William Congreve descended from a family in Staffordshire of so
great antiquity, that it claims a place among the few that extend
their hue beyond the Norman Conquest, and was the son of William
Congreve, second son of Richard Congreve, of Congreve and Stratton.
He visited, once at least, the residence of his ancestors; and, I
believe, more places than one are still shown in groves and gardens,
where he is related to have written his Old Bachelor.

Neither the time nor place of his birth is certainly known. If the
inscription upon his monument be true, he was born in 1672. For the
place, it was said by himself that he owed his nativity to England,
and by everybody else that he was born in Ireland. Southern
mentioned him with sharp censure as a man that meanly disowned his
native country. The biographers assigned his nativity to Bardsa,
near Leeds, in Yorkshire, from the account given by himself, as they
suppose, to Jacob. To doubt whether a man of eminence has told the
truth about his own birth is, in appearance, to be very deficient in
candour; yet nobody can live long without knowing that falsehoods of
convenience or vanity, falsehoods from which no evil immediately
visible ensues, except the general degradation of human testimony,
are very lightly uttered, and once uttered are sullenly supported.
Boileau, who desired to be thought a rigorous and steady moralist,
having told a pretty lie to Louis XIV., continued it afterwards by
false dates; thinking himself obliged IN HONOUR, says his admirer,
to maintain what, when he said it, was so well received. [Congreve
was baptised at Bardsey, February 10, 1670.]

Wherever Congreve was born, he was educated first at Kilkenny, and