Barclay

Barclay, ALEXANDER, poet and prose-writer, was born about 1475, almost certainly in Scotland, may have studied at either or both of the English universities, and then travelled in France and Italy. Some time before 1508 he was appointed, through Bishop Cornish, a priest of Ottery St Mary, Devonshire. About 1511 he became a monk of the Benedictine monastery of Ely; later he assumed the Franciscan habit at Canterbury; and he died at Croydon in June 1552, six weeks after he had been presented to the rectory of All-Hallows, London. His claim to notice rests chiefly upon his famous poem, The Shyp of Folys of the Worlde—partly a translation, and partly an imitation of the German Narrenschiff by Sebastian Brandt (q.v.)—printed by Pynson in 1509. He also published The Castell of Laboure, The Egloges (Eclogues), a translation of Sallust's History of the Jugurthine War, &c. See the admirable edition of the Shyp of Folys by T. H. Jamieson (2 vols. Edin. 1874).