The great Whig historian’s sneer at the Cavalier dramatist’s conversion to the Catholic Faith was equally ungenerous and untrue. For Dryden had in all probability become a Catholic before Charles II died, as his wife and one of his sons had already been received into the Church. And the

‘pension,’ contemptuously referred to by Macaulay, was simply the belated payment of his salary as Laureate, already four years in arrears, together with other sums owing to the poet by the spendthrift King Charles. Lord Macaulay might have discovered if he liked, in the course of his historical researches among seventeenth century documents, the existing Treasury Warrant, signed by Rochester and dated May 6th, 1684, authorising the payment to Dryden of £ 50, being one quarter’s annuity (as poet laureate) due at Midsummer, 1680, and also the sum of £25, being one quarter’s additional annuity by Letters of Privy Seal, due Lady Day, 1680. James II, having a stricter sense of justice, thus paid off his brother’s debts. But Dryden lost his court post, and had the mortification of seeing it transferred to Shadwell. And he died in William Ill’s reign, a staunch Catholic and a poor man under a Protestant king.