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Fynes Moryson

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FYNES MORYSON (1566-1630), English traveller and writer, was the son of a Lincolnshire gentleman, Thomas Moryson, member of parliament for Grimsby. After being educated at Cambridge, where he gained a fellowship at Peterhouse, Fynes Moryson spent many years in travel on the continent of Europe, in Palestine, and in Asia Minor. In 1600 he became secretary to Sir Charles Blount, lord-deputy ofIreland, in which country his brother, Sir Richard Moryson, held an important government appointment. In 1617 Moryson published an account of his travels and of his experiences in Ireland, where he witnessed O'Neill's rebellion, in a voluminous work entitled An Itinerary. He died on the 12th of February 1630. The Itinerary was originally intended to consist of five parts; but only three were printed, a fourth being preserved in manuscript in the library of Corpus Christi College, Oxford (partially printed in 1903 in Charles Hughes's Shakespeare's Europe). Another part of the Itinerary was republished in 1735 with the title History of Ireland 1 599160 3, with a short Narrative of the State of the Kingdom from 1169; and in 1890 Henry Morley included in the "Carisbrooke Library" a volume, Ireland under Elizabeth and James I., described by Spenser, Sir John Davies and Fynes Moryson. The Itinerary is a work of great value to the historian as a truthful picture of the social conditions prevailing in Europe at the beginning of the 17th century.