not in want. On his marriage with Lady Elizabeth Howard in 1664 or 1665,* her father, the Earl of Berkshire, I believe, settled upon them a small estate in Wiltshire, the exact value of which I have not been able to ascertain; but it probably was not less than sixty pounds a year.' From 1665 till 1670, we may therefore consider him as possessed of one hundred pounds a year in land;

* It being probable that our author was married either in London or at Charlton, the scat of his father-in-law, in Wiltshire, there was reason to believe that a license was taken out in one or other of those places, from which the time of his marriage, and the age of his wife, might have been ascertained: but neither in the Faculty-Office in London, nor the Consistory-Office at Salisbury, the records of both which offices have been examined with this view, is there any trace of such a license having been granted.

The only notice of Dryden's Wiltshire estate that I have met with, is found in the following passage of his Dedication of CLEOMENES, in 1692, to Laurence Hyde, Earl of Rochester:

"I not only give you back a play, which, had you not redeemed it, had not been mine, but also at the same time dedicate to you the unworthy author, with my inviolable faith, and, how mean soever, my utmost service; and I shall be proud to hold my dependence on you in chief, as I do part of my small fortune, in Wiltshire.”

Whether this estate was freehold, or copyhold, or what was its extent or value, I have in vain endeavoured to ascertain. The Duke of Queensberry, to whom I had conceived that some part of Lord Cornbury's estate had devolved, (who was the last male descendant of Laurence Hyde, Earl of Rochester,) obligingly ordered his family

and his emoluments from the playhouse during that period (with the exception of about eighteen

deeds to be examined, with a view to discover the nature of the tenure alluded to by our author; but no trace of it was found. I now believe that Lord Rochester's estate is possessed by the Earl of Clarendon.-Dryden's Wiltshire property, on the death of his widow, who survived all her children, probably under her marriage settlement went to her own right heirs.

My conjecture, however, concerning the value of this estate, is not without a reasonable foundation. As Dryden did not derive any property in Wiltshire from his father, the land in question doubtless was the principal part of his wife's fortune; and was assured to him by Thomas, Earl of Berkshire, who possessed an estate at Charlton, in the county of Wilts, derived, I believe, from his mother, Elizabeth, daughter and coheir of Sir Henry Knevet, of Charlton, Knight. His family was so numerous, (for beside the eleven children enumerated in p. 398, he had at least two others, James, and our poet's wife,) that probably for many of them he could make but a moderate provision. However, he would hardly settle on his daugh ter Elizabeth less than her husband possessed; and as land at the time of the Restoration was sold for about twenty years' purchase, her portion, if my supposition be well founded; was only equal to a sum of twelve hundred pounds.

Mrs. Elizabeth Thomas knew enough of the value of truth, to mix a little of it with her fictions, and in this instance probably did not exercise her invention. She asserts, that Lady Elizabeth Dryden, after her husband's death, took a small house in Sherrard-street, and that "she had wherewithal to live frugally genteel;" which, according to her account, was eighty pounds a year. If

months, when the theatres were shut,) may be estimated at a hundred pounds a year: which, with his patrimony and his wife's fortune, produced an income equal to six hundred a year at the present time. In August, 1670, he obtained the offices of Poet Laureat and Historiographer, with a salary of two hundred pounds a year, and a sum of £.400., which, by a retrospective clause in his Patent, he was intitled to receive immediately; and by his contract with the comedians of the

this statement be correct, the Wiltshire property was let for sixty pounds a year, and the whole of it was by her marriage settlement secured to her for life; for from the Northamptonshire estate, we have seen, she derived but twenty pounds a year.

Mr. Spence furnishes a better authority than this lady for the statement I have made; for he mentions in his ANECDOTES, that Pope, speaking of Dryden, (probably from the information of either Congreve or Garth,) said, that " his family estate was about £.120. a year." He added, indeed, that Dryden left it to his son, Charles; but this was a mistake, for our author made no will; and as Charles died in his mother's life-time, he had never more than forty pounds a year to live on.

Congreve himself only says, in general terms, that Dryden's" hereditary income was little more than a bare competency." But Oldys, who was a careful inquirer, and began his inquiries above seventy years ago, men. tions in one of his Manuscripts, that he had been in. formed by one of Dryden's relations, that he had about £100. a year to the last; which appears to have been not very far from the truth.

King's Theatre, which commenced before he obtained the laurel, and continued for about ten years, he derived from the stage during the greater part of that time not less than two hundred pounds

By this contract, which has been printed in a former page, (p. 73.) he was entitled to a share and a quarter of the clear profits of the King's Theatre; which, according to the statement of the players, for several years produced between three and four hundred pounds a year, communibus annis. But there is good ground for believ ing that they exaggerated his proûts. However, they may moderately be estimated at two hundred a year; for . from an indenture between Thomas Killigrew on the one part, and Thomas Ellyott, Esq., and Dame Catharine Sayer, on the other, executed June 27, 1670, (an abstract of which is now before me,) it appears, that Thomas Kil. ligrew, out of the two shares which he possessed in the King's Theatre, (the whole of the profits of acting being divided according to this deed into twelve shares, and not twelve and three quarters, as recited in a former deed between Thomas and Henry Killigrew, Thomas Porter, and Sir John Sayer and his wife,) had settled two hundred pounds a year on Henry, his eldest son by his first wife. And the object of this deed of June 27, 1670, was, out of the remaining profits of the said two shares to make a provision for his second wife Charlotte, and for his son Charles, and the other children which he then had or might have by her. We cannot suppose that Thomas Killigrew gave his son, Henry, more than he retained for himself; and consequently his two shares must have produced at least four hundred pounds a year. My estimate, however, is still lower; for I have supposed a share to produce but £.160. a year. According to a statement by Sir

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a year. Froth this statement it appears, that from 1670 to 1676, inclusive, his income was about L.557. pèr annum, a revenue at least equal to £1,500. a year at this day.

In the latter end of this period his mother died, and was buried at Tichmarsh on the 14th of June, 1676: but her circumstances appear to have been so scanty, that he obtained no other accession to his fortune by her death, than the land bequeathed to her by her husband in lieu of dower, which we have seen produced twenty pounds a year; to which she added, as a memorial of her affection, a silver tankard, and her wedding-ring.'

Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels in the time of Charles I. and Charles II. made in July, 1662, Thomas Killigrew then derived from his two shares £.19. 6. o. per week; which, supposing the theatre to be open for Forty weeks in the year, would produce £.772 per annum. But many of Sir Henry Herbert's statements in the paper referred to, appear to have been exaggerated.

Register of the parish of Tichmarsh.

The Will of our author's mother, Mary Dryden, which is in the Prerogative-Office, (Hale, qu. 60.) has no date, but was proved, June 12, 1677. It begins thus:

"In the name of GOD, Amen. I Mary Dryden, in the "6 county of Northton, widdow, do make and ordaine "this my last will and testament in forme following. First, "I comend my soule into the hands of Almighty GOD, 66 my most mercifull Father; trusting in the onely suffer "ing and meritt of his beloved Son, my Lord and Saviour JESUS CHRIST, that I have remission of all my sinnes, "and that I shall injoy the inheritance of his everlasting kingdome, amongst them who are freely beloved in him.