s, agreeably to a
traditionary account in the family, that "she was very friendly to the
nonjuring clergy, and that she had frequently received and protected
them."

There are several pictures of clergymen at Flaxley, which have always
been believed to be portraits of Mrs. Boevey's nonjuring friends.
Amongst these are two in episcopal habits, one of which is ascertained to
be the portrait of the deprived Dr. Frampton, Bishop of Gloucester, since
an exactly similar painting exists in the Palace at Gloucester. Flaxley
is mentioned as her residence by Sir R. Atkyns in 1712, where, he tells
us, "she hath an handsome house and pleasant gardens, and a great estate,
a furnace for casting of iron, and three forges," as also appears by
Kip's view of it. In 1714 Steele dedicated to her the second volume of
'The Ladies' Library,' the frontispiece to which Mr. Kerslake describes
as "representing a young lady, dressed in widow's weeds, opening a book
upon a table, on which also lies a skull; her admirers, in long wigs and
swords, are thronging round the door." In one of his letters to Lady
Steele, dated the 17th January, 1717, he writes--"I have yours in a leaf
of the widow's." Such incidents seem to prove that this highly-gifted
lady was the original of the character so graphically delineated by
Steele in his description of "the perverse widow." The numbers of the
'Spectator' in which she is introduced generally bear his name, and she
probably was more intimate with him than with Addison (although both are
said to have visited the Abbey), since he would naturally pass near
Flaxley whenever he travelled between London and his house at Llangunnor,
near Caermarthen. Nothing less than such a familiar acquaintance could
have enabled him to give so exact and real a description of her as occurs
in No. 113.

In Ballard's 'Ladies,' first printed in 1752, and on her monument in
Westminster Abbey and in Flaxley Church, her more public virtues are
displayed; but the value of her home life, which many of the poor
Foresters had experienced in her bounties, is best related in the words
of her faithful attendant, Mrs. Rachel Vergo, "who always waited
particularly on her mistress, and was the only servant who sat up, as she
spent an hour or two every night in her closet. She did the same in the
morning, and was a very early riser. Mrs. Vergo had the care of the
family under Mrs. Mary Pope, a relation of Mrs. Bovey, who came for a
visit of