Samuel Pordage

Baptized in 1633, he was the eldest son of John Pordage, a Berkshire clergyman and religious mystic. Samuel Pordage became known as an English poet, dramatist, and translator, and later writers have linked him with Merchant Taylors' School and legal study at Lincoln's Inn.

His writing ranged widely. Alongside poems and translations, he published the tragedies Herod and Mariamne and The Siege of Babylon, as well as the romance Eliana. He is most often remembered today for Azaria and Hushai (1682), written as a response to Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel.

Sources agree that he was active into the late 17th century and was alive in or after 1691, though the exact year of his death is uncertain. That slight mystery fits a writer whose reputation now rests on a handful of vivid works from a turbulent political and literary age.