… got up into a great oak that had been lopped some 3 or 4 years before and so was grown out very bushy and thick not to be seen through.
#KING CHARLES II HOW TO#
He told me that it would be very dangerous either to stay in the house or go into the wood (there being a great wood hard by Boscobel) and he knew but one way how to pass all the next day and that was to get up into a great oak in a pretty plain place where we could see round about us for they would certainly search all the wood for people that had made their escape. The king’s account, dictated 30 years later to Samuel Pepys, records their decision: They resolved to head out on foot once more under cover of darkness – this time heading for Boscobel House, a mile from White Ladies.Ĭharles consulted with William Careless, another fugitive staying at the house. Their hopes of reaching Wales dashed, Richard and Charles were forced to turn back. They reached the house of a trusted ally in a town called Madeley, but learned that the Severn was heavily guarded. At one point they were forced to run down a country lane and hide behind a hedge after being challenged by the miller at Evelith Mill. Charles practised his disguise, learning from Richard a country fellow’s speech and manner of walking – a ‘lobbing jobsons gate’, as one 17th-century writer describes it. They decided to cross the river Severn into Wales and from there sail to France.Īs soon as it was dark Charles and Richard set out on foot. They stayed there through a long, wet day – reportedly with just a blanket to sit on and a ‘mess of milk and some butter and eggs’ – and planned an escape. The other troops left and Richard Penderel, the eldest of five brothers summoned to the house, led Charles out to a wood. Shears were produced and the long, dark royal locks cropped short. Nelly riposted, “You are entirely right, madam, and I am whore enough to be a duchess.At White Ladies, Charles’s coat and breeches were removed and he was dressed in country clothes: green breeches, a leather doublet, a coarse hemp shirt and an old grey hat.
Once, when Louise had been appointed Duchess of Portsmouth (as a reward for her sexual favours) she said condescendingly to Nell, who was looking particularly fine, “Nelly, you are grown rich, I believe, by your dress why woman you are fine enough to be a queen”. Nell constantly mocked and abused her: ‘Squintabella’ was one nickname, for the slight cast she had in one eye, as well as ‘the weeping willow’, for her tendency to weep when thwarted or upset. Louise was brought from the French court, and openly took part in English court politics, hoping to promote French interests. More important, emotionally, to Charles was Nell’s great rival, from the opposite end of the social spectrum, Louise de Kéroualle. Original Artwork: Engraving by Walter L Colls, from an engraving by Valck after a painting by Sir Peter Lely. She bore the king at least one illegitimate son. Samuel Pepys recorded the king dancing to a popular tune of the time, ‘Cuckolds All A-Row’, which well suggests the cheery, heartless, amoral world of the royal court.Ĭ1670, English stage actress Nell Gwyn, mistress of King Charles II. The poet John Dryden, always agreeable to the ruling classes, described it as a “laughing, quaffing and unthinking time”, but it is clear that there was widespread disapproval of this ‘brave new world’, as is suggested by the title of poet Samuel Butler’s Satire upon the Licentious Age of Charles the Second. Most people think of Charles II as the ‘merry monarch’, with his perky Cockney mistress, Nell Gwyn (perhaps the Barbara Windsor of her day), at the centre of a court remarkable for its gaiety, extravagance, and amorous entanglements. Here, writing for HistoryExtra, Pritchard introduces you to the pleasure-seeking world of Charles II’s court… Drawing on a wealth of evidence by contemporary observers, such as diaries, memoirs, letters, gossip and satire, Scandalous Liaisons: Charles II and His Court recounts the king’s many mistresses, including Barbara Villiers and Nell Gwyn.
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