Jacob Allestry
Jacob Allestry was an English poet.
Biography
Jacob Allestry, the son of James Allestry, a bookseller who lost his property in the Great Fire of London, was born in 1653. After being educated at Westminster he proceeded to Christ Church, Oxford, in 1671; was music-reader in 1679 and terræ filius in 1682. He had the "chief hand", according to Anthony à Wood, in composing the Verses and Pastoral spoken in Oxford Theatre on 21 May 1681, before James, [Duke of York], and published in Examen Poeticum, 1693.Wood also wrote that hard living caused Allestry to move to a house in Fish Row, in St. Thomas' parish, in the suburbs of Oxford. There he was nursed incognito for about seven weeks, and died "in a poor condition and of a loathsome disease" on Friday, 15 October 1686.