When Rochester told Gilbert Burnet that he once had been continually drunk for five years, he must have been referring to the period from 1668 to 1672. During those years, his literary output was slight, his attendance in Parliament was sporadic, and scandalized stories about his drinking, wenching, and brawling proliferated. Burnet blamed the drinking for most of Rochester’s postwar problems: risk-taking searches for diversion and unleashed sensuality that destroyed his health. But like other young men who fight in wars and survive but lose their ideals, John Wilmot seems rather to have used alcohol to fend off a sense of nothingness, to anesthetize his fear of death and suppress a growing rage at life and the world.

Rochester’s inclination for the bottle was a bequest of temperament from his soldier-father, along with other characteristics: “a haughty and ambitious nature” and “a pleasant wit.” Clarendon, who had ample opportunity to observe both the Wilmots, described the father in terms that also applied to the son. “Wilmot loved debauchery” and was “inspired” in its “very exercise”:

In combat, however, Henry Wilmot shunned all drink or “Dutch courage.” His son, who also grew abstemious in combat, had no restraints to check him once his military duties were over and his disapproving bride was off in the country. On the contrary, his interest with Charles II required that he amuse the monarch and his roistering companions and be a constant source of witty entertainment.