147). Charles also employed him on many diplomatic missions. In May 1652 he was sent to negotiate with the Duke of Lorraine (Nicholas Papers, i. 301), and in December of the same year he was despatched to negotiate with the diet of the empire at Ratisbon, from whom he succeeded in obtaining a subsidy of about 10,000l. for the king's service (Clarendon, Rebellion, xiv. 55, 103). In 1654 he was sent on a mission to the elector of Brandenburg, from whom the king hoped for assistance to further the rising attempted by the Scottish royalists (Clarendon State Papers, iii. 204, 220, 230, 251). In February 1655 Rochester went to England to direct the movements of the royalist conspirators against the Protector, with power to postpone or to authorise an insurrection, as it seemed advisable. He sanctioned the attempt, but at the rendezvous of the Yorkshire cavaliers on 8 March at Marston Moor found himself with only about a hundred followers, and abandoned the hopeless enterprise. Clarendon unfairly blames him for desisting, but royalists in general did not (Rebellion, xiv. 135). Thanks to his skill in disguises, Rochester contrived to effect his escape, and, though arrested on suspicion at Aylesbury, got back to the continent early in June (English Historical Review, 1888 p. 337, 1889 pp. 315, 319, 331). In 1656, when Charles II raised a little army in Flanders, Rochester was colonel of one of its four regiments (Clarendon, Rebellion, xv. 68). He died at Sluys on 19 Feb. 1657–8, and was buried at Bruges by Lord Hopton (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1658, pp. 297, 300). After the Restoration his body is said to have been reinterred at Spelsbury, Oxfordshire.
Rochester married twice: first, on 21 Aug. 1633, at Chelsea, Frances, daughter of Sir George Morton of Clenston, Dorset, by Catherine, daughter of Sir Arthur Hopton of Witham, Somerset; secondly, about 1644, Anne, widow of Sir Francis Henry Lee, bart. (d. 13 July 1639), and daughter of Sir John St. John, bart., by Anne, daughter of Sir Thomas Leighton. Portraits of her and her first husband are reproduced in ‘Memoirs of the Verney Family’ (i. 241, iii. 464). She was the friend of Sir Ralph Verney and of Colonel Hutchinson, and helped to save the life of the latter at the Restoration (Verney, Memoirs, i. 247, iii. 464; Life of Colonel Hutchinson, 1885, ii. 258, 268, 396). She was also the mother of John, second earl of Rochester [q. v.], survived her son, and was buried at Spelsbury, Oxfordshire, on 18 March 1696 (G. E. C[okayne], Complete Peerage, vi. 481).
[Doyle's Official Baronage, iii. 151; G. E. C[okayne]'s Complete Peerage, vi. 480; Clarendon's History of the Rebellion; Clarendon State Papers; Nicholas Papers. Many of Wilmot's letters are among the correspondence of Prince Rupert in the British Museum, some of which are printed in Warburton's Prince Rupert.]
WILMOT, JAMES (d. 1808), alleged author of 'The Letters of Junius.' [See under Serres, Mrs. Olivia Wilmot.]
WILMOT, JOHN, second Earl of Rochester (1647–1680), poet and libertine, was the son of Henry Wilmot, first earl of Rochester [q. v.], by his second wife. He was born at Ditchley in Oxfordshire on 10 April 1647, and on the death of his father on 9 Feb. 1657–8 succeeded to the earldom. He was left with little besides the pretensions to the king's favour bequeathed him by his father's services to Charles after the battle of Worcester. After attending the school at Burford, he was admitted a fellow commoner of Wadham College, Oxford, on 18 Jan. 1659–60. His tutor was Phineas Bury. He showed as an undergraduate a happy turn for English verse, and contributed to the university collections on Charles II's restoration (1660) and on the death of Princess Mary of Orange (1661). He was created M.A. on 9 Sept. 1661, when little more than fourteen. Next year he presented to his college four silver pint pots, which are still preserved. On leaving the university he travelled in France and Italy under the care of Dr. Balfour, who encouraged his love of literature. In 1664 he returned from his travels while in his eighteenth year, and presented himself at Whitehall. In the summer of 1665 he joined as a volunteer Sir Thomas Teddeman [q. v.] on board the Royal Katherine, and took part in the unsuccessful assault on Dutch ships in the Danish harbour of Bergen on 1 Aug. He is said to have behaved with credit. He again served at sea in the summer of the following year in the Channel under Sir Edward Spragge [q. v.], and distinguished himself by carrying a message in an open boat under the enemy's fire.
Rochester had meanwhile identified himself with the most dissolute set of Charles II's courtiers. He became the intimate associate of George Villiers, second duke of Buckingham; Charles Sackville, earl of Dorset; Sir Charles Sedley, and Henry Savile, and, although their junior by many years, soon excelled all of them in profligacy. Burnet says that he was ‘naturally modest till the court corrupted him,’ but he fell an unresisting prey to every manner of vicious example.
