Disguises and practical jokes were the fashion of the day.  The use of the mask, which was put down by proclamation soon after the accession of Queen Anne, favoured a series of pranks with which Lord Rochester, during the period of his living concealed in London, diverted himself.  The success of his scheme was perfect.  He established himself, since he could not go to Whitehall, in the City.  ‘His first design,’ De Grammont relates, ’was only to be initiated into the mysteries of those fortunate and happy inhabitants; that is to say, by changing his name and dress, to gain admittance to their feasts and entertainments....  As he was able to adapt himself to all capacities and humours, he soon deeply insinuated himself into the esteem of the substantial wealthy aldermen, and into the affections of their more delicate, magnificent, and tender ladies; he made one in all their feasts and at all their assemblies; and whilst in the company of the husbands, he declaimed against the faults and mistakes of government; he joined their wives in railing against the profligacy of the court ladies, and in inveighing against the king’s mistresses:  he agreed with them, that the industrious poor were to pay for these cursed extravagances; that the City beauties were not inferior to those at the other end of the town,... after which, to outdo their murmurings, he said, that he wondered Whitehall was not yet consumed by fire from heaven, since such rakes as Rochester, Killigrew, and Sidney were suffered there.’

This conduct endeared him so much to the City, and made him so welcome at their clubs, that at last he grew sick of their cramming, and endless invitations.

He now tried a new sphere of action; and instead of returning, as he might have done, to the court, retreated into the most obscure corners of the metropolis; and again changing his name and dress, gave himself out as a German doctor named Bendo, who professed to find out inscrutable secrets, and to apply infallible remedies; to know, by astrology, all the past, and to foretell the future.

If the reign of Charles was justly deemed an age of high civilization, it was also one of extreme credulity.  Unbelief in religion went hand in hand with blind faith in astrology and witchcraft; in omens, divinations, and prophecies:  neither let us too strongly despise, in these their foibles, our ancestors.  They had many excuses for their superstitions; and for their fears, false as their hopes, and equally groundless.  The circulation of knowledge was limited:  the public journals, that part of the press to which we now owe inexpressible gratitude for its general accuracy, its enlarged views, its purity, its information, was then a meagre statement of dry facts:  an announcement, not a commentary.  ‘The Flying Post,’ the ‘Daily Courant,’ the names of which may be supposed to imply speed, never reached lone country places till weeks after they had been printed on their one duodecimo sheet of thin coarse paper.  Religion, too, just emerging into glorious light from the darkness of popery, had still her superstitions; and the mantle that priestcraft had contrived to throw over her exquisite, radiant, and simple form, was not then wholly and finally withdrawn.  Romanism still hovered in the form of credulity.