Christopher Rich was no great judge of acting, but he thought there was something like promise of excellence in the easy and gentleman-like young fellow; and he consented to engage him for Drury Lane, at the encouraging salary of fifteen shillings a week, from which half a crown was to be deducted for instruction in dancing! This left Wilks twelve and sixpence clear weekly income; and he had not long been enjoying it, when he married Miss Knapton, daughter of the Town Clerk of Southampton. Young couple never began life upon more modest means; but happiness, hard work, and good fortune came of it. For a few years, commencing with 1690,[8] Wilks laboured unnoticed, at Drury Lane, by all save generous Betterton, who seeing the young actor struggling for fame, with a small salary, and an increasing family, recommended him to return to Ashbury, the Dublin manager, who, at Betterton's word, engaged him at £50 a year,[9] and a clear benefit. "You will be glad to have got him," said Betterton to Ashbury. "You will be sorry you have lost him," said he, to Christopher Rich. _Sorry!_ In three or four years more, Rich was imploring him to return, and offering him Golconda, as salaries were then understood. But Wilks was now the darling of the Dublin people, and, at a later period, so universal was the desire to keep him amongst them, that the Duke of Ormond, Lord Lieutenant, issued a warrant to prohibit his leaving the kingdom. But, on the other hand, £4 per week awaited him in London. It was nearly as high a salary as Betterton's![10] Wilks, however, caring less for the terms than for the opportunity of satisfying his inordinate thirst for fame, contrived to escape, with his wife. With them came a disappointed actor, soon to be a popular dramatist, Farquhar; who, in the year 1699, after opening the season with his "Love and a Bottle," produced his "Constant Couple," with Wilks as Sir Harry Wildair. On the night of Wilks's first appearance, in some lines written for him by Farquhar, and spoken by the _debutant_, the latter said:-- "Void of offence, though not from censure free, I left a distant isle, too kind to me;" and confessing a sort of supremacy in the London over the _Dublin_ stage, he added:-- "There I could please, but there my fame must end, For hither none must come to boast--but mend."