Returning to the Court of Charles II, Rochester was reunited with the coterie of rakehells who came to be called “the Merry Gang.” The foremost of these were three of his special friends: Charles Sackville Lord Buckhurst, the future Earl of Middlesex and Dorset; Sir Charles Sedley; and Sir Henry Savile. Born in 1643, Sackville Lord Buckhurst was just four years older than Rochester. Son of Richard Sackville the Fifth Earl of Dorset, the genial but rather grossly featured Charles would become the generous patron of many a Restoration author and no mean poet and satirist himself. He went briefly to Westminster School in 1657, then was tutored and taken on a Grand Tour that ended in 1660 soon after the Restoration of Charles II. Grateful to the Royalist Sackvilles––Buckhurst’s grandmother had been his governess––the King showered titles and holdings on the father and son. In March 1661, Charles Sackville returned to Parliament as the Member for East Grinstead; it is reasonable to assume that he and John Wilmot met about that time, possibly during the festivities of the Coronation in April 1661.

While Rochester was abroad, Buckhurst was getting into trouble. In February 1662, he and his brother were arrested and accused of killing and robbing a tanner. The two young noblemen claimed they were chasing a robber and killed the tanner by mistake, but they were put into Newgate Prison; gossip abounded, and not until June, when they pled the King’s pardon, were they acquitted. On June 16, 1663, Buckhurst and Sedley got drunk at the disreputable Cock Tavern in London. They moved out on a balcony, where their noisy carousing attracted a crowd. When Sedley stripped and began a rowdy parody of a sermon––some reports said he pissed on the spectators––the scandalized crowd drove them indoors with a barrage of bottles. They were subsequently brought before the King’s Bench and Sedley was fined 2,000 marks, but Buckhurst got off scot free. Such luck caused Rochester once to tell the King, tongue in cheek, “he did not know how it was, but [Buckhurst] might do anything, yet was never to blame.”