ISAAC BICKERSTAFF.
Arthur Maynwaring was descended from the ancient family of the Maynwarings of Over Peover, Cheshire. He was born in 1668, at Ightfield, Shropshire, and was educated at the Shrewsbury Grammar School and at Christ Church, Oxford, where Smalridge was his tutor. Filled with prejudices against the Revolution, he came to London to study law, but a political satire which he published brought him under Dryden's notice, and the kind reception given him by several Whig statesmen, to whom he was introduced, caused him to change his views on politics, and after his father's death in 1693 he gave up the law and determined to push his fortunes at the Court. He was made a Commissioner of Customs and afterwards Auditor of the Imprests. He was admitted to the Kit-Cat Club, and in 1706 the interest of Godolphin procured him a seat in the House of Commons. Upon the fall of the Whig ministry in 1710, Maynwaring set up the Medley, a weekly paper in which the attacks of the Examiner were answered, and wrote various political pamphlets. But his health soon broke down, and he died in November, 1712. Mrs. Oldfield, the actress, was the sole executrix of his will, by which he divided his small property of some £3000 between her, a son that he had by her, and his sister. There appear to have been many good points in his character. His "Life and Posthumous Works" were published by Oldmixon in 1715. "Maynwaring, whom we hear nothing of now, was the ruling man in all conversations, indeed what he wrote had very little merit in it" (Pope, in Spence's "Anecdotes," 1820, p. 338). Steele says that Harley told him that he had to thank Maynwaring for his post of Gazetteer.
"Encouragement of these volumes," in the octavo edition. The list of subscribers to the original octavo edition comprised the names of some four hundred of the most prominent persons of the day.