available regarding his illustrious townsman. Malone’s inquiries further stimulated his exertions; and having wants to supply as well as information to communicate, he early in 1790 forwarded a packet of papers on that subject to the Critic in London.
One of the letters of Jordan—April 1790, in Mr. Rooper’s collection, with its truth vouched by the Vicar of Stratford—offers his services in any mode of research likely to be useful, but prefaces it by a history of his life. Like so many unlucky followers of the Muse, it had been but a series of evils. He had experienced neglect, disappointment, misfortune, poverty, sickness, starving and scarcely-clothed children; reduced from master-tradesman to journeyman at nine shillings a week by an “ungrateful brother, who basely usurped the business during a long illness arising from quotidian ague.” He is refused by a rich sister-in-law even a shilling a week for the schooling of his children; “is overwhelmed by misfortune, misery, and wretchedness.” Even the Rev. Mark Noble, a near relative of his wife, and author of Memoirs of the Cromwell Family, had promised aid and some small place under government, but both expectations remained unfulfilled. “Alas!” he cries, “I am unnoticed by the world, oppressed with affliction, and wrecked with despair; the anchor of hope has totally forsook me; I am dashed by the waves of a boundless sea of trouble, sorrow, and misery, which brings to my mind an expression of Shakspeare, that
Being low is not relieved by any.”
