But of the greatest interest to Charles and me were the races he arranged specially for our visit. After announcing that for that year, the race for the King’s Plate would be shifted from Newmarket to Burford, gentlemen from all over the country conveyed their fastest horses. Surely there could be no more extreme contrast between the grim business of politics taking place in Oxford and this jovial crowd of jockeys, trainers, bettors, rogues, gentlemen, and their not-quite ladies, and crowds of local people.
“Doesn’t this remind you of our first days at Newmarket, Nelly?” Charles asked, his face ruddy from the cold. He’d brought his horse to where I sat, bundled in furs, in an open carriage. “Back when every race was wild and unpredictable, before matters had become so tidily organized?”
“Ah, sir, then our whole lives were wild and unpredictable,” I said wistfully, for it did seem long ago. “But they were good days, too, good days.”
He smiled, teasing. “You’re too young to look back on former days.”
“Pish, I’m thirty-one, sir, as old as Dame Methuselah,” I said, wrinkling my nose. “I’m entitled to look back if I please.”
“I’m fifty-one,” he said proudly, “and I’ll only look before me, not back.”
This was not quite true, of course. More and more, he repeated the old tales of his exile until the younger members of the court nigh perished of boredom. But Charles and I had been so many years in each other’s company that I could indulge him that small folly, and love him all the more for it. “Hey-ho, a soothsayer now, are you? ”
“Yes.” He glanced back across the downs, to where horses were gathering for the next race. “I’ll see England at peace, Nelly, even if I must do it without Parliament.”
I looked at him sharply. “How, sir?”
He smiled and winked. “You’ll soon see every bit as clearly as I do, Nelly. In time, you’ll see it all.”
We returned the Oxford the following week, and on March 21, the king gave his opening speech to the new Parliament. In the cramped, makeshift meeting hall at the university, there was little room for spectators—there wasn’t much room for the members, either, who complained about that along with everything else—so I was forced to learn of the doings from others. Though Charles was conciliatory, even welcoming, Shaftesbury had at once plunged into the wretched question of exclusion again, this time pushing further for Monmouth to be legitimized and named as Charles’s successor. As the debates grew more heated, Charles let them suggest other outrageous possibilities, including a Parliament-sponsored regent to oversee Mary of Orange. The members quarreled back and forth, each faction loudly (and sometimes violently) promoting a different solution.
“How can you let them speak so, sir?” I’d asked, shocked by the Whigs’ boldness. “Those poxy dogs! How dare they try to dictate to you?”
But Charles had only smiled indulgently at me, just as he’d smiled at Shaftesbury and the other Whigs. “Be easy, Nelly. You shall see. I’ve the law and reason on my side.”
Still I worried, for him and for England. The streets seemed to vibrate with the dissention of Parliament, and the arguments in the two houses spilled, brawling, into every tavern and alehouse. Surely this could only lead to the civil war and mayhem that Charles claimed to so fear!
Yet the people of Oxford were like the people in Burford; they preferred to keep themselves apart from the quarrelling, and cheer only for the king. Wise folk, I thought, and gladly added my own cheers to theirs.
Things could not continue in this fashion endlessly, however. Charles knew this, too, of course, yet he alone could control it. After a week of debates, Charles summoned the Commons and the Lords both to join him in the Hall of Christ Church. Eagerly they all hurried to the meeting place, expecting Charles finally to concede to their varied demands.
But what they found was something altogether different. Shocked, their confidence vanished, and their jollity with it. Waiting for them in the hall sat the king on his throne. He watched them gravely, silently, dressed in his full robes with his crown on his head—the regalia of His Majesty that had been smuggled into the hall in great secrecy, and was required for what came next.
The members exclaimed and chattered among themselves, striving to make sense of what Charles intended. They made so much racketing that the sergeant at arms was required to call for silence three times before there was quiet enough for the king to speak, and give his orders to the lord chancellor beside him.
