Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Kidley, William

by Thomas Bailey Saunders

KIDLEY, WILLIAM (fl. 1624), poet, was son of John Kidley of Dartmouth, Devonshire, where he was born in 1606. In matriculating at Oxford he gave his name as Kidley, alias Pointer. He entered at Exeter College on 16 July 1625, and graduated B.A. 12 Nov. 1627. He speaks, in a marginal note interpolated in the work noticed below, of returning to the college after a twelve years' absence, apparently in 1639. In 1624 he composed in his leisure ‘A Poetical Relation of the Voyage of S^r Richard Hawkins [q. v.], Knight, unto Mare del Zur,’ and ‘History of the year 1588, wth other Historical Passages of these Tymes (during the Raigne of the B. Q. Elizabeth).’ Hawkins's account of his voyage to the South Sea had been published in 1622. Kidley's poem, which is now among the manuscripts at the British Museum (Sloane Coll. 2024), and has not been printed, is entitled ‘Kidley's Hawkins.’ It was designed to be in eight books, but six only were completed. Kidley refers to other attempts made by him in verse, both at Oxford and at Dartmouth.

[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, ii. 367–74; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1500–1714.]

T. B. S.