The Duchess Henrietta conceived a violent fancy for the wit and poet, and whatever her husband, Lord Godolphin, may have thought of it, the connection ripened into a most intimate friendship, so much so that Congreve made the duchess not only his executrix, but the sole residuary legatee of all his property.[18] His will gives us some insight into the toadying character of the man.  Only four near relations are mentioned as legatees, and only L540 is divided among them; whereas, after leaving L200 to Mrs. Bracegirdle, the actress; L100, ’and all my apparel and linnen of all sorts’ to a Mrs. Rooke, he divides the rest between his friends of the nobility, Lords Cobham and Shannon, the Duchess of Newcastle, Lady Mary Godolphin, Colonel Churchill (who receives ’twenty pounds, together with my gold-headed cane’), and, lastly, ’to the poor of the parish,’ the magnificent sum of ten pounds.  ’Blessed are those who give to the rich;’ these words must surely have expressed the sentiment of the worldly Congreve.

However, Congreve got something in return from the Duchess Henrietta, which he might not have received from ‘the poor of the parish,’ to wit, a monument, and an inscription on it written by her own hand.  I have already said what ‘Queen Sarah’ thought of the latter, and, for the rest, those who care to read the nonsense on the walls of Westminster Abbey can decide for themselves as to the honour the poet received from his titled friend.

The latter days of William Congreve were passed in wit and gout:  the wine, which warmed the one, probably brought on the latter.  After a course of ass’s milk, which does not seem to have done him much good, the ex-dramatist retired to Bath, a very fashionable place for departing life in, under easy and elegant circumstances.  But he not only drank of the springs beloved of King Bladud, of apocryphal memory, but even went so far as to imbibe the snail-water, which was then the last species of quack cure in vogue.  This, probably, despatched him.  But it is only just to that disagreeable little reptile that infests our gardens, and whose slime was supposed to possess peculiarly strengthening properties, to state that his death was materially hastened by being overturned when driving in his chariot.  He was close upon sixty, had long been blind from cataracts in his eyes, and as he was no longer either useful or ornamental to the world in general, he could perhaps be spared.  He died soon after this accident in January, 1729.  He had the sense to die at a time when Westminster Abbey, being regarded as a mausoleum, was open to receive the corpse of any one who had a little distinguished himself, and even of some who had no distinction whatever.  He was buried there with great pomp, and his dear duchess set up his monument.  So much for his body.  What became of the soul of a dissolute, vain, witty, and unprincipled man, is no concern of ours. Requiescat in pace, if there is any peace for those who are buried in Westminster Abbey.