Thomas Rochester

“ The worst that can be laid to the charge of this poor youth, whom it has been the fashion to represent as the most desperate of reprobates, as a village Rochester, is that he had a great liking for some diversions, quite harmless in themselves, but condemned by the rigid precisians among whom he lived, and for whose opinion he had a great respect. ”

“ For Rochester, indeed, there was some excuse. When his offences against decorum were committed, he was a very young man, misled by a prevailing fashion. Wycherley was sixty-four. He had long outlived the times when libertinism was regarded as essential to the character of a wit and a gentleman. Most of the rising poets, Addison, for example, John Philips and Rowe, were studious of decency. We can hardly conceive any thing more miserable than the figure which the ribald old man makes in the midst of so many sober and well-conducted youths. ”

“ Rochester was firmly resolved not to abjure his religion; but he had no scruple about employing in selfdefence artifices as discreditable as those which had been used against him. He affected to speak like a man whose mind was not made up, professed himself desirous to be enlightened if he was in error, borrowed Popish books, and listened with civility to Popish divines. He had several interviews with Leyburn, the Vicar Apostolic, with Godden, the chaplain and almoner of the Queen Dowager, and with Bonaventure Giffard, a theologian trained to polemics in the schools of Douay. ”

“ I wish to Heaven, my Lord----"
"Hush," cried Rochester, laughing, and taking him by the collar, "not a word, or I will strangle you. She is the most charming creature in the whole world; beauty, wit, grace, everything--I can no more give her up than I can fly."
"I do not ask you to give her up, my Lord;" replied Sir Thomas Overbury, whose morality was not very nice. "I only wish you to be more careful. For a light love affair like this, you will never think of marring your whole fortunes; and if you do not mend the rashness of your passion, you will do so. ”

“ The wise and the good have fallen beneath the axe, and the best that ever lived was crucified; there is no fear that fair Sir Thomas Overbury has not abundance of such vices in his composition as may well move a monarch's indignation, with a good word to help."
"No," said Rochester, who had been thinking deeply, and was not yet brought fully to that utter shamelessness at which his partner in evil had arrived--"No, a means may be devised for attaining our object, without bringing on my own head the charge of ingratitude. ”

“ She is married to William Seymour, as sure as my name is Rochester."
"Well, choose some one else, then," cried Sir Thomas; "choose any one but this woman--choose anything but disgrace."
"But I do not see the disgrace," exclaimed Rochester, who had heard him throughout with a heated cheek and contracted brow; "there is a great difference between Lady Rich and Lady Frances Howard, whom they call Lady Essex. I tell you, though some ceremony was performed in their childhood, she is not his wife; and the pretended marriage may be dissolved. Then, too, she has never loved any one but me ”

“ Augustine’s preaching, though the scene of the legend was laid in Dorsetshire. The writer of this singular composition goes on to describe the people of Rochester as seducers of other people, as men without gratitude, and as traitors. He proceeds to show that Rochester being situated in England, its vices had tainted the whole nation, and he illustrates the baseness of the English character by a number of anecdotes of worse than doubtful authenticity. It is, in fact, a satire on the English composed in France, and leads us into the domains of political satire. ”

“ He seems to have determined to make some amends for neglecting the welfare of his own soul by taking care of the souls of others. He set himself, therefore, to labour, with real good will, but with the good will of a coarse, stern, and arbitrary mind, for the conversion of his kinsman. Every audience which the Treasurer obtained was spent in arguments about the authority of the Church and the worship of images. Rochester was firmly resolved not to abjure his religion ”

“ The obstacle to their ambitions, and one they found hard to stomach, was the upstart Rochester. And even Rochester would hardly have stood in their way had his power in the Council depended on his own ability. The brain that directed Robert Carr belonged to another man. This was Sir Thomas Overbury. ”

“ Ils s'etoient assures d'elle." While Bonrepaux was writing thus, Rochester was writing as follows: "Oh God, teach me so to number my days that I may apply my heart unto wisdom. Teach me to number the days that I have spent in vanity and idleness, and teach me to number those that I have spent in sin and wickedness. ”

