The ability to make clever, hard-hitting speeches in the House of Lords with a monumental hangover was just one of the many accomplishments required of a peer of the realm in the late 17th and early 18th century. But in a world dominated by strong drink, impassioned political struggle and the urgent need to impress, it was by no means the least important.
In an age of violence, prowess at arms was as necessary as cunning and a strong constitution. A man might cut a dash at court, and be master of the cutting aphorism on the floor of the House of Lords, but he was just as likely to be called upon to cut down his enemies physically; fighting in one of the endless wars against France, defending himself against ruffians on the streets of London after a night of whoring and carousing in low taverns - or in a duel in the sober light of dawn.
But most of all, the aristocracy required money, land and status and often had to fight in the courts and sometimes on the duelling ground to win them.
Victor Stater aptly chooses the infamous duel between Charles Mohun, fourth Baron Mohun, and James Douglas Hamilton, fourth Duke of Hamilton, to illustrate the pressures and social climate of a time when the aristocracy was regaining its lost prestige, just as the conditions which justified its elevated position in society were beginning to change forever.
The nobility had borne most of the costs of the English civil war between Charles I and parliament, both financially and in terms of their loss of status and security. In the decades that followed, especially after the restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660, the battle to regain money and status became the focus of an aristocrat's daily grind.
Ironically, the 'aristocratic century' was a time when new fortunes were being made among the merchant classes. In competition with the so-called 'moneyed interest', a nobleman's status could only be maintained by ever more ostentatious spending.