The grandfather of David was among the fugitives. That he moderately prospered may be believed, since his son ultimately held a captain's commission in the English army. Captain Garrick married a lady named Clough, the daughter of a Lichfield vicar; and the most famous son of this marriage, David, was born at Hereford, his father's recruiting quarters, in February, 1716. In the same city was born Nell Gwyn, if that, and not Margaret Simcott, be her proper name. Her great grandson, Lord James Beauclerk, was not yet bishop of the place when Garrick was born, but a much more dramatic personage, Philip Bisse, _was_. This right reverend gentleman was the audacious individual who, catching the Duchess of Plymouth in the dark, kissed her, and then apologised, on the ground that he had mistaken her for a Maid of Honour. The lively Duchess, who was then the widow of Charles Fitz-Charles, natural son of Charles II., by Catherine Peg, married the surpliced Corydon. Their life was a pleasant comedy; and under this very dramatic episcopate was Roscius born. His boyhood was passed at Lichfield, where he became more remarkable for his mania for acting than for application to school studies. At the age of eleven years, chief of a boyish company of players, he acted Kite, in the "Recruiting Officer," in which one of his sisters represented the Chambermaid, and to which Master Samuel Johnson refused to supply an introductory address. From Lichfield he made a trip to Lisbon, and therewith an attempt to fix himself in a vocation. His failure was no source of regret to himself. His uncle, a wine-merchant in the Portuguese capital, was not disposed to initiate the volatile lad into the mysteries of his craft, and David returned to Lichfield, with such increase of taste for the drama, that "several of his father's acquaintances," says Davies, "who knew the delight which he felt in the entertainment of the stage, often treated him with a journey to London, that he might feast his appetite at the playhouse." By this singular liberality, the ardent youth was enabled to see old Mills and Wilks, the two Cibbers, Ryan (of whose Richard, Garrick always spoke with admiration), and Quin. Booth was then stricken with the illness which ultimately killed him, and Garrick thus failed to study the greatest of actors between the era of Betterton and the coming time of Garrick himself. Of actresses the most important whom he saw, were Mrs. Porter, Mrs. Cibber, with whom he was destined to rouse the passions of many an audience, and Miss Raftor, who, as Mrs. Clive, was afterwards to rouse and play with his own.