SEDLEY, SIR CHARLES (c. 1639-1701), English wit and dramatist, was born about 1639, and was the son of Sir John Sedley of Aylesford in Kent. He was educated at Wadham College, Oxford. The college was then under the direction of John Wilkins, whose other pupils included Rochester and Car Scroop. Sedley is famous as a patron of literature in the Restoration period, and was the "Lisideius" of Dryden's Essay of Dramatic Poesy. His most famous song is "Phyllis,is my only joy." His first comedy, The Mulberry Garden (1668), hardly sustains Sedley's contemporary reputation for wit in conversation. The best of his comedies is Bellamira; or The Mistress (1687), an imitation of the Eunuchus of Terence, in which the heroine is supposed to represent the duchess of Cleveland, the mistress of Charles II. His two tragedies, Antony and Cleopatra (1667) and The Tyrant King of Crete (1702), an adaptation of Henry Killigrew's Pallan tus and Eudora, have little merit. He also produced The Grumbler
(1702), an adaptation of Le Grondeur of Brueys and Palaprat.
An indecent frolic in Bow Street, for which he was heavily fined, made Sedley notorious. He was member of parliament for New Romney in Kent. His bon mot at the expense of James II. is well known. The king had seduced his daughter, Catherine (c. 1657-1717), and created her countess of Dorchester, where upon Sedley remarked that he hated ingratitude, and, as the king had made his daughter a countess, he would endeavour to make the king's daughter a queen. He died on Aug. 20, 1701.
See The Works of Sir Charles Sedley in Prose and Verse (1778), with a slight notice of the author ; and V. de Sola Pinto, Sir Charles Sedley 1639-1701: A Study in the Life and Literature of the Restora tion (1927).