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 make others follow the same example. _These he had drawn up in writing with intention to publish for the general good, and it is hoped he may now have leisure to finish them._" It is possible that the words in italics were the cause of Voltaire's astounding statement: "Plusieurs curieux ont encore le petit livre que ce Chancelier composa en faveur de la Polygamie." On this point Lord Campbell, confidently advancing an opinion which can scarcely command unanimous assent, says, "The fable of the '_Treatise_' is evidently taken from the panegyric on 'a plurality of wives,' which Mrs. Manley puts into the mouth of Lord Cowper, in a speech supposed to be addressed by Hernando to Lousia." But whether Voltaire accepted the 'New Atalantis,' or the _Examiner_, as an authority for the statements of his very laughable passage, it is scarcely credible that he believed himself to be penning the truth. The most reasonable explanation of the matter appears to be, that tickled by Swift's venomous lines, the sarcastic Frenchman in malice and gaiety adopted them, and added to their piquancy by the assurance that the Chancellor's book was not only published, but was preserved by connoisseurs as a literary curiosity.
