These three plays brought her money, friends, and reputation. She was already beginning to be a considerable figure in literary circles, and the first writers of the day were glad of the acquaintance of a woman who was both a wit and a writer. There is still retailed a vague, persistent, and entirely baseless tradition that Aphra Behn was assisted in writing her plays by Edward Ravenscroft,22 the well known dramatist. Mrs. Behn often alludes in her prefaces to the prejudice a carping clique entertained against her and the strenuous efforts that were made to damn her comedies merely because they were ‘writ by a woman’. Accordingly, when her plays succeeded, this same party, unable to deny such approved and patent merit, found their excuse in spreading a report that she was not inconsiderably aided in her scenes by another hand. Edward xxxiii Ravenscroft’s name stands to the epilogue of _Sir Timothy Tawdrey_, and he was undoubtedly well acquainted with Mrs. Behn. Tom Brown (I suggest) hints at a known intrigue,23 but, even if my surmise be correct, there is nothing in this to warrant the oft repeated statement that many of her scenes are actually due to his pen. On the other hand, amongst Aphra’s intimates was a certain John Hoyle, a lawyer, well known about the town as a wit. John Hoyle was the son of Thomas Hoyle, Alderman and Lord Mayor of, and M.P. for York, who hanged himself24 at the same hour as Charles I was beheaded. In the Gray’s Inn Admission Register we have: ‘1659/60 Feb. 27. John Hoyle son and heir of Thomas H. late of the city of York, Esq. deceased.’ Some eighteen years after he was admitted to the Inner Temple: ‘1678/9 Jan. 26. Order that John Hoyle formerly of Gray’s Inn be admitted xxxiv to this society _ad eundem statum_. (_Inner Temple Records_, iii, 131.) There are allusions not a few to him in Mrs. Behn’s poems; he is the Mr. J. H. of _Our Cabal_; and in ‘A Letter to Mr. _Creech_ at _Oxford_, Written in the last great Frost,’ which finds a place in the _Miscellany_ of 1685, the following lines occur:— To Honest H——le I shou’d have shown ye, A Wit that wou’d be proud t’ have known ye; A Wit uncommon, and Facetious, A great admirer of _Lucretius_. There can be no doubt he was on terms of the closest familiarity25 with Mrs. Behn, and he (if any), not Ravenscroft, assisted her (though we are not to suppose to a real extent) in her plays. There is a very plain allusion to this in Radcliffe’s _The Ramble: News from Hell_ (1682):— Amongst this Heptarchy of Wit The censuring Age have thought it fit, To damn a Woman, ’cause ’tis said The Plays she vends she never made. But that a _Greys Inn_ Lawyer does ’em Who unto her was Friend in Bosom, So not presenting Scarf and Hood New Plays and Songs are full as good.26