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So rich in treasures of her own,

She might our boasted stores defy;
Such noble vigour did her verse adorn,

That it seemed borrowed where 'twas only born."

And again,

"Unmixed with foreign filth, and undefiled,

Her wit was more than man, her innocence a child.”

Walpole, who gives her more credit for her painting than for her poetry, quotes a remark of Vertue's, who, in speaking of some of her paintings, observes,-"These pictures I saw, but can say little." Her performances were in history, portrait, and landscape. It also appears by Dryden's Ode, that both the Duke and Duchess of York sat to her for their pictures. Her career was as brief as it was interesting. She died of the small-pox, in her twenty-fifth year, at her father's apartments in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey, on the 16th June, 1685. She was buried in the Savoy Chapel, where a handsome monument may still be seen to her memory. Her poems were published in a thin quarto the year after her decease.

The last of the Killegrews who seems to have distinguished himself, and who probably closed the career of an accomplished race, was Thomas Killegrew, a gentleman of the bedchamber to George the Second, when Prince of Wales, and the author of a pleasing comedy called "Chit-Chat." Owing to the exertions of the Duke of Argyle, and the numerous influential friends of its author, the profits of this play, on its being first presented at Drury Lane, are said to have amounted to upwards of a thousand pounds. Thomas Killegrew died in July, 1719, and was buried at Kensington.

345

WILLIAM CHIFFINCH.

Connection of William and Thomas Chiffinch with the scandalous Annals of the Court-Notice of Thomas-Peculiar Duties of William Chiffinch-The "Spy Office"-Notice of Edward Progers, another confidant of the royal Intrigues-Residence of this Person in Bushy Park - Peculiar Circumstances which attended his Death.

THERE were two brothers of the name of Chiffinch, William and Thomas, who are both intimately connected with the scandalous annals of the Court of Charles. They are generally confounded together; nor is it an easy task to separate the story of the one from that of the other. They both held appointments in the royal household, and were both men of pleasure. It seems, however, to have been William Chiffinch, (whose name has been rendered classical by Sir Walter Scott,*) who is so frequently mentioned by his contemporaries as the depositor of the secrets, and the panderer to the pleasures, of Charles. Whichever it may have been, the elder brother, Thomas, as he died the earliest, and as his story was the briefest, shall be dismissed the first.

The little that can be gleaned respecting Thomas Chiffinch is scanty and unsatisfactory in the extreme: that little, however, is not unfavourable to his character. He was probably a man of taste, since Charles entrusted him with the care of his collection of curiosities, which Evelyn says might have been made as famous as the

* In Peveril of the Peak.

cabinet of the Duke of Florence.* He had a house in St. James's Park. Evelyn was at a house-warming there, and informs us that it was full of excellent pictures. He died very suddenly on the 8th of April, 1666. His acquaintance, Pepys, informs us, " He was well last night as ever, playing at tables in the house, and not very ill this morning at six o'clock, yet dead before seven; they think of an imposthume in his breast." He was a page of the bedchamber to Charles, and joint Comptroller of the Excise with Elias Ashmole the antiquary.

Respecting William Chiffinch, the supper companion of his Sovereign, the promoter of his excesses, and his agent both in politics and pleasure, something more is known. This person was page of the bedchamber, and keeper of the private closet to Charles. Roger North, in his Life of Lord Keeper Guildford, affords us an insight into his peculiar duties and character, the truth of which there is no reason to question. "Mr. Chiffinch," he says, "was a true secretary as well as page. He had a lodging at the back stairs, which might have been properly termed the 'Spy Office,' where the King spoke with particular persons, about intrigues of all kinds; and all little informers, projectors, &c., were carried to Chiffinch's lodgings. He was a most impetuous drinker, and, in that capacity, an admirable spy; for he let none pass from thence sober, if it were possible to make them drunk; and his great artifice was pushing idolatrous healths, and being in haste, for the King is coming, which was his word." According to Roger North, as soon as he had made his victims sufficiently inebriated, he elicited their secrets from them with peculiar dexterity. Though he drank inordinately himself, he was on no occasion known to be intoxicated.

* Letters to Thomas Chiffinch, Esq.; Evelyn Correspondence.

A drinking acquaintance he had formed with the brutal and inhuman Lord Jeffreys, is said to have led to the rise of the latter, and his influence at Court.

Anthony Wood, alluding to the King's convivial parties, has the following passage:-"They met," he says, "either in the lodgings of Louisa Duchess of Portsmouth, or in those of Chiffinch, near the back stairs, or in the apartment of Eleanor Gwynn, or that of Baptist May; but he losing his credit, Chiffinch had the greatest trust among them." Neither was the confidential agency of Chiffinch confined to the pursuit of a new mistress, or to the usual arcana of the back stairs. There can be no doubt indeed that he was the medium through whom Charles received his pension from the French Court. Lord Danby, afterwards Duke of Leeds, alluding to the proposed mode of payment, writes to Mr. Montagu, 16th July, 1677,-"I perceive by you, that Mr. Chiffinch hath been, and is to be, the receiver of whatever shall be had from thence." And Montagu returns answer, dated Paris, 12th August following,

"I congratulate very heartily with your lordship, that Mr. Chiffinch is to be the French Treasurer; and in this, and everything else that can concern your lordship, you shall find me as careful and faithful as any servant you have." The subject is again adverted to by Montagu in a subsequent letter.*

When Charles the Second lay on his death-bed, it was Chiffinch who was entrusted with the last secret of the dying monarch. It was through his means that Huddlestone, the popish priest, was admitted to the sick chamber, and administered extreme unction to Charles. After the death of his old master, he was continued in his con

* Letters to and from the Duke of Leeds, pp. 9, 17, and 33.

fidential post by James. Among other intrigues to which he was a party during this reign, we find the Secret Committee,-appointed to watch over the interests of the Roman Catholics in England,-assembling in the apartments of Chiffinch at Whitehall. It was to these apartments, also, that the unfortunate Duke of Monmouth was brought by water from the Tower, previous to his being admitted to his last and memorable interview with James.

Lord Dartmouth, in one of his notes to Burnet's History, adverts incidentally to his having held a conversation with Chiffinch-a circumstance only so far of importance, as showing that he must have survived his royal master, King Charles, for some years; Lord Dartmouth not having been born till the year 1672, and apparently not having been a very young man at the time when the conversation took place. It may be mentioned that, in a letter from a Mr. Shaw to Lawrence Earl of Rochester, dated 13th July, 1691, there is a report of his having died at "Philberts."* There is a portrait of William Chiffinch at Gorhambury.

Another disreputable hanger-on of the profligate court of Charles was EDWARD PROGERS, the confidant of the royal intrigues, and one of the principal panderers to the pleasures of his sovereign. Andrew Marvell says in his "Instructions to a Painter,"

"Then the procurers under Progers filed,

Gentlest of men, and his lieutenant mild."+

Progers, who was a gentleman by birth, appears to have held a confidential situation about the Court at least

* See Clarendon and Rochester Corrrespondence, vol. ii. p. 340. Henry Brounker. See the next memoir.

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