The New International Encyclopædia/Fisher, Payne

FISHER, Payne (1616-93). An English poet and political satirist. He was born at Warnford, Dorsetshire, and was educated at Oxford and Cambridge, but went soldiering to Holland in 1638. The following year found him in the English Royalist army, where he afterwards fought under Prince Rupert; but at the defeat of Marston Moor he retired, to join the ranks of needy literary men in London. Turncoat through necessity, he grew in favor with the Parliamentarians, and was Cromwell's poet laureate, writing Latin verse to order, in a highly panegyric style. At the Restoration he merely changed his dedications; but despite the satirical pamphlets he directed against his late patrons, he fell out of favor at Court and died poor. Two prose works which he wrote while in Fleet Prison are of some importance because they describe Tombs, Monuments, and Sepulchral Inscriptions which were destroyed in the great fire.