Rose Alley Ambuscade
Attack on John Dryden 18th December 1679
My last offering about John Dryden (1631 - 1700) was titled John Dryden and Restoration War Poetry and posted in 2017. John Dryden's first published poetry included an Ode to Cromwell, yet Dryden switched to being an avid supporter of The Restoration. and became Poet Laureate in 1668.
On 18th December 1679, John Dryden was attacked by three masked ruffians in Rose Alley, Covent Garden on his way home from a coffee house. It is generally accepted that this was a deliberate assault resulting from a private grudge. And whoever organised the beating decided that Dryden was a social inferior. If his opponent felt that he was of equal rank, Dryden would more likely have been openly challenged to a duel. On 24th December, Dryden placed an advert in the Gazette , and later in the Domestic Intelligence of 2nd January 1680, offering £50 reward for information (WINN) . This suggests that he did not know who his assailants were.
London in 1679 was caught up by the Exclusion Crisis, with Whig politicians and their allies trying to prevent the heir apparent James Duke of York from succeeding the throne. However the motive for the attack seems to have been that Dryden was considered to have been the author of a piece titled Essay upon Satire, first published in 1679 ( WINN, WARD, VAN DOREN) . Most possibly circulated in London in manuscript form rather than printed for large scale circulation. The essay extols the virtue of satire before launching an on the leading figures of the Restoration Court.
The cunning courtier should be slighted too,
Who with dull knavery makes so much ado;
Till the shrewd fool, by thriving too, too fast,
Like Æsop's fox becomes a prey at last.
Nor shall the royal mistresses be named,
Too ugly, or too easy to be blamed,
With whom each rhyming fool keeps such a pother,
They are as common that way as the other:
Yet sauntering Charles, between his beastly brace,
Meets with dissembling still in either place,
Affected humour, or a painted face.
In loyal libels we have often told him,
How one has jilted him, the other sold him:
How that affects to laugh, how this to weep;
This work also slated John Wilmot 2nd Earl Rochester 'Mean in each action, lewd in every limb/Manners themselves are mischievous in him '( VAN DOREN). Charles II s mistresses such as the Duchess of Portsmouth and the Duchess of Cleveland were are also depicted in quite unfavourable terms.
Rochester was one of the most famous Restoration rakes, essayist and poets. Could be quite outrageous , especially in his poem Signior Dildo , with his observation that the Duchess of Cleveland has "Swallowed more pricks than the sea has sand." (ZUVICH) . It is possible that Rochester took umbrage and decided that Dryden was overreaching his social status. Yet it is strange that Dryden as Poet Laureate could be assumed to have written such a brazen attack on the Court. Charles II certainly did not treat Dryden as being the author and offered a pardon to anyone who would testify against his attackers (WYNN) . John Sheffield Earl Mulgrave later admitted to be the writer of the piece (VAN DOREN) though of course it is possible that Dryden had some input into certain parts of the poem.
However, the culprits and whoever they were working for remain untraceable. In 1961 Charles E.Ward explored the possibility that the Whig luminary Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury was behind the assault. Partly by mistakenly considering Dryden as the author of Essay on Satire (WARD) . John Dryden moved to a very hostile position against Shaftesbury, especially between 1681-1684 , most notably in his scathing attack upon The Whigs in Absalom and Achitophel. This argument worked both ways, could mean that Dryden was particularly bitter towards Shaftesbury if he held him responsible for the attack. But on the other hand, there is no further record of Dryden being assaulted when his poetry became more directly related to politics, so could mean that the Whigs preferred to retaliate in print- which they did- rather than by hiring ruffians.
John Anderson Wynn proposed that Earl of Pembroke, who was brother in law to the Duchess of Portsmouth, also mocked in Essay Upon Satire as ' False, foolish,old, ill natured and ill bread' was behind the assault . A leading Whig, Pembroke had kicked a man to death in a tavern earlier that year, and also physically attacked the Earl of Dorset. Pembroke owned large posse of dogs, pet bears, a lion, and master of 60 bestial fellows ( WYNN) . In 1680, the Earl of Pembroke went into exile after committing murder.
In 2002 a historian named Edward L Saslow had an article published titled ' The Rose Alley Ambuscade' in 'Restoration Studies in English Literary Culture 1660-1700 Volume 26 No.1 Spring 2002 ,proposing that the Earl of Dorset arranged for Dryden to get a beating. This earl was likely to have taken particular offence at the lines :
Thus Dorset, purring like a thoughtful cat,
Married, but wiser puss ne'er thought of that:
And first he worried her with railing rhyme,
Like Pembroke's mastives at his kindest time;
Then for one night sold all his slavish life,
A teeming widow, but a barren wife;
Swell'd by contact of such a fulsome toad,
He lugg'd about the matrimonial load;
Till fortune, blindly kind as well as he,
Has ill restored him to his liberty;
Which he would use in his old sneaking way,
Drinking all night, and dozing all the day;
Dull as Ned Howard, whom his brisker times
Had famed for dulness in malicious rhymes.
The lines portrayed Dorset as being obsessed with one of the King's mistresses. Though the Earl of Dorset and Dryden had previously been on cordial terms during the 1660's and Dorset was to be particularly helpful to Dryden after he lost the post of Poet Laureate in 1689 when William and Mary came to the throne, there were a number of years when contact between the men seemed to have slackened.
The whole episode remains unresolved. The incident is fascinating. Firstly it is hard to think of another Poet Laureate who was set about by ruffians for verses that they may or may not have written. Secondly that shows the rough and tumble of Restoration Court culture did have its own set of rules concerning who could take part.
The Hidden London website has a superb post about Rose Alley and the surrounding area.
Works consulted
'The Rose Alley Ambuscade ' Edward L Saslow. article via https://www.jstor.org/
'The Poetry of John Dryden' Mark Van Doran
'The Life of John Dryden' Charles E. Ward
'John Dryden and his World' John Anderson Wynn
'Sex and Sexuality in Stuart Britain' Andrea Zuvich
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As ever, I hope that all visitors of this blog will stay safe and well during these challenging times.
Michael Bully
Brighton, England, 19th May 2021.
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