Today we mark the death of Thomas Cooper, an English bishop, lexicographer, theologian, and writer. Cooper was born in Oxford, England, where he was educated at Magdalen College. He became Master of Magdalen College School and afterwards practiced as a physician in Oxford.
Cooper’s writing career began in 1548, when he compiled the Bibliotheca Eliotae, a Latin dictionary by Sir Thomas Elyot. In 1549 he published a continuation of Thomas Lanquet’s Chronicle of the World. This work, known as Cooper’s Chronicle, covers the period from AD 17 to the current time when it was written.
In 1559, another writer Rober Crowley, updated and changed the Chronicle, and Cooper then issued his own updated version in 1560 removing most of Crowley’s changes.
In 1565 he published the first edition of his most famous work, the Thesaurus Linguae Romanae et Britannicae, and this was followed by three other editions.
John Aubrey in “Brief lives”, gave the following glimpse into the creation of this dictionary:
“Dr. Edward Davenant told me that this learned man had a shrew to his wife, who was irreconcileably angrie with him for sitting-up late at night so, compileing his Dictionarie, (dedicated to Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester). When he had halfe-donne it, she had the opportunity to gett into his studie, tooke all his paines out in her lap, and threw it into the fire, and burnt it. Well, for all that, that good man had so great a zeale for the advancement of learning, that he began it again, and went through with it to that perfection that he hath left it to us, a most usefull worker.“
A close inspection of Shakespeare’s word usage shows that he used Cooper’s Thesaurus in the creation of his many poems and plays.
That’s your Tudor Minute for today. Remember you can dive deeper into life in 16th century England through the Renaissance English History Podcast at englandcast.com.
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Heather Teysko is the creator, writer, and producer of The Renaissance English History Podcast, one of the longest running indie history podcasts, going since 2009. She's been writing about history online for over 25 years, since her first site on Colonial American history became number one in history on Yahoo in 1998. She writes books, created the original Tudor Planner (a yearly diary filled with Tudor history) and in 2019 created the world's first Tudorcon (you can "attend" online this year!). She has been passionate about Tudor England since she first read Alison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII 20 years ago, and subsequently moved to London after college to spend her time immersed in Tudor history.