surance.

One thing and one thing only shines clearly out of the obscurity in
which Defoe's closing years are wrapt--his earnest desire to make
provision for those members of his family who could not provide for
themselves. The pursuit from which he was in hiding, was in all
probability the pursuit of creditors. We have seen that his income must
have been large from the year 1718 or thereabouts, till his utter loss
of credit in journalism about the year 1726; but he may have had old
debts. It is difficult to explain otherwise why he should have been at
such pains, when he became prosperous, to assign property to his
children. There is evidence, as early as 1720, of his making over
property to his daughter Hannah, and the letter from which I have quoted
shows that he did not hold his Newington estate in his own name. In this
letter he speaks of a perjured, contemptible enemy as the cause of his
misfortunes. Mr. Lee conjectures that this was Mist, that Mist had
succeeded in embroiling him with the Government by convincing them of
treachery in his secret services, and that this was the hue and cry from
which he fled. But it is hardly conceivable that the Government could
have listened to charges brought by a man whom they had driven from the
country for his seditious practices. It is much more likely that Mist
and his supporters had sufficient interest to instigate the revival of
old pecuniary claims against Defoe.

It would have been open to suppose that the fears which made the old man
a homeless wanderer and fugitive for the last two years of his life,
were wholly imaginary, but for the circumstances of his death. He died
of a lethargy on the 26th of April, 1731, at a lodging in Ropemaker's
Alley, Moorfields. In September, 1733, as the books in Doctors' Commons
show, letters of administration on his goods and chattels were granted
to Mary Brooks, widow, a creditrix, after summoning in official form the
next of kin to appear. Now, if Defoe had been driven from his home by
imaginary fears, and had baffled with the cunning of insane suspicion
the efforts of his family to bring him back, there is no apparent reason
why they should not have claimed his effects after his death. He could
not have died unknown to them, for place and time were recorded in the
newspapers. His letter to his son-in-law, expressing the warmest
affection for all his family except his son, is sufficient to prevent
the horrible notion that he might ha