Pepy's Diary. 25 Nov 1666. The Council up, after speaking with Sir W. Coventry (age 38) a little, away home with Captain Cocke (age 49) in his coach, discourse about the forming of his contract he made with us lately for hempe, and so home, where we parted, and I find my uncle Wight (age 64) and Mrs. Wight and Woolly, who staid and supped, and mighty merry together, and then I to my chamber to even my journal, and then to bed. I will remember that Mr. Ashburnham (age 62) to-day at dinner told how the rich fortune Mrs. Mallett (age 15) reports of her servants; that my Lord Herbert (age 25) would have had her; my Lord Hinchingbrooke (age 18) was indifferent to have her¹ my Lord John Butler (age 23) might not have her; my Lord of Rochester (age 19) would have forced her² and Sir---Popham (age 20), who nevertheless is likely to have her, would kiss her breach to have her.

Note 1. They had quarrelled (see August 26th). She, perhaps, was piqued at Lord Hinchingbroke's (age 18) refusal "to compass the thing without consent of friends" (see February 25th), whence her expression, "indifferent" to have her. It is worthy of remark that their children intermarried; Lord Hinchingbroke's (age 18) son (age 18) married Lady Rochester's (age 15) daughter. B.

Note 2. Of the lady (age 15) thus sought after, whom Pepys calls "a beauty" as well as a fortune, and who shortly afterwards, about the 4th February, 1667, became the wife of the Earl of Rochester (age 19), then not twenty years old, no authentic portrait is known to exist. When Mr. Miller, of Albemarle Street, in 1811, proposed to publish an edition of the "Memoires de Grammont", he sent an artist to Windsor to copy there the portraits which he could find of those who figure in that work. In the list given to him for this purpose was the name of Lady Rochester. Not finding amongst the "Beauties", or elsewhere, any genuine portrait of her, but seeing that by Hamilton she is absurdly styled "une triste heritiere", the artist made a drawing from some unknown portrait at Windsor of a lady of a sorrowful countenance, and palmed it off upon the bookseller. In the edition of "Grammont" it is not actually called Lady Rochester, but "La Triste Heritiere". A similar falsification had been practised in Edwards's edition of 1793, but a different portrait had been copied. It is needless, almost, to remark how ill applied is Hamilton's epithet. B.