History's Worst F*ckboys: Charles II

Our mini-series exploring the worst f*ckboys in history is back! In today's episode, Kate is joined by Dr. David Taylor of Oxford University to get to know the so-called Merry Monarch and the many women in his life. Was it better to be married or be a mistress to Charles II? How many lovers did he really have? And was Restoration England as fun as it sounded? This episode was edited by Amy Haddow and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer is Charlotte Long. Please vote for us for Listeners' Choice at the British Podcast Awards! Follow this link https://www.britishpodcastawards.com/voting - https://www.britishpodcastawards.com/voting - and don’t forget to confirm the email. Thank you! Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener surveyhere https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6FFT7MK. All music from Epidemic Sounds. Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards! UK & Ireland listeners please place your vote on the Spotify mobile app here: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Kate Lister?

  Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? Well, sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles. Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 0:35Kate Lister?

  Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister, and you have arrived at Betwixt the Sheets. And thank God that you're here, because if you weren't here, I mean, what is the point of any of this? But before we can go any further, I do have to let you know, in case you've forgotten that this is an adult podcast, spoken by adults to other adults about dirty things and in an adult's way, covering a range of adult subjects, because you've been adult too. And we call that the Fair Dees warning, because, well, fair dees, we did tell you it was going to get spicy. Right, on with the show. You can say a lot of things about Charles II, but it's got to be said, he very much brought the good time vibes back to Britain after a long, old stint of Puritanism. And quite frankly, any alternative to Puritanism is likely to be seen as quite radical. Those guys thought that church hymns were too much of a good time.

• 1:18Kate Lister?

  So it's no surprise that Charlie Boy was nicknamed the Merry Monarch. But boy, oh, boy, did he like to have a good time. One diarist described him as "a prince of many virtues and good parts, but insatiable of women."

• 1:35Kate Lister?

  They wouldn't have used the term fuckboy in the 17th century, but if they had, would Charles II have fitted the bill? I think he might, but let's find out.

• 1:54Speaker 01

  What are you a callie man?

• 1:56Speaker 02

  Oh, money, of course.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you.

• 1:59Speaker 02

  I make perfect compliments of whatever my boss needs by just turning the knob and pushing the button.

• 2:12Speaker 01

  Yes, social courtesy does make a difference.

• 2:15Speaker 03

  Goodness, what a beautiful time. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Derek.

• 2:23Kate Lister?

  Hello and welcome back to The Twixt the Sheet, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister. As the eagle-eyed of you will have noticed, our mini-series of history's worst fuckboys is back with more. Hurrah!

• 2:37Kate Lister?

  We're not exactly gonna run out of content with this one, are we? But what better way to kick it off than with the merry monarch himself, Charles II, whose many, many mistresses include my absolute favourite, Nell Gwynn. How did this man measure up as a 17th-century fuckboy? What extravagant and decadent stories are there of his reign? And what did his poor, old wife make of all of this? Well, joining me today is Dr David Taylor, Associate Professor of English at Oxford University, no less, and he's gonna take us back to the wild world of Restoration England, where all of the action unfolded. Wigs are ready, everyone. Let's do it!

• 3:24Kate Lister?

  Hello and welcome back to The Twixt the Sheet. It's only David Taylor. How are you doing?

• 3:30Speaker 04

  I'm doing very well, thank you. And it's really, really lovely, really exciting to be back with you, Kate.

• 3:35Kate Lister?

  Oh, it's a pleasure. I had so much fun talking to you about Nell Gwynn. She was a riot, wasn't she? I absolutely love her. But we are back for another installment of our little mini-series of history's worst fuckboys. And of course, of course, Charlie Boy. King Charles II had to make an appearance, so we had to ask you back on, didn't we? Before we get into this, let's define our terms, David. This is from urban dictionary dot com. Because the term fuckboy isn't in the Oxford English Dictionary. I checked. It's not in there. So if they're listening, might be time for an update. But this is according to Urban Dictionary. A fuckboy is a boy who plays with girls' feelings and doesn't really like them

• 4:20Kate Lister?

  and would say anything to a girl that they want to hear to have sex with them or to get something that they want. That's their definition. Hmm.

• 4:28Kate Lister?

  So we will consider if Charlie Boy fits that particular description.

• 4:33Speaker 04

  Definitely.

• 4:34Kate Lister?

  So the Merry monarch, before we get on to his mistresses, let's just give him a little bit of a background because he had a very turbulent time getting to the throne, didn't he?

• 4:45Speaker 04

  Yeah. He really did. I think the thing to understand about Charles is that in lots of ways, he's a king unlike any other that had been before or since because he's a king who comes to the throne in 1660, when there's been a period of time in Britain when there's been no monarchy. Okay, there's been a republic since the execution of his father, Charles I in 1649. So that's the other thing that makes him different. Okay, he's a king who comes to the throne when there's been no one immediately before him, no immediate predecessor, and he's a king whose own father has been executed for treason by his own people.

• 5:24Kate Lister?

  He didn't see that, did he? Did he? Was he there when that happened?

• 5:26Speaker 04

  No, he wasn't there. So by the time Charles I was executed in front of Whitefall Palace in London in 1649, Charles II, his son, was on the continent. Okay, so he learns about it. He's only 18 at the time. He's at the Hague, so in the Netherlands. And his chaplain comes to him and simply kneels before him and says, Your Majesty, and he understands immediately what that stands up what that means. And apparently, according to reports, Charles breaks down in tears as he realizes his father is dead and he is effectively king, but also not king.

• 6:01Kate Lister?

  No, you can't go back, can you? They've just kicked, they've just executed the other king. You're not going to rock up and go, um, so where am I going to go then?

