The Debt to Pleasure

John Wilmott (Earl of Rochester), John Wilmot, John Adlard

• Publisher: Fyfield Books
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9780856350924
• eBook ISBN:
  9781847776259
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

Rochester, incontestably the greatest of the Restoration poets and reprobates, is presented in The Debt to Pleasure both in his own words and the words of those who loved or loathed him. The book is a mosaic in which the poet's voice and the voice of his age sound with a startling, ribald, and riotous clarity.

1

‘Those Shining Parts … Began to Show Themselves’

1647	1 April. John Wilmot bom at Ditchley manor house, Oxfordshire, to Henry Wilmot, Baron Wilmot of Adderbury, Royalist general, and Anne, daughter of Sir John St John.
1652	13 December. Father created Earl of Rochester.
1655	February, March. Father led abortive Royalist rising in Yorkshire.
1657/8	19 February. Father died in exile.
1659/60	18 January. Rochester matriculated at Wadham College, Oxford.
1660	25 May. Charles II, restored, landed at Dover.
1660/1	February. King granted Rochester a pension in gratitude for his father’s loyalty.
1661	21 November. Rochester left England for a tour of France and Italy with Sir Andrew Balfour.
1664	Christmas Day. Rochester, returned from his travels, appeared at court with a letter to the king from his sister, the Duchess of Orleans.

His Birth and Parentage

John Wilmot Earl of Rochester was born in April, Anno Dom. 1648. [sic] His father was Henry Earl of Rochester, but best known by the title of the Lord Wilmot, who bore so great a part in all the late wars that mention is often made of him in the History: And had the chief share in the honour of the preservation of His Majesty that now reigns, after Worcester Fight, and the conveying him from place to place, till he happily escaped into France: But dying before the King’s return, he left his son little other inheritance but the honour and title derived to him, with the pretensions such eminent services gave him to the King’s favour: These were carefully managed by the great prudence and discretion of his mother, a daughter of that noble and ancient family of the St Johns of Wiltshire, so that his education was carried on in all things suitably to his quality.

Gilbert Burnet, Some Passages of the Life and Death of the Right Honourable John Earl of Rochester, London, 1680, pp. 1–3

His Birthplace in Oxfordshire

(i)

Hence we went to Ditchley, an ancient seat of the Lees, now Sir Hen: Lee’s, a low, ancient timber house, with a pretty bowling green: My Lady gave us an extraordinary dinner: This gent: mother was Countess of Rochester, who was also there, & Sir Walt: Saint Johns: There were some pictures of their ancestors, not ill painted; the Gr: grandfather had been knight of the garter, also the picture of a Pope & our Saviour’s head….

John Evelyn, Diary, 20 October 1664

(ii)

So I walked a mile & an half through a very pleasant country, in a good measure adorned with marvellous pleasant woods, till I came against Ditchley House, about a furlong on the west hand of the road. As soon as I entered in at the great gate I observed an old ditch running directly by the house, & on each side planted with trees, which are very thick…. As I was gazing at this ditch & admiring the situation of the house, which is placed on the side of a hill, … I espied an elderly man going to work. I took the opportunity to ask him the name of this ditch. Why, Master, says he, this is Grim’s Ditch, & it runs on through the Park & so on to Charlbury, Cornbury and Ramsden, where it joins with the Akeman Street….

This old house is a very notable thing, & I think I was never better pleased with any sight whatsoever than with this house, which hath been the seat of persons of true loyalty & virtue. The front on the south side is very pretty, considering the method of building at that time.

We passed through the kitchen & came into the great Hall, which is above 9 yards in length, & is eight yards & an half in breadth. I was mightily delighted with the sight of this old Hall, & was pleased the more because it is adorned with old stags’ horns, under some of which are … inscriptions on brass plates, which are the only inscriptions I ever saw of the kind…. I saw this date (1592) upon one of the leaden spouts of the house. The house itself was built before that year. But I cannot tell how old it is. It seems to have been done in the time of K. Hen. VIII.

10 June 1718; Remarks and Collections of Thomas Hearne, VI, Oxford, 1902, pp. 187, 188, 192

His Tutor

Mr Giffard tells me that he was tutor to the Earl of Rochester (mad Rochester) before he came to Wadham College, which was in the eleventh year of his age, and that he was then a very hopeful youth, very virtuous and good natured (as he was always) and willing & ready to follow good advice. He was to have come to Oxford with his Lordship, but was supplanted. His Lordship had always a very good opinion of Mr Giffard. Mr Giffard used to lie with him in the family, on purpose that he might prevent any ill accidents…. Mr Giffard says that my Lord understood very little or no Greek, and that he had but little Latin, & that therefore ’tis a great mistake in making him (as Burnet & Wood have done) so great a master of classic learning. He said my Lord had a natural distemper upon him which was extraordinary, & he thinks might be one occasion of shortening his days, which was that sometimes he could not have a stool for 3 weeks or a month together. Which distemper his Lordship told him was a very great occasion of that warmth and heat he always expressed, his brain being heated by the fumes and humours that ascended and evacuated themselves that way.

16 November 1711; Remarks and Collections of Thomas Hearne, III, Oxford, 1889, p. 263

At Burford Grammar School

(i)

[Anthony Wood tells us that he was ‘educated in grammar learning in the free school at Burford, under a noted master called John Martin’. Since in 1673 this John Martin, in a friendly reply to Christopher Wase of Oxford, who was making a survey of grammar schools, transcribed the ‘Constitutions’ of the school without comment, we may suppose that these rules were as applicable in Rochester’s day as they were when drawn up by one Si...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• A Note on the Text
• 1: ‘Those Shining Parts … Began to Show Themselves’
• 2: ‘Many Wild and Unaccountable Things’
• 3: ‘The Imperfect Enjoyment’
• 4: ‘The Right Vein’
• 5: ‘A Man Half in the Grave’
• 6: Epilogue (1685)
• Notes
• About the Author
• Copyright