Nell Gwyn - Early Years With King Charles II

Early Years With King Charles II

Late in 1667, George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham took on the role of unofficial manager for Gwyn's love affairs. He aimed to provide King Charles II with someone who would supplant Barbara Palmer, his principal current mistress (and Buckingham's cousin), moving Buckingham closer to the King's ear. The plan failed; reportedly, Gwyn asked £500 a year to be kept and this was rejected as too expensive. Buckingham had an alternative plan, however, which was to set the King up with Moll Davis, an actress with the rival Duke's Company. Davis would be Nell's first rival for the King. Several anonymous satires from the time relate a tale of Gwyn, with the help of her friend Aphra Behn, slipping a powerful laxative into Davis' tea-time cakes before an evening when she was expected in the King's bed.

The love affair between the King and Gwyn allegedly began in April 1668. Gwyn was attending a performance of George Etherege's She Wou'd if She Cou'd at the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields. In the next box was the King, who from accounts was more interested in flirting with Nell than watching the play. Charles invited Nell and her escort (a Mr. Villiers, a cousin of Buckingham's) to supper, along with his brother James, Duke of York. The anecdote turns charming if perhaps apocryphal at this point: the King, after supper, discovered that he had no money on him; nor did his brother. Gwyn had to foot the bill. "Od's fish!" she exclaimed, in an imitation of the King's manner of speaking, "but this is the poorest company I ever was in!"

Previously having been the mistress of Charles Hart and Charles Sackville, she jokingly titled the King "her Charles the Third". By the summer of 1668, Gwyn's affair with the King was well-known, though there was little reason to believe it would last for long. She continued to act at the King's House, her new notoriety drawing larger crowds and encouraging the playwrights to craft more roles specifically for her. June 1668 found her in Dryden's An Evening's Love, or The Mock Astrologer, and in July she played in Lacy's The Old Troop. This was a farce about a company of Cavalier soldiers during the English Civil War, based on Lacy's own experiences. Possibly, Nell Gwyn's father had served in the same company, and Gwyn's part — the company whore — was based on her own mother. As her commitment to the King increased, though, her acting career slowed, and she had no recorded parts between January and June 1669, when she played Valeria in Dryden's very successful tragedy Tyrannick Love.

King Charles II had a considerable number of mistresses through his life, both short affairs and committed arrangements. He also had a wife, Portuguese Queen consort Catherine of Braganza, whose pregnancies all ended in miscarriages, and she had little or no say over Charles' choice to have mistresses. This had come to a head shortly after their 1662 marriage, in a confrontation between Catherine and Barbara Palmer which became known as the "Bedchamber crisis". Ostracised at Court and with most of her retinue sent back to Portugal, Catherine had been left with little choice but to acquiesce to Charles' mistresses being granted semi-official standing.

During Gwyn's first years with Charles, there was little competition in the way of other mistresses: Barbara Palmer was on her way out in most respects certainly in terms of age and looks and others, such as Moll Davis, kept quietly away from the spotlight of public appearances or Whitehall. Nell gave birth to her first son, Charles, on 8 May 1670. This was the King's seventh son — by five separate mistresses.

Several months later, Louise de Kérouaille came to England from France, ostensibly to serve as a maid of honour to Queen Catherine, but also to become another mistress to King Charles, probably by design on both the French and English sides. She and Gwyn would prove rivals for many years to come. They were opposites in personality and mannerism; Louise a proud woman of noble birth used to the sophistication of Versailles, Nell a spirited and pranking ex-orange-wench. Gwyn nicknamed Louise "Squintabella" for her looks and the "Weeping Willow" for her tendencies to sob. In one instance, recorded in a letter from George Legge to Lord Preston, Nell characteristically jabbed at the Duchess's "great lineage," dressing in black at Court, the same mourning attire as Louise, when a prince of France died. Someone there asked, "What the deuce was the Cham of Tartary to you?" to which Nell responded, "Oh, exactly the same relation that the French Prince was to Mademoiselle de Kérouaille." The Duchess of Portsmouth's only recorded riposte was, "anybody may know she has been an orange-wench by her swearing" Their relationship was not strictly adversarial; they were known to get together for tea and cards, for example. Basset was the popular game at the time, and Gwyn was a frequent — and high-stakes — gambler.

Gwyn returned to the stage again in late 1670, something Beauclerk calls an "extraordinary thing to do" for a mistress with a royal child. Her return was in Dryden's The Conquest of Granada, a two-part epic produced in December 1670 and January 1671. This may have been her last play; 1671 was almost certainly her last season. Nell Gwyn's theatrical career spanned seven years and ended at the age of 21. In the cast list of Aphra Behn's The Rover (produced at Dorset Garden in March 1677) the part of Angelica Bianca, "a famous Curtezan" is played by a Mrs Gwin. She is a pretty, witty whore who puts herself up for sale for a thousand crowns a month. Could this have been Nell's return to the theatre? (Methuen Drama, Behn Five Plays)