Nell Gwyn: life of the week

Summary

History Extra Podcast Summary: "Nell Gwyn: Life of the Week"

Episode Overview

In the January 14, 2025 episode of the History Extra podcast, hosted by Ellie Cawthorn and featuring historian Sophie Shoreland, listeners are taken on an engaging journey through the life of Nell Gwyn, a quintessential figure of the Restoration era. The episode, titled "Nell Gwyn: Life of the Week," delves deep into Gwyn's remarkable ascent from humble beginnings to becoming one of King Charles II's most beloved mistresses, highlighting her wit, resilience, and enduring legacy.

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Early Life and Upbringing

Sophie Shoreland opens the discussion by painting a vivid picture of Nell Gwyn's challenging early years. Often likened to a 17th-century Cinderella, Gwyn's rise from poverty is a central theme. Shoreland explains:

"Nell Gwyn is sometimes known as the 17th century Cinderella because she was a bit of a rags to riches tale... She was possibly a child prostitute and then became one of the first ever actresses on the English stage."
— Sophie Shoreland, 00:53

Gwyn is believed to have been born in London, amidst the turmoil following the English Civil War. Shoreland notes the hardships of the time, describing London as a "very wooden city," "dirty," and rife with disease. Nell's mother, referred to as the "mad old dame," struggled with alcoholism, and Nell's early life was marked by poverty and potential exploitation.

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From Orange Seller to Stage Star

One of the most captivating aspects of Nell Gwyn's early career was her role as an "orange seller." Shoreland clarifies the dual nature of this profession:

"Oranges were kind of these luxury products and they were kind of the 17th century popcorn... Orange sellers, or sometimes orange wenches as they were known, would sell the theatre goers oranges. But they were also known for often being prostitutes themselves or they would be messengers."
— Sophie Shoreland, 06:03

Gwyn's charismatic presence as an orange seller caught the attention of prominent figures, including the actor Charles Hart. This connection paved her way into the theatre, where she faced the grueling demands of early acting life, including unpaid initial years and the challenge of performing multiple plays weekly. Despite these obstacles, Gwyn's exceptional comedic timing and vivacious personality propelled her to stardom.

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Breaking Ground: Women on the Restoration Stage

The Restoration era was a transformative period for English theatre, particularly with the introduction of female actresses. Shoreland provides insightful context:

"Yes, so it's very exciting, women on stage for the first time... Nell was one of the very first women then on the English stage."
— Sophie Shoreland, 09:38

This shift was met with mixed reactions. While some celebrated the authenticity and allure of having real women perform, others were scandalized by the visible display of women's ankles and the professional presence of actresses. Nell Gwyn, with her sparkling wit and dynamic performances, became a celebrated celebrity, akin to a modern-day pin-up girl, admired both in London and beyond.

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Romantic Entanglements and Rise to Royal Favor

Nell Gwyn's personal life was as vibrant as her stage presence. Initially involved with Lord Bookhurst, their relationship was short-lived. However, her true prominence came from her affair with King Charles II. Shoreland narrates their first encounter and the blossoming of their relationship:

"Their first official date was possibly late 1667, when Gwyn was still a teenager... Nell Gwynne had to pay and gave a very witty line complaining about the poverty of her company... Charles was probably quite impressed with her ability to adapt to circumstances."
— Sophie Shoreland, 14:20

Charles II, known for his merry and informal court, found a kindred spirit in Gwyn. Their relationship was marked by mutual respect, genuine affection, and shared moments of leisure, such as fishing and horse racing. Unlike many of his other mistresses, Gwyn remained loyal, refraining from taking additional lovers, which deepened their bond.

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Influence and Soft Power in the Court

While Nell Gwyn was primarily celebrated for her role as a royal mistress, her influence extended into the political sphere through what Shoreland describes as "soft power." Gwyn used her closeness to the king to advocate for friends and influence decisions subtly:

"She quite often got things for them or got them pardoned and kind of out of sticky situations... she was also a realist... she gave Charles a couple of reality checks when he asked her, why am I so unpopular."
— Sophie Shoreland, 22:21

Her ability to provide pragmatic advice and her advocacy for key figures like the Duke of Buckingham and Monmouth showcased her political acumen and the significant, albeit informal, role she played in the governance of the time.

