on
of poor relations was carried on more systematically than it is to-day,
and certainly Mrs. Trotter contrived to live and to bring up her two
daughters genteelly. The first years were the worst; the accession of
William III. brought back to England and to favour Gilbert Burnet, who
became Bishop of Salisbury in 1688, when Catharine was nine years old.
Mrs. Trotter found a patron and perhaps an employer in the Bishop, and
when Queen Anne came to the throne her little pension was renewed.

There is frequent reference to money in Catharine Trotter's writings,
and the lack of it was the rock upon which her gifts were finally
wrecked. With a competency she might have achieved a much more prominent
place in English literature than she could ever afford to reach. She
offers a curious instance of the depressing effect of poverty, and we
get the impression that she was never, during her long and virtuous
career, lifted above the carking anxiety which deadens the imagination.
As a child, however, she seems to have awakened hopes of a high order.
She was a prodigy, and while little more than an infant she displayed an
illumination in literature which was looked upon, in that age of female
darkness, as quite a portent. She taught herself French, "by her own
application without any instructor," but was obliged to accept some
assistance in acquiring Latin and logic. The last-mentioned subject
became her particular delight, and at a very tender age she drew up "an
abstract" of that science "for her own use." Thus she prepared for her
future communion with Locke and with Leibnitz. When she was very small,
in spite of frequent conferences with learned members of the Church of
England, she became persuaded of the truth of Catholicism and joined the
Roman communion. We may conjecture that this coincided with the
conversion of her kinsman, Lord Chancellor Perth, but as events turned
out it cannot but have added to the sorrows of that much-tried woman,
her mother. (It should be stated that Catharine resumed the Anglican
faith when she was twenty-eight years of age.)

She was in her tenth year when the unhappy reign of James II. came to a
close. Mrs. Trotter's connections were now in a poor plight. The new
Earl of Lauderdale was in great distress for money; Lord Dartmouth,
abandoned by the King in his flight, was thrown into the Tower, where he
died on October 25th, 1691, in which year the estates of the Earl of
Perth were sequestered and