John Caryll

Who was John Caryll?

John Caryll, 1st Baron Caryll of Durford in the Jacobite Peerage, was a poet, dramatist, and diplomat; not to be confused with his nephew, John Caryll, the dedicatee of Alexander Pope's Rape of the Lock.

Caryll was born at West Harting, England. He was head of an old English Catholic and Royalist family at that time settled in West Harting, in Sussex. His father, of whom he was heir, was likewise named John; his mother was a daughter of William, second Baron Petre. Of his education he received part at the English College of St. Omer, in Artois, part at the Venerable English College in Rome. During the reign of Charles II of England he produced several plays and poems. In poetry his chief performances were a translation of Ovid's Epistle of Briseïs to Achilles, first appearing in 1680 in a work entitled Ovid's Epistles, translated by several hands, and afterwards separately; also a translation of Virgil's first Eclogue, printed in Nichol's Select Collection of Miscellany Poems and published in 1683.