WILMOT, Charles (1670-81)

The sickly only son of the rakish poet earl of Rochester, Wilmot had early on displayed symptoms believed at the time to be the king’s evil (scrofula). He was touched for the condition by Charles II, but it seems more likely that he was in fact a victim of congenital syphilis. Johnson, Rochester, 162, 180–1. Although prone to crippling bouts of illness, by 1677 he was described by his father’s circle as ‘a fair-haired brilliant boy’ and at the time of his death though ‘scarce ten years old … of parts beyond twenty’. HMC Ormonde, vi. 223. It is possible that aged eight he was sent to Eton (though no record exists of his admission in the school’s register). Johnson, Rochester, 275, 416.

Wilmot succeeded to the earldom aged just nine, following his father’s much publicized death in the summer of 1680. Under the terms of his father’s will he was entrusted to the guardianship of his grandmother and mother. PROB 11/365, ff. 238–9. With the peerage he inherited interests in Oxfordshire and Somerset, though it is unlikely that he exercised any personal influence over his estates during his short life and he was too young to attend the Oxford Parliament that met in the spring of 1681. HMC Wells, ii. 463. That summer, precisely a year after his father’s death, Rochester lost his mother to a fit of apoplexy. Hatton Corresp. ii. 6. His own condition deteriorated markedly soon after and by November his life was despaired of. HMC Rutland, ii. 59; HMC Ormonde, vi. 223. He died on 12 Nov. and was buried almost a month later in the family vault at Spelsbury. Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 144; Wood, Life and Times, ii. 559. On his death the earldom became extinct. Inheritance of the Wilmot estates passed to his three sisters, Anne (later wife of Fulke Greville, 5th Baron Brooke), Elizabeth (later wife of Edward Montagu, 3rd earl of Sandwich) and Malet (later wife of John Vaughan^‡, Viscount Lisburne [I]). Administration was granted to his grandmother Anne, dowager countess of Rochester, during his sisters’ minorities.