第55章 CHAPTER X.(1)

Notorious courtiers.--My Lord Rochester's satires.--Places a watch on certain ladies of quality.--His majesty becomes indignant.--Rochester retires to the country.--Dons a disguise and returns to town.--Practises astrology.--Two maids of honour seek adventure.--Mishaps which befell them.--Rochester forgiven.

--The Duke of Buckingham.--Lady Shrewsbury and her victims.--Captain Howard's duel.--Lord Shrewsbury avenges his honour.--Astrange story.--Colonel Blood attempts an abduction.--Endeavours to steal the regalia.--The king converses with him.

Prominent among the courtiers, and foremost amid the friends of his majesty, were two noblemen distinguished alike for their physical grace, exceeding wit, and notable eccentricity. These were the Earl of Rochester, and his Grace of Buckingham; gallants both, whose respective careers were so intimately connected with the court as to make further chronicle of them necessary in these pages.

My Lord Rochester, though younger in years than the duke, was superior to him in wit, comeliness, and attraction. Nor was there a more conspicuous figure observable in the palace of Whitehall than this same earl, who was ever foremost in pursuit of such pleasures as wine begets and love appeases. His mirth was the most buoyant, his conversation the most agreeable, his manner the most engaging in the world; whence he became "the delight and wonder of men, the love and dotage of women." Acourtier possessed of so happy a disposition, and endowed with such brilliant talents, could not fail in pleasing the king; who vastly enjoyed his society, but was occasionally obliged to banish his person from court, when his eccentric conduct rendered him intolerable, or his bitter satire aimed at royalty. For it was given no other man in his age to blend merry wit and caustic ridicule so happily together; therefore those who read his lines were forced to laugh at his fancy, even whilst hurt by his irony.

Now in order to keep this talent in constant practice, he was wont to celebrate in inimitable verse such events, be they private or public, as happened at court, or befell the courtiers;and inasmuch as his subjects were frequently of a licentious nature, his lines were generally of a scandalous character. He therefore became the public censor of court folly; and so unerringly did his barbed shafts hit the weaknesses at which they aimed, that his productions were equally the terror of those he victimized, and the delight of those he spared.

This liberal use of satire he was wont to excuse on the plea there were some who could not be kept in order, or admonished, by other means. Therefore, having the virtue of his friends keenly at heart, an ingenious plan occurred to him by which he might secretly discover their vices, and publicly reprove them. In order that he might fulfil this purpose to his greater satisfaction, he promptly sought and found a footman, who, by virtue of his employment, was well acquainted with the courtiers.

This man the "noble and beautiful earl" furnished with a red coat and a musket, that he might pass as a sentinel, and then placed him every night throughout one winter at the doors of certain ladies of quality whom he suspected of carrying on intrigues.

In this disguise the footman readily passed as a soldier stationed at his post by command of his officer, and was thus enabled to note what gentlemen called on the suspected ladies at unreasonable but not unfashionable hours. Accordingly, my lord made many surprising discoveries, and when he had gained sufficient information on such delicate points, he quietly retired into the country, that he might with greater ease devote himself to the composition of those lively verses which he subsequently circulated through the court, to the wonder and dismay of many, and the delight and profit of few.

To these lampoons no name was attached, and my lord took precautions that their authorship should not be satisfactorily proved, no matter how sagely suspected. Moreover, in his conversation he was judicious enough to keep the weapon of his satire in reserve; sheathing its fatal keenness in a bewitching softness of civility until occasion required its use; when forth it flashed all the brighter for its covering, all the sharper for its rest. And satire being absent from his speech, humour ever waited on his words; and never was he more extravagantly gay than when assisting at the pleasant suppers given by the merry monarch to his choicest friends.

Here, whilst drinking deep of ruddy wine from goblets of old gold, he narrated his strange experiences, and illustrated them with flashes of his wit. for it was the habit of this eccentric earl, when refinements of the court began to pall upon him, or his absence from Whitehall became a necessity, to seek fresh adventure and intrigue disguised as a porter, a beggar, or a ballad-monger. And so carefully did he hide his identity in the character he assumed, that his most intimate friends failed to recognise his personality.

No doubt the follies in which he indulged were in some measure due to the eccentricity ever attendant upon genius; but they were probably likewise occasioned by craving for excitement begotten of drink. For my lord loved wine exceedingly; and when he drew near unto death in the dawn of his manhood, confessed to Bishop Burnet that for five years he was continually drunk: "Not that he was all the while under the visible effects of it, but his blood was so inflamed, that he was not in all that time cool enough to be perfectly master of himself." Charles delighted in the society of this gay courtier, because of his erratic adventures, and his love of wine. Moreover, the licentious verses which it was the earl's good pleasure to compose, the names of some of which no decent lips would whisper in this age of happy innocence, afforded the monarch extravagant enjoyment.