that time a ‘surgeon's mate,’ but on his second marriage (17 May 1797) he had risen to be the Rev. William Graham, M.A., of Misterton in Leicestershire. This second marriage of Mrs. Macaulay exposed her to much abuse, and caused her the loss of many friends. Dr. Wilson acknowledged that Alfred House was hers, but threatened to hold it against her. He had placed on 8 Sept. 1777 within the altar-rails of St. Stephen's, Walbrook, a white marble statue of her by J. F. Moore, in which she was represented in the character of history, with a pen in her right hand, and with her left arm leaning on some volumes of her ‘History;’ and had built a vault for her remains to rest in, but the statue was now taken down and the vault was sold. Among the satires published against her were ‘The Female Patriot, an Epistle from C—t—e M—c—y to the Rev. Dr. W—l—n on her late marriage,’ 1779, and ‘A remarkable moving Letter [anon.],’ 1779, which was suggested by an extraordinary epistle sent by her on her second marriage to her clerical admirer. On her union with Graham she quitted Bath, and went first to Leicestershire and then to Binfield in Berkshire. In the spring of 1784 she embarked for North America, and in June 1785 she stopped with Washington at Mount Vernon for ten days. Three letters subsequently written to her by him are in Washington's ‘Writings’ (ed. Sparks), vols. ix. and x., and two more, which are deposited in the Leicester Museum, are printed in ‘Notes and Queries,’ 1878, 5th ser. ix. 421–2. After her return to England she lived at Binfield, and died there on 22 June 1791, when a monument to her memory, with her portrait on a medallion, and with the figure of an owl as the bird of wisdom, was placed in the church by her second husband. Her statue by Bacon, a fine work, came to the Right Hon. J. Wilson Patten, afterwards lord Winmarleigh. A portrait of her as a Roman matron, by Katharine Read, was engraved by Williams. A second portrait, by the same artist, was engraved by Jonathan Spilsbury in September 1764; a third, by Cipriani, was engraved by Basire in 1767; while a fourth, by Gainsborough, the property of E. P. Roberts, was on view at the winter exhibition of the Grosvenor Gallery, 1884–5 (Catalogue, pp. 93–5). Wright of Derby painted in 1776 a portrait of Dr. Wilson and his adopted daughter, Miss Macaulay (Bemrose, Wright of Derby, p. 45).
Mrs. Macaulay possessed great talents combined with irrepressible vigour. Mary Wollstonecraft, in her ‘Vindication of the Rights of Women’ (pp. 235–6), speaks of her as ‘the woman of the greatest abilities that this country has ever produced,’ endowed with a sound judgment, and writing ‘with sober energy and argumentative closeness,’ and comments on her death ‘without sufficient respect being paid to her memory.’ Lecky distinguishes her as ‘the ablest writer of the new radical school’ (Hist. of England, iii. 206). Josiah Quincy, jun., an acute traveller from America, called on her at Bath in 1774, and, after an interview of an hour and a half, ‘was much pleased with her good sense and liberal turn of mind’ (Memoir, p. 243). Her most famous production was the ‘History of England from the Accession of James I to that of the Brunswick line,’ i. 1763, ii. 1766, iii. 1767, iv. 1768, v. 1771, vi. 1781, vii. 1781, viii. 1783, which attracted great attention at the time, and brought her a considerable income, but has now dropped into oblivion. A letter from David Hume on the first volume of her ‘History’ is printed in the ‘European Magazine,’ November 1783, pp. 331–2. Horace Walpole confessed that the author was prejudiced, but claimed that she ‘exerted manly strength with the gravity of a philosopher,’ and spoke of Gray's opinion as corroborating his own, that it was ‘the most sensible, unaffected, and best history of England that we have had yet.’ From a letter written by Gray in 1766 it would appear that Pitt ‘made a panegyric of her “History” in the House of Commons’ (Works, ed. Gosse, iii. 238). Capel Lofft [q. v.] issued in 1778 a printed letter of laudatory ‘Observations on Mrs. Macaulay's “History,”’ and John Salt of Amwell wrote some eulogistic stanzas on it (Chalmers, Poets, xvii. 497). A letter from Mirabeau suggesting that this work should be translated into French is in his ‘Letters from England’ (ed. 1832, ii. 230–40), and a translation into five volumes, purporting to be by Mirabeau, though it was the work of P. T. Guiraudet, appeared at Paris in 1791–2. De Quincey quotes an instance, not altogether conclusive, of her ignorance, and Isaac Disraeli printed a charge against her of having torn out four leaves of Harleian MS. 7379 on 12 Nov. 1764, with the result that she had been banished from the British Museum (Curiosities of Literature, ed. 1858, ii. 446). This accusation led to an animated correspondence in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine’ in 1794 and 1795 between Disraeli and her second husband, William Graham, when it was proved that no record existed of her having been forbidden to enter the museum, and that the damage to the manuscript could not be definitely attributed to her. The original manuscripts of her ‘History of England,’ 1628–60,
