Rebecca Rideal

speaker

1,038 appearances 3 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 21 Sep

Rebecca Rideal’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 2.

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Not Just the Tudors · Royal Favourites: The Filthy Earl of Rochester · 21 Sep 2026 podcast

But very much those figures, Buckingham, Etheridge...

Seville and the Earl of Rochester, obviously, were part of this merry gang.

Oh, God.

There was no typical day as a member of the merry gang.

They did so much stuff.

There are stories of them.

And they come from multiple sources as well.

Often when we think about crazy behaviour or behaviour that is too obscene to be true, we probably think that it's not true.

But actually, there are tales of members of the merry gang stripping off, being at the top of a building and pissing down, to use their words, onto people in the streets.

So this is funny for them, but perhaps not funny for everyone else.

There are other stories of the Earl of Rochester on one occasion, this is later in the 1670s, smashing up Charles II's prized sundial just because he wanted to.

Apparently he said something like, you know, you can no longer, and pardon the swearing, fuck with time.

There are other tales as well of various courtiers running.

Well, this is in Oxfordshire.

So at a time when the Earl of Rochester was ostracised from court, he went back to his home in Woodstock.

And there was a story of him running around through Woodstock woods with 10 companions all naked.

He then wrote a letter because this story was going around London, but he wrote a letter to his friend Seville afterwards saying, yes, we were naked, but we were only doing it to dry after having a swim.

So there's just so much stuff.

Samuel Pepys writes about some of their antics in his diary.

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