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New Light on Richard Steele

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New Light on Richard Steele NEW LIGHT ON RICHARD STEELE J. D. ALSOP RICHARD STEELE (1672-1729) (fig. i) has been studied so extensively that new factual information on the essayist and playwright is generally a consequence of accidental discovery. The following evidence was unearthed in the course of unrelated research amongst the archival records of Augustan and Georgian Britain. JOHN STEELE In 1714 John Lacy, a pseudonymous critic of Steele, produced an account of his parentage and his early life. The Ecclesiastical and Political History of Whigland of Late Years, used both to slight Steele's lineage and to attack his alleged indifference to his mother's later poverty. This reads in part: [Richard Steele, senior, was] an Honest Farmer, a man of Honour and Integrity... The worthy good Man lived rich in poverty, and respected by all his superior Neighbours, till his Body was gathered to the Grave... He left behind him his poor dear Wife, two Sons, and a Daughter... to weather it thro' the World as well as they were able. This worthy Farmer had a sister, that was perfer'd to the place of Waiting-Woman to an honourable Lady ... She every now and then supply'd the Widow, and the Children she took intirely into her Possession, sent her two Nephews to School, and saw her Niece well educated under her own Eye.^ Two sons; two nephews.' All modern accounts of Steele indicate that he was an only son, accompanied in his childhood simply by an elder sister Katherine. George Aitken, who delved deepest into Steele's biography, said of this publication merely, ' It will be seen that Steele is credited with a brother, of whom we hear nothing elsewhere'.'^ All the contextual evidence provided by Lacy here rings true. The aunt was clearly Katherine Mildmay, married to Henry Gascoigne and employed as a gentlewoman in the household of the Countess of Arran, wife to the subsequent second Duke of Ormonde.^ There is no credible reason for the critic to have invented a fictitious sibling. Could Richard Steele have had a hitherto undetected brother.^ The English Army register of letters of attorney and administrations for deceased officers, 1702-13, includes the following entry: Letters of Administration after the Death of John Steel late Ensigne in the Earle of Aruns Troop granted to Richard Steele Esquire 8th September 1704.^ Letters of administration for a person who died intestate were normally awarded to the next of kin and, although this junior officer is mentioned nowhere in any modern study 23 of Steele, the reference to the Earl of Arran would appear to be conclusive evidence of a firm connection. Charles Butler, Earl of Arran (1671-1758), was the grandson of James Butler, first Duke of Ormonde (1610-88), and brother and heir male to James Butler, second Duke of Ormonde (1665-1745). Richard Steele's foster father, Henry Gascoigne, had been private secretary to the first Duke, and the Steele family benefitted extensively from Butler patronage. Steele himself entered the army, in 1692, in the Duke of Ormonde's Second Troop of the Life Guards.^ However, appearances are in this instance deceptive. Two errors are associated with this entry in the register. The first, of omission, is the failure to identify the probate jurisdiction in which Richard Steele took out the letters of administration, a routine feature of other entries. The second is John Steele's connection to the 'Earle of Aruns Troop'. Brigadier-General Charles, Earl of Arran, was Colonel of the Sixth Horse from 1697 to 1702 and subsequently Colonel of the Third Troop of the Horse Guards, 1703-15.^ As horse regiments, neither of these commands included the rank of ensign, and Steele's name does not appear in the (fragmentary) regimental lists. ^ One John Steele, however, did enter Brigadier-General Thomas Earle's Regiment of Foot on i September 1694 as ensign to Captain Charles Wills. Nothing is known of his army career, apart from the renewal of his commission upon Queen Anne's accession; he was out of the Regiment by 1706, if not earlier.^ How to proceed to solve the puzzle? The army register was rechecked, but the handwriting is clear and unequivocal. The letters of administration might have been taken out in any one of numerous probate courts, but the death of an officer intestate during wartime suggests the likelihood of overseas service, and the most common probate jurisdiction for testators and intestates deceased abroad was the Prerogative Court of Canterbury. Under the date of 8 September 1704 the register of the Prerogative Court records the grant of administration to Richard Steele, esquire, for the estate of John Steele, 'nuper vexillareii in Legione honorabilij Thomiae Earle Armiger'.