the famous Duchess of Marlborough) and Miss Price arrayed
themselves as orange women to visit Rochester, who was
masquerading as an astrologer so as to catch some city
lady. Miss Hobart and Miss Temple exchanged dresses
and paraded masked in The Mall to befool the same extra-
ordinary peer; and these were all court ladies. Bishop
Burnet tells of the court masquerades, and how even the
king and queen attended masked balls incogniti, 'and
danced there with wild frolic'. Nor was this the most.
Although poisoning never attained the vogue it did in
France at this period, Sir John Denham's wife was supposed
to have been poisoned 'by the hand of the Countess of
Rochester with chocolate'. Whether this was true or not,
the fact that it could be recorded by Aubrey is sufficient
indication of the morality of the time, while Burnet was
strongly inclined to believe that Charles II died by the
same foul means. When the actor Mountford was mur-
dered, little pains were taken to bring the murderer to trial,
and his noble accomplice, Lord Mohun, was acquitted.

To us it seems a fantastic world, brutal and stupid, for
all its merriment and grace; did not Rochester, Buckhurst,
and others break up the astronomical balls in Whitehall
for fun? Its pleasures seem to smack somewhat of effort,
and these men and women to express only a part of man-
kind in contrast to the wholeness of the Elizabethans.
That is the obvious aspect. Yet can it have been just
that? What really underlay this behaviour that seems to
us so extraordinary? For at bottom, men do not deliberately
live this troubled life, existing from day to day. Certainly
people were determined to enjoy their newly regained
luxury and security, and besides, nobody could foretell what
the morrow would bring: at any moment the king, in spite
of a contrary determination, might once more have to go

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