Samuel Garth

Spencer Cowper, a lawyer and member of a prominent Hertfordshire family, was accused with some friends of the murder of a Quaker woman called Sarah Stout.

he exclaimed in 1714, on hearing that Sir John St Leger, an Irish Whig barrister, had been appointed a High Court judge in Ireland.

In 1697 he delivered the Harveian Oration, in which he advocated a scheme dating from some ten years back for providing dispensaries for the relief of the sick poor, as a protection against the greed of the apothecaries.

[5] Long has he been of that amphibious fry, Bold to prescribe, and busy to apply; His shop the gazing vulgar's eyes employs, With foreign trinkets and domestic toys.

Here mummies lay, most reverently stale, And there the tortoise hung her coat of mail; Not far from some huge shark's devouring head The flying-fish their finny pinions spread.

The sage in velvet chair here lolls at ease, To promise future health for present fees; Then, as from tripod, solemn shams reveals, And what the stars know nothing of foretells.

In 1704 he wrote the prologue for the play Squire Trelooby which his fellow Kit-Cat Club members Congreve, Vanbrugh and William Walsh had created.