this time, he married Mrs Herbert, a lady reputed to be of good family, but whether she was a widow, or not, is uncertain, as the evidence is conflicting. With her he expected a considerable fortune, but, through the greater part of it having been put out on bad security, and other losses, occasioned, it is said, by knavery, it was of but little advantage to him. To this some have attributed his severe strictures upon the professors of the law; but, if his censures be properly considered, they will be found to bear hard only upon the disgraceful part of the profession, and upon false learning in general.
How long he continued in office, as steward of Ludlow Castle, is not known, but there is no evidence of his having exercised it after 1662. Anthony a Wood, on the authority of Aubrey, says that he became secretary to Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, when he was Chancellor of Cambridge, but this is doubted by Grey, who nevertheless allows the Duke to have been his frequent benefactor. That both these assertions are false there is reason to suspect from a story told by Packe in his Life of Wycherley, as well as from Butler's character of the Duke, which will be found on next page. The story is this: "Mr Wycherley had always laid hold of any opportunity which offered of representing to the Duke of Buckingham how well Mr Butler had deserved of the royal family by writing his inimitable Hudibras; and that it was a reproach to the Court, that a person of his loyalty and wit should suffer in obscurity and want. The Duke seemed always to listen to him with attention enough; and after some time undertook to recommend his pretensions to his Majesty. Mr Wycherley, in hopes to keep him steady to his word, obtained of his Grace to name a day when he might introduce that modest and unfortunate poet to
"The churchmen overlook all other people as haughtily as the churches and steeples do private houses.
"The French do nothing without ostentation, and the king himself is not behind with his triumphal arches consecrated to himself, and his impress of the sun, nec pluribus impar.
"The French king, having copies of the best pictures from Rome, is as a great prince wearing clothes at second-hand; the king in his prodigious charge of buildings and furniture docs the same thing to himself that he moans to do by Paris, renders himself weaker by endeavouring to appear the more magnificent; lets go the substance for the shadow."
