Oscar Wilde renewal. He immediately wrote to the Society of Jesus requesting a six-month Catholic retreat; when the request was denied, Wilde wept. "I intend to be received into the Catholic Church before long", Wilde told a journalist who asked about his religious intentions. He spent his last three years impoverished and in exile. He took the name "Sebastian Melmoth", after Saint Sebastian and the titular character of "Melmoth the Wanderer" (a Gothic novel by Charles Maturin, Wilde's great-uncle). Wilde wrote two long letters to the editor of the "Daily Chronicle", describing the brutal conditions of English prisons and advocating penal reform.
William Melmoth wife died around 1699 and left him property. He married again, a woman named Catharine, by 1710, and the two had four daughters and two sons to survive infancy. Among these was William Melmoth the Younger. As a high churchman, he was pleased with the accession of Queen Anne in 1702. He was active in the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge and greatly concerned with the lasciviousness and "impiety" of the English stage. He wrote, anonymously, to rail against stage performances, including correspondence with Daniel Defoe and the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Tenison. It was during these