“All the world may see to what a point we are come,” he said, clearly and distinctly, so that there’d be no questions later, “that we are not like to have a good end when the divisions at the beginning are such as these.”
Like that, he dismissed Parliament.
Like that, the controversy and debates and quarrels over his succession were done. He rose swiftly, removed his robes in a side chamber, and left the hall, soon leaving the town altogether for Windsor.
We’d all been told to leave Oxford and follow as quickly as could be arranged, even if it meant having our trunks sent after us. It wasn’t until much later that evening, when I’d settled myself at Burford House, that Charles could separate himself from the others and come to me.
“Oh, sir, what you did!” I exclaimed as I hurried toward him. “All of Oxford spoke of nothing else!”
He laughed as if he’d not a care left in the world, taking me into his embrace. “Likely all of London speaks of it as well by now.”
“But to have your robes and crown waiting—”
“Smuggled inside their own sedan chair.” He laughed, clearly pleased by how well everything had gone. “I hadn’t forgotten what you said about the importance of fine costumes.”
“Oh, aye, and a pretty show you set, too!” I exclaimed. “To dissolve Parliament like that before they’d fair begun—”
“Nor will I call them back again,” he said, brooking no doubt, “not so long as I reign.”
I gasped, stunned, for this was audacious indeed. “How can you do that, sir?”
“I can because that is what my people want,” he said. “They don’t want to be ruled by the petty dictators of Parliament. This last fortnight has proved that to me. This is the right course for England.”
“For England,” I repeated, and at last let myself smile. I’d always trusted him before, and I would trust him now, for he was not only my king, but my Charles.
Sensing my doubt, he brushed his fingers fondly over my cheek. “I’ve told you before, Nelly. Better one master than five hundred.”
I sighed, settling my arms neatly around his waist. “Only if that one master is you, sir.”
“You flatter me, sweet.”
“ ’Od’s faith, sir,” I exclaimed. “I speak only the purest of truth.”
He laughed again, drawing me closer. “Ah, Nelly, Nelly. Whatever would I do without you, eh?”
“Not laugh half so much,” I said promptly, “nor so well.”
My king then smiled so warmly at me, I could have melted from it. “Without you, I wouldn’t have much worth laughing about.”
“No, sir, you wouldn’t,” I said, and winked as I stood up on my toes to kiss him. “And where, I ask you, would be the joy in that?”
Author’s Note
More than three hundred years after her death, Nell Gwyn remains the best remembered of the mistresses of Charles II. She wasn’t the most beautiful, or the highest born, or the most notorious, but she had the rare gift of making Charles laugh, and she might well have loved him the best. Her charm and her bawdy wit still manage to reach across the centuries, and today she remains one of the most endearing characters—and symbols—of Charles’s infamous reign as the “Merry Monarch.”
The contentious Parliament that Charles dissolved so briskly in 1681 was the last to sit in his reign. Keeping both his word and his intention, he never called another, and ruled without the “interference” of Parliament until his death. Except for the outraged politicians, England remained at peace, exact
ly as Charles had wished, though it was done once again with the help of secret subsidies from Louis XIV.
Unfortunately these peaceful years were short. In late February 1685, after a pleasant evening at Whitehall surrounded by his friends as well as his queen, Nell, and Louise, Duchess of Portsmouth, Charles retired to his rooms. He bantered with his gentlemen attendants, made plans for the next day, and went to bed. Sometime in the night, he was struck by the stroke that would eventually lead to his death.
For an agonizing week, he lingered, surviving despite the horrific seventeenth-century treatments inflicted upon him by his desperate surgeons. He was able to bid farewell to his wife, his family, his many children (including his surviving son with Nell, Charles, by then Duke of St. Albans), and the Duchess of Portsmouth. But because Nell had never been raised to the peerage, those in charge of the deathbed denied her admittance, banishing her to weep inconsolably outside the door to the king’s bed chamber.
