 Sources for Catharine Macaulay’s early life are scarce, and modern historians have relied on the account published by Mary Hays in her Female Biography (Hays 1803, 5.287–307; Hill 1992, 1–24). Hays represents Macaulay’s childhood as a romance of miraculous self-education. She was born Catharine Sawbridge on April 2, 1731 (March 23, 1730, old style) the second child of John Sawbridge and Dorothy Wanley, at Olantigh in Kent, a property that had been a gift from her grandfather, who had made a fortune, and then lost much of it as well as his reputation, as a result of his position as one of the directors of the South Sea Company. Having given birth to two daughters and two sons, John and Wanley, Catharine’s mother died leaving her and her siblings to the care of their father, who was often absent, while their uncle Jacob, who was married to Anne Brodnax from the neighboring Godmersham, remained at Olantigh. Though Macaulays cousins by this marriage appear to have had a greater claim, Godmersham was later inherited by Jane Austen’s brother, Edward (Green 2017). According to Hays, Macaulay was educated by “an antiquated, well-recommended, but ignorant governess,” who could not satisfy her intellectual curiosity, and “having found her way into her father’s well-furnished library, she became her own purveyor, and rioted in intellectual luxury” (Hays 1803, 5.288–9). It is here, according to Hays, that she first became interested in the history of the Greeks and Romans, “their laws and manners interested her understanding, the spirit of patriotism seized her, and she became an enthusiast in the cause of freedom.” (Hays 1803, 5.289–90) While perhaps exaggerated, this rather romantic account can be accepted as in essence accurate, since Hay’s informant, “Mrs Arnold of Leicester” was the sister of Macaulay’s second husband. It echoes Macaulay’s own assertion, in the introduction to the first volume of her History of England that,