• 6:08Speaker 04

  No. And he, and what then happens is ultimately he lands in Scotland where he has a, the Stuart family, of course, are a Scottish royal family ultimately. And there's considerable support in Scotland still for the Stuart family. Charles lands in Scotland in 1650. He's crowned king in Scotland in January 1651. But then there's this big final battle, really, of the English Civil Wars, the Battle of Worcester in 1651, where Charles and his Scottish army are utterly routed by Cromwell's army. And Charles has to flee the country in what's a very dramatic sequence of events. He famously hides in an oak tree. It takes him six weeks after the Battle of Worcester to get out of England, back into the safety of mainland Europe.

• 6:52Speaker 04

  He disguises himself as a servant. He has many narrow escapes along the way. There's a big reward on his head for his capture. Lots of people looking for him because, of course, Cromwell's regime wants to capture Charles. They want Charles the First's heir, but they don't ultimately. He escapes and then spends the next almost decade in considerable poverty, really. He doesn't have much money on the continent and certainly very bored. But already, as we get into the late 1640s and into the early 1650s, he's playing around. He becomes well known for his mistresses. He has a number of mistresses.

• 7:30Kate Lister?

  I was going to say he's filling a hole, but that just doesn't sound.

• 7:35Speaker 04

  Exactly. I think he has many holes to fill.

• 7:38Kate Lister?

  I think, I think he does, doesn't he? Yes, okay. So what's going on with him? He's bored.

• 7:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, he's bored.

• 7:46Kate Lister?

  That does sound quite fuckboy, doesn't it?

• 7:48Speaker 04

  He's, I think he's very bored. And what we know later on, it's one of the things that Samuel Pepys, the Restoration diarist, tells us about Charles. Once Charles is king, and he becomes king, as I say, Cromwell, I should say, Oliver Cromwell dies in 1658. His son, briefly, Richard, his son succeeds him as Lord Protector, effectively kind of king in all but name. But Richard has no loyalty or power from the army, so he falls quite quickly. And in a series of actually events that genuinely shock most people, the monarchy ends up retiring in 1660. Charles.

• 8:20Kate Lister?

  That's a hell of a plot twist.

• 8:22Speaker 04

  It is, it is a real plot twist that I think. No one really sees coming two years before it happens, or even less than that. But Charles enters London triumphantly in May 1660. Monarchy is back. Charles II is king and he's king in a very different way. As I say, as Peepes, Samuel Peepes says, Charles has no interest in business at all.

• 8:47Kate Lister?

  Really?

• 8:48Speaker 04

  He likes nothing but pleasure. That's what Peepes says of him. And certainly that's become, seems to become increasingly true as his reign goes on. His reign lasts from 1660 until he dies in 1685. He's a man who wants pleasure, but he's also a king who does, he's not very rich. Okay. He looks across the English Channel to his cousin, his first cousin, Louis XVI of France, who's an enormously wealthy king, an enormously powerful king. And Charles simply can't compete with that. And so one of the big problems he has throughout his reign is the question of whether his people are really loyal to him and his advisers and so forth are really loyal to him.

• 9:24Kate Lister?

  Why doesn't he have any money? Did the Puritans spend it all?

• 9:27Speaker 04

  Exactly. The Puritans melted down the crown jewels and it really is the case that Charles constantly struggles for money. He doesn't want to rule with Parliament. Okay. He wants to rule without Parliament. But Parliament is a necessary evil as far as Charles is concerned because without Parliament, you can't raise taxes and therefore you can't gain funds. I mean, Charles ultimately signs a secret treaty with France in 1670 that guarantees him a staggering sum of money from France each year. So Charles is more or less being bankrolled by France. Now, what France really wants is for Charles to convert, openly convert to Catholicism. Now, in fact, Charles does that on his deathbed.

• 10:09Kate Lister?

  Charles.

• 10:10Speaker 04

  He does. He converts to Catholicism on his deathbed and clearly is kind of more or less a covert Catholic for most of his life. I mean, his brother, his heir, James Duke of York, is openly a Catholic. So France see.

• 10:23Speaker 04

  Funding Charles ultimately as a way of controlling him and of controlling Britain. Had this become public knowledge, there would have been another civil war. Unquestionably, it would have been absolute political dynamite. So it's a secret treaty.

• 10:35Kate Lister?

  Oh, wow.

• 10:36Speaker 04

  But anyway, so Charles is a king who can't behave like previous kings, who certainly can't behave as his father Charles I had behaved, because he simply doesn't have the money. He doesn't have the power effectively. And there's this constant worry that the country might once again descend into civil war, because the relationship between king and parliament throughout Charles's reign remains very, very tense and at times unbelievably toxic.

• 11:03Kate Lister?

  It's mental, when you think about it, though, just listening to you describe that there. So like, we got rid, we actually cut the king's head off. Like that, for the British, that's like, that's the most extreme thing I think we've, normally, we like, we try and monitor our power, but oh, well, really, that's about enough of that then. We actually cut his head off. And then we got the Puritans in, and he went, right, no fun for anybody. I know it's more complex than that. We might have you back on to talk to us about the Puritans. But like, that was a severe regime. And then we get rid of them, and then we go, oh, let's have the king again. So Charles comes back, and he must have been working with the same people that cut his dad's head off.

