John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647-80) was the brightest star at the court of King Charles 2nd.  His father, the 1st Earl had been instrumental in Charles 2nd coming back from exile and re-gaining the throne of England and as a result his son was feted. He attended Wadham College Oxford, did the Grand Tour with a learned scholar, distinguished himself in the Dutch Wars, was awarded £1000 a year by the King, married the most beautiful woman at court and entered the House of Lords at 19 (the King had the 21 years old rule set to one side specifically for him) but then it all started to go wrong.

By 33 he was dead because of his debauchery and sexual adventure and as Samuel Johnson put it, ‘blazed out his youth and health in lavish voluptuousness’. However, he was also one of the wittiest poets of the seventeenth century, writing comic verse, scurrilous satires and highly explicit erotica. In short, a freethinker, of whom even Voltaire said, ‘The man of Genius, the great poet’.

The painting used in our logo can be found in Warwick Castle and was done by Jacob Huysmans (c.1633–1696), a Flemish portrait painter, he moved to England during the reign of Charles 2nd where he became one of the fashionable painters of the court.

The monkey?

"Were I...," Rochester wrote, "a spirit free, to choose for my own share/ what sort of flesh and blood I pleas'd to wear,/ I'd be a dog, a monkey or a bear,/ Or any thing but that vain animal/ Who is so proud of being rational."