POOR NELLY

See Also: THE CROWN ESTATE No. 79 Pall Mall; FRUIT Citrus Fruits, Orange, Nell Gwynne; COURTESANS King Charles II's Mistresses; WEST END THEATRES The Theatre Royal Drury Lane

At the Theatre Royal Drury Lane Thomas Killigrew ended the practice by which the stage had been an exclusively male preserve. In 1664 Nell Gwynne became an orange seller in the playhouse. She soon graduated to acting. During the remainder of the decade, she moved through a succession of increasingly socially elevated lovers. Eventually, she became one of King Charles II's mistresses. Of the Restoration era royal courtesans, she was the only one who became popular with the public. This may have derived from the facts that she had a strong natural wit and that she was not from a court background and so never became a political force in her own right in the way that the Duchess of Cleveland and the Duchess of Portsmouth were.¹

Upon one occasion, while she was travelling through London in a coach, it became known that it was the king's mistress who was in the vehicle. The crowd took her to be Portsmouth, who was a French-born, Roman Catholic. The duchess was deeply disliked and the onlookers seemed to be about to turn into a mob. Nell defused the situation by proclaiming loudly that she was Charles's Protestant whore .

In 1670 Gwynne gave birth to a boy. Charles proved to be awkward about recognising the child as his. He had acted similarly with regard to his other illegitimate children.² Six years later the lovers were with each other and their offspring. Gwynne called the boy over with the words, Come hither, you little bastard and speak to your father. This prompted the king to exclaim, Nay, Nelly, do not give the child such a name. She replied, Your majesty has given me no other name by which I may call him. The monarch bestowed the surname Beauclerk upon the child and granted him the Earldom of Burford.³

On his deathbed, the king is reputed to have declared, Let not poor Nelly starve!

Location: 79 Pall Mall, SW1Y 5ES (orange, white)

¹. Which accounts for why Nell did not become a duchess.

². The reason why Charles was tardy over the matter was probably monetary. He was in a state of financial embarrassment for nearly all of his reign. Whenever he recognised one of his numerous illegitimate sons with a title, it became incumbent upon him to furnish the financial wherewithal to support that dignity. Accumulatively, this had proved to be a very expensive practice. He may have been hoping to utilise Gwynne s humble origins to justify his not making provision for their child.

³. Charles sons by the Duchess of Cleveland - the 1^st Duke of Southampton, the 1^st Duke of Grafton, and the 1^st Duke of Northumberland had been given the surname Fitzroy (son of the king).

David Backhouse 2024