By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Chidiock Tichborne was only 24 years old when he was executed in the most horrifically brutal way, by being hanged, drawn, and quartered, for his role in the Catholic Babington Plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth I in 1586. Tichborne’s Elegy, which he composed on 19 September 1586 on the eve of his execution and sent to his wife Agnes, remains his most famous poem, and an oft-anthologised example of sixteenth-century English verse.