William Fennor

{{short description|English-Dutch poet (fl. 1617)}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2019}}

William Fennor ({{fl|1617}}), also known as Wilhelmus Vener, was an English bilingual English/Dutch poet and rogue of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods.{{Cite journal | doi=10.1007/BF01514320|title = Bilingual poet: William Fennor, Alias Wilhelmus Vener, Enghelsman| journal=Neophilologus| volume=62| pages=151–160|year = 1978|last1 = Simoni|first1 = Anna E. C.|authorlink1=Anna E. C. Simoni}}

He was the author of The Compter’s Commonwealth (1617). This work was written from his experience of imprisonment at London's Wood Street compter.[http://www.bartleby.com/214/1623.html The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21). Volume IV. Prose and Poetry: Sir Thomas North to Michael Drayton. XVI. London and the Development of Popular Literature. § 23. Discoverie of the Knights of the Poste.]

He had been an actor at the Swan theatre, where he performed in England's Joy. In 1615 at Theobalds he recited a poem for the king about the differences between Oxford and Cambridge Universities. In 1616 he recited a poem on the Order of the Garter to the court of King James. He appeared in Ben Jonson's Masque of Augurs in 1621. He engaged in a literary dispute with John Taylor the Water Poet.John Nichols, Progresses of James the First, vol. 3 (London, 1828), pp. 97, 139-65.