Nell Gwyn

Eleanor “Nell” Gwyn (1650-1687), actress and royal mistress.

Life

Gwyn grew up poor, selling oranges at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. She became an actress — one of the first English women on the public stage, since female performers had been banned until Charles II restored the theaters in 1660. She was known for comedy roles.

She became Charles’s mistress around 1668 and bore him two sons. The public liked her because she was Protestant, English, and low-born — a contrast to Charles’s other prominent mistress, the Catholic French Duchess of Portsmouth. In one famous story, a mob mistook her carriage for the Duchess’s, and Nell leaned out to say, “Pray, good people, be civil. I am the Protestant whore.”

Charles reportedly said on his deathbed, “Let not poor Nelly starve.” She died two years after him, at 37.

In the novel

Gwyn appears as part of the texture of Charles II’s court, where royal mistresses held real social and political weight.