• 11:41Speaker 04

  One of the preconditions of Charles's return in 1660 is effectively a kind of what we might call a general pardon. He publishes, a couple of months before he returns, he makes a statement called the Declaration of Brede, in which he basically says, I forgive everybody, and if I come back, there'll be religious tolerance. Now, there were exceptions to this. So when he came back, the bodies of some of the key people who'd signed Charles I's death warrant were exhumed and posthumously executed, posthumously hung, drawn and quartered. So not everyone was completely safe, but it was a strange, everyone had to pretend like this hadn't happened. There was even an act of parliament called the Act of Indemnity and Oblivion, which more or less said,

• 12:26Speaker 04

  The past 10 years, all of what happened with Cromwell, that never happened. Charles II became Charles II, became king, the moment his father lost his head. But absolutely, it did, it did mean that Charles had to get along with people who had very complex political histories and sympathies. And one report of someone who knew Charles says that Charles was deeply cynical. Charles didn't really trust anybody. He didn't really believe that anybody loved him or was loyal to him for anything other than the power and money that might come with that loyalty.

• 13:01Kate Lister?

  Wow.

• 13:01Speaker 04

  So Charles was understandably a deeply cynical man. And so he has this reputation as a merry monarch and he certainly is a man who loves his women, absolutely, and who loves his, his high lifestyle, his food, his drink, his sports as well, he loved sport.

• 13:16Kate Lister?

  He was a looker as well, wasn't he? He was good looking.

• 13:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, he, he had, no, he had style. He did, he absolutely had style. He had style. J M Barrie, the author of Peter Pan, bases Captain Hook on Charles II.

• 13:31Kate Lister?

  I didn't know that.

• 13:32Speaker 04

  That's slightly kind of, that's slightly mischievous, but also debonair kind of masculinity. That, that is absolutely Charles II. And if you, if you see some of the portraits of Charles, he's often showing a good bit of leg. So you can see his stockings, you can see his garters. So yes, he was a bit of a looker and you know, he was, he was 30 when he came to the throne, he was a, he was in the prime of his life.

• 13:55Kate Lister?

  So he's going to indulge, I would, you would.

• 13:57Speaker 04

  And he did.

• 13:58Kate Lister?

  Especially with what he's been through, it's so traumatic. But let's, let's talk ladies, because it is what Charles is known for, the merry monarch. He is like, how many mistresses do we know that this man had?

• 14:12Speaker 04

  I mean, that's an excellent question. How many women he slept with is impossible to know. What we do know is that he had 14 illegitimate children in total by seven different women. Okay, so there were seven, we can think of seven mistresses. Who ultimately had enough of a relationship with the king to actually.

• 14:35Speaker 04

  Become pregnant by him. But there will have been more women and there may well have been more children.

• 14:41Kate Lister?

  Yeah, like, because that's not even counting one night stands, flings, sex workers, just a casual up against a wall. These are the, these are the women he got pregnant and he had to acknowledge the children, isn't it? So like, we've got no way of knowing.

• 14:55Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, he didn't have to acknowledge the children. That's an interesting thing. The fact that he chose to acknowledge them in many cases is itself important. Indeed, he not only acknowledged them, but in many cases, he ennobled them. So he ultimately gave them.

• 15:10Kate Lister?

  So I'm going to put that in a plus point in Charles's column, actually. I think like that many illegitimate children, not, not great, but the fact that he supports them.

• 15:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, as he does really most of his mistresses, he's, he's generous to his mistresses.

• 15:25Kate Lister?

  Okay, well, before we get to them, we've got to talk about his wife. She often gets left out of this discussion. We often, it's so easy to get carried away. And with Nell going in the theatre and the wigs and, and Rochester and forget his poor bloody wife. All right. So who was she and when did they get married?

• 15:43Speaker 04

  So his wife was Catherine, known as Catherine of Braganza. She was a Portuguese princess and she and Charles were married by arrangement in 1662. It was an important political alliance between England and Portugal. A treaty, a political treaty was part of that marriage called the marriage treaty. In which England gave about 10,000 men to the Portuguese army. And in return for that, and also for the marriage, Charles got a huge sum of money. Going back to what we've already talked about, it's all, he needs the money. He gets over £300,000, which is a lot.

• 16:18Kate Lister?

  It is, isn't it?

• 16:19Speaker 04

  Portugal hands over the ports of the really important strategic ports of Bombay and Tangier to England. So, so it's a hugely important political alliance that's forged in the marriage.

• 16:32Kate Lister?

  You just think about like what, what I gave up to get like, somebody bought me a drink down the pub. This is insane.

• 16:39Speaker 04

  Absolutely, but of course, it's it's it's a loveless marriage. It's an arranged marriage. Catherine arrives in England on the south coast in sixteen sixty two. The king doesn't immediately come to meet her. In fact, he's in bed with his principal mistress at the time, Barbara Villiers, who is also Barbara Villiers is also at that time pregnant with their child. And despite Catherine's protests, Charles even makes his principal mistress Barbara Villiers one of her ladies of the bedchamber.

• 17:10Kate Lister?

  Oh, no.

• 17:11Speaker 04

  Soon after the birth of of Charles and Barbara's child. So the story goes that when Catherine first meets Barbara Villiers by, you know, who becomes the Countess of Castlemain, poor Catherine has a nosebleed and she faints, for which the about which the king is very upset with her. He feels that she's she's embarrassed herself, she's embarrassed him, she's failed with due protocol.

• 17:34Kate Lister?

  You didn't meet my girlfriend properly.

• 17:38Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 17:39Kate Lister?

  Oh, that's right, I'm marking that down against him. That's not good behaviour.

• 17:44Speaker 04

  Definitely.

• 17:45Kate Lister?

  Did she know that he was that you had all of these lovers? She knew, she knew, right, okay.

• 17:51Speaker 04

  She knew. One of the things that is interesting about Charles is that more or less everybody knows that he's king at the centre of gossip in a way that's utterly unprecedented in English history. Okay, no monarch has had their sex life so subject to common gossip as Charles the Second. And that's the case again, well before he becomes king. In fact, many of his advisers in the sixteen fifty s, when he's in exile on the continent, are worried. They're worried because these details of Charles's sex life are getting into the press back in England. And that's exactly what Cromwell's regime wants, you know, it's. All of this mudraking suits them perfectly because

• 18:33Kate Lister?

