Seguarde, John (DNB00)

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SEGUARDE, JOHN (fl. 1414), rhetorician and poet, was the son of a knight of Norwich, and became master of the old grammar school of Norwich. He reproved the profanity of monks and priests, and the abuse of poetry by those who wrote lascivious verses and rhymes. He was consequently deprived. He himself bore a high reputation as a rhetorician and poet, and wrote the following works, all of which are extant in Merton College MS. cxcix.: 1. ‘Metristenchiridion,’ a book on metres, which he dedicated to Richard Courtenay [q. v.], bishop of Norwich. 2. ‘Comœdia or Ludicra.’ 3. ‘A Book of Epigrams,’ dedicated to one Master J. W. 4. ‘Argumenta & Integumenta Metamorphoseon.’ Pits ascribes to him a work, ‘De Laudibus Regis Henrici Quinti,’ in verse. The ‘De Miseria Hominis et Penis Inferni,’ in the Royal Library, 15 A xxii. 5, ascribed to him, is by Segardus junior of St. Omer.

[Coxe's Catalogue of Oxford MSS.; Blomefield's Norfolk, iv. 376; Holinshed, ii. 584 (ed. 1586–7), s.a. 1422.]

M. B.