So, happy 360th anniversary of the night Sir Charles Sedley went to the Cock Tavern in Covent Garden with his mates and got so shitfaced that they took to the balcony outside, took all their clothes off and cavorted, and he stuck his nob in a glass of wine, and then drank it.
Sedley was mates with people like John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, forming a gang which the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography says
“consumed drink and were entertained by prostitutes on a scale that caused comment even at the Caroline court”.
One of the most extensive biographies of him was published in 1927, and is rather coy about what actually went on that night, talking only of Sedley “performing certain disgusting pranks”, and pointing the curious reader in the direction of Pepys if they want the dirt.
So, here’s what Pepys said, on hearing the details of Charles appearing in court the following month:
1 July 1663
Mr. Batten telling us of a late triall of Sir Charles Sydly the other day, before my Lord Chief Justice Foster and the whole bench, for his debauchery a little while since at Oxford Kate’s; coming in open day into the Balcone and showed his nakedness — acting all the postures of lust and buggery that could be imagined, and abusing of scripture and as it were from thence preaching a mountebank sermon from the pulpit, saying that there he had to sell such a powder as should make all the cunts in town run after him — a thousand people standing underneath to see and hear him. And that being done he took a glass of wine and washed his prick in it and then drank it off, and then took another and drank the King’s health.
The life and times of Anthony Wood, antiquary of Oxford, 1632–1695, says Sedley, Charles (Sackville) Lord Buckhurst, and Sir Thomas Ogle “excrementiz’d in the street”, calling this “ a remarkable instance” of his “most debauched life … beyond (I think) any former practice”.
This all attracted a crowd, apparently 1,000-strong, and, according to Vivian de Sola Pinto’s 1927 biography,
The Puritans or “fanaticks” naturally took full advantage of such an incident in order to cast discredit on the Court.
Sir Charles discovered that even a mate of the King’s could be charged with breaking “the King’s Peace”, and he was summoned to appear before Sir Robert Forster, Lord Chief Justice, “an old-fashioned, high-minded Cavalier … to whom such escapades were especially odious”.
They weren’t illegal at this point, though, because “cases of immorality and indecency had formerly been tried by the Star Chamber”, which had been abolished. Forster, however, told Sedley it was “high time to punish such profane Actions committed against all decency”.
…and that “it was for him and such wicked wretches as he was that God’s anger and judgments hang over us”. It is, perhaps, not a surprise then, that Sedley “took the sensible course of confessing the indictment and throwing himself on the mercy of the court”.
He got a week in prison and a 2,000 mark (£500) fine, paid for cushy treatment inside, and persuaded the king to halve the fine. (One version of the story even says Sedley’s friend Harry Killigrew begged the king to give him the money to pay the fine, and when he — remarkably — got it, didn’t pay the fine, but spent it.)
Either way, Sedley was bound over to keep the peace for three years, and may have done so, but five years later (by which time he was an MP) he made another appearance in Pepys’ diary:
Mind you, this was a man who wrote a oath in verse for his drinking club which opened with the words
Wee to this Order none receave
That in his Glasse a drop doth leave
…and who may once have been so hungover that even his doctor thought he was dying. In the words of his biographer:
In July 1661, Sedley was seriously ill and his death was considered imminent. However, as on more than one other occasion, his sturdy constitution gave the lie to the doctors. The nature of this illness has not been recorded, but it may be conjectured that it was caused by the enormous revels which accompanied the gorgeous and somewhat disorderly coronation of Charles II on St. George’s Day, 1661. The whole of London seems to have been more or less intoxicated with wine and loyalty on this occasion, and some riotous incidents occurred even on the stairs of Westminster Hall. If Pepys, a hardworking official of moderate means, suffered a little from the effects of the orgies of 23 April, 1661, it may be readily imagined that a young man of wealth and leisure like Sir Charles Sedley was laid up after the “extraordinary feasting” by which even sober John Evelyn admits that the Court celebrated the coronation of the restored King.
Given that the coronation was on 23 April, it seems remarkable that a man of 22 could be so hungover that he was thought to be close to death more than two months later, so I would guess it’s either a separate incident, or he’d been partying continuously since April.
Whatever the truth is, I don’t think we should allow it to get in the way of the legend of Sir Charles Sedley and the hangover that really did feel like death. He was dead at 62, but it’s remarkable he got that far, frankly.
