Roger Manners, 5th Earl of Rutland
Roger Manners, 5th Earl of Rutland ( * October 6, 1576, † June 26, 1612 in Cambridge, England ) was an English nobleman who served as patron of the arts in the Elizabethan era.
Life
He was the son of John Manners, 4th Earl of Rutland ( to 1559-1588 ) and Francis Charlton. Manners studied at Queens ' College, Cambridge. Later he followed his tutor John Jegon to the Corpus Christi College, where he in 1588 after the death of his father inherited the title. At Cambridge he led the life of a nobleman from a wealthy family, had a servant and went hunting. In February 1595 he graduated with a Master of Arts in 1596 and began a trip to Europe via Paris and Switzerland to Italy, where he enrolled at the University of Padua.
1598, he was admitted at Gray 's Inn in London as a lawyer. He was a close friend of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, at the military companies in Ireland he took part in 1599 as a colonel of infantry. There, however, he remained only briefly (he was one of those who Essex arbitrarily raised there to knighthood, so this aroused the indignation of the queen). In the same year he also received a Master of Arts from Oxford University and then joined the troops of Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland, on behalf of the Netherlands against Spain. In 1600 he was constable in the castle of Nottingham and Stewart Sherwood Forrest. Since 1601 he was involved in the conspiracy against Queen Elizabeth Devereux, for which this was executed in February 1601, he landed in the Tower. He was remorseful and was discharged after detailed examination against payment of 30,000 pounds. Under Elizabeth's successor, James I, he was back in favor. His finances recovered when he 1603 received the supervision of Birkwood Park in Yorkshire and Clipstone Castle in Northamptonshire. From June to August 1603, he led an embassy to Denmark to King Christian IV in order to bring this Order of the Garter, which he received given by the English King, and the King of England ( whose wife Anna was a Danish princess) at baptism to be represented by his son. In the same year he became Lord Lieutenant of Lincolnshire and Stewart of Grantham, which was still further increased in 1609 to that of Long Bennington and Mansfield.
Manners was praised by his contemporaries as a man of high talents, was friends with many literati and frequently attended the theater in London, as well as his close friend, Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton. He is said to have introduced the architect ( and organizer of courtly masques ) Inigo Jones at court.
In 1599 he married Elizabeth Sidney ( 1584-1612 ), the daughter of the courtier and poet Sir Philip Sidney and granddaughter of Francis Walsingham. After Manners early death at age 35 his title fell to his younger brother Francis Manners ( 1578-1632 ). Some sources speculate that Manners had been poisoned by his wife Elizabeth. It is located in the Church of St. Mary the Virgin buried in Bottesford in Leicestershire. His wife, who died shortly after him, on the other hand is buried with her father Philip Sidney.
Letters from Manners are preserved in the family.
Occasionally, he has been named as a candidate in the authorship debate surrounding William Shakespeare. This is in addition to his avid theater eg stated that he had fellow students in Padua named Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.