Charles’s last words, a plea to his brother James—“Don’t let poor Nelly starve”—were likely little consolation to her, nor was the knowledge that he’d finally approved a title for her (as Countess of Greenwich) for her next birthday, but died before he could sign the patent. When Charles, fifty-five, finally died at noon on February 6, Nell lost not only her lover and royal protector, but her best friend, as well.
While modern medicine claims that no one perishes of a broken heart, surely Charles’s death hastened Nell’s own end. Financially, her world crashed overnight. Never as avaricious as her rivals, she had few resources left to her. Her pensions ended, and the leases on numerous properties bound to the king’s lifetime ceased. The City bankers who had extended her endless credit now closed in on her like the proverbial vultures to demand payment, and it was only through the intercession of several friends from the happier days that she was able to save any of her property. The Duke of York, now James II, made a small show of respecting Charles’s dying wish by keeping her from starving. But he also attempted to blackmail both her and her son into converting to Catholicism, which Nell—she of the best Pope burnings in Pall Mall—firmly refused to do.
A series of strokes in 1687 left her cruelly paralyzed and speechless, an invalid confined to her famous silver bed. She died in November at age thirty-seven. Her funeral packed her church with mourners from every rank of society, their grief genuine for the small woman whose main joy in life had been to make others laugh.
Her son Charles, Duke of St. Albans, proved himself worthy of both his famous parents. Left adrift at seventeen by Nell’s death, he chose a career in the military with great success, and was a loyal Whig supporter of William I. Though forced to sell his mother’s Pall Mall house to pay his debts (many inherited from Nell), he married happily, sired thirteen children, and lived out his life at Burford House, in the shadow of Windsor Castle.
Though King Charles had always despaired of his brother James’s unfortunate conversion to Catholicism, he maintained that, for the sake of England and the monarchy, James must be his rightful heir. That Charles also believed that his brother would make a deplorable king and would not remain on the throne for four years after he assumed it was a depressing contradiction that proved all too true. In his brief reign, James II sought to undo all the good of his brother, and force his religion on the English. He was overthrown in the bloodless Glorious Revolution of 1688, and lived in exile in France until his death in 1701. His son James Francis, born shortly before the Glorious Revolution and the only male Stuart of his generation to survive infancy, was also removed from succession, though as the “Old Pretender” he continued to be a political rallying point, if not a figure of any political power, throughout his life.
The aspirations of James, Duke of Monmouth, were shorter and more tragic. Still hoping to lay claim to the throne of England after Charles’s death, he rallied his supporters in a doomed rebellion against his uncle James II in 1685. James swiftly sent the full force of his army to brutally put down the rebellion, and thus efficiently slaughtered hundreds of Monmouth’s ill-prepared followers. Monmouth himself was captured and brought back to London for trial. James showed no mercy to his brother’s hapless, foolish son, and Monmouth, thirty-five, was beheaded as a traitor by his uncle’s order.
Many of Nell’s other friends did not long survive Charles, either. George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, found life at James II’s court a humorless place indeed, and soon retreated to his estate in Yorkshire, where he died in 1687 after catching a chill while hunting. Thomas Killigrew lost control of the King’s Theatre to one of his sons in 1683, and died soon after at Whitehall Palace. Charles Hart, Nell’s “Charles the First,” continued as a prominent actor and partner in the King’s Company, and also died in 1683. Charles Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, Earl of Middlesex and Dorset (Nell’s “Charles the Second”) continued as her friend to the end of her life. Though he retired from James II’s Court, he served in several high posts under successive rulers William, Mary, and Anne before he died in 1706.
The most tragically short life, however, remains that of Nell’s good friend John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. Blessed with exceptional looks, wit, and talent, he nonetheless squandered his gifts and destroyed his health through debauchery. There is no doubt that syphilis finally killed him, though modern medical scholars say that alcoholism was equally to blame. His deathbed confession and repudiation of his earlier life, under the guidance of the famous Anglican Gilbert Burnet, made for the most famous cautionary tale of his time. The fact that within the next three years, Rochester’s young wife and son were also dead of syphilis and his line ended only increased his legend. But to Nell, he was a constant friend and coconspirator, and a loyal supporter throughout his too-short life.
