Nell Gwyn - After The Stage

After The Stage

In February 1671, Nell moved into a brick townhouse at 79 Pall Mall. The property was owned by the crown and its current resident was instructed to transfer the lease to Gwyn. It would be her main residence for the rest of her life. Gwyn seemed unsatisfied with being a lessee only – in 1673 we are told in a letter of Joseph Williamson that "Madam Gwinn complains she has no house yett." Gwyn is said to have complained that "she had always conveyed free under the Crown, and always would; and would not accept till it was conveyed free to her by an Act of Parliament." In 1676, Gwyn would in fact be granted the freehold to the property, which would remain in her family until 1693; as of 1960 the property was still the only one on the south side of Pall Mall not owned by the Crown.

Nell Gwyn gave birth to her second child by the King, James, on 25 December 1671. Sent to school in Paris when he was six, he would die there in 1681. The circumstances of the child's life in Paris and the cause of his death are both unknown, one of the few clues being that he died "of a sore leg", which Beauclerk (p. 300) speculates could mean anything from an accident to poison. Her family's history has been published in the authoritative book: The House of Nell Gwyn (1974).

There are two variations about how the elder of her two children by Charles was given the Earldom of Burford, both of which are unverifiable: The first (and most popular) is that when Charles was six years old, on the arrival of the King, Nell said, "Come here, you little bastard, and say hello to your father." When the King protested her calling Charles that, she replied, "Your Majesty has given me no other name by which to call him." In response, Charles created him Earl of Burford. Another is that Nell grabbed Charles and hung him out of a window of Lauderdale House in Highgate, where briefly she resided, and threatened to drop him unless Charles was granted a peerage. The King cried out "God save the Earl of Burford!" and subsequently officially created the peerage, saving his son's life. On 21 December 1676, a warrant was passed for "a grant to Charles Beauclerc, the King's natural son, and to the heirs male of his body, of the dignities of Baron of Heddington, co.Oxford, and Earl of Burford in the same county, with remainder to his brother, James Beauclerc, and the heirs male of his body." A few weeks later, James was given "the title of Lord Beauclerc, with the place and precedence of the eldest son of an earl."

Shortly afterwards, the King granted Burford House, on the edge of the Home Park in Windsor, to Nell and their son. She lived there when the King was in residence at the Castle. In addition to the properties mentioned above, Nell had a summer residence on the site of what is now 61-63 King's Cross Road, which enjoyed later popularity as the Bagnigge Wells Spa. According to the London Encyclopedia (Macmillan, 1983) she "entertained Charles II here with little concerts and breakfasts". An inscribed stone of 1680, saved and reinserted in the front wall of the present building, shows a carved mask which is probably a reference to her stage career.

Just after the death of Henry Jermyn, 1st Earl of St Albans at the turn of the year, on 5 January 1684, King Charles granted his son Charles, Earl of Burford, the title of Duke of St Albans, gave him an allowance of £1,000 a year, and granted him the offices of Chief Ranger of Enfield Chase and Master of the Hawks in reversion (i. e. after the death of the current incumbents).

King Charles died on 6 February 1685. James II, obeying his brother's deathbed wish, "Let not poor Nelly starve," eventually paid most of Gwyn's debts off and gave her a pension of 1500 pounds a year. He also paid off the mortgage on Gwyn's Nottinghamshire Lodge at Bestwood, which would remain in the Beauclerk family until 1940. At the same time, James applied pressure to Nell and her son Charles to convert to Roman Catholicism, something she resisted.

In March 1687, Gwyn suffered a stroke that left her paralysed on one side. In May, a second stroke left her confined to the bed in her Pall Mall house; she made out her will on 9 July. Nell Gwyn died from apoplexy "almost certainly due to the acquired variety of syphilis" on 14 November 1687, at ten in the evening, less than three years after the King's death. She was 37 years old. Although she left considerable debts, she left a legacy to the Newgate prisoners in London.

She was buried in the Church of St Martin-in-the-Fields, London. By one of Gwyn's final requests Thomas Tenison, the Archbishop of Canterbury, preached a sermon on 17 December from the text of Luke 15:7 "Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance."