Donne: a brief biography, which centers around the facts that I found particularly interesting and memorable

So I read up on Donne’s life in the Dictionary of National Biography, and wanted to just share a few of what I thought were the most salient points regarding his life. I present them here in the form of bulleted, though not exhaustive, list:

• Donne was born to a Catholic family. His father was a successful merchant, but died when Donne was around three years old, leaving a widow and six children.
• Donne’s mother was very staunchly Catholic, and so Donne’s education was deeply informed by the Catholic tradition. The DNB says, “In her [Donne’s mother’s] household there should be no uncertainty; protestantism and all that it implied was hateful to her; her children should be brought up in the old creed, and in that alone” (1129).
• Donne had a grammar school until he was twelve years old, and then he entered Oxford. Apparently enrolling at Oxford at such a young age was not entirely unusual at the time, and in doing so, Donne avoided having to take an oath of allegiance to the Anglican church, which was required of entrants over the age of sixteen.
• It appears that shortly after his finishing his Oxford studies, he had a job as a secretary to the lord keeper. The DNB points out that this required him to live a very public life. It appears that he made many important friends during this time and his poetry started to circulate among some circles. The DNB observes that “He seems to have had an extraordinary power of attaching others to himself; there is a vein of peculiar tenderness which runs through the expressions in which his friends speak of him, as if he had exercised over their affection for him an unusual and indefinable witchery” (1130).
• In 1600, Donne secretly married the daughter of the man for whom he was working as a secretary. When her father discovered this, he was furious, and had the witnesses to the secret marriage imprisoned. He dismissed Donne as secretary in enough ignonomy as to spoil Donne’s career.
• Donne was probably ordained as a divine on January 25, 1615 (though the date is, apparently, not entirely clear). Soon after, James I made him his chaplain and Donne thus preached regularly before James’ court.
• Shortly before his death in 1631, Donne preached an Ash Wednesday sermon entitled “Death’s Duell”. He was in very poor health when he preached it, and the king said that Donne was preaching his own funeral sermon. The DNB comments that, “There is a tone of awful solemnity throughout the discourse, but no sign of failing powers" (1135-6).