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The article presents evidence that author Daniel Defoe, a member of John Foe's family, was born on September 30, 1659. It is clear that Defoe is representing key events in his own existence in his book "Robinson Crusoe." Defoe stated in "The Protestant Monastery," published in 1727, that he was in six sixty-seventh year which would make his birth year 1660. According to Defoe's marriage license, he gave a precise age of 24 when he applied for a licence to marry Mary Tuffley on December 28, 1683.

The article presents information about the birth date of Lady Jane Grey. It is explained that the date has been thought to be in October 1537 but the author argues it to be in June 1537. Information about research on Lady Jane Grey is provided and the account of the author Michaelangelo Florio is examined.

This article presents information related to Penelope Rich a premier beauty of the Elizabethan court. Lady Penelope Devereux, best known as Penelope Rich, has long been of interest to scholars as the 'Stella' of Philip Sidney's sonnet sequence "Astrophil and Stella," as the influential sister of the second Earl of Essex who lost his head in 1601 and as the premier beauty of the Elizabethan court for whom much poetry and music was written. Her birth date, however, has remained unknown, generally assigned speculatively to 1562 or 1563. The Dictionary of National Biography offers a tentative 1562 or 1563.

Something of a mystery surrounds the birth of Arthur Lawrence, the coal-miner father of author D. H. Lawrence. A General Register Office entry made on July 18, 1846 records the birth on June 18, 1846 of Arthur John Lawrence, and has unhesitatingly been used by every biographer and genealogist up to now. There is no Register Office record of any other Arthur or John Lawrence born in Brinsley in 1846, 1847,1848, or 1849. Arthur may have been some eighteen months younger than the printed records suggest.

The article informs that for 375 years there has been some doubt, not to say confusion, as to the exact date of birth of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, England. There is a dearth of biographies for this most prominent figure of the last decade of Elizabeth's reign, but the few who have ventured in this century to chronicle Essex's life and death have favored November 10, 1567 as his birth date. The source for this date is Thomas Mules' Catalogue of Honor, published in 1610. The date has, however, been challenged a number of times, usually on the basis of seventeenth-century astrological notations surviving in manuscript.

The article throws some light on the date of birth and family of novelist Pierre-Henri Treyssac de Vergy. Among the many minor novelists of the 18th century, Pierre-Henri Treyssac de Vergy, born in Bordeaux, France, established in London in 1763, where he died in 1774, created some sensation by his novels often based on contemporary scandalous events. Little is known about his family background and even the date of his birth was a matter of conjecture. In every case he is mentioned, not as a young man of good family who had sunk in the social scale, but as a rank outsider. Yet it has also been stated that his wife in Bordeaux was a woman of easy circumstances.

The article reports that authorities disagree over the date of birth of the Elizabethan poet Barnabe Googe. Standard works, including those of T. Cooper and J.A. Venn, provide a date of 1540. Others, including Lincolnshire genealogies and the biography by Richard Barnett, indicate 1542. To the present, Googe himself has been known to have made. two comments on his age. It can now be confirmed that Googe was indeed born on St. Barnabas Day. Googe used the flyleaf of a thirteenth-century psalter which came into his possession in 1587 to record biographical information on himself and his family.