Oddlet: Lord Rokeby · 1 min read
Oct 6, 2026
The Baron in the Bath
On rainy mornings, a Georgian peer walked miles to the sea to swim while his liveried footman, on the peer's orders, rode dry in the empty carriage behind him.
Matthew Robinson, 2nd Baron Rokeby — Cambridge Fellow, Fellow of the Royal Society, independent Whig MP for Canterbury — went to Aachen on holiday and came home convinced water was the answer to almost everything.
Every morning, in any weather, he walked the several miles from Mount Morris to the sea at Hythe to swim. His liveried footman followed behind in the empty carriage. When it rained, Rokeby ordered the man to get inside, because the servant was "gaudily dressed and not inured to wet."
He refused fires in the house. He refused church, arguing God was better worshipped at "the natural altars of the earth, the sea and the sky," which conveniently placed church wherever he already happened to be. He refused doctors so completely that he threatened to disinherit his nephew if one was ever called during a fit. His beard stuck out from under his arms and could be seen from behind; he was, by contemporary count, the only peer in Britain or Ireland then wearing one.
Eventually he built a glass-roofed pool inside Mount Morris, warmed only by the sun, and began taking his meals in it.
A joint of roast veal floated beside him. He ate from it as it drifted past.
He died at eighty-seven, in bed, having refused every doctor who might have bled him.
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- Wikipedia — Matthew Robinson, 2nd Baron Rokeby — Baseline biography, family, bathing, diet, quotations from Elizabeth Montagu.
- Lee Priory biography (based on DNB entry by Sidney Lee) — Detailed DNB-derived biography with dates, physical description ('tall and ungraceful'), sun-warmed bath, disinheriting-nephew anecdote, burial 8 December 1800.
- Kent Archaeology — Two Neighbouring Kent Estates near Hythe — Mount Morris estate details, inheritance in 1746, family vault at Monks Horton church.
- History of Parliament Online — Robinson-Morris, Matthew (1713–1800) — MP career, opposition to Lord North's American policy, Whig alignment, sole speech on 25 March 1760.
- Egerton Brydges — A Brief Character of Lord Rokeby (1817) — Contemporary character sketch by relative and neighbour: tall meagre form, long beard, sun-worship at dawn, memory 'capacious, exact, and retentive.'
- Wellcome Collection — R. Page engraving 'Lord Rokeby, of Singular Eccentricity' (1821)
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