“ SURREY.
Instantly, good Sir Thomas,
We’ll bring the writing unto our sovereign.
[They write.]
PALMER.
My Lord of Rochester,
You must with me, to answer this contempt.
ROCHESTER.
This is the worst,
Who’s freed from life is from all care exempt.
[Exit Rochester and Palmer.]
SURREY.
Now let us hasten to our sovereign.
Tis strange that my Lord Chancellor should refuse
The duty that the law of God bequeaths
Unto the king.
SHREWSBURY.
Come, let us in. No doubt
His mind will alter, and the bishop’s too:
Error in learned heads hath much to do.
[Exeunt.]
SCENE III. Chelsea. ”

“ For what offence was Lord Rochester driven from the Treasury? He was closely connected with the Royal House. He was at the head of the Tory party. He had stood firmly by James in the most trying emergencies. But he would not change his religion, and he was dismissed. That we may not be suspected of overstating the case, Dr. Lingard, a very competent, and assuredly not a very willing witness, shall speak for us. “The King,” says that able but partial writer, “was disappointed: he complained to Barillon of the obstinacy and insincerity of the treasurer ”

“ THOMAS, JOHN (1712–1793) , bishop of Rochester, born at Carlisle on 14 Oct. 1712, was the eldest son of John Thomas (d. 1747) , vicar of Brampton in Cumberland, by his wife Ann, daughter of Richard Kelsick of Whitehaven, a captain in the merchant service. The younger Thomas was educated at the Carlisle grammar school, whence he proceeded to Oxford, matriculating from Queen's College on 17 Dec. ”

“ Fish, at Rochester; but no [46] sooner had she gone than the manifestations re-commenced with more force than ever, in the presence of Margaretta. In course of time Mrs. Fox, with both her daughters, went to live in Rochester, but neither change of place nor house, nor yet the separation of the family, afforded them any relief from the disturbances that evidently attached themselves to persons rather than places as formerly. ”

“ A. H. Jervis, a Methodist minister of Rochester, in whose family remarkable manifestations occurred of the same character as in that of the Foxes, and whose appreciation of the beauty and worth of the communications he received, several of his published letters bear witness of. Mr. Lyman Granger, Rev. Charles Hammond, Deacon Hale, and several other families of wealth and influence, both in Rochester and the surrounding towns, also began to experience similar phenomena in their own households, while the news came from all quarters, extending as far as Cincinnati and St. ”

“ Sancroft, who, since the return of James from Kent to Whitehall, had taken no part in public affairs, determined to come forth from his retreat on this occasion, and to put himself at the head of the Royalists. Several messengers were sent to Rochester with letters for the King. He was assured that his interests would be strenuously defended, if only he could, at this last moment, make up his mind to renounce designs abhorred by his people. Some respectable Roman Catholics followed him, in order to implore him, for the sake of their common faith, not to carry the vain contest further. ”

“ No, I can conceive of no such fearful possibility; the wise, the virtuous Bishop of Rochester can never be involved in the misfortune that would crush Thomas More.”
“Ah!” replied Fisher, “but I shall understand how to call down on my head the vengeance with which he may hesitate to strike me. Believe me, More, a man scarcely reaches the prime of life before he feels himself, as it were, daily beginning to fail. Just as in the autumn days the sun’s light rapidly diminishes, so the passing years despoil his body of physical strength and beauty ”

“ He had been admitted to familiar conversation both with Charles and James, had lived on terms of close intimacy with several distinguished statesmen, particularly with Halifax, and had been the spiritual guide of some persons of the highest note. He had reclaimed from atheism and from licentiousness one of the most brilliant libertines of the age, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. Lord Stafford, the victim of Oates, had, though a Roman Catholic, been edified in his last hours by Burnet's exhortations touching those points on which all Christians agree. ”

