Recovering a Restoration Scribal Poet: The Life and Work of Robert Wolseley, with Notes on His Association with Rochester

The present essay aims to retrieve the “minor poet and wit” Robert Wolseley from obscurity, uncovering new information about his court career and shifting political allegiance, his output as a poet, and his association with the Earl of Rochester. In particular, Paul Davis argues that Wolseley makes a credible candidate for authorship of part or all of the “Allusion to Tacitus” (1679–80). The essay concludes by reconstructing Wolseley’s poetic canon, identifying some eighteen items for which he was almost certainly responsible, either as sole author or in collaboration. These include a number of poetically creditable and historically significant pieces; Robert Wolseley emerges as a Restoration poet overdue scholarly attention not only because of his prestigious literary connections but also in his own right.