Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/842

828 distributed instantly among her mother's creditors; but when the other became due, he bid her defiance, stood suit on his own bond, and held her out four terms. He carried it from one court to another, till at last it was brought to the bar of the house of lords; and as that is a tribunal where the chicanery of lawyers can have no weight, he thought proper to pay the money without a hearing. The gentlemen of the long robe had made her sign an instrument, that they should receive the money and pay themselves, and she received but 13 l. 16 s. which reduced her to the necessity of absconding from her creditors, and starving in an obscure corner, till she was betrayed by a false friend, and hurried to gaol. Besides all her other calamities, she fell into a dangerous fit of illness by a mere accident. In April 1711, she swallowed the middle bone of the wing of a large fowl, being above three inches long; she had the end in her mouth, and speaking hastily, it went forcibly down in the act of inspiration. At first she felt no pain; but in a few days she complained of a load at her stomach. After this she fell into a violent pain, convulsions, and swooning fits, and was seized with a malignant fever. In this deplorable condition she continued, except some small intervals, for about two years, notwithstanding all that the most eminent physicians could do for her. They sent her to Bath, where she found relief, and continued tolerably well for some years, even to bear the fatigue of an eight years suit with an unjust executor.

Being deprived of a competent fortune by cross accidents, she suffered all the extremities of a close imprisonment, and was in want of all the necessaries of life, lying on boards for two years. On recovering liberty, and beginning to use exercise, she was judged to be in a dropsy; but no medicines taking place, was given over as curable;