Colley Cibber, who was a close friend, says that the young Brett was sent to Oxford and entered at the Temple, but was an idler about town in 1700, when he married Anne, the divorced wife of Charles Gerard, 2nd Earl of Macclesfield,[1] who succeeded to the title in 1693.
She was daughter of Sir Richard Mason, knight, of Sutton, Surrey, and married the Earl of Macclesfield, then Lord Brandon, in 1683, but separated from him soon after.
He rebuilt Sandywell Park, which he sold to Lord Conway, and at one time had a share in the patent of Drury Lane Theatre (Cibber, Apology, p. 212).
The young lady's ambition and prospects of a coronet were disappointed through the death of the king in 1727, and she subsequently married Sir William Leman, 2nd baronet, of Northaw or Northall, Hertfordshire, and died without issue in 1743.
She is said to have been a woman of literary tastes, and Colley Cibber is said to have submitted to her revision the manuscript of his best play, The Careless Husband, which was first put on the boards in 1704.