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Rivalries and Court Dynamics

Nell Gwyn's position at court was not without challenges. Her primary rival was Louise de Kerouailles, another of Charles II's mistresses. Shoreland recounts their humorous and sharp-witted rivalry:

"Nell Gwyn's coach was stopped by an angry mob in Oxford who thought she was Louise... She is the Protestant whore. And they kind of let her go... Louise was very prone to tears... Nell loved sending that up."
— Sophie Shoreland, 26:43

Gwyn's ability to navigate and often outwit her rivals further cemented her reputation as a formidable and likable figure within the aristocratic circles.

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Later Life, Legacy, and Untimely Death

The death of King Charles II in 1685 marked a significant turning point for Nell Gwyn. Despite losing her primary source of wealth and influence, Gwyn managed to retain her estates and ensure financial stability for her children, thanks to the assistance of James, Charles's younger brother. Shoreland highlights:

"She died surrounded by friends and kind of very supported... considering her kind of fairly big spending, she did do fairly well financially."
— Sophie Shoreland, 24:50

Nell Gwyn passed away at the young age of 37, likely due to syphilis contracted from the king. Her legacy endures as a symbol of the Restoration's vivacious spirit, combining wit, generosity, and resilience. Shoreland concludes:

"She does in many ways sum up restoration kind of merriment and these madcap escapades... a duality there of this, you know, madcap wit and an incredibly kind, loyal woman."
— Sophie Shoreland, 29:34

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Conclusion

The "Nell Gwyn: Life of the Week" episode of the History Extra podcast offers a comprehensive and enthralling exploration of one of history's most beloved figures. Through Sophie Shoreland's expert insights, listeners gain a nuanced understanding of Nell Gwyn's rise from adversity to prominence, her influential role in King Charles II's court, and her enduring legacy as a symbol of Restoration-era joie de vivre. This episode serves as both an educational and entertaining homage to a woman whose life story continues to captivate historians and enthusiasts alike.

Transcript

[Ellie Cawthorn]

Hello and welcome to Life of the Week from History Extra, where leading historians delve into the lives of history's most intriguing and significant figures. No one epitomized the wild spirit of the Restoration era quite like Nell Gwynne. An orange seller turned actress turned royal mistress. She hustled her way to the very top with ch, charm, wisecracks and withering put downs. For today's Life of the Week episode, Ellie Cawthorn spoke to Sophie Shoreland about Gwyn's rags to riches story.

[Sophie Shoreland]

It's lovely to have you on the podcast, Sophie, because we're going to be delving into the life of one of the most remarkable characters of the Restoration era. Can you give us a 60 second intro to Nell Gwyn? What can we expect in this episode?

So Nell Gwyn is sometimes known as the 17th century Cinderella because she was a bit of a kind of rags to riches tale. So she grew up incredibly poor, a really, really difficult life. She was possibly a child prostitute and then became one of the first ever actresses on the English stage, became incredibly successful and then eventually caught the eye of King Charles ii, became one of his principal mistresses, sometimes known as his countryside mistress, even though she was actually quite, you know, London bitcockney, and had a love affair with him that lasted until the end of his life and made quite a lot of money from it.

Amazing summary and that's a great sense of some of the incredible stories to come. So let's go back to the beginning of Nell's life. What do we know for certain and what are some of the stories that are told about her upbringing?

Yeah, I think because she's been such a popular figure over the years and you know, this idea of kind of like Cinderella, she's really caught the imagination. Her early life is very contested, so I think lots of places want her to have been born there. So Hereford claims her Oxford, London. I personally think London's probably the most likely for where she was born because it's where she was also brought up. But, you know, I'm not gonna try and take that away from someone from Hereford if they're going to fight about it. So we have her astrological chart which claims that she was born on 2nd February 1650 at 6am so very precise. That has been contested. It's been argued that maybe, you know, as an actress, she fudged her age a little bit and wanted to appear younger than she actually was. And then we first hear about her when she was serving strong waters at.

A bawdy House and strong waters means.

Yes, I was just about to say this is not very obvious. It's not water. She was basically serving spirits to the gentlemen who were visiting a brothel when she was very young, and she was possibly taken from there when she was about 12 or 13 to live with a man and basically become a kind of private prostitute. So she had a very, very difficult early life. Her mother was an alcoholic. She was kind of known as the mad old dame and eventually probably died of alcohol, alcohol related illness. She had an elder sister, Rose, and it was possibly through Rose that she first became connected to the theatre, because Rose was friends with the manager of the King's company, Killigrew.

So it's hard to imagine a more difficult upbringing, really, but I wonder if you could give us a bit of wider context about London and England at this time. What kind of society was Nell growing up in?

