Oh Love! Oh Love! Ye Pow'rs above
Intriguing Moll restore,
The best Interpreter of Love,
That ever message bore.
Amongst her lovers were Harry Lumley, Hungerford, Howe. It is noticeable that the lampoons inevitably refer to her in the grossest terms.
All the World can't afford
Such a Bitch as Mall Howard,
writes one versifier, and in Rochester's Ghost addressing itself to the Secretary of the Muses she is found bracketed with seven other ladies of the most dubious repute,
And here, would time permit me, I could tell,
Of Cleveland, Portsmouth, Crofts, and Arundel,
Mol. Howard, Su[sse]x, Lady Grey, and Nell,
Strangers to good, but bosom Friends to ill,
As boundless in their lusts as in their will.
When Lady Mary Howard was received into the Church in 1685, the wits (as was often the case on these conversions) seized the opportunity to flood the town with their pasquils, e.g. The Ladies March.
p. [397] an Urban Throng (as Mr. Bayes calls it). cf. The Rehearsal, iii, v, the scene of Prince Volscius 'going out of Town'.
Vols. Harry, my Boots; for I'l go rage among
My Blades encamp'd, and quit this Urban throng.
p. [398] Prologue to Romulus. vide Vol. I, pp. xlii-iii.