  Oh, it does, doesn't it?

• 18:34Speaker 04

  Charles is getting a bad reputation. I mean, it means that in sixty, there's one report of a of a woman in Newcastle who's asked how she feels about the king returning in sixteen sixty. And she says, well, the only people who are happy about him returning are drunken whores and whoremongers. So already, for some, by sixteen sixty, by the time he becomes king, he already has this reputation. Okay. So absolutely, Catherine knows. And what's what's difficult for Catherine is that Barbara Villiers isn't the only one of Charles's mistresses whom Charles makes one of her ladies of the bedchamber. And to be clear, to be a lady of the bedchamber means you're one of the closest attendants on the queen. Okay, you're there with her. But Charles makes others of his mistresses

• 19:18Speaker 04

  ladies of the bedchamber, Frances Stuart, and also Louise de Kerewell, Duchess Portsmouth, that they all become ladies of the bedchamber. So there's a kind of on running, ongoing pattern.

• 19:30Kate Lister?

  It's humiliating, isn't it?

• 19:31Speaker 04

  Where Charles forces his mistresses into his own wife's company.

• 19:36Kate Lister?

  And Catherine doesn't do the thing that the queen is supposed to do, like their number, on page one of How to Be a Queen in the Olden Days, she doesn't have a baby, does she?

• 19:48Speaker 04

  She doesn't. It's it's at a political level, it's kind of fascinating and kind of ironic that this king, who is ultra fertile.

• 19:58Kate Lister?

  And he can get the furniture pregnant by sitting on it.

• 20:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Right. Ultra promiscuous. You know, he just, he just can't stop fathering illegitimate children. But it's ironic that this king, who's fathering so many illegitimate children, never has a legitimate child. And therefore, his brother remains heir. Now, that has huge consequences in terms of British political history, because ultimately, what it means is that his brother, James, Duke of York, remains his heir. And when Charles dies in sixteen eighty five, James becomes king. What's the problem with James? Well, he's Catholic, openly Catholic, avowedly Catholic. And that ultimately leads to the so-called Glorious Revolution of sixteen eighty eight, where effectively Parliament

• 20:42Speaker 04

  says, we don't want a Catholic king, we want a Protestant king. It dispatches James and invites the Protestant William of Orange, along with his wife Mary, who's James's daughter, to come and take the throne instead. So it has this lack, this inability of Catherine to give Charles a legitimate son has this incredible political consequence going forward. But it also has a much more personal dimension, a one which is really tragic, because we know that Catherine was pregnant three times between 1666 and 1669, and in all cases she miscarried.

• 21:17Kate Lister?

  Thanks.

• 21:17Speaker 04

  And there was indeed, there was pressure on the king.

• 21:20Kate Lister?

  To get rid.

• 21:21Speaker 04

  To think about alternatives. So there was a point where Catherine was very ill, and at that point, some of his advisers were suggesting he remarry, possibly even marry one of his mistresses.

• 21:32Kate Lister?

  Nice.

• 21:32Speaker 04

  And at the height of the biggest political crisis of Charles's reign, which is known as the exclusion crisis, between 1678 and 1681, when many people in Parliament were saying to the king, you must exclude your own brother from the line of succession because he is Catholic, we will not accept a Catholic king. Now, Charles wasn't having any of this, okay, but it was a real political crisis. It looked like, again, there might be civil war. And what the so-called exclusionists wanted was to replace James, the brother as heir, with the Duke of Monmouth, who was Charles's first illegitimate son, whom Charles has been noble.

• 22:11Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 22:11Speaker 04

  So the Duke of Monmouth, who was the son of Charles and his first known mistress, Lucy Walters, the Duke of Monmouth became this key alternative heir for many people in what we might think of as a kind of political opposition. That caused a lot of problems for Charles.

• 22:55Speaker 05

  Research shows that a good night's sleep can put a smile on your face, and that's because sleep is essential for happiness. Enter Dr. Teal's magnesium spray, a proprietary blend of topical minerals powered by pure Epsom salt and natural Dead Sea salt to help you get ready for bedtime. When you need a reset after a long day, make Dr. Teal's magnesium spray part of your nighttime routine. It's an effortless way to relax your body and your mind. Dr. Teal's magnesium spray comes in a lightweight, fast drying formula. Just shake it up, generously spritz on the soles of your feet and massage until absorbed. I've long been a fan of Dr. Teal's, so I was excited when I learned that they had a new product to help me unwind. I tried out Dr. Teal's magnesium spray after a particularly hard week.

• 23:39Speaker 05

  It was the perfect ritual to end my day and signaled to my brain that the work week was over and it was time to rest. For wellness you can feel, find Dr. Teal's magnesium spray online and in your local bath aisle. Dr. Teal's, yep, you needed that.

• 23:56Speaker 06

  Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series, Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed: Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week.

• 24:50Kate Lister?

  I bet it did. So he's got, he's got a politically favorable wife, but no baby, but he doesn't divorce her. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing really, but he doesn't. But when it comes to his mistresses, now I might be very wide of the mark here, but it does seem like he likes the headcases. Like he likes them, he likes, like, he likes the lunatics, the really bonkers ones, like Lucy Walters that you described just there, like, oh, hello, tell me a bit about her.