Yeah, so, I mean, she was growing up in this very difficult time following the Civil War. It would have been really normal to see very heavily disabled people on the street who'd been injured by the Civil War, and also very kind of mentally traumatized people as well. So people talk about kind of seeing their friends blown up in front of them. Lots of people who weren't involved in the fighting had been involved in some sort of siege or had a brother who died. So it was quite a traumatized country that had emerged from this time. 1660 marked the end of the Commonwealth, when Charles II was invited back to become king, which I think would have been an incredibly exciting kind of hopeful time. And the theaters reopened, dancing was allowed again, not that people actually didn't dance, because most of the Puritan rules were more or less ignored. So this idea of a really, really bleak time isn't quite accurate, but I think Nell would have been about 10 when Charles was invited back and became king. And I think it would have been a very exciting time, kind of full of hope and possibility. I mean, whether that was actually realised is obviously a different question. London was also a very wooden city. It was a very dirty city. It really stank. People had to wear these kind of clogs on stilts to walk around the streets. There was a lot of disease. It was a very difficult life. There are also a huge number of primary which would have been Nell Gwyn's first profession, and so she would have grown up kind of surrounded by other working women.

One of the classic stories about Nell's upbringing is that she was an orange seller. Is that true? Is it a euphemism? And what was an orange seller?

Yeah, I mean, it's both true and a bit of a euphemism. So oranges were kind of these luxury products and they were kind of the 17th century popcorn. So when people went to the theater, oranges were for sale as this exciting food that you could buy. And orange sellers, or sometimes orange wenches as they were known, would sell the theatre goers oranges. But they were also known for often being prostitutes themselves or they would be messengers. So they would take messages between the spectators and the actresses behind the scenes, kind of like enable flirtation. And Nell Gwynne was quite well known as an orange seller because she was so sparky and gave as good as she got. And she was very fun. She always had a kind of witty comeback when you were buying an orange from her.

So we've edged closer to the theatre. She's selling oranges in this world. How did Nell go from that to ending up on the stage?

So I think she was partially spotted as an orange seller. You know, Pepys writes about her in his diary when she's still an orange seller. So she has a real star quality, I think. She befriends the very famous actor Charles Hart and possibly becomes his lover, which helps get her a kind of step into the theatre. And they start training her to be an actress. The pay is absolutely terrible as an actress and actually you don't get paid for the first year, so she would still have been working while also trying to make it as an actress. So it's very difficult, but she does get trained and then she starts to get bigger and bigger parts and becomes very, very popular, very successful. The only problem is she cannot do a serious part. She just massacres them. She's not a serious actor at all. And in her defence, a lot of the serious plays of the time are really bad. They were really into the heroic couplet, which is a type of rhyming couplet that to us, when you read a serious play at the time, it just sounds so silly and so awful. So in Nell's defence, she didn't have great material. Whereas the comedy plays, they're very witty, they're very sparkling and she did incredibly well in these comedic parts. She had fantastic comic timing. She'd also, earlier in her life, I think because of the dangers of being a woman in London at the time, she'd experimented with cross dressing and this served her really well on stage because often the female parts dressed as men, both for comedic purposes and also to show off their legs. And Nell is said to have caught her next lover, Charles. Her. Charles ii. She's said to have caught his eye when she rolled across the stage and her petticoats came up and she showed off her very nice legs.

Well, before we turn to more lovers, I just want to stay for a moment on that idea of gender on the stage. Because in this period, as you've made clear, we've got women on the stage. How long had that been happening and what was the view of women who took to the stage in this era?

Yes, so it's very exciting, women on stage for the first time. So Charles II comes back from exile. He's seen women be on the stage as a very normal state of affairs. And he decides, this is great, let's have it in England.

So Nell was one of the very first women then on the English stage?

Yes, she was one of the very first women on the English stage.

I imagine that must have been quite scary. Ground to break.

Yeah. And I mean, it kind of caused a bit of a mixed reaction. So some people thought this was really good because it means that men will be lusting after real women rather than boys dressed as women. And some people were like, oh, no, it's terrible. You know, we're seeing women's ankles. This is horrendous. But yeah, I think it was quite scary. New ground. And actresses were kind of trying to prove themselves as talented individuals that had a right to be on the stage. It was a difficult profession as well because they cycled through plays so quickly. So you could be performing three plays in a week and you had to learn that part and all those lines. And you were also fighting for the audience's attention. So audiences weren't well behaved as they are now. They were talking amongst themselves, they were sometimes fighting, they were eating really noisily and they were kind of admiring each other's outfits. They weren't necessarily paying attention to the stage. So as an actress, you had to really fight to be seen. People would even try and talk to actors and actresses from the audience and would distract them.

