1700 - 4: Although Anne and Heneage began to stay at Eastwell for longer periods, they were not yet living there; rather they lived nearby, at Wye College. This is clear from two letters from Heneage, one dated October 12, 1700, the other, May 14, 1702; and two poems by Anne, one referring to a campaign by Prince Eugene which occurred in spring 1701 and to a workman at Wye who volunteered and lost his life in the war, the other dated March 25, 1703. In 1703 Heneage described as called out (clearly from where he was living) to the wagon-way by Wye to examine an ancient red-clay urn and the skeleton of a small child. McGovern says that Longleat Thynne papers also show Anne and Heneage living at Wye College "from 1700 until 1704, possibly longer." It was during this time Anne began to recover in a more permanent way.

Anne's depressions were now infrequent and mostly controllable. It was then the first manuscript book was begun: this is the elegant octavo book whose label is F-H 283 (MS Finch-Hatton). Anne also wrote a group of poems sent to Rowe and/or Gilden for publication (which appeared July 1701) which were later copied into either the first or the second manuscript book which itself shows a rearrangement and revisions from the first: this second book is a large folio; first "recovered by Edmund Gosse, it now resides in the Folger Shakespeare Library and is labelled the Folger MS.

Common sense suggests that the couple chose to live nearby rather than at Eastwell to avoid various family tensions, stemming perhaps from quarrels between the young Earl's mother and the diceased Earl's fourth wife. See my I on Myself Can Live, Chapter Four: Longleat, Godmersham and Wye.

1700 - 1:

85. Did I my Lines intend for publick view
86. Now, spent the alter'd King, in am'rous cares
87. Mourn all ye Loves, the fair Adonis dyes
88. Damon, whilst thus, wee nightly watches keep,
89. Fair Tree, for thy delightfull shade,
90. Tho' to Antiquity the praise we yeild
91. Wonder not Madam, that the Muses pay
92. How shall I wooe thee gentle rest
93. With such a pulse, with such disorder'd veins
94. What art thou Spleen, which ev'ry thing doest ape?
95. [First line unknown. Title: An Answer to Mirtilla]
96. When my Aminta weeps 'tis sure

1700 - 2: Anne and Heneage still living at Wye College, perhaps alone (as suggested by the lines in her "Some Occasional Digressions" remembering her failed attempt at retirement in "monastick walls," glossed in a note in the Folger MS as "Wye College in Kent, formerly a Priory," p 293 bottom margin).

97. Give me, oh! indulgent Fate
98. Give me, Oh!--2nd petition poem pasted over
99. 'Tis fitt Serena shou'd be sung
100. To write in verse has been my pleasing choice
101. You who remote in London lye

1701, July (soon afterwards):
102. Twice in our Solitude has now appear'd

1701, September (afterwards, finished later in the year)
103. If the Possession of Imperial Sway

1702-3:
104. Gentlest Air thou breath of Lovers

1703, March 25, Wye College:
105. 'Tis true of courage I'm no mistress

1703, April 12 (sometime later, from the text: A woodbine ... o're my window spreads its od'rous boughs/Refreshing, with a secret sweet content,/My lonely sight ... Anne is at Eastwell awaiting Charles's return with the rest of the family):

106. Now blow, ye Southern winds, with full release

1703, November 27 - February 9, 1704: Anne and Heneage back at Wye College:

107. You have obey'd, you Winds that must fullfill
108. To the Almighty on his radiant throne

1704 - 6: Anne and Heneage come to live at Eastwell permanently. A second manuscript book (MS Folger) begun, into which the following poems were all copied before Anne wrote the preface. A footnote at the bottom of the preface points to the insertion of Anne's three pieces from the Italian of the Aminta, which has been decided on since she wrote the preface. The pagination is consistent a few pages after the first few pages of The Triumphs of Love and Innocence. I suggest 1706 as a terminus ad quem for this series because one of the poems below seems to refer to this year (the reference to Mons in "An Invitation to Dafnis), and because it is in that year that she dated and wrote two Tunbridge satires (not found in the MS Folger). Anne was slowly moving from the personally referential meditations (long and short) of her court years, the 1690s through early 1700s, the MS F-H 283 and the early MS Folger, to a much more apparently impersonal and ironic poetry. By 1709 she is writing hudibrastic fables, impersonal Pope-like pastorals, and anacreontics in Prior's gay amoral vein. She had works within the genres of mid-, to later 17th century poets; now she was working within the newer subgenres of the early Augustan era.

