Lampoons, mentioning Lady Villiers

Among the many abusive lampoons on women of the Restoration court produced by the Court Wits, we find an occasional reference to Lady Villiers as "Richmond." In the following excerpt, her machinations with Charles II provide grist for the (lampoon) mill:

"Gray-growing Richmond has just right
To challenge here a place;
She has maintained with all her might
The noble whoring cause.
("A Ballad to the Tune of Cheviot Chace,"
Harleian MS 7319, f. 170 [ca. 1680])

A playful lampoon against Charles II, attributed to Rochester, alludes to Lady Mary's cabal on behalf of her niece, Elizabeth Lawson, and also to Lady Villiers's taste in spirits. Speaking to his boon companion, Charles II, Rochester writes:

"Old Richmond, making thee a glorious punk,
Shall twice a day with brandy now be drunk:
Her brother Buckingham shall be restored,
Nelly [Miss Lawson] a countess, Lawson [her father], a Lord."
("Flatfoot, the Gudgeon Taker, [ca. 1680], POAS, II:1900

An anonymous court satire captures something of Lady Villiers's situation in the second half of the seventeenth century, particularly her pride of family name:

Now Richmond, the relic, once youthful and fair,
With matronly modesty put in her claim;
Adonis, she thought, would have fall'n to her share
Out of very regard to her honor and name."
("Session of Court Ladies," Harl. MS. 7319, f. 557).

Lady Villiers' tippling may be the context of two amusing lines in "Satire on the Court Ladies" (ca. 1680):

"I blush to think one impious day has seen
Three duchesses roaring drunk on Richmond Green."
(Harleian MS 7319, f. 87)

In view of her many personal losses by the late 1670s -- the death of her natural and adoptive parents, her three husbands, and both children -- Mary Villiers displayed uncommon valor, and her alleged excesses are comparably innocent in a Court culture in which heavy drinking was a unisex pastime and the first of sports.