"There is a tradition that his death was occasioned by a cold which he caught in the night waiting for admittance to his own house. It is said that he used to keep late hours, and that his wife had given orders to his servants not to let him in after midnight; unfortunately he came home heated with wine from the tavern at an hour later than that prescribed him, and through the inclemency of the air contracted a disorder of which he died. If this be true, it reflects but little honour on Madam Purcell, for so she is styled in the advertisements of his works; and but ill agrees with those expressions of grief for her dear, lamented husband, which she makes use of to Lady Howard in the dedication of the _Orpheus Britannicus_. It seems probable that the disease of which he died was rather a lingering than an acute one, perhaps a consumption." We see from this, that Hawkins had some doubt as to the truth of the story, and his daughter writing in 1822,[52] respecting some aspersions which had been cast on her mother in reference to her treatment of her father, says, "Sir John Hawkins was not at home at all the sooner for his wife's fetching him. Mrs. Purcell, I should conjecture, had other modes of attracting Mr. Purcell; yet _perhaps the whole may have been as gross a falsification as that_ by which Lady Hawkins is vilified." In a volume of poetry of glees published by Richard Clark in 1824, he improves the tale told by Hawkins, and boldly adds details. He prints the words of the catch, "Jack, thou'rt a toper." "Jack, thou'rt a toper; let's have t'other quart. Ring, we're so sober 'twere a shame to part; None but a cuckold bully'd, by his wife For coming late, fears a domestic strife; I'm free, and so are you! to call and knock Boldly, the watchman cries, 'Past two o'clock.'" To these lines he appends the name of Tom Brown, and tells us that _Jack_ was intended for Dr. Blow, and that "Purcell appears to have spent much of his time with Tom Brown, who wrote the words of most of his catches." Purcell never set a single line of Brown's, and they were wholly unacquainted with each other, as may be learnt from the following verses written by Brown in June, 1693, two years before Purcell's death, "To his unknown friend, Mr. _H. Purcell_, upon his excellent compositions in the _Harmonia Sacra_."