Note 1 — SPRING:
Reading edition
Our author's friendship with this gentleman commenced at very unequal years; he was under sixteen, but Sir William above sixty, and had lately resigned his employment of secretary of state to King William.—Pope.
This amiable old man, who had been a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and doctor of civil law, was sent by Charles II. judge advocate to Tangier, and afterwards in a public character to Florence, to Turin, to Paris; and by James II. ambassador to Constantinople; to which city he went through the continent on foot. He was afterwards a lord of the treasury, and secretary of state, with the Duke of Shrewsbury, which office he resigned 1697, and retiring to East Hampstead, died there in December, 1716, aged seventy-seven. Nothing of his writing remains but an elegant character of Archbishop Dolben.—Warton.
Pope says that Sir William Trumbull had "lately" resigned his office at the period of their acquaintance, but seven years had elapsed after the date of Sir William's retirement, before Pope had reached the age of sixteen.