The Death of Rochester

John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, was an on-again off-again member of the Restoration court of Charles II. He was best known for his utterly extravagant lifestyle and a deathbed renunciation of that lifestyle recorded by Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury.

The print is "signed" by William Humphrey (WH fec.), and like other Gillray prints of this period is likely to have been initiated and directed by him. But since Draper Hill believes that the print has "all the marks of an early Gillray," I include it in this cataliog of Gillray's works.

The print purports to show the 33 year old Earl of Rochester on his death bed, suffering from a combination of alcoholism and venereal disease. He is attended by a cleric who should be Gilbert Burnet who was in fact recruited by Rochster's mother to attend him in his final illness. Neither figure,however, is an accurate portrait. Rochester is slightly idealized; Burnet resembles several caricatured figures in A Trip to Cocks Heath.

The cleric is reading from a Bible open apprpriately to the page headed "XIX.C. Genesis" which tells of Sodom and Gomorrah. In that story the Lord destroys both cities because of their extreme wickedness, raining down fire and brimstone upon them. Only Lot and his family are spared, but Lot's wife is turned into a pillar of salt because she disobeys the injunction not to look back.

Whether we are to consider Rochester among the damned of Sodom and Gomorrah or or an exception as indicated by his slightly iedealzed visage is ambiguous.

Sources and Reading

• Commentary from the British Museum on The Death of Rochester.
• Draper Hill, Mr. Gillray The Caricaturist, 1965, p. 19n
• "John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester," Wikipedia
• "Gilbert Burnet," Wikipedia
• Thomas Wright and Joseph Grego, The Works of James Gillray, the Caricaturist; With the History of His Life and Times, p. 27.