Thomas Shipman

Thomas Shipman (1632–1680) was a Royalist gentleman-poet of Nottinghamshire. He wrote steadily from the last years of the Commonwealth through the Restoration, and his verse is largely occasional: elegies for friends and for Charles I, verse-letters and thank-you poems to neighbouring gentry, drinking songs in praise of Canary wine, and prologues written for players. Many of the poems carry the year of composition in their titles.

Almost nothing of his verse was printed in his lifetime. Carolina, or Loyal Poems appeared in 1683, three years after his death, published by friends. It opens with poems on the execution of Charles I and the Restoration and closes with a long Pindaric poem on Belvoir Castle, the seat of the Earls of Rutland. The Resolute Courtier is the poem by which he is most often anthologised.