lieutenant of this name in the Duke's Life Guards I have ascertained from official documents. He was a cadet of the house of Limerick, and his Christian name was Robert. If there is truth in De Grammont's account, he died in or before 1669. A Colonel Dungan was Governor of New York in the reign of James II.[1]
Such, then, is all that can be ascertained, after full inquiry, of this Duncan or Dungan, by whom Nelly is said to have been lifted from her very humble condition in life. Such indeed is the whole of the information I have been able to obtain about "pretty witty Nell" from her birth to the winter of 1666, when we again hear of her through the indefatigable Pepys. How her life was passed during the fearful Plague season of 1665, or where she was during the Great Fire of London in the following year, it is now useless to conjecture. The transition from the orange-girl to the actress may easily be imagined without the intervention of any Mr. Dungan. The pert vivacity and ready wit she exhibited in later life, must have received early encouragement and cultivation from the warmth of language the men of sort and quality employed in speaking to all classes
- ↑ Secret Service Expenses of Charles II. and James II., p. 195. There is in one of Etherege's MS. satires a very coarse allusion to Dungan and Nelly.
