Leonard Digges

Leonard Digges was an accomplished Hispanist and minor poet, a younger son of the astronomer Thomas Digges (1545–95) and younger brother of Sir Dudley Digges (1583–1639). After his father's death in 1595, his mother married Thomas Russell of Alderminster, who was named by William Shakespeare as one of the two overseers of his will. There are varying opinions about the extent to which the young Leonard Digges might have been influenced in his choice of profession by his stepfather's association with Shakespeare; disagreements about whether he was or was not personally acquainted with the playwright have in recent years eclipsed discussion of the work of Digges himself.