Concept

William Wycherley

Summary
William Wycherley (baptised 8 April 1641 - 1 January 1716) was an English dramatist of the Restoration period, best known for the plays The Country Wife and The Plain Dealer. Wycherley was born at Clive near Shrewsbury, Shropshire, although his birthplace has been said to be Trench Farm to the north near Wem later the birthplace of another writer, John Ireland, who was said to have been adopted by Wycherley's widow following the death of Ireland's parents. He was baptised on 8 April 1641 at Whitchurch, Hampshire, son of Daniel Wycherley (1617–1697) and his wife Bethia, daughter of William Shrimpton. His family was settled on a moderate estate of about £600 a year and his father was in the business service of the Marquess of Winchester. Wycherley lived during much of his childhood at Trench Farm, one his paternal family's properties, then spent some three years of his adolescence in France, where he was sent, at fifteen, to be educated on the banks of the Charente. While in France, Wycherley converted to Roman Catholicism. He returned to England shortly before the restoration of King Charles II, and lived at The Queen's College, Oxford, where Thomas Barlow was provost. Under Barlow's influence, Wycherley returned to the Church of England. Thomas Macaulay hints that Wycherley's subsequent turning back to Roman Catholicism once more was influenced by the patronage and unwonted liberality of the Duke of York, the future King James II. As a professional fine gentleman, at a period when, as Major Pack wrote, "the amours of Britain would furnish as diverting memoirs, if well related, as those of France published by Rabutin, or those of Nero's court writ by Petronius", Wycherley was obliged to be a loose liver. However, his nickname of "Manly Wycherley" seems to have been earned by his straightforward attitude to life. Wycherley left Oxford and took up residence at the Inner Temple, which he had initially entered in October 1659 but gave little attention to studying law and ceased to live there after 1670.
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