John Wilmot

Earl of Rochester, Viscount Athlone in Ireland, and Baron of Adderbury in Oxfordshire, was born at Dichley near Wodstock in the said County, .... Apr. 1648, educated in Grammar learning in the Free-school at Burford, under a noted Master called John Martin, became a Nobleman of Wadham Coll. under the tuition of Phineas Bury Fellow, and inspection of Mr. Blandford the Warden, an. 1659, actually created Master of Arts in Convocation, with several other noble persons, an. 1661; at which time, he, and none else, was admitted very affectionately into the fraternity by a kiss on the left cheek from the Chancellour of the University (Clarendon) who then sate in the supreme chair to honour that Assembly. Afterwards he travelled into France and Italy, and at his return frequented the Court (which not only debauched him but made him a perfect Hobbist) and was at length made one of the Gentlemen of the Bedchamber to his Majesty K. Ch. 2. and Controller of Wodstock Park, in the place of Sir W. Fleetwood deceased. He was a person of most rare parts, and his natural talent was excellent, much improved by learning and industry, being throly acquainted with all classick Authors, both Greek and Latine; a thing very rare (if not peculiar to him) among those of his quality. He knew also how to use them, not as other Poets have done, to transcribe and steal from, but rather to better and improve, them by his natural fancy. But the eager tendency and violent impulses of his natural temper, unhappily inclining him to the excesses of Pleasure and Mirth; which with the wonderful pleasantness of his unimitable humour, did so far engage the affections of the Dissolute towards him, that to make him delightfully ventrous and frollicksome to the utmost degrees of riotous extravagancy, they for some years heightned his spirits (enflamed by wine) into one almost interrupted fit of wantonness and intemperance. Some time before his death, were several copies of his verses printed (besides what went in MS. from hand to hand) among which were,

A Satyr against mankind—Printed in one sheet in fol. in June 1679. Answer’d in another sheet in the next month by one Mr. Griffith a Minister. Andr. Marvell who was a good Judge of wit, did use to say that Rochester was the only man in England that had the true vein of Satyr.

On nothing; a Poem.—Printed on one side of a sheet of paper in 2 columes. But notwithstanding the strict charge which the Earl of Rochester gave on his death bed to those persons, in whose custody his papers were, to burn all his prophane and rude Writings, as being only fit to promote Vice and Immorality, by which he had so highly offended the Omnipotent and sham’d and blasphem’d that holy Religion into which he had been baptized; yet no sooner was his breath out of his body, but some person, or persons, who had made a collection of most of his Poetry in Manuscript, did, meerly for lucre sake, (as ’twas conceived) publish them under this title,

Poems on several occasions. Antwerp alias Lond. 1680. oct. Among which, as those before mention’d are numbred, so many of his composure are omitted, and there is no doubt but that other mens Poems are mixed among them. They are full of obscenity and prophaneness, and are more fit (tho excellent in their kind) to be read by Bedlamites, than pretenders to vertue and modesty: and what are not so, are libellous and satyrical. Among them is a Poem intit. A Ramble in S. James’s Park, p. 14, which I guess is the same with that which is meant and challenged in the preface to the Poems of Alex. Radcliff of Greys Inn intit. The Ramble, an anti-heroick Poem, together with some terrestial Hymns, and carnal Ejaculations. Lond. 1682. oct. as the true composure of the said Radcliff, but being falsly and imperfectly published under the Earl’s name, is said there to be enlarged two thirds, above what it was, when before in print. The Reader is to know also that a most wretched and obcene and scandalously infamous Play, not wholly compleated, passed some hands privately in MS, under the name of Sodom, and fathered upon the Earl (as most of this kind were, right or wrong, which came out at any time, after he had once obtained the name of an excellent smooth, but withall a most lewd Poet) as the true author of it; but if that copy of verses inserted among his printed Poems before mention’d, in pag. 129. wrot upon the author of the Play call’d Sodom be really his, then questionless the writing of this vile piece is not to be laid to his charge; unless we should suppose him to have turned the keenness and sharpness of his piercing Satyr (for such is this) upon himself. He hath also written,

