[2] Jonathan Trelawney, bishop of Winchester, in June 1707 made Duke his chaplain, and in July 1710 presented him to the living of Witney, Oxfordshire.
[2] Francis Atterbury and Matthew Prior had been among his close friends, and on 16 February Jonathan Swift recorded Duke's death in his Journal to Stella, describing him as a wit.
Among works by Duke was the caustic satire on Titus Oates, printed by Nathanael Thompson, ‘A Panegyrick upon Oates,’ which is referred to in Duke's acknowledged companion poem, ‘An Epithalamium upon the Marriage of Captain William Bedloe,’ issued at Christmas 1679, and this was followed, near the end of August 1680, by ‘Funeral Tears upon the Death of Captain William Bedloe.’[2] He complimented the queen at Cambridge, September 1681.
; the ninth ode (Horace and Lydia) of book iii., and the Cyclops, idyl xi., of Theocritus, for John Dryden, with whom he appears to have been on terms of friendship, although he addressed him elsewhere as ‘the unknown author of “Absalom and Achitophel.”’ He praised him in a poem for his adaptation of Troilus and Cressida; he also complimented Thomas Creech (for his Lucretius), Nathaniel Lee, Thomas Otway, and Edmund Waller.
[2] Duke's ‘Poems upon Several Occasions’ were collected in 1717, and published in conjunction with those of Roscommon, including the fragmentary beginning of ‘The Review,’ declared to have been never before printed.