109. Beaumont in the beginning of a Coppy of Verses to his freind Fletcher, (upon the ill sucesse of his Faithfull Shepheardesse) tells him
110. A pleasing wonder throo' my fancy moves
111. Me, dear Ephelia, me, in vain you court
112. In love, who to a cure aspires
113. What freindship is, Ardelia shew?
114. You, when your body, life shall leave
115. This Day, sais Ralpho, I was free
116. More then a Sea of tears, can show
117. From the Park, and the Play
118. Absence in Love effects the same
119. When such a day, blesst the Arcadian plaine
120. Appollo, as lately a Circuit he made
121. If we those Gen'rous Sons, deserv'dly Praise
122. Madam--'till pow'rfully convinc'd by You
123. Fate, 'till the Day was Ours, wou'd not dispense
124. Whilst with his falling Wings, the courtly Dove
125. Peace, where art thou to be found
126. 'Tis true Mirtillo 'twas a fault

1704-7: Anne at Long-Leat for one or more longer visits:

127. SOoner I'd praise a Cloud which Light beguiles
128. THINK not a partial fondness sway'd my mind
129. FArewel, lov'd Youth! since 'twas the Will of Heaven
130. THUS Tapistry of old, the Walls adorn'd,

1704, August 10, from Lewston, Dorsetshire, to Longleate, Wiltshire:

131. From the sweet pleasure of a rural seat
132. Absence in love effects the same

1706: Anne, taking the water at Tunbridge Wells.

133. Protect the State and let old England thrive
134. FOR He, that made, must new create us
135. Who e'er of Satyre does my pen accuse

1706 - 9: Now we can locate Anne and Heneage Finch as permanently at Eastwell and going to visit London. Many of the poems written during these first years of the 18th century show Anne Finch writing vigorously and with great beauty. The following texts include some of most frequently reprinted of Anne Finch's poetry. They show a new intent and new influences; the intent is a more impersonal poetry, the influence that of the new eighteenth-century style and modes as exemplified by Pope and others in the 1710's. In her middle years Anne was not retired or retiring, but attempted to join the "swim" of things "in town." A number of her poems in the MS Wellesley are dated from Cleveland Row, though when "Mrs Finch" began appearing regularly in society is anyone's guess; I suggest 1706 as a terminus ad quo as we can place her at Tunbridge in that year. I conjecture 1709 as the terminus ad quem for the whole of the MS Folger as it is in 1709 we find Tonson publishing some of the later MS Folger poems, and 1709 is the last date in the MS Folger: "A Tale of the Miser and the Poet," written in a kind of naturalistic doggerel which dominates some of her fables in the 1713 Miscellany and many of the comic poems in MS Wellesley. The long period of severe continuous depressions is over, and her later illness and the return of depressions (spleen) not yet begun. Finch uses her psychological power and techniques to write her satire, elegiac lyrics, fables, pastorals and landscape art in a more impersonal vein.

136. Pretty Nymph within this Shade
137. Cupid e're depriv'd of sight
138. Cou'd our first Father at his toilsome Plough
139. 'Tis true I write and tell me by what Rule
140. How gayly is at first begun
141. Since the Road of Life's so ill
142. Cou'd we stop the time that's flying
143. Dorinda since you must decay
144. Silvia letts from the Crowd retire
145. How dear is Reputation bought
146. Reputation, Love, and Death
147. Whilst Monarks in stern Battels strove
148. Through every Age some Tyrant passion reigns
149. Two long had lov'd and now the Nymph desir'd
150. When Poets gave their God in Creete a Birth
151. Never trifle with a Disease
152. Far, from Societies where I have place
153. The tree of Knowledge, we in Eden prov'd
154. By neer resemblance see that Bird betray'd
155. Exert thy voyce, sweet Harbinger of Spring

1707-9: Anne Finch, perhaps at Eastwell and poem sent to Hothfield Place, or in London and poem sent to Thanet House. Anne Finch was in town in August of 1708 from a letter from Lady Marrow to her daughter Lady Kay.

156. With all respect and humble duty

1708-11:
157. 'Friend! if I'm late, excuse the failing

1709:
158. CUPID, one day ask'd his Mother
159. A WIT, transported with Inditing

1709, March 2 to around July 26, 1711, Anne part of fashionable society, perhaps in London. This is the period when amused himself by writing verses to Mrs Finch; his doggerel plain style influenced her in this and other poems in the years 1709-14:

160. This matchless Picture, Jervas, hide