Edmund was in 1606 and inherited Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire. He was educated at Eton and King's College, Cambridge. In 1631 he married a London heiress who died three years later. He entered Parliament early and was at first a brilliant and active member of the opposition. Later he became a Royalist and in 1643 was the leader in a plot (`Waller's plot') to seize London for Charles I. For this he was imprisoned, fined and banished but, on betraying his associates, spared execution. He made his peace with Cromwell in 1651, and returned to England. He was received again into royal favor on the Restoration and was once more a member of Parliament. The eighteenth century gave Waller rather more credit than he deserved for the development of the heroic couplet, deeming him, with Denham, the founder of the school of correct verse. He died in 1687 anfter a short illness.

Go Lovely Rose

The Self Banished