• 25:20Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, so she's the daughter of a Welsh gentleman. She's effectively a commoner. They actually have a very brief relationship. Charles is certainly not her first lover. Okay. She's fairly experienced. And her erratic behaviour becomes increasingly embarrassing to Charles and to his advisers. As I say, they only have a brief relationship, probably in about, so this relationship was about 1648. So Charles is only about 18 years old, okay. She starts selling some of letters to a previous lover, Thomas Howard. She threatens to make public the correspondence between herself and Charles.

• 26:00Speaker 04

  And, and takes other lovers and is very overt in the way she behaves, okay. And as a result, Charles and his advisers make several attempts to kidnap the son they've had together, the future Duke of Monmouth. And eventually they succeed, eventually they succeed and they get James, future Duke of Monmouth, away from her when he's nine years old. Okay, so Lucy Walters is definitely unpredictable, a kind of volatile figure. And they, Charles and his advisers, really want to make, distance themselves from her.

• 26:37Kate Lister?

  And doesn't she like, she keeps trying to, like, obviously, because he's stolen their child, but she keeps trying to follow him around and get him back and like, we're kind of moving into, I don't know if it's stalker territory, because I think she's got grounds, but it's the, the behaviour is becoming more and more extreme.

• 26:52Speaker 04

  Absolutely. I think, I think there is almost a kind of stalking element to it.

• 26:55Kate Lister?

  I think there is.

• 26:56Speaker 04

  Absolutely, that, that she does, she doesn't let, as I say, Charles wants to distance himself from her, but she is not having any of that.

• 27:03Kate Lister?

  No.

• 27:03Speaker 04

  Charles in some ways is her leverage, or she sees it that way. So that's, that's absolutely the case with Lucy Walters. I think Lucy, and others, all of them have their own quirks, to say the least.

• 27:18Kate Lister?

  Barbara Villiers, head case, absolute stone cold maniac.

• 27:23Speaker 04

  But also canny, that, this is the thing.

• 27:26Kate Lister?

  Oh, I didn't say I didn't like her, I just said maniac.

• 27:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. Absolutely. I mean, I suppose one way of putting it is that wouldn't you have to be to live this particular, this strange life?

• 27:37Kate Lister?

  But didn't she, when Catherine of Breganza was arriving to marry Charles, do this big stunt of putting her knickers on display for everybody to see? Didn't she turn up when they were having a honeymoon, fully pregnant, and announced herself there?

• 27:51Speaker 04

  These are all, this is what, this is the stories that are reported, and some of these must be true. Okay, some of these must be true. Absolutely, absolutely. Another, another story is that she, yeah, that at the, I think, I can't remember if it's the wedding or the, the main, the big ball announcing Catherine's arrival and marriage to Charles, that she turns up in an unbelievably extravagant dress. Basically, that she, you know, it's, it's the equivalent of a bridesmaid turning up in a beauti-, a far more beautiful white dress than the bride now, that, that she's determined to upstage the bride, basically. And she does it. She does it.

• 28:25Kate Lister?

  Yes, several times. But she, she wasn't popular, was she?

• 28:30Speaker 04

  She wasn't popular. She, I mean, the, the two most, I suppose, important and certainly powerful of Charles's mistresses were first Barbara Villiers, who became Countess of Castle Main, and then the Duchess of Cleveland. And she was really the main mistress in the 1660s. And in the 1670s, a woman who I've already mentioned, Louise de Kerewell, who became Duchess of Portsmouth, she becomes the kind of principal mistresses. And in both cases, they're not much liked. Particularly Louise, because she's French, which is at a point when there's a great deal of xenophobia, big no-no. But the thing that's amazing about Barbara Villiers is that she's pretty much the first acknowledged mistress of a king for centuries. And she is

• 29:12Speaker 04

  openly acknowledged, okay? She's, she's given these titles, as I say, Countess of Castle Main and Duchess of Cleveland. She's given money, she's given power. We know that she helps many of the closest political advisers and statesmen to Charles into high office. She helps get them there. People like Henry Bennet, Earl of Arlington, who was more or less, there was no such thing at that point as a prime minister, but Arlington is, is Charles's chief secretary of state. There's a point, for instance, which I find so funny, there's a point when the office of the keeper of the king's privy purse becomes open. And Barbara decides there's a particular man who she wants to get that post, a man called

• 29:56Speaker 04

  rather brilliantly Baptist May. And the king wants to appoint someone else to that position. Barbara's having none of this. She does her usual thing, right? She withdraws from court. She refuses to see Charles. And eventually she prevails. She gets her way.

• 30:14Kate Lister?

  Wow.

• 30:14Speaker 04

  So it really is the case that these women are politically powerful.

• 30:19Kate Lister?

  Yeah, they are.

• 30:20Speaker 04

  They wield genuine political influence. Barbara is constantly courted by the foreign ambassadors arriving at Charles's court because they know that she's a really key figure. If they want to find out what's going on, or they want certain things to happen, they want to persuade Charles of certain things, then Barbara is in many ways A or even the key figure. And so she throws these very lavish parties, almost like state dinners for these foreign ambassadors.

• 30:47Kate Lister?

  Tell me about the poor horse petition, because I think that's really funny. But like, she is, she is very grand and very fancy, but also she is the target of public mockery and public scorn. There were these, they were called the Bawdy House riots.

• 31:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 31:03Kate Lister?

  Where brothels were basically attacked in the city. And then somebody anonymously wrote this document called the Poor Horse Petition, which was allegedly written from the poor horse of London to their sister Barbara Castleman, imploring her as one of their own, please come and rescue us.

• 31:21Speaker 04

  Exactly. Yeah. So the Bawdy House riots.

• 31:23Kate Lister?

  That's quite funny.

• 31:24Speaker 04

  Exactly. We've got these hundreds, even not thousands of apprentices who in 1668 attack the brothels of London and start assaulting prostitutes. It's a kind of appalling.