“ Weak and short-sighted as he was, Rochester experienced its influence at that moment. To be branded with the stain of foul ingratitude for coming times--to be marked out in the annals of the age as one who had betrayed and ruined his friend--to be held up for scorn and reprobation as a base and thankless villain, in the eyes of his children and his children's children, somewhat appalled him ”

“ For me she is ready to sacrifice everything----"
"She has sacrificed too much already," answered Overbury. But seeing by Rochester's angry look that he had gone much farther than was politic, and that nothing he could say would change his resolution, he added, after a moment's pause, "Well, Rochester, do me justice, and remember that I have but spoken for your good, as I believe it to be. I may be mistaken; probably am; but your happiness I wish sincerely."
"No man's happiness can be secured, but in his own way," replied Rochester. ”

“ Rochester has a thoughtful nature and a very feeling heart; he is neither selfish nor self-indulgent; he is ill-educated, misguided; errs, when he does err, through rashness and inexperience: he lives for a time as too many other men live, but being radically better than most men, he does not like that degraded life, and is never happy in it. ”

“ A word about the Rochester family is here necessary. They inhabited the largest house in March Square—the large grey one at the corner by Lent Street—and yet it could not be said to be large enough for them. Mrs. Rochester was a black-haired woman with flaming cheeks and a most untidy appearance. Her mother had been a Spaniard, and her father an English artist, and she was very much the child of both of them. Her hair was always coming down, her dress unfastened, her shoes untied, her boots unbuttoned. ”

“ CHAPTER XV ROCHESTER IS INDIGNANT Rochester accepted his wife’s offer of a lift in her victoria after the luncheon party in Cadogan Street.
“Mary,” he said, as soon as the horses had started, “I cannot imagine why you were so civil to that insufferable bounder Saton.”
She looked at him thoughtfully.
“Is he an insufferable bounder?” she asked.
“I find him so,” Rochester answered, deliberately. “He dresses like other men, he walks and moves like other men, he speaks like other men, and all the time I know that he is acting. He plays the game well, but it is a game. ”

“ Lord Rochester was not more remarkable for the superiority of his parts, than the extraordinary debauchery of his life, and with his dissipations of pleasure, he suffered sometimes malevolent principles to govern him, and was equally odious for malice and envy, as for the boundless gratifications of his appetites. ”

“ Rochester's poetry is the poetry of wit combined with the love of pleasure, of thought with licentiousness. His extravagant heedless levity has a sort of passionate enthusiasm in it; his contempt for every thing that others respect, almost amounts to sublimity. His poem upon Nothing is itself no trifling work. ”

“ Lord Rochester is, without contradiction, the most witty man in all England; but then he is likewise the most unprincipled, and devoid even of the least tincture of honour; he is dangerous to our sex alone; and that to such a degree that there is not a woman who gives ear to him three times, but she irretrievably loses her reputation. No woman can escape him, for he has her in his writings, though his other attacks be ineffectual; and in the age we live in, the one is as bad as the other in the eye of the public. ”

“ The bibliography of Rochester's poems is difficult owing to the number of poems that are attributed to him in miscellaneous collections of verse of which he was probably not the author (cf. Poems on Affairs of State, passim; Examen Miscellaneum, 1702) . No complete critical collection of his works has been attempted. His ‘Satires against Mankind,’ his poem on ‘Nothing,’ and others of ‘his lewd and profane poems’ and libels appeared as penny broadsides in single folio sheets at the close of his life—in 1679 and 1680—doubtless surreptitiously. ”

“ But Rochester is a man of the best English society, courted by wealth and rank, a man of cultivated tastes, of wide experience and refined habits, and lastly of most generous and heroic impulses—and yet such a man swears at his people like a horse-dealer, teases and bullies his little governess, treats his adopted child like a dog, almost kicks his brother-in-law in his rages, plays shocking tricks with his governess at night, offers her marriage, and attempts to commit bigamy in his own parish with his living wife still under the same roof! ”