Richard Brathwaite: First person to coin the word “computer”

It is the Manor House at East Appleton, set in two acres of mature gardens in an “idyllic hamlet” to the south of Catterick.

It was to this quiet, country location that the poet and gentleman of pleasure Richard Brathwaite – best known for being the first person to coin the word “computer” in the English language – lived out the last years of his life with his second wife while dreaming of his first.

Brathwaite was born in 1588 in Kendal – he is known as “the first Lakeland poet” – and, after attending Oxford university and studying law, he inherited his family’s estates in Westmoreland and North Yorkshire which provided him with the wealth to devote himself to poetry.

And pleasure. He was, says John Bowes in his 2008 biography of the poet, “a familiar face in the brothels and taverns of London”.

Because of his reputation, when, aged 29, he proposed marriage to 20-year-old Frances Lawson, of Neasham Abbey near Darlington, her parents opposed the union.

He had just published a volume of poetry called A Strappado for the Divell, which was a supposedly satirical look at lust and avarice, plus another book on the pleasures of drinking and another on the delights of tobacco and “the smoaking age”. He didn’t know it, but in his 1613 book The Yong Mans Gleanings, he had stumbled upon a word that would come to dominate later centuries. In describing a mathematician of his acquaintance, he described him as the "best arithmetician that ever breathed…the truest computer” – it was the first recorded use of the word "computer" in the English language.

However, the opposition of Frances’ parents did not prevent the wedding. He fraudulently obtained a marriage licence and on May 4, 1617, they tied the knot at Hurworth church, pictured below.

The happy couple lived over in Kendal and Brathwaite continued his prodigious output of poetry, which he often wrote in clever rhyming Latin as well as English doggerel. His best known saucy book of his day was Barnabee's Journal which is a travelogue in which a man named Barnaby takes four different routes from London to Kendal. The book is described as “libidinous and drunken” and as a “rollicking romp”, and it is conjectured that Brathwaite did a lot of personal research before writing.

He was also well known for his books on etiquette. His best seller was called The English Gentlewoman. It was a guide to the conduct of the female gentry and he idealised the devout and obedient wife, who was wonderful with her children, firm in her management of domestic affairs and always subservient to her husband. The best bit of advice he could affluent young women was to "tip their tongues with silence".

It is conjectured that this domestic goddess was based upon Frances, who was, in contrast to her husband, so pious that she kept her own shroud on open display in her wardrobe as a reminder of her own mortality.

They had nine children in 16 years of marriage before Frances died of consumption in 1633, plunging Brathwaite into a period of mourning and intense scribbling, in which he composed a long series of elegies dedicated to her memory.

In 1639, he married Mary Croft, of Kirklington, near Thirsk, and East Appleton became their main base.

They had one son, Sir Stafford Brathwaite, a well known naval captain who was killed in a sea-fight with Algerian pirates, and Brathwaite himself became well respected in the Catterick area, being the trustee of a local school.

He died aged 85 at the Manor House on May 4, 1673, and was buried three days later in Catterick church, where there is a monument in his honour.

“Although his prolific output has not gained much critical or popular attention since his lifetime, Brathwaite's œuvre is of growing importance as evidence of a gentleman's literary activity in the 17th Century as well as of particular approaches to social and political issues,” says his entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography as scholars study his writings to discover what life was really like in his day.

They also note that for all of his rollicking writings, Frances, of Neasham, was the love of his life. In one of his tenderest poems, he wrote: “A Modell of her feature yet I have, Which I will carry with me to my Grave And this in private am I wont to eye, And view't from top to toe, then set it by, Then take it up againe to feed my sight, Which cheeres, but cannot cloy mine appetite.”

His Manor House at East Appleton is on the market with Savills for £1.45m