Page:The lives of the poets of Great Britain and Ireland to the time of Dean Swift - Volume 4.djvu/68

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HIS lady was daughter of one Mr. Freeman, of Holbeack in Lincolnſhire. There was formerly an eſtate in the family of her father, but being a Diſſenter, and a zealous parliamentarian, he was ſo very much perſecuted at the reſtoration, that he was 'aid under a neceſſity to fly into Ireland, and his eſtate was confiſcated; nor was the family of our authoreſs’s mother free from the ſeverity of thoſe times, they being likewiſe parliamentarians. Her education was in the country, and her father dying when ſhe was but three years of age, and her mother not living ’till ſhe was twelve, the improvements our poeteſs made were merely by her own induſtry and application. She was married before the age of fifteen, to a nephew of Sir Stephen Fox. This gentleman living with her but a year, ſhe afterwards married Mr. Carrol, an officer in the army, and ſurvived him likewiſe in the ſpace of a year and a half. She afterwards married Mr. Joſeph Centlivre, yeoman of the mouth to his late Majeſty. She gave early diſcoveries of a genius for poetry, and Mr. Jacob in his Lives of the Poets tells us, that ſhe compoſed a ſong before ſhe was ſeven years old. She is the author of fifteen plays; her talent is comedy, particularly the contrivance of the plots, and incidents. Sir Richard Steele, in one of