Nell gwynn biography
Nell Gwyn (Gwynne)
&#;Pray good people be civil, I am the Protestant whore&#; was Nell Gwyn&#;s cheeky retort to the masses pushing around her coach in the mistaken belief that it was that of the Duchess of Portsmouth, the Catholic Louise de Keroualle.
&#;Pretty, witty Nell&#; was perhaps the best known and remembered mistress of King Charles II.
She was one of many (there were 13 in all during his lifetime), but she was the least &#;greedy&#; of them all. When he lay dying he begged his heir, the Duke of York, &#;not to let poor Nellie starve&#;.
In her early teens, Nell Gwyn was engaged to sell oranges at the King&#;s Theatre. Her natural wit and complete lack of self-consciousness caught the eye of the actor Charles Hart and others, and Dryden wrote plays to exploit her talents as a comic actress.
She became Charles Hart&#;s mistress, she called him Charles the First, and was then passed to Charles Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, whom she dubbed Charles the Second, and later the King, calling him her Charles the Third.
Lady Castlemaine (Barbara Palmer) had been King Charles&#; mistress for many years when he became enamoured of Nell.
The rivalry between Nell, Lady Castlemaine, Frances Stuart, Louise de Keroualle, Lucy Walters, Moll Davis and sundry others made the King&#;s life difficult at times!
Charles had 13 children by these &#;ladies&#; and agreed to support the children he believed were his. He had doubts about some of Lady Castlemaine&#;s children as he had caught her in a compromising position with John Churchill, later Duke of Marlborough. Lady Castlemaine&#;s last child, born was acknowledged to be Churchill&#;s.
Other ladies came and went &#; one Winifred Wells was a Maid of Honour. She was described as having the &#;carriage of a goddess but the physiognomy of a dreamy sheep&#; !
Moll Davies, also an actress, had a child by the King. The child was known as Lady Mary Tudor. Moll was given a house in Suffolk Street and a ring worth £ by the Eleanor - commonly called 'Nell' - Gwynne was born on 2nd February , traditionally in the city of Hereford, although the Coal Yard off Drury Lane, London, may have been her real birthplace. Her family was certainly of Welsh origin. Her father, Captain Thomas Gwynne, appears to have been a soldier ruined by the Civil War. Her mother, who lived with Nell for some time, drowned in a pond at Chelsea (Middlesex) in July , apparently after becoming inebriated. Nell Gwynne, who originally sold oranges in the precincts of the Drury Lane Theatre, became an actress at the age of only fifteen, through the influence of her first lover, the actor, Charles Hart, and also of Robert Duncan, a guards officer who had an interest in the theatre's management. Her first recorded appearance on the stage was in , as Montezuma's daughter, Cydaria, in Dryden's Indian Emperor, a serious part to which she was not well. In the following year, however, she played Lady Wealthy in James Howard's comedy The English Monsieur. The diarist, Samuel Pepys, was apparently delighted by the performance from "pretty, witty Nell", but went further upon seeing her as Florimel in Dryden's Secret Love, or the Maiden Queen, : "so great a performance of a comical part was never, I believe, in the world beforeso done by Nell her merry part as cannot be better done in nature" (25th March ). Nell's success brought her other leading roles: Bellario, in Beaumont and Fletcher's Philaster; Flora, in Rhodes's Flora's Vagaries; Samira, in Sir Robert Howard's Surprisal. Nell Gwynne excelled in the delivery of the risqu�, but fashionable, prologues and epilogues of the time, but her success as an actress was largely due to John Dryden, who wrote characters especially for her, having made a study of her airy and irresponsible English royal mistress and celebrity (–) For other uses, see Nell Gwyn (disambiguation). Eleanor Gwyn (2 February – 14 November ; also spelled Gwynn, Gwynne) was an English stage actress and celebrity figure of the Restoration period. Praised by Samuel Pepys for her comic performances as one of the first actresses on the English stage, she became best known for being a longtime mistress of King Charles II of England (c. April – 6 February ). Called "pretty, witty Nell" by Pepys, she has been regarded as a living embodiment of the spirit of Restoration England, and has come to be considered a folk heroine, with a story echoing the rags-to-royalty tale of Cinderella. Gwyn had two sons by King Charles: Charles Beauclerk (–) and James Beauclerk (–). Charles Beauclerk was created Earl of Burford and Duke of St. Albans; Murray de Vere Beauclerk, 14th Duke of St. Albans is her descendant, and the current holder of the duchy. The details of Gwyn's background are somewhat obscure. A horoscope in the Ashmolean manuscripts gives her date of birth as 2 February On the other hand, an account published in The New Monthly Magazine and Humorist in states that she was born about The earlier date of birth was asserted without documentation, but various scholars have supported both the earlier and later dates. The eight-year difference between these two possible birth years can offer different readings of what Gwyn achieved during her lifetime. The obscurity surrounding Gwyn's date of birth parallels numerous other obscurities that run through the course of her life. The information we have about Gwyn is collected from various sources, including the plays she starred in, satirical poetry and pictures, diaries, and letters. As such, much of this information is founded on hearsay, gossip, and rumour, and must therefore be handled with caution. Her mother Ellen (or a variant, being referred to in her lifetime as "
Nell Gwynne()
Born: 2nd February at Pipewell Lane, Hereford, Herefordshire
Actress
Died: 14th November at Pall Mall, Westminster, MiddlesexEleanor "Nell" Gwyn (also spelled Gwynn, Gwynne) was born on February 2, Her birthplace is thought to be either Hereford, London, or Oxford. Her mother, Ellen, ran a brothel, and the identity of her father is not known. In , Gwyn and her older sister, Rose, began working as "orange girls" selling oranges to patrons of the newly built Theatre in Bridges Street, now known as the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. Less than a year later, at the age of fourteen, Gwyn began acting. After King Charles II was restored to the throne in , he reinstated the theatre (which had previously been banned) and legalized acting as a profession for women; earlier, women’s parts were played by boys or men. Her first stage appearance was in alongside the actor, Charles Hart, in The Indian Emperour, a drama by John Dryden. That performance was followed by several comedic roles, at which she excelled, and soon she became the leading comedienne of the King’s Company. Gwyn became mistress to King Charles II in and they had two sons: Charles Beauclerk, born in , who became Earl of Burford and later, Duke of St. Albans; and James Beauclerk, who was born in and died in In early , Gwyn suffered two strokes which left her confined to her bed. She died on November 14, from apoplexy.
Nell Gwyn
Early life