D'AVENANT, Sir WILLIAM, an English poet and playwright, was b. in the year 1605 or 1606 at Oxford. where his father kept the Crown inn, a house at which Shakespeare was in the habit of stopping when on his journeys between London and Stratford. D., while still a child, had a great admiration for Shakespeare, and when only 10 years of age, on the occasion of Shakespeare's death, the precocious boy penned an ode In Re membrawe of Master William Shakespeare. He began to write for the stage in the year 1628, and 10 years after, on the death of Ben Jonson, he was appointed poet-laureate. He afterwards became manager of Drury Lane theater, but entering into the intrigues of the civil war, he was apprehended, and cast into the Tower. He escaped, however, to France, and returning, distinguished himself so much in the cause of the royalists, that he was knighted by Charles after the battle of Gloucester. D. a second time got into difficulties, and was confined in the Tower for 2 years, when he was released, as is said, on the intercession of Milton. Once more free, he set about establishing a theater,
and succeeded. After the restoration, lie was favored by royal patronage, and continued to write and superintend the performance of plays until his death, April 7, 1668. D.'s epic, entitled Gorulibert, a poem of about 6,000 lines, is now almost wholly forgotten.— CHARLES D'AVENANT, a son of the preceding (b. 1656, d. 1714), distinguished himself as a writer on political economy and finance. His chief works are: An Essay upon Ways and Means of Supplying the War (1695); Discourses on the Public Revenues and the Trade of England (1698); A Discourse upon Grants and Resumption (1700); An Essay upon the Balance of Power • The Right of Making War, Peace, and Alliances (1701); Essays upon Peace at Home and War Abroad (1704), etc. A selection of his works was published in 1771, by sir Charles Whitworth, afterwards earl Whitworth.