To me, it sounds a lot like what Nell was doing was stand up comedy. You know, she was delivering this witty material. She was engaging with her audience. She had this back and forth. Gwyn clearly captured people's hearts when she was on the stage. Was she famous in London? Like, could we call her a celebrity at that time?

Yes, I would definitely say that she was for sure a celebrity. People knew her name. She had lots and lots of songs and poems written about her. Her engraving was passed around and in some ways almost as like a 17th century pin up girl. So, yeah, I would say she was definitely a celebrity and even outside of London as well, she was known about and talked about. So, yeah, very famous.

I also want to ask about the connections between acting at this time for women and sex work. So obviously, as you mentioned, Nell, we think came from this world of brothels, but also she, through her work on the stage, kind of acquired these lovers. Was that seen as the usual state of affairs at the time?

Yeah, that was very normal. And lots of prologues and epilogues complain about the gallants attending the theatre who were stealing, you know, our talent away, the actresses away, because it was very common. I think in the same way that there's a kind of allure of film stars today, actresses were very desirable because they were kind of being watched by so many other people and they also, you know, they had opportunities to kind of show off their talents as well. So for example, Nell Gwynn was a very talented, graceful dancer in a way that was very attractive. So, yeah, it was very normal for actresses to not actually act for very long and quickly become someone's kind of paid companion and be set up in a house somewhere.

So to return to Nell rolling around on the floor, which somehow captured the eye of her next lover, Charles Sack, who was Lord Bookhurst. Can you tell us a bit about that relationship and whether it was significant?

It was a quite short lived relationship. I mean, I don't think it was hugely significant for Nell Gwyn because she was back on the stage about a month later. I think possibly he was maybe a bit immature for her. He kind of did fairly mad capers. Like for example, one night he and his friends got really drunk on a balcony. They all stripped naked, pretended to have sex with each other and then weed on the spectators below. Yeah. So I think whereas Gwyn was. She was incredibly lively, she was incredibly fun, but she was never kind of disrespectful in that way to other people. And I think from her very difficult childhood, I think she had a level of maturity that but Cursed possibly lacked. So it wasn't a very successful relationship.

And as it would turn out, Nelgwyn had bigger fish to fry. So tell us about how she met the King himself, Charles ii.

So they first kind of encountered each other when she was acting on stage and kind of, I think, flirted back and forth for a while and she was being proposed as a kind of Protestant mistress. People were keen that the King have a Protestant lover rather than all the Catholics he was usually surrounded with. And then their first official date was possibly late 1667, when Gwyn was still a teenager. And they went to a pub after the theater as a kind of group. And when the time came to pay the bill, all the aristocrats hadn't brought any money with them. So Nell Gwynne had to pay and gave a very witty line complaining about the poverty of her company. So I think that Charles was probably quite impressed with her ability to adapt to circumstances. And through 1668, Gwynne carried on acting. But Charles did several times send for Nellie. So we know that she made the trip up the back stairs to Whitehall a few times that year.

Stories of the King going out for drinks in the pub with a few actresses and mates. It doesn't sound very regal, shall we say? And Charles does have this reputation as the merry monarch. So I wonder if you could just take us into his court. It's often painted as one kind of big riotous party. Is that a fair summation of Charles and his?

I think it is in many ways a fair summation. Charles was very informal. He couldn't abide kind of being treated in an overly distant way. He was very clever, and when he put his mind to it, he could work very, very hard. But he very seldom put his mind to it, which his kind of chief ministers, they're pulling their hair out. And I think he'd had a, you know, a really rough time. His father had been executed while still very young. He lived in exile, pinching pennies for over a decade. And I think he and his court had kind of had enough, so they kind of exploded back into England and were kind of determined to enjoy themselves while they could. I think partly because they had this awareness, partly from the Civil War, that life could be very short and very difficult. So it wasn't kind of just rich kids necessarily running around like they had had a very difficult time and seen lots of their friends killed.

And where does Nell fit into that picture? Is she just part of this pursuit of pleasure, you know, another good time girl? Or was there anything deeper in their relationship? Can we tell?

