must
set the house on fire but it shall be roasted!" And roasted it was.

CHAPTER X.

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.--A strange 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."
A courtier 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 sha