The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I | Page 9

familiarity[25] with Mrs. Behn, and he (if any), not Ravenscroft, assisted her (though we are not to suppose to a real extent) in her plays. There is a very plain allusion to this in Radcliffe's The Ramble: News from Hell (1682):--
Amongst this Heptarchy of Wit The censuring Age have thought it fit, To damn a Woman, 'cause 'tis said The Plays she vends she never made. But that a Greys Inn Lawyer does 'em Who unto her was Friend in Bosom, So not presenting Scarf and Hood New Plays and Songs are full as good.[26]
Unfortunately Hoyle was reputed to be addicted to the grossest immorality, and rumours of a sinister description were current concerning him.[27] There is, in fact, printed a letter[28] of Mrs. Behn's wherein she writes most anxiously to her friend stating that the gravest scandals have reached her ears, and begging him to clear himself from these allegations. Hoyle was murdered in a brawl 26 May, 1692, and is buried in the vault belonging to the Inner Temple, which is presumably in the ground attached to the Temple Church. The entry in the Register runs as follows: 'John Hoyle, esq., of the Inner Temple was buried in the vault May ye 29, 1692.' Narcissus Luttrell in his Diary, Saturday, 28 May, 1692, has the following entry: 'Mr. Hoil of the Temple on Thursday night was at a tavern with other gentlemen, and quarrelling with Mr. Pitts' eldest son about drinking a health, as they came out Mr. Hoil was stabb'd in the belly and fell down dead, and thereon Pitts fled; and the next morning was taken in a disguise and is committed to Newgate.'[29] 30 June, 1692, the same record says: 'This day Mr. Pitts was tryed at the Old Bailey for the murder of Mr. Hoil of the Temple, and the jury found it manslaughter but the next heir has brought an appeal.'
[Footnote 22: In view of the extremely harsh treatment Ravenscroft has met with at the hands of the critics it may be worth while emphasizing Genest's opinion that his 'merit as a dramatic writer has been vastly underrated'. Ravenscroft has a facility in writing, an ease of dialogue, a knack of evoking laughter and picturing the ludicrous, above all a vitality which many a greater name entirely lacks. As a writer of farce, and farce very nearly akin to comedy, he is capital.]
[Footnote 23: Letters from the Dead to the Living: The Virgin's [Mrs. Bracegirdle] Answer to Mrs. Behn. 'You upbraid me with a great discovery you chanc'd to make by peeping into the breast of an old friend of mine; if you give yourself but the trouble of examining an old poet's conscience, who went lately off the stage, and now takes up his lodgings in your territories, and I don't question but you'll there find Mrs. Behn writ as often in black characters, and stand as thick in some places, as the names of the generation of Adam in the first of Genesis.' How far credence may be given to anything of Brown's is of course a moot point, but the above passage and much that follows would be witless and dull unless there were some real suggestion of scandal. Moreover, it cannot here be applied to Hoyle, whereas it very well fits Ravenscroft. This letter which speaks of 'the lash of Mr. C----r' must have been written no great time after the publication of Jeremy Collier's A Short View of the Immorality of the English Stage (March, 1698), probably in 1701-2. Ravenscroft's last play, The Italian Husband, was produced at Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1697, and he is supposed to have died a year or two later, which date exactly suits the detail given by Brown. Ravenscroft's first play, Mamamouchi, had been produced in 1672, and the 'an old poet' would be understood.]
[Footnote 24: This occurrence is the subject of some lines in The Rump (1662): 'On the happy Memory of Alderman Hoyle that hang'd himself.']
[Footnote 25: The Muses Mercury, December, 1707, refers to verses made on Mrs. Behn 'and her very good friend, Mr. Hoyle'.]
[Footnote 26: My attention was drawn to these lines by Mr. Thorn Drury, who was, indeed, the first to suggest that Hoyle is the person aimed at. I have to thank him, moreover, for much valuable information on this important point.]
[Footnote 27: cf. Luttrell's Diary, February, 1686-7, which records that an indictment for misconduct was actually presented against him at the Old Bailey, but the Grand Jury threw out the bill and he was discharged. The person implicated in the charge against Hoyle seems to have been a poulterer, cf. A Faithful Catalogue of our Most Eminent Ninnies, said to have been written by the Earl of Dorset in 1683, or (according to another edition