Peter Cunningham

“ None of the biographers of Sir John Denham tell us when his second marriage took place. But we must not look to printed books for every kind of information. We must extend our inquiries further, and may sometimes do so with success. Denham's marriage to Margaret Brook is recorded in the register of Westminster Abbey, under the 25th of May, 1665. Poor Miss Brook! She was cold in her grave, like Lady Chesterfield, before De Grammont had married Miss Hamilton, or the period I am seeking to assign to these Memoirs had well-nigh closed. ”

“ He the next day (of which the Duke was warned by somebody that saw the passion my Lord Chesterfield was in the night before) went and told the Duke how much he did apprehend himself wronged, in his picking out his lady of the whole court to be the subject of his dishonor; which the Duke did answer with great calmnesse, not seeming to understand the reason of complaint, and that was all that passed; but my lord did presently pack his lady into the country in Derbyshire near the Peake; which is become a proverb at court, to send a man's wife to the Peake when she vexes him."—Pepys. ”

“ Now it appears from Lilly's Nativities in the Ashmolean Museum, that the Earl of Oxford's son by Roxolana was born 17th April, 1664, and Roxolana herself 3rd March, 1642. Whenever a new edition of De Grammont is again required (and a new one is very much needed) , I hope to see no more confusion in this matter. [6]
Chapter X. of the Memoirs is equally true to the chronology of history. Here we have the story of Lord Rochester's residence as a German doctor in Tower Street, and that famous adventure of Miss Jennings and Miss Price disguised as orange-girls. ”

“ His excellence as a man of wit was entirely limited to conversation. He is said, however, to have sold the MS. for 1500 livres; and it is added that when the MS. was brought to Fontenelle, then censor of the press, he refused to license it on account of the scandalous conduct imputed to the Court in a party at quinze, described in the third chapter.
It is a somewhat singular omission on the part of all the English editors and annotators of De Grammont, that they do not tell us when the first edition of the Memoirs appeared. ”

“ Hamilton more than hints at it; Burnet is very pointed about it in his History; Reresby just mentions and Pepys refers to it in three distinct entries and on three different authorities. But the evidence is not yet at an end. "How could the Duke of York make my mother a papist?" said the Princess Mary to Dr. Burnet. "The Duke caught a man in bed with her," said the Doctor, "and then had power to make her do anything." ”

“ This disappointment had such effect upon him, that he could neither eat nor drink; this did not signify to him; but his passion at length became so violent, that he could not neither play nor smoke. In this extremity, Love had recourse to Hymen. ”

“ Unquestionably Sarah Cooke, an actress at the King's House, who spoke the prologue on the first night of Rochester's Valentinian, and the new prologue on the second night. She seems to have been but an indifferent actress, and her parts were generally restricted to prologues and epilogues. She is mentioned in the State Poems; [9] by Dryden in a letter to Tonson; [10] and by Sir George Etherege, not very decently, in a MS. letter now before me. [11] Count Hamilton is not inexact in his chronology: it is his annotators who are wrong. ”