The “pox” (which covered syphilis, gonorrhea, and all other sexually transmitted ailments) represented the darker side of the promiscuous Restoration era. Its causes might have been misunderstood, but the devastating results were all too obvious. Treatment was as barbaric as only the medicine of the time could be, relying on bleeding and purging, noxious potions, and such hair-raising procedures as searing away infected flesh with a hot poker! Remission or changing symptoms were perceived as a “cure,” with the infected happily returning to his (or her) former haunts and practices.
Charles himself went through periodic stages of being “poxed,” and took quicksilver (mercury) as an early attempt at a cure. Louise de Kéroualle was widely known to have spent more than a year recovering from a bout of the pox, visiting all the famous healing baths and spas of the time in search of relief (one does not want to consider the shared effects of all that communal bathing). The only time Nell suspected herself of being afflicted was late in her life, in 1679, but no one knows for certain. Just as with the king, her early death may have been related to the pox, but the cause may just as well have been from lingering childhood malnutrition or heredity. I think it is, however, pretty safe to say that among those at court who solemnly shook their heads over Rochester’s death, many must have been equally infected, and simply didn’t realize it.
If Nell’s world was a bawdy place, then it was also one famous for its wit, both high and low. The English language has never been more amusing, whether in the artfully composed pornography that Rochester produced to entertain the court, or the popular plays of Dryden, Behn, and Etherege, or even the doggerel slanders of anonymous tavern ballads and broadsides. While this novel is a work of fiction, I wouldn’t dare try to “improve” on the words of these writers. The many quotes that spice these pages were taken from their seventeenth-century sources, and are as close as possible to the way Nell would have heard them. I’ve tried to make sure that Nell credits the writer or the speaker, but I’d also like to add my own humble thanks for both the pleasure and the inspiration these works have given me.
Nell’s Cinderella story, her plucky rise from a barefoot waif to Whitehall Palace, is an endearing one. The Victorians in particular doted on her history, reducing the wonderful
ly bawdy woman to a saccharine “whore with a heart of gold.” Equally, other, later historians with a misogynistic bent were quick to drop her into the pool of faceless, faithless women of ill repute, branding her as just one more slut who caught the king’s eye.
But Nell, I think, was more complicated than that. She delighted in calling herself a whore, yet by all evidence, she was not promiscuous. Instead she seems to have been serially monogamous, with only four men definitely linked to her, and she was entirely loyal to Charles until her death, a claim neither Lady Portsmouth nor Lady Castlemaine could make.
Nor do I believe Nell was the Cockney-dialect-spouting cartoon she’s often depicted to be. Even as a comedian, an impenetrable accent would have made her transition from orange seller to actress impossible at that time, an even greater handicap than her illiteracy; more likely, she spoke as a native of Oxford. My guess is that she was also intelligent, given her reputation for a quick rejoinders and memorization. Funny people are generally smart people, and she was clearly one of the funniest women of her generation.
Like so many others, Nell was one more fatherless “lost soul” of the post-Civil War generation, born into a society turned upside down and ready to embrace the merry hedonism of Charles II’s London. What separated her (and Rochester, too) from the rest were the twin gifts of beauty and wit that gave her the rare ability to escape from the bleakness of life through jests and humor.
Because Charles was reserved by nature himself, he delighted in having wild, witty creatures like Nell, Rochester, and Buckingham around him, ready to mock the foolishness of authority in a way that he, as king, couldn’t. He loved to laugh at them, and with them. In Nell he found a woman who was nearly his ideal. She was beautiful, energetic, and funny. No wonder their relationship was ended only by his death.
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