They were to pass over three or four fields before they could reach it, and in going over the last, they very nearly escaped falling into the enemy’s hands; but the voice of the husband discovering who he was, our adventurers struck down the field out of the path, and for the greater security lay down in the grass.  The place, the occasion, and the person that was so near, put his lordship in mind of renewing his pleasure almost in sight of the cuckold.  The fair was no longer coy, and easily yielded to his desires.  He in short carried the girl home and then prostituted her to the duke’s pleasure, after he had been cloyed himself.  The old man going home, and finding his sitter asleep, his wife fled, and his money gone, was thrown into a state of madness, and soon hanged himself.  The news was soon spread about the neighbourhood, and reached the inn, where both lovers, now as weary of their purchase as desirous of it before, advised her to go to London, with which she complied, and in all probability followed there the trade of prostitution for a subsistance.

The King, soon after this infamous adventure, coming that way, found them both in their posts at the inn, took them again into favour, and suffered them to go with him to Newmarket.  This exploit of lord Rochester is not at all improbable, when his character is considered; His treachery in the affair of the miser’s wife is very like him; and surely it was one of the greatest acts of baseness of which he was ever guilty; he artfully seduced her, while her unsuspecting husband was entertained by the duke of Buckingham; he contrived a robbery, and produced the death of the injured husband; this complicated crime was one of those heavy charges on his mind when he lay on his death-bed, under the dreadful alarms of his conscience.

His lordship’s amours at court made a great noise in the world of gallantry, especially that which he had with the celebrated Mrs. Roberts, mistress to the King, whom she abondoned for the possession of Rochester’s heart, which she found to her experience, it was not in her power long to hold.  The earl, who was soon cloyed with the possession of any one woman, tho’ the fairest in the world, forsook her.  The lady after the first indignation of her passion subsided, grew as indifferent, and considered upon the proper means of retrieving the King’s affections.  The occasion was luckily given her one morning while she was dressing:  she saw the King coming by, she hurried, down with her hair disheveled, threw herself at his feet, implored his pardon, and vowed constancy for the future.  The King, overcome with the well-dissembled agonies of this beauty, raised her up, took her in his arms, and protested no man could see her, and not love her:  he waited on her to her lodging, and there compleated the reconciliation.  This easy behaviour of the King, had, with many other instances of the same kind, determined my lord Hallifax to assert, “That the love of King Charles ii, lay as much as any man’s, in the lower regions; that he was indifferent as to their constancy, and only valued them for the sensual pleasure they could yield.”