But it is hardly conceivable that the Government could have listened to charges brought by a man whom they had driven from the country for his seditious practices.

It is much more likely that Mist and his supporters had sufficient interest to instigate the revival of old pecuniary claims against Defoe.
It would have been open to suppose that the fears which made the old man a homeless wanderer and fugitive for the last two years of his life, were wholly imaginary, but for the circumstances of his death.

He died of a lethargy on the 26th of April, 1731, at a lodging in Ropemaker's Alley, Moorfields.

In September, 1733, as the books in Doctors' Commons show, letters of administration on his goods and chattels were granted to Mary Brooks, widow, a creditrix, after summoning in official form the next of kin to appear.

Now, if Defoe had been driven from his home by imaginary fears, and had baffled with the cunning of insane suspicion the efforts of his family to bring him back, there is no apparent reason why they should not have claimed his effects after his death.