1679 Poet laureateship was a riskier office in the 18th century. The first writer formally to be appointed to the position in 1670, John Dryden, was thought to have had a hand in The Essay on Satire, nominally the sole work of John Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave (later Duke of Buckingham) – one of Dryden’s principal patrons, and not renowned as a poet of the first class.
The work, circulated in manuscript (and anonymously), contained smart sarcasms against the Earl of Rochester – the most wicked poet of his age – not for the earl’s wickedness (which would have amused the author of Sodom) but his ‘want of wit’. In the Restoration period such an accusation, between versifiers, was blood libel.
On the night of 18 December 1679, in Rose Alley (a dank corner off Covent Garden, still to this day used as a convenient public toilet), Dryden was set on by three bullies (one of whom was later identified as ‘Black Will’) and brutally beaten up. It was never decisively proved, although widely suspected, that Rochester organised the assault. It ranks as one of his lesser outrages.
The ‘Rose Alley Ambuscade’ (uncommemorated to London’s metropolitan shame by any blood-red plaque) has become allegorical of the woes of authorship. The event is annually re-enacted. In 1995 David D. Horowitz founded the ‘Rose Alley Press’ in Seattle, whose list specialises in ‘rhymed and metered poetry, cultural commentary, and an annually updated booklet about writing and publication’.