^ Obviously, the apparently straightforward entry in the army register had become badly corrupted, whereby an abbreviation of'Thomiae' become rendered as 'the' and the abbreviation 'Arm' became 'Arun'. The date of death remains unestabhshed. Thomas Earle's regiment was dispatched to the West Indies in 1702. After a lengthy, dilapidating stay at Barbados, the regiment took part in the disappointing engagement at Guadaloupe in 1703. Mortality was high, and Richard Steele's earlier associate. Governor Christopher Codrington, commented upon the heavy toll taken amongst the expedition troops by 'poxes, fluxes and feavers'.^** The Prerogative Court identified Richard as brother and closest relative of the deceased John Steele. Was this THE Richard Steele, esquire, the man who in September 1704 was a captain at Landguard Fort and a newly-successful playwright? This question cannot be answered conclusively. The exhaustive biographical researches of George Fig. I. Sir Richard Steele, by Sir Godfrey Kneller, engraved by J. Houbraken; Thomas Birch, Heads of Illustrious Persons... (London, 1756), facing p. 205. C.6.e.8 25 Aitken unearthed only one other Richard Steele of the period who held the status of esquire, and this individual did not have a brother John.^^ It appears that Richard Steele may well have had a previously unidentified brother. Very little family correspondence survives for the early portion of Steele's life, and contemporaries noted Steele's reticence and ambiguity on his family and Irish background.^^ Children who died without heirs of their body were not always included in family pedigrees, but, in any case, our knowledge of the children of Richard Steele, senior, and Elinor Symes - Richard and Katherine - comes not from a pedigree but instead from the parish registers for the parish of residence during the marriage, St Bride's, Dublin.^^ Katherine, born in March 1671, ten months after the marriage licence was issued, was clearly the eldest, and Richard came second, being baptized on 12 March 1672. However, the marriage continued until 1676 or early 1677, nothing more is known concerning the couple's fertility, and biographers suggest that the family spent at least some time after 1672 in County Tipperary, where Richard, senior, was subsheriff.^* Any child born in this period would have been exactly the right age to have entered the army as an ensign in 1694. Moreover, the name John had been the one selected for Elinor Symes's first child from her previous marriage, a child who died within months of his birth in 1664.^^ Although circumstantial, the evidence clearly supports the statement made in 1714 that Richard Steele was one of two brothers, both of whom, we can now determine, began their careers in military service. Finally, although it was perhaps only a coincidence that John Steele's service, and possible death, in Barbados would soon be followed, in 1705, by Richard Steele's own marriage into one of that colony's families, in our present state of knowledge for Steele's early career no leads should be dismissed out of hand. ROWLAND TRYON Rowland Tryon has remained an obscure figure for scholarship on Richard Steele ever since George Aitken first identified the 'Mr. Tryon' of Steele's correspondence.^^ Tryon, a London merchant and agent for Barbados merchants, apparently entered Steele's life early in 1708, shortly before he was formally appointed principal trustee for the sale of Steele's Barbados estate. In this capacity, Tryon acted primarily on behalf of the tenant and purchaser, George Walker.^^ Joseph Addison's Chancery suit of October 1708 against Steele, Walker, and the trustees singled out Tryon as the leading obstacle to the repayment of the £1,000 lent to Steele on the security of the estate. ^^ Tryon's contentious response of 7 December 1708 may have produced so many difficulties for Addison that eventually he abandoned the suit.^^ Steele's biographers had already formed a negative opinion of Tryon prior to the discovery of the 1708 Chancery case, derived from the frequent protestations in Steele's correspondence of 1708-9 and 1714 that Tryon was incorrectly withholding funds due from the sale of the property.^** Following the discovery, Tryon became depicted as 'a shrewd and rather shady agent'.^^ Nonetheless, both Rowland Tryon and his brother William were associated with Steele in the testimonial of January 1709 on behalf of Alexander Skene, the 26 Secretary of Barbados dismissed on charges of extortion and bribery, and in the same year they were on the same side as Steele in the controversies over the governorships of Milford Crow at Barbados and Daniel Parke at the Leeward Islands.^^ Moreover, Rowland Tryon subsequently was a subscriber to the first edition of the Tatler. Perhaps there is more to the relationship than Steele's self-interested statements in his correspondence suggest. Some additional evidence for Tryon is provided by his last will and testament. Written on 30 May 1720 and probated in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury on 8 July following, this brief document decreed that Rowland Tryon of Kent, esquire, bequeathed all property and personal estate to his brother William Tryon, of London, merchant, as executor and residual beneficiary.^^ William Longueville, Robert Weston, John Smith and Robert Dickinson witnessed the will.
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