as
Voltaire observes, "was driven to the most calamitous situation that
ever poor lady was exposed to; she was obliged to sollicit Cromwel to
pay her an allowance, as Queen Dowager of England, which, no doubt,
she had a right to demand; but to demand it, nay worse, to be obliged
to beg it of a man who shed her Husband's blood upon a scaffold, is an
affliction, so excessively heightened, that few of the human race ever
bore one so severe."

After an active service under the marquis of Newcastle, and the King's
cause declining beyond hope of recovery, Shirley came again to London,
and in order to support himself and family, returned his former
occupation of teaching a school, in White Fryars, in which he was
pretty successful, and, as Wood says, 'educated many ingenious youths,
who, afterwards in various faculties, became eminent.' After the
Restoration, some of the plays our author had written in his leisure
moments, were represented with success, but there is no account
whether that giddy Monarch ever rewarded him for his loyalty, and
indeed it is more probable he did not, as he pursued the duke of
Lauderdale's maxim too closely, of making friends of his enemies, and
suffering his friends to shift for themselves, which infamous maxim
drew down dishonour on the administration and government of Charles
II. Wood further remarks, that Shirley much assisted his patron, the
duke of Newcastle, in the composition of his plays, which the duke
afterwards published, and was a drudge to John Ogilby in his
translation of Homer's Iliad and Odysseys, by writing annotations on
them. At length, after Mr. Shirley had lived to the age of 72, in
various conditions, having been much agitated in the world, he, with
his second wife, was driven by the dismal conflagration that happened
in London, Anno 1666, from his habitation in Fleet-street, to another
in St. Giles's in the Fields. Where, being overcome with miseries
occasioned by the fire, and bending beneath the weight of years, they
both died in one day, and their bodies were buried in one grave, in
the churchyard of St. Giles's, on October 29, 1666.

The works of this author

1. Changes, or Love in a Maze, a Comedy, acted at a private house in
Salisbury Court, 1632.

2. Contention for Honour and Riches, a Masque, 1633.

3. Honoria and Mammon, a Comedy; this Play is grounded on the
abovementioned Masque.

4. The Witty Fair One, a Comedy, acted in Drury Lane, 1633.

5. The Trait