[66d] Sir Henry St. John seems to have continued a gay man to the end of his life. In his youth he was tried and convicted for the murder of Sir William Estcourt in a duel (Scott). In 1716, after his son had been attainted, he was made Viscount St. John. He died in 1742, aged ninety.
[67b] “Swift delighted to let his pen run into such rhymes as these, which he generally passes off as old proverbs” (Scott). Many of the charming scraps of “Old Ballads” and “Old Plays” at the head of Scott’s own chapters are in reality the result of his own imagination.
[67d] Sir Richard Levinge, Bart., had been Solicitor-General for Ireland from 1704 to 1709, and was Attorney-General from 1711 to 1714. Afterwards he was Speaker of the Irish House of Commons and Chief-Justice of the Common Pleas in Ireland.
[68c] Thomas Belasyse, second Viscount Fauconberg, or Falconbridge (died 1700), a nobleman of hereditary loyalty, married, in 1657, the Protector’s youngest daughter, Mary Cromwell, who is represented as a lady of high talent and spirit. She died on March 14, 1712. Burnet describes her as “a wise and worthy woman,” who would have had a better prospect of maintaining her father’s post than either of her brothers.
[69a] Richard Freeman, Chief Baron, was Lord Chancellor of Ireland from 1707 until his death in November 1710.