Anne Hyde

‘Monday 10 December 1660…So hearing that the Duke of York is gone down this morning, to see the ship sunk yesterday at Woolwich, he and I returned by his coach to the office, and after that to dinner. After dinner he came to me again and sat with me at my house, ands among other discourse he told me that it is expected that the Duke will marry the Lord Chancellor’s daughter at last which is likely to be the ruin of Mr. Davis and my Lord Barkley, who have carried themselves so high against the Chancellor; Sir Chas. Barkley swearing that he and others had lain with her often, which all believe to be a lie…’

Samuel Pepys refers to the Lord Chancellor’s daughter, in his diary entry for December 10, 1660.  The woman in question is Anne Hyde.  The Duke of York did marry her.  Walter Scott mentions Ms. Hyde in his biographical sketch, the”Life of Dryden”:

 ‘  The conversion of Dryden [to Catholicism] did not long remain unrewarded, nor was his pen suffered to be idle in the cause which he had adopted. On the 4th of March, 1685-6, an hundred pounds a-year, payable quarterly, was added to his pension; and probably he found himself more at ease under the regular and economical government of James, than when his support depended on the exhausted exchequer of Charles. Soon after the granting of this boon, he was employed to defend the reasons of conversion to the Catholic faith, alleged by Anne Hyde, Duchess of York, which, together with two papers on a similar subject, said to have been found in Charles the Second's strong box, James had with great rashness given to the public. Stillingfleet, now at the head of the champions of the Protestant faith, published some sharp remarks on these papers. Another hand, probably that of a Jesuit, was employed to vindicate against him the royal grounds of conversion; while to Dryden was committed the charge of defending those alleged by the Duchess. The tone of Dryden's apology was, to say the least, highly injudicious, and adapted to irritate the feelings of the clergy of the Established.’

Judging of one Crooked Line by Another

‘…a more formidable champion than Blackmore had arisen, to scourge the profligacy of the theatre. This was no other than the celebrated Jeremy Collier, a nonjuring clergyman, who published, in 1698, "A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the Stage." His qualities as a reformer are described by Dr. Johnson in language never to be amended. "He was formed for a controvertist; with sufficient learning; with diction vehement and pointed, though often vulgar and incorrect; with unconquerable pertinacity; with wit in the highest degree keen and sarcastic; and with all those powers exalted and invigorated by the just confidence in his cause.

"Thus qualified, and thus incited, he walked out to battle, and assailed at once most of the living writers, from Dryden to Durfey. His onset was violent: those passages, which, while they stood single had passed with little notice, when they were accumulated and exposed together, excited horror; the wise and the pious caught the alarm, and the nation wondered why it had so long suffered ir-religion and licentiousness to be openly taught at the public charge."

Notwithstanding the justice of this description, there is a strange mixture of sense and nonsense in Collier's celebrated treatise. Not contented with resting his objections to dramatic immorality upon the substantial grounds of virtue and religion, Jeremy labours to confute the poets of the 17th century, by drawing them into comparison with Plautus and Aristophanes, which is certainly judging of one crooked line by another. Neither does he omit, like his predecessor Prynne, to marshal against the British stage those fulminations directed by the fathers of the church against the Pagan theatres; although Collier could not but know, that it was the performance of the heathen ritual, and not merely the scenic action of the drama, which rendered it sinful for the early Christians to attend the theatre. The book was, however, of great service to dramatic poetry, which, from that time, was less degraded by license and indelicacy…’

Walter Scott wrote the words above as part of his “The Life of John Dryden”.  Theater critic Jeremy Collier was born on September 23, 1650.  Scott mentions his best known work, and its possible impact on Dryden in his biography of the great poet.  Collier was roughly 59 when Samuel Johnson, who Scott also quotes, was born.  Collier lived nearly twenty years more (died 1726), and would have been still fresh when Johnson was young. 

Ben Jonson

Ben Jonson is believed to be of Scottish descent, through the Johnstones of Annandale, though he was born and grew up in London.  Jonson's career as a playwright was marked by controversy, and his plays sometimes garnered him an arrest warrant.  Jonson died on August 6, 1637.  A note in Sir Walter Scott's "Life of Dryden" describes him thus:

'Jonson is described as wearing a loose coachman's coat, frequenting the Mermaid tavern, where he drunk seas of Canary, then reeling home to bed, and, after a profuse perspiration, arising to his dramatic studies. Shadwell appears, from the slight traits which remain concerning him, to have followed, as closely as possible, the same course of pleasure and of study. He was brutal in his conversation, and much addicted to the use of opium, to which, indeed, he is said finally to have fallen a victim.


I observe, the ingenious editor of the late excellent edition of Jonson's Works, expresses some indignation at the charge brought against that eminent author in this note, and denies the authority of the letter-writer, who characterises Jonson as indulging in vulgar excess. Few men have more sincere Admiration for Jonson's talents than the present writer. But surely that coarseness of taste, which tainted his powerful mind, is proved from his writings. Many authors of that age are indecent, but Jonson is filthy and gross in his pleasantry, and indulges himself in using the language of scavengers and night-men. His Bartholomew-fair furnishes many examples of this unhappy predilection, and his " Famous Voyage" seems to have disgusted even the zeal of his editor. But, in marking these faults, I was far from meaning to assail the well-earned reputation of " Rare Ben Jonson," who could well afford to be guilty of these sins against decorum, while his writings afford so strong and masculine a support to the cause of virtue and religion. [Sir Walter Scott argues this question with Mr Gilford more at length in his Essay on Hawthornden, in the "Provincial Antiquities." '