Samuel Butler , known largely in the late twentieth century (if at all) as the author of Hudibras (1663-1678) and whom librarians and students confuse with a late-Victorian novelist, was in his day a favorite writer with kings and clergymen alike. Hudibras, a staunch attack of the Parliamentarians, won favor with King Charles II, who presented several copies of his favorite book as gifts. Butler, the poet who popularized burlesque verse in English, found a devoted follower in Jonathan Swift, whose own burlesque poems are written in the form Butler made famous: "hudibrastics."

Biographical details about Butler's early life are slim. The fifth of Samuel and Mary Butler's eight children, he was baptized on 14 February 1613 in Strensham, south of Worcester, and was named after his father, a clerk to Sir John Russell and an occasional church warden. Samuel Butler, Sr., descended from prosperous yeoman farmers, was a devout Anglican...