# Jasper Mayne

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This article is about the English clergyman. For the English chief constable and marksman, see [Jasper Graham Mayne](/source/Jasper_Graham_Mayne).

**Jasper Mayne** (1604 – 6 December 1672) was an [English](/source/England) clergyman, translator, and a minor poet and dramatist.

Mayne was baptized at [Hatherleigh](/source/Hatherleigh), [Devon](/source/Devon), on 23 November 1604, and educated at [Westminster School](/source/Westminster_School) and [Christ Church, Oxford](/source/Christ_Church,_Oxford).[1] He then entered the Church, was given two college livings in [Oxfordshire](/source/Oxfordshire) (the vicarages of Cassington near Woodstock, and Pyrton near Watlington), and in 1646 was made a [Doctor of Divinity](/source/Doctor_of_Divinity) (D.D.). These livings ended under the [Commonwealth](/source/Commonwealth_of_England) (1649–1660), when he was turned out of office to become chaplain to the [Duke of Devonshire](/source/William_Cavendish,_3rd_Earl_of_Devonshire). After the [Restoration](/source/English_Restoration), he was made [canon](/source/Canon_(priest)) of Christ Church (1660–1672), [Archdeacon of Chichester](/source/Archdeacon_of_Chichester) (1660–1672), and chaplain in ordinary to King [Charles II](/source/Charles_II_of_England). Burke records that Dr. Mayne gave £500 towards the rebuilding of [St. Paul's Cathedral](/source/St._Paul's_Cathedral) after the [Great Fire of London](/source/Great_Fire_of_London) in 1666.

Mayne wrote two plays before giving up poetry as unbefitting his station: *[The City Match](/source/The_City_Match)* (1639), a domestic farce acted at Whitehall by the command of King [Charles I](/source/Charles_I_of_England); and *[The Amorous War](/source/The_Amorous_War)* (1648), a [tragicomedy](/source/Tragicomedy). His other works include a number of poems and sermons; translations of [Lucian of Samosata](/source/Lucian) (1638, 1664), and [John Donne](/source/John_Donne)'s *Latin Epigrams*; and the preface to the 1647 [Beaumont and Fletcher](/source/Beaumont_and_Fletcher) first folio.

In an amusing anecdote recounted in Blackwood's Magazine, Dr. Mayne is said to have bequeathed a trunk to an old servant, noting that it contained something that would make him drink. When opened, it was found to contain a red herring.

Shakespeare scholar [Sidney Lee](/source/Sidney_Lee) proposed Jasper Mayne as a possible identity of the "I. M." who wrote the fourth [commendatory verse](/source/Commendatory_verse) in the [First Folio](/source/First_Folio) of [Shakespeare's](/source/William_Shakespeare) plays (1623). Yet since Mayne was only nineteen years old at the time the Folio was published, scholars have tended to favor [James Mabbe](/source/James_Mabbe).[2]

Mayne died on 6 December 1672 at Oxford, and was interred on the north side of the choir at Christchurch.

## Notes

1. [Alumni Oxonienses 1500–1714, Mascall-Meyrick](https://www.british-history.ac.uk/alumni-oxon/1500-1714/pp921-955)

1. F. E. Halliday, *A Shakespeare Companion 1564–1964*, Baltimore, Penguin, 1964; p. 294.

## References

- [Samuel Johnson](/source/Samuel_Johnson) and [William Hazlitt](/source/William_Hazlitt), *Johnson's Lives of the British poets completed by W. Hazlitt*
- John Burke, *A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Commoners of Great Britain and Ireland, Enjoying Territorial Possessions Or High Official Rank*, 1838.
- [British History Online](http://www.british-history.ac.uk/)

## External links

- Lee, Sidney. Vol. 37.

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