Fatal Brawl at Epsom and Flight from Justice
Poet involved
What happened
In the summer of 1676, Rochester, the Earl of Dorset, and other companions became entangled in a violent affray with the night watch at Epsom, Surrey, during which a Captain Downs was killed. Although Rochester was not the one who struck the fatal blow, the scandal forced him to flee into hiding to avoid prosecution. The incident exposed the dangerous underbelly of his rakish lifestyle and the increasingly blurred line between courtly wit and criminal violence.
Literary impact
The Epsom affair marked a shift toward darker introspection in his later poetry, as the consequences of libertinism became harder to ignore. In his subsequent work and especially his late religious verse, a note of repentance and mortality creeps in, prefiguring his famous deathbed conversion.
Source: Wikipedia
