1893 text
Mrs. Knight, a celebrated singer and mistress of Charles II. There is in Waller’s “Poems” a song sung by her to the queen on her birthday. In her portrait, engraved by Faber, after Kneller, she is represented in mourning, and in a devout posture before a crucifix. Evelyn refers to her singing as incomparable, and adds that she had “the greatest reach of any English woman; she had been lately roaming in Italy, and was much improv’d in that quality” (“Diary,” December 2nd, 1674).