• 31:35Kate Lister?

  Yeah, really, really nasty.

• 31:36Speaker 04

  Moment and outbreak of civil violence, in part because of the prices. They're complaining about the prices. There's a large, there's a kind of economic element to it. But yes, there's this satirical letter, which is published, very widely available. We don't know who wrote it, but it purports to be written by the prostitutes of London.

• 31:56Speaker 04

  And they're imploring Barbara Villiers, Cantus of Castlemaine, to come to their aid because she is one of their sisters. So the joke is absolutely that Barbara Villiers is nothing more than a common whore. Okay, that's what she is ultimately.

• 32:11Kate Lister?

  I love that. You'd love to be, you'd love to be a fly on the wall when, when she heard about that. Like, how did she take that news? But I'm actually, I'm getting distracted now. I just want to talk to you about Barbara Villiers because she's so interesting. We should focus on how did the king treat her because we, we need to answer, was he a fuckboy? Because he did look after her. And how many kids did they have together?

• 32:33Speaker 04

  How many kids they had? They had five children.

• 32:35Kate Lister?

  Five. Yep. Okay. Wow.

• 32:38Speaker 04

  And her son with the king, Henry, is married at the age of just nine to the daughter, who's then five, of the Earl of Arlington, who's then Charles the Second's chief politician. Okay. I mean, it's bizarre political dealings going on, but again, Charles is treating his illegitimate children well. Okay. He is treating them well. He's making sure they're looked after.

• 33:03Kate Lister?

  Yes, he is. Yes, he is.

• 33:05Speaker 04

  In sixteen seventy, she's given, she's given non-such palace in Surrey. Okay. She's given a palace to herself.

• 33:12Kate Lister?

  See, that's, I've met many a fuckboy and they've never given me a palace. Chlamydia maybe, but not a palace.

• 33:19Speaker 04

  And, and that, that definition of a fuckboy, which is that they'll say anything to get what they want. Well, I mean, Charles didn't have to say anything. I mean, it's, I mean, he, he is king. And you're right, he's, he's not as rich or as powerful as other, you know, earlier kings of England, or certainly not as rich and powerful as his cousin across the English Channel. But he still is, he's attractive, he is, he is wealthy. And he lives a very lavish and good lifestyle and he's able to give that to these women as well. And to give them power.

• 34:13Speaker 05

  Research shows that a good night's sleep can put a smile on your face. And that's because sleep is essential for happiness. Enter Dr. Teal's magnesium spray. A proprietary blend of topical minerals powered by pure Epsom salt and natural Dead Sea salt to help you get ready for bedtime. When you need a reset after a long day, make Dr. Teal's magnesium spray part of your nighttime routine. It's an effortless way to relax your body and your mind. Dr. Teal's magnesium spray comes in a lightweight, fast drying formula. Just shake it up, generously spritz on the soles of your feet and massage until absorbed. I've long been a fan of Dr. Teal's, so I was excited when I learned that they had a new product to help me unwind. I tried out Dr. Teal's magnesium spray after a particularly hard week.

• 34:58Speaker 05

  It was the perfect ritual to end my day and signaled to my brain that the work week was over and it was time to rest. For wellness you can feel, find Dr. Teal's magnesium spray online and in your local bath aisle. Dr. Teal's, yep, you needed that.

• 35:12Kate Lister?

  Hello, Betwixters. I'm jumping in here because I have some very exciting news. Betwixt the Sheets has set up camp on YouTube. That's right, it took us a while, but we are there now. So if you are the kind of person who likes to see your podcasts as well as hear your podcasts, you can now go and find us right there. And the link is in the show notes. And please remember to like and subscribe because the people in charge of them really do like that. Right, let's get on with it.

• 35:53Kate Lister?

  The thing that kind of makes you go, okay, so he is looking after them well. He's recognizing this horde of illegitimate children that he has. But there's a lot of them and I always imagine like, what would on earth would this atmosphere have been like? Because it's not just Barbara Castleman. You've got Louise de Carroway, who turns up. We've got our favorite Nell Gwynn in the mix. There is Hortense Mancini, who turns up at one point as well. Yeah. Like, the castle is just stuffed full of these mistresses wandering around.

• 36:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 36:23Kate Lister?

  Like, is that fuckboy behaviour, has any other king done that that you are aware of? That has that many at once?

• 36:30Speaker 04

  The important thing with Charles is that, not that is recognised, not that's public knowledge. Okay, so that on the one hand, he's got his acknowledged mistresses, people like Barbara Villiers. And they get huge recognition. Louise de Kerewell, Duchess of Portsmouth, she gets her own apartments in the Palace of Whitepool. At the time, Charles's main residence in London. And her apartments, so the diarist John Evelyn tells us, are far larger and more lavish, more richly decorated than Catherine Braganza's are. So certainly Louise de Kerewell effectively becomes Queen Consort. So on the one hand, we've got these mistresses who are unbelievably visible, okay? And unbelievably acknowledged.

• 37:11Speaker 04

  And then we've got other mistresses who are probably being brought up the back staircase by servants into Charles's room. Initially, I mean, that's probably how the likes of Nell Gwyn was ushered into Charles's bedrooms. But no, Charles is unprecedented.

• 37:25Kate Lister?

  Hmm.

• 37:27Speaker 04

  I mean, his promiscuity is, is at least the public knowledge of his promiscuity is unprecedented. And his own willingness to recognise these women. There's so many amazing things we could say about that recognition. So for instance, the renowned court painter, portrait painter at the time, Peter Lelley, paints a series of portraits of Barbara Villiers, including a portrait of her as the Virgin Mary, holding the Christ child. And the Christ child is one of their illegitimate children, one of the royal illegitimate children. Yeah. Francis Stewart, another one of Charles's mistresses, sits as the model in 1667 for Britannia. Okay, so, and that meant that all the images of Britannia that appeared on English coins

• 38:12Speaker 04

  all the way through to decimalisation, okay, in the 1970s, were actually images of one of Charles II's mistresses.

