CONSTABLE, HENRY (1562-1613), English poet, grad uated from St. John's college, Cambridge, in 1580. He became a Roman Catholic, but nevertheless appears to have been in the secret service of the English Government in Paris in 1584 to 1585. In 1S98 he was sent by the pope to Scotland to indicate the terms on which James VI. would be supported in his claim to the English throne, and later he was in the service of the king of France. Most of his adult life was spent abroad, and when he ventured to visit England in 1604 he was arrested. He died at Liege on Oct. 9, 1613. Constable has an early place in the devel opment of the English sonnet. His Diana, the praises of his Mistress in certain sweet sonnets, by H. C., which owes some thing to the Diane of Desportes, contained 23 poems, and was printed in 1592. The reprint of 1594 contains 76 pieces, many of them by other hands. Constable contributed four sonnets to Sid ney's Apologie of Poetry, and four pastoral poems to England's Helicon (1600), one of which, the Shepheardes Song of Venus and Adonis, was certainly known to Shakespeare.
The second edition of Diana was reprinted by Arber in the English Garner, vol. ii. (1877). Sixteen Spirituall Sonnettes attributed to Con stable were found in ms. and printed by Thomas Park in Heliconia (1815), and another small collection found in Canterbury by H. J. Todd was printed in the Harleian Miscellany (1813) . Constable's works were edited by W. C. Hazlitt in 1859.