Yeah, I mean, the fact that she stuck around for so long suggests there was definitely something deeper, because Charles had plenty of mistresses who were, you know, a couple of knights. She really didn't suffer fools, which was the same as Charles. She sometimes known as his countryside mistress. So they would go off to Newmarket or Epsom together and they would dress as normal people and they would go fishing or they would place bets on the horses. So I think she became a very relaxing presence for Charles, where he could just be a normal person rather than someone that people want something from all the time.

But I'm also imagining that this would have been a huge financial opportunity for Nell. Was that the case? Was she lavished with luxury goods and houses and carriages and jewelry and all of that?

Yes, absolutely, she was. Charles loved spending money on women. It's one of his better qualities. Not that the people of England thought so at the time, but yes, she was lavished with gifts, with manors, estates. I mean, she did run through money, partly because she loved gambling, but also she was incredibly generous and a very, very big tipper. Servants loved it when Gwyn came to call because she was very generous with her money. She was very beloved for it and often gave to charity as well. But she had a real extravagant streak. So, for example, she had this totally ridiculous silver bed commissioned. It would have been disgusting to look at. It had these massive figures of her and Charles together. And then it included her chief rival, Louise de Kerouailles, one of Charles's mistresses. Louise was figured lying in a grave on the bed.

That's incredible.

Yeah, yeah. So she kind of had a bit of a baroque streak as well as all of her kind of charitable giving.

The servants might have loved her, but I'm imagining that there would have been some snobbery from amongst the aristocrats. Was Nell accepted into court generally?

So certainly not immediately. It took a few years of her being Charles mistress, and it also took Charles a lot longer to grant Gwyn's children titles. So there's a great story, there's a few stories, actually, but one of the stories is that her eldest son, Charles, was playing one day next to Charles II and Gwyn, and she said, come here, you little bastard. And Charles was like, oh, you can't call him that, that's terrible. And she was like, well, I don't have any other title to call him by. So Charles responded, all hail the Earl of Burford. The other story is that she dangled him out of a window a la Michael Jackson, until Charles gave him a title. But, yes, it did take her a while to be accepted by the court, but I think it's kind of testament to her personality that eventually she was actually fairly accepted despite her comparatively low birth, and she was present kind of helping to host diplomatic events and eventually became quite involved in the life of the court. But I think she was always partially on the defensive. So we have lots of stories of being snubbed by one of Charles's other more highborn mistresses. And she comes back with a witty one liner, something like, you know, women of the same profession should stick together.

So clearly there were advantages for now of being in this relationship. Can we gauge any sense of how she actually felt about King Charles? Was she just, you know, pandering to his needs and giving him what he wanted for the reward? Or can we tell if there was any romantic involvement or affection on her part?

I think most telling is when Charles died. She was really upset. It said that she visibly aged when he died and she was still very young, she was only in her 30s. And I think as well, lots of Charles's mistresses weren't very faithful to him. Whereas Nell Gwyn didn't take any other lovers. She was quite monogamous in her tastes and I mean, possibly she was just a bit traumatized by her childhood, to be honest, but she didn't have any other lovers and I think they had a very loving relationship. They spent a lot of time together and could kind of relax with each other. And I think both of them were incredibly lively and very witty and intelligent and I think they had a lot in common.

Nell was clearly a very vivacious presence at court, but how much did she get involved in politics and power? Did she stay out of it or did she throw her oar in?

So it's a bit difficult to tell in some ways because obviously a lot of her power was soft power, so it would have been kind of talking to the King in bed, influencing things that way. But she definitely advocated for her friends, so she quite often got her friends like the Duke of Buckingham or Charles's eldest son, Monmouth. She quite often got things for them or got them pardoned and kind of out of sticky situations. And she was also a realist. So she gave Charles a couple of reality checks when he asked her, why am I so unpopular? And she was like, you need to spend less money on women and more time working. So I think, yeah, in some ways it's a bit hard to tell, but she definitely had an influence on politics and was very celebrated by the Proto Whig, the kind of Protestant party at the time, for having a kind of steadying influence.

She sounds like a very smart woman. As you mentioned, in 1670 Gwyn gave birth to Charles son, who she called Charles, can he move? And also she had another son by him, James, who followed in 1671. As you say, she managed to get Charles a title. Did that help cement her own position as well?

