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
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 to-day at dinner told how the rich
fortune Mrs. Mallett reports of her servants; that my Lord Herbert would
have had her; my Lord Hinchingbroke was indifferent to have her;

[They had quarrelled (see August 26th). She, perhaps, was piqued at
Lord Hinchingbroke's 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 son married Lady
Rochester's daughter.--B.]

my Lord John Butler might not have her; my Lord of Rochester would have
forced her;

[Of the lady 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, 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.]

and Sir------Popham, who nevertheless is likely to have her, would kiss
her breach to have her.

26th. Up, and to my chamber to do some business. Then to speak with
several people, among others with Mrs. Burroughs, whom I appointed to meet
me at the New Exchange in the after