's Prayer, with a Preparatory Preamble to the Right Understanding and True Use of this Pattern,’ London, 8vo; and next year ‘Three Private Meditations, for the most part of Publick Concernment,’ London, 1666, 8vo (in verse). Once again he ventured into the political arena with a poem called ‘Sighs for the Pitchers: Breathed out in a Personal Contribution to the National Humiliation, the last day of May 1666, in the Cities of London and Westminster, upon the near approaching engagement then expected between the English and Dutch Navies;’ there is a warning prefixed of many faults escaped in the printing owing to ‘the author's absence;’ a woodcut on the title presents two pitchers (England and Holland); there were two editions in 1666. The government viewed the pamphlet with suspicion, and warrants were issued for the arrest of those who sold it (Cal. State Papers, 1665–6, p. 569).
The last work that Wither published was ‘the first part’ of a series of extracts from his old prophetic books, which bore the general title ‘Fragmenta Poetica.’ ‘The first part’ had the subsidiary title ‘Ecchoes from the Sixth Trumpet. Reverberated by a Review of Neglected Remembrances’ (1666); a portrait of the author at the age of seventy-nine was prefixed. The volume, which supplies an account of Wither's chief works, was twice reissued posthumously in 1669—first with the new title ‘Nil Vltra, or the Last Works of Captain George Wither;’ and again with the title ‘Fragmenta Prophetica, or the Remains of George Wither, esq.’
Wither died in his house in the precincts of the Savoy on 2 May 1667, after living in London ‘almost sixty years together;’ he was buried ‘within the east door’ at the church of the Savoy Hospital in the Strand. An ‘epitaph composed by himself upon a common fame of his being dead and buried’ was published in his ‘Memorandum to London,’ 1665.
He married Elizabeth, daughter of John Emerson or Emerton of South Lambeth. She survived him; her will, dated 15 May 1677, was proved 19 Jan. 1682–3. ‘She was a great wit,’ according to Aubrey, ‘and would write in verse too.’ Wither frequently refers to ‘his dear Betty’ in his poems in terms of deep devotion. By her he had six children, only two of whom—a son and a daughter—seem to have survived the poet. The daughter Elizabeth married Adrian Barry, citizen of London, and of Thame, Oxfordshire, and died about 1708. She prepared for publication in 1688 her father's ‘Divine Poems by way of a paraphrase on the Ten Commandments;’ she wrote under the initials ‘E. B.,’ and dedicated the work to her father's friends. The poet's surviving son, Robert, was buried at Bentworth in 1677, and by his wife Elizabeth, daughter of John Hunt of Fidding (Theddon), left, with other issue, two sons—Hunt Wither and Robert Wither (d. 1695)—and two daughters (cf. Shepherds Hunting, ed. Brydges, 1814, pp. x–xiii).
Besides the engraved portraits prefixed to ‘Juvenilia,’ ‘The Emblems,’ ‘Fragmenta Poetica,’ and other of his books, an original portrait of Wither, painted in oil by Cornelius Janssen, was sold at Gutch's sale in 1858. This is probably the picture from which the likeness by John Payne was engraved for Wither's ‘Emblemes’ (1635). The head prefixed to the thirty-first emblem in Thomas Jenner's ‘Soules Solace’ (1631, 4to) is supposed to be intended for Wither.
In his ‘Fides Anglicana’ (1660) Wither enumerated eighty-six of his works. His ‘Ecchoes from the Sixth Trumpet’ (1666) gives a far briefer list. The full total of his publications reached a hundred, and others remained in manuscript. Various reissues of
