Constable, Henry (1562-1613)

English poet. His Diana (1592) is a series of 23 sonnets, praised by Ben Jonson and others. He also wrote 16 Sprituall Sonnettes to the Honour of God and hys Sayntes and The Shepheard's Song of Venus and Adonis.

Constable was educated at Cambridge. He became a Roman Catholic, and spent much of his time in Paris. In 1598 he tried to form a new English Catholic college there. He went to London in 1603, and was confined in the Tower for about a year because of his involvement in pro-Catholic publications. In 1610 he returned to Paris. He was a friend of the writers Philip Sidney and John Harington.