a 17th-century English playwright, historian and poet. Born a commoner, he worked as a gentleman-in-waiting and steward to several powerful Parliamentarians in the period up to the English Civil War. He is remembered as a minor playwright, who wrote several plays for London's Blackfriars Theatre, and as the author of The History of Great Britain, being the Life and Reign of King James I, which documents the anti-Stuartism prevalent in the late Caroline era. Wilson had a reputation as an adventurer. His autobiographical Observations of God's Providence, in the Tract of my Life, records some of his adventures, such as his 1642 rescue of Elizabeth Savage, Countess Rivers from anti-Catholic rioters.
