date of his marriage is not known, though it is generally assumed to have taken place in the beginning of 1735. But it may well have been earlier, for it will be observed that in the above quotation from the Preface to the Universal Gallant, which is dated from “Buckingham Street, Feb. 12,” he indirectly speaks of “his family.” This, it is true, may be no more than the pious fraud of a bachelor; but if it be taken literally, we must conclude that his marriage was already so far a thing of the past that he was already a father. This supposition would account for the absence of any record of the birth of a child during his forthcoming residence at East Stour, by the explanation that it had already happened in London; and it is not impossible that the entry of the marriage, too, may be hidden away in some obscure Metropolitan parish register, since those of Salisbury have been fruitlessly searched. At this distance of time, however, speculation is fruitless; and, in default of more definite information, the “spring of 1735,” which Keightley gives, must be accepted as the probable date of the marriage.
Concerning the lady, the particulars are more precise. She was a Miss Charlotte Cradock, one of three sisters living upon their own means at Salisbury, or—as it was then styled—New Sarum. Mr. Keightley’s personal inquiries, circa 1858, elicited the information that the family, now extinct, was highly respectable, but not of New Sarum’s best society. Richardson, in one of his malevolent outbursts, asserted that the sisters were illegitimate; but, says the writer above referred to, “of this circumstance we have no other proof, and I am able to add that the tradition of Salisbury knows nothing of it.”
