LOCAL HISTORY
Canons Ashby, home of the Dryden family and now a National Trust property
Glorious John
Northamptonshire’s Poet Laureate
I
think many living in Northamptonshire will have heard the name John Dryden at one time or another. As one of Northamptonshire’s most famous sons, there are many buildings and institutions bearing his name, but who was he? And what made him so highly esteemed by society, yet ignored by his Northamptonshire family? The Dryden family was established in Northamptonshire around 1550, when the first John Dryden from Cumbria married a wealthy Banbury heiress, Elizabeth Cope. They settled at Canons Ashby near Daventry, building a manor house now under the care of the National Trust. The couple were fervent Puritans, and against the old Roman Catholic Church and the trappings of monarchy. This family stance remained consistent through subsequent generations. 20
Those relations who dared to practice Catholicism were excluded from the inner circle of the family. Our John, John the poet, was the great grandson of the first John Dryden, and born in 1631 in the Northamptonshire vicarage of Aldwincle, where his maternal grandfather was the parish priest. It seems that the Aldwincle Drydens were on good terms with their cousins at Canons Ashby, and young John in time developed a romantic attachment to Honor, the eldest daughter of his Uncle, Sir John.
Portrait of John Dryden by John Michael Wright, circa 1668
Laura Malpas delves into the history of John Dryden
Young John grew up in troubled times. By the time he was ten years old England was in the grip of conflict between the demands of the Roman Catholic monarch Charles I and Parliament. His family, also Parliamentarians with Puritan leanings, moved to Titchmarsh, just across the Nene valley.
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