• 38:20Kate Lister?

  I love that, it's one of his side pieces.

• 38:23Speaker 04

  Another one is that Charles's nickname for Louise de Kerewell was Fubs.

• 38:27Kate Lister?

  Fubs.

• 38:27Speaker 04

  That's what he always called her Fubs. And he names one of his only royal yachts Fubs, again, in her recognition. So these paintings of her, the way that these mistresses are.

• 38:38Kate Lister?

  Celebrities.

• 38:38Speaker 04

  Are appearing and circulating, they are celebrities in some ways. I mean, this is often seen as the first age of celebrity. And these women became celebrities. And with that, and it goes back to what you were saying earlier about that letter written supposedly by the prostitutes of London to Robert Williams. With that idea of celebrity comes a double edged sword, the fact that people kind of love to hate these people as well as being utterly fascinated by them.

• 39:02Kate Lister?

  He did have some limits though, Charlie boy, if I remember, if I remember correctly, maybe I've got this wrong, but didn't the poet Rochester, everyone's favourite scallywag, didn't he write a play that was about the king that was too obscene? And he got chucked out of court, didn't he say he had a really big willy or something like that?

• 39:21Speaker 04

  So he, he wrote a poem for which he was exiled from court. So Rochester is an interesting example. So that in many ways, the word that was used and we use now to think about the kind of atmosphere and ethos of Charles II's court is libertinism. The idea of the libertine. And a libertine is a man who is utterly sexually uninhibited and promiscuous. Okay. There's also a kind of philosophical dimension to it about freedom, refusing to obey the seemingly artificial dictates of society and law and ethics. But Rochester was absolutely the quintessential libertine. And he was also in many ways a kind of Charles's foster son.

• 40:06Speaker 04

  His father died when he was very young. Rochester's father had been a very important figure in the army, in the civil wars. And as a result, Charles II really favored this young and rather naughty young man, Rochester, who became a poet. And who constantly upset the king, constantly did things he shouldn't have done. He struck a man in front of the king, which is a bit, no, no, he was briefly, briefly exiled from the court for that. He kidnapped a woman who he eventually married, but Charles sent him to the Tower of London for a period for that. But yeah, most famously in 1674.

• 40:46Speaker 04

  Rochester, who would rather than publish his poems, he would circulate them in manuscripts to his friends and associates. Rochester wrote this very, very naughty poem about Charles, and he accidentally gave a copy of it to the king in sixteen seventy four. And for that, he was again, he was sent away from court, he was exiled. But as always with Rochester, he kind of worms his, the king just can't help but like him. And he worms his way back into his affections. But some of the things that, I would say that the one key line in terms of what we're talking about in that poem that Rochester writes is this, I'll just read it. His scepter, this is, he's talking about Charles, his scepter and his prick are of a length, and she may sway the one who plays with the other. In other words, the,

• 41:31Speaker 04

  these women, Charles thinks with his dick, and the people, the women who control that, they control the country. Okay. And there's a joke there, but there's also deep anxiety there. That's exactly what people worry about. The fact that the likes of Barbara Villiers, the likes of Louise de Carrowell, have such influence over this man, who's never thinking with his head.

• 41:53Kate Lister?

  I think that might be a fair accusation, though, you know. Or do you, yeah, there might be some truth to that.

• 41:59Speaker 04

  I, I, I think it is. He's, well, again, going back to what Peep said, that he's somewhat, he's interested in pleasure. He can't really ever take to business. He's not a man of business. And I think that's absolutely the case. And I mean, someone like Freud would surely have a field day with Charles Second.

• 42:15Kate Lister?

  Wouldn't he?

• 42:16Speaker 04

  I mean, thinking about all the trauma he must have experienced in that kind of tumultuous period of his early life, and ultimately the death of his father in this most public and brutal manner, when he was eighteen years old. And then the, the kind of, will I, won't I ever be?

• 42:31Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 42:32Speaker 04

  King of England, will I, won't I ever be able to return to my own country? He comes back, and of course, you know, this is a man who. I mean, who knows, but one easy way of understanding Charles is that he that he wants to forget in lots of ways.

• 42:46Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 42:46Speaker 04

  He wants to.

• 42:47Kate Lister?

  He wants to lose himself.

• 42:48Speaker 04

  To lose himself, exactly.

• 42:50Kate Lister?

  As a, as a final piece of evidence that we might have to try and dissect to to understand what we make of this man's behaviour, I think he's, he did seem to have a venereal disease, he did seem to spread that around, or at least, I don't know if that's ever been officially confirmed, but like, a lot of his mistresses seem to have had something. So I think, yeah.

• 43:08Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 43:08Kate Lister?

  What's your thoughts on that one?

• 43:09Speaker 04

  We know that the king has a venereal disease, syphilis possibly or something else. We know he's, he's ill with this by the mid sixteen seventies, if not earlier. We know for certain.

• 43:20Kate Lister?

  Right, there we go.

• 43:21Speaker 04

  That he passes this to Louise de Carrowell, that actually supports Smith, but that not, not intentionally necessarily, but he infects her with disease.

• 43:30Kate Lister?

  Right.

• 43:30Speaker 04

  He must infect other of his mistresses.

• 43:33Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 43:33Speaker 04

  So.

• 43:34Kate Lister?

  I mean, Nell Gwynn died very young, probably of complications from the venereal disease as well.

