Unless they had grave reasons for their conduct, the Lord Keeper and his
lady had better have joined hands in the presence of the world, for the
mystery of their private wedding nettled public curiosity, and gave new
life to an old slander.

Cowper's boyish _escapade_ was not forgotten by the malicious. No sooner
had he become conspicuous in his profession and in politics, than the
story of his intercourse with Miss Culling was told in coffee-rooms with
all the exaggerations that prurient fancy could devise or enmity
dictate. The old tale of a secret marriage--or, still worse, of a mock
marriage--was caught from the lips of some Hertford scandal-monger, and
conveyed to the taverns and drawing-rooms of London. In taking Sir
Robert Booth's daughter to Church, he was said to have committed bigamy.
Even while he was in the House of Commons he was known by the name of
'Will Bigamy;' and that _sobriquet_ clung to him ever afterwards. Twenty
years of wholesome domestic intercourse with his first wife did not free
him from the abominable imputation, and his marriage with Miss Clavering
revived the calumny in a new form. Fools were found to believe that he
had married her during Judith Booth's life and that their union had been
concealed for several years instead of a few months. The affair with
Miss Culling was for a time forgotten, and the charge preferred against
the keeper of the queen's conscience was bigamy of a much more recent
date.

In various forms this ridiculous accusation enlivens the squibs of the
pamphleteers of Queen Anne's reign. In the 'New Atalantis' Mrs. Manley
certified that the fair victim was first persuaded by his lordship's
sophistries to regard polygamy as accordant with moral law. Having thus
poisoned her understanding, he gratified her with a form of marriage, in
which his brother Spencer, in clerical disguise, acted the part of a
priest. It was even suggested that the bride in this mock marriage was
the lawyer's ward. Never squeamish about the truth, when he could gain a
point by falsehood, Swift endorsed the spiteful fabrication, and in the
_Examiner_, pointing at Lord Cowper, wrote--"This gentleman, knowing
that marriage fees were a considerable perquisite to the clergy, found
out a way of improving them cent. per cent. for the benefit of the
Church. His invention was to marry a second wife while the first was
alive; convincing her of the lawfulness by such arguments as he did not
doubt would ma