A Letter to Dr. Gilb. Burnet, written on his death bed. Lond. 1680. in one sh. in fol. And that he was the author of it, the Doctor himself acknowledgeth in the History ((†))((†)) Printed at Lond. 1680. in the Pref. and in page 133. of some passages of the life and death of John Earl of Rochester. About the same time also was published a sheet in fol. intit. The two noble Converts; or the Earl of Marlborough and the Earl of Rochester, their dying Requests to the Atheists and Debauchees of this age: but this was faigned and meerly written by a Scribler to get a little money. In Nov. 1684 was a Play of Joh. Fletchers published intit. Valentinian: a Tragedy as ’tis altered by the late Earl of Rochester, and acted at the Theatre-Royal. Lond. 1685. qu. To which is put, by a nameless Writer, a large Preface concerning the Author and his Writings, wherein among too many things, and high [•] flown surfeiting Encomiums, that are by him given of the said Count, is this,— “For sure there has not lived in many ages (if ever) so extraordinary, and I think I may add, so useful a person, as most English men know my Lord to have been, whether we consider the constant good sense and the agreeable mirth of his ordinary conversation, or the vast reach and compass of his invention, and the wonderful depths of his retired thoughts, the uncommon graces of his fashion, or the inimitable turns of his wit, the becoming gentleness, the bewitching softness of his civility, or the force and fitness of his Satyr; for as he was both the delight and wonder of Man, the love and the dotage of Women, so he was a continual curb to impertinence, and the publick censor of folly, &c. ” — In another place he saith thus, “He had a wit that was accompanied with an unaffected greatness of mind, and a natural love to justice and truth: a wit that was in perpetual war with knavery, and ever attacking those kind of vices most, whose malignity was like to be most diffusive, such as tended more immediately to the prejudice of publick bodies, and were of a common nusance to the happiness of humane kind. Never was his pen drawn but on the side of good sense, and usually imployed like the Arms of the ancient Heroes, to stop the progress of arbitrary oppression, and beat down the bruitishness of headstrong will; to do his K. and Country justice upon such publick State-Thieves, as would beggar a Kingdom to enrich themselves, &c. ” —To pass by other characters, which the said Anonymus too too fondly mentions of the Count, I shall proceed and tell you that he hath also written,

Poems, &c. on several occasions: with Valentinian a Tragedy. Lond. 1691. oct. They were published in the latter end of Feb. 1690. but the large Preface before mention’d is there omitted. These Poems, which are different from those that came out in 1680, have before them an admirable Pastoral on the death of the Earl of Roch. in imitation of the Greek of Moschus, made by Oldham; and among them songs and letters, as also (1) A copy of English verses made on the Kings return, in a book intit. Britannia rediviva, printed at Oxon. under the name of the University, 1660. qu. (2) A Lat. and English copy on the death of Mary Princess of Orange, in another book of verses published under the name of the said University, at Oxon. the same year in qu. But these three copies were made, as ’twas then well known, by Rob. Whitehall a Physitian of Mert. Coll, who pretended to instruct the Count (then 12 years of age) in the art of Poetry, and on whom he absolutely doted. (3) The translation of the ninth Elegy in the second book of Ovids Amours; which was published in a thing intit. Miscellany Poems: containing a new translation of Virgils Eclogues, Ovids love Elegies, Odes of Horace, &c. by the most eminent hands. Lond. 1684. oct. At length, after a short, but pleasant, life, this noble and beautiful Count paid his last debt to nature in the Rangers Lodge in Woodstock Park, very early in the morn. of the 26 of July in sixteen hundred and eighty,1680. and was buried in a vault under the north Isle joyning to Spelsbury Church in Oxfordshire, by the body of his Father Henry sometimes the generous, loyal and valiant Earl of Rochester, the same who had been Commissary General of the Army in the Scotch Expedition, an. 1639 under Thomas Earl of Arundel the General, and had then a troop of horse under him, and the same who had married Anne the Widow of Sir Harry Lee of Dichley before mention’d, and Daughter of Sir John St. John of Wiltshire. Which Henry Earl of Roch. dying beyond the Seas, in his attendance on his Majesty, on the 19 of Feb. 1657, aged 45 years, was, by leave obtained, privately buried in the before mention’d Vault, being the place of sepulture only for the family of Lee, since honored with the title of Earl of Lichfield. The said John E. of Rochester left behind him a son named Charles, who dying on the 12 of Nov. 1681, was buried by his father on the 7 of Dec. following. He also left behind him three daughters, named Anne, Elizabeth, and Malet; so that the male line ceasing, his Majesty Ch. 2. confer’d the title of Rochester on Laurence Viscount Killingworth, a younger son of Edward Earl of Clarendon.