This thesis explores the scandalous reputations of the Court Wits of Charles II’s court between c.1660 and c.1900. The Court Wits are a group who are reflexively associated with scandal; however, historians have often failed to give them sufficient credit as figures of historical importance, considering them solely of literary interest. This thesis offers a view of the formation of the Wits’ scandalous reputation from a historical perspective, examining the formation, and subsequent propagation of the group’s reputation for scandal, in order to gain a more complete picture of their contemporary significance, as well as a fuller understanding of their role as infamous figures of English literary history.

The thesis is structured in two parts; the first exploring how the Court Wits accrued their contemporary reputation as a scandalous group, and the second shifting focus to the telling and retelling of the Wits’ scandalous legend over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In arguing that the Court Wits embodied characteristics of early Stuart court scandal, as well as aspects of scandalous celebrity, it counters the view that scandalous literary celebrity was a ‘new’ phenomenon unique to the eighteenth-century. By demonstrating a congruence between these two approaches to the study of scandal, the thesis shows that the Wits existed in a transitional period in the intertwined histories of scandal and celebrity.

The Court Wits have largely been studied biographically, with a particular focus on the 2nd Earl of Rochester. This thesis reintegrates Rochester into his scandalous milieu, demonstrating the centrality of the group identity of the Wits to both their contemporary and posthumous renown. Utilizing a broad source base, which includes letters, diaries, satires, biographies, novels, and paintings the thesis maps the formation of the Wits cultural identity, demonstrating what was so scandalous about Charles II’s most scandalous courtiers.