From the beginning of her fifth year, then, Catharine experienced the
precarious lot of those who depend for a livelihood on the charity of
more or less distant relatives. We dimly see a presentable mother
piteously gathering up such crumbs as fell from the tables of the
illustrious families with whom she was remotely connected. But the Duke
of Lauderdale himself was now dead, and the Earl of Perth had passed the
zenith of his power. No doubt in the seventeenth century the protection
of poor relations was carried on more systematically than it is to-day,
and certainly Mrs. Trotter contrived to live and to bring up her two
daughters genteelly. The first years were the worst; the accession of
William III. brought back to England and to favour Gilbert Burnet, who
became Bishop of Salisbury in 1688, when Catharine was nine years old.
Mrs. Trotter found a patron and perhaps an employer in the Bishop, and
when Queen Anne came to the throne her little pension was renewed.

There is frequent reference to money in Catharine Trotter's writings,
and the lack of it was the rock upon which her gifts were finally
wrecked. With a competency she might have achieved a much more prominent
place in English literature than she could ever afford to reach. She
offers a curious instance of the depressing effect of poverty, and we
get the impression that she was never, during her long and virtuous
career, lifted above the carking anxiety which deadens the imagination.
As a child, however, she seems to have awakened hopes of a high order.
She was a prodigy, and while little more than an infant she displayed an
illumination in literature which was looked upon, in that age of female
darkness, as quite a portent. She taught herself French, "by her own
application without any instructor," but was obliged to accept some
assistance in acquiring Latin and logic. The last-mentioned subject
became her particular delight, and at a very tender age she drew up "an