Note 463 — Chapter XXV · THE DRAMA.

Betterton says Mrs. Bracegirdle was the daughter of Justinian Bracegirdle of Northamptonshire, Esq., whilst Aston, who calls her 'the Diana of the Stage,' says 'The most received Opinion is, that she was the Daughter of a Coach Man, Coach maker, or Letter out of Coaches in the Town of Northampton, but I am inclinable to my Father's Opinion, (who had a great Value for her reported Virtue) that she was a distant Relation, and came out of Staffordshire from about Wallsal or Wolverhampton.' She is believed to have been born about the year 1674, and somehow came to be placed, when an infant, under the care of Betterton and his Wife, who naturally brought her up to the stage. So young did she enter her future profession that she acted as a page in 'The Orphan,'[463] at the Dorset Garden Theatre in 1680, when only six years old. She was not only remarkable for her magnificent acting, but for the exceeding purity of her life, which no breath of scandal could sully; although it could not be said it was from want of temptation. Congreve writes of her:—