I think it probably did cement her own position because they kind of had a more official position than I suppose she did. She was always dependent on the King's favour. And also, Charles was a very, very affectionate father, so there are lots of tales of his children kind of hanging about his knee or playing with his hair. It's very sweet. And I think he would never have abandoned his children. But then he was also quite solicitous for his mistresses as well. So famously, some of his final words were, let not poor Nelly starve. So he was thinking about her right up until the end and provision for her.

I mean, it's a really incredible trajectory that she had, from growing up in a brothel in the most difficult circumstances in London to having titles for her sons. It's quite incredible. But as you say, the party did come to an end at some point and Charles died. What did that mean for Nell? Was she able to hold on to anything that he had given her?

Yes. So she did have all the estates that Charles had granted to her. And James, Charles's heir and younger brother, was very helpful in kind of helping to untangle her affairs. She was never as wealthy as she had been with Charles being alive, but she did manage to leave her son money and also gave lots of charitable bequests in her own will as well. So considering her kind of fairly big spending, she did do fairly well financially.

It's interesting that James did decide to help Nell out after his brother Charles had died. I mean, he could probably have cut her off a lot more than he did. Why do you think he did that?

I mean, I think James had spent lots of time with Gwyn as well, like their first date. James was actually there. He was one of the aristocrats. He couldn't possibly. He was remembering that incident. But I think it was difficult not to like Nell Gwyn. She was incredibly friendly. She was great fun to be around. The French ambassador describes her as having this kind of air that was infectious. She made life more fun and more interesting. And she had been very loyal to Charles. She'd kind of acted almost as another one of his wives. And I think, you know, that good nature and that loyalty provokes that response in other people as well, unless you were Louise de Kerouay, Charles principal mistress of later years. Nell and Louise had a very funny rivalry. Mostly funny, I have to say, on Gwyn's part. Louise didn't have such a sense of humor.

Can you tell us a bit about that rivalry?

Yeah. So, I mean, one of the most famous stories about Them both is. Nell Gwyn's coach was stopped by an angry mob in Oxford who thought she was Louise. And Gwyn poked her head out of the coach and said, pray good people, be silent. I am the Protestant whore. And they kind of let her go about her business because she wasn't a Catholic, so it's all good. And Louise was very. Gwyn called her the Weeping Willow. She was very prone to tears and I think sounds quite annoying, really. And she had real pretensions to aristocracy. She was very minor Breton nobility, but whenever a famous person died, she would go into full mourning for them. And Nalgwn loved sending that up. So after Louise went into mourning one of the times, Nell Gwyn arrived the next day in full mourning herself and said, I'm mourning the Cham of Tartary. And someone asked, you know, are you at all related to the Charm of Tartary? Like, who is that? And she said, well, I'm just as related to the Cham of Tartary as Louise is to that other noble who died.

So she clearly brought that kind of sense of humor from the stage forward into her life. We have all these incredible anecdotes about Nell Gwyn. Do we have anything from Gwyn herself?

No, we don't. She couldn't write, so we don't have any writings of Gwyn's herself. I think these stories are the closest thing we have to her words, and they're probably fairly accurate because they tend to have a similar kind of wit that shines through them. But no, unfortunately, we don't have exactly from Gwyn herself.

Nell died when she was only 37. I wonder if you could tell us about what happened.

Yeah. So it's thought that she died of syphilis, that Charles II passed on to her, and she wasn't very well for the last few years of her life. She only outlived Charles by about two years, but she died surrounded by friends and kind of very supported. Her younger son James had died when he was very little and away at school, but she was very attached to her eldest son, Charles. But she was only 37 when she died, so it was very young.

Nell is often seen, I think, to sum up the spirit of this wild restoration age. Do you think that's a fair way to remember her?

Yeah, I mean, yeah. Pepys famously called her pretty witty Nell, which in some ways does summarize her. Pepys was a big fan. He had a naked engraving of her above his desk at the Admiralty in his office, which is quite wild, I think. Yeah. She does in many ways sum up restoration kind of merriment and these madcap escapades. The wit, I think, that you often associate with the restoration, but I think she's remembered as having a kind of heart of gold, and I think that's a very fair assessment as well. Gwyn was incredibly kind, you know, even after she'd made it, and she really didn't need to be. She was one of the richest women in the country at one point. So I think there's a duality there of this, you know, madcap wit and an incredibly kind, loyal woman.

[Ellie Cawthorn]

That was Dr. Sophie Shoreland speaking to Ellie Cawthorn. Sophie also appeared on the podcast earlier this year to discuss her book on Charles II's wife, Catherine of Brigand. You can find a link to that in the description of this episode.