• 43:40Speaker 04

  Exactly. Now dies just a few years after Charles, really, really quite soon after Charles. Again, surely her health is also affected by disease. I mean, lots of these people are riddled with disease.

• 43:50Kate Lister?

  Oh, God.

• 43:50Speaker 04

  Rochester, we've just mentioned.

• 43:51Kate Lister?

  That's some dirty dick, isn't it? That is some dirty dick right there.

• 43:54Speaker 04

  Utterly riddled with disease by the end of his life. Yeah, I mean, he, I mean, he's utterly, and of course, all of this is made worse because the main way that things like syphilis were being treated at the time was through mercury therapy, which is going to do you absolutely no good at all, because of course, that is utterly.

• 44:10Kate Lister?

  No.

• 44:11Speaker 04

  Toxic, utterly poisonous to you. So, so what they thought was helping them get better was just killing them. So absolutely, Charles had sexually transmitted diseases and he himself infected others with those. There's no question about that.

• 44:24Kate Lister?

  So then, David, with all of your expertise and your knowledge about this man and his, his gargantuan sexual appetite, do you think that we could classify him as a fuckboy in modern terms?

• 44:38Kate Lister?

  He liked sex, he liked a lot of sex, but I'm not sure that's quite what we mean by fuckboy, is it?

• 44:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm not sure we could call him a fuckboy. He's definitely what I, what I said, I, I, what I would call a libertine. He lived that lifestyle, a, a lifestyle of very conscious kinds of freedom, of refusing to obey the, the dictates of society or morality. He definitely did that, you know, we could think of him as an astarte, a word that was coined shortly after Charles died. But is he a, is he a fuckboy? I don't think so because I think the two things that probably prevent him from being a fuckboy are firstly, he doesn't have to work very hard, you know, he's, he's not simply saying anything he wants. He's in this unbelievably privileged position, as he knows well,

• 45:25Speaker 04

  of being able to get what he wants. And it goes back to what I said earlier about his cynicism, that, you know, he realizes he can, he can get anything he wants, but also that the flip side of that is that can he ever really trust the affection that people have for him, the loyalty that people have for him? So, and I think that's one element. The other element of the fact, I think, whether or not he's a fuckboy is the word that arguably the woman he treated worst was his wife. Catherine Braganza.

• 45:50Kate Lister?

  I mean, she might have had a whole different perspective on this conversation.

• 45:54Speaker 04

  Absolutely. And, and poor Catherine, but otherwise he treats his mistresses very well.

• 46:00Kate Lister?

  Pretty well.

• 46:01Speaker 04

  They're getting thousands of pounds a year. Now Gwyn is getting four or five thousand a year.

• 46:05Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 46:06Speaker 04

  Someone like Louise de Caro is getting something like twenty thousand a year. Okay. And this is from a king who, as I've already said, doesn't have that much money. So he's giving money to these mistresses, to these women, but he doesn't really have to give, which is another criticism that some of his advisors make of the lifestyle that the king is living, but he certainly treats these women pretty well.

• 46:23Kate Lister?

  And he acknowledges not just the kids, but he acknowledges them. I mean, a fuckboy's defining thing is to go, oh, we don't need to put a label on it. We'll just, you know, we'll just go with the flow. Whereas he was quite happy to say, this is my mistress, to the point where going, please go and work for my wife.

• 46:37Speaker 04

  Right, exactly. No, he, he seems actively to want them to be recognized.

• 46:41Kate Lister?

  Yeah, okay. I think I'm going to agree with you. I think that, that there are elements of this behaviour that we would have to, from a modern point of view, I don't think he'd survive the Me Too movement very well. But I don't think that Charles. Is a fuckboy?

• 46:54Speaker 04

  No, I don't.

• 46:55Kate Lister?

  That's what I think.

• 46:55Speaker 04

  I think on the basis of the definition which she gave us at the start, I think.

• 46:59Kate Lister?

  Yep.

• 47:00Speaker 04

  I don't think he is.

• 47:01Kate Lister?

  So he's off the hook. A well-done Charlie boy. Well done.

• 47:05Speaker 04

  He's off that hook.

• 47:05Kate Lister?

  He's off that.

• 47:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:07Kate Lister?

  There's plenty of other hooks, bro.

• 47:10Speaker 04

  There's plenty of other hooks, including, you know, Captain Hook.

• 47:13Kate Lister?

  Of course, Captain Hook.

• 47:17Kate Lister?

  Oh, David, you've been so much fun to talk to. Thank you so much. And if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you?

• 47:22Speaker 04

  Well, I just want to give a shout out to the group that I'm part of called the R18 Collective. What we're trying to do at the moment is get the plays of this period, especially plays by women, some amazing plays by women.

• 47:33Kate Lister?

  Oh, amazing.

• 47:34Speaker 04

  Written this period in the Restoration and beyond, better recognised and performed again. So if people want to head to r18collective.org and check out the work we're doing, that'd be fabulous.

• 47:44Kate Lister?

  Amazing. Thank you so much. Will you come back and talk to us about more Restoration scallywags?

• 47:49Speaker 04

  I would love to. And there are many.

• 47:52Kate Lister?

  Thank you so much. You've been marvellous.

• 47:58Kate Lister?

  Thank you for listening and thanks so much to David for joining me. And if you like what you heard, please don't forget to like, review and follow along wherever it is that you get your podcasts. Coming up, we've got episodes on everything from whether the Renaissance man Raphael was a fuckboy, spoiler alert, yeah, he was, and an exploration of queer Jordans with none other than Anthony Delaney, co-host of our sister podcast, After Dark. And if you would like us to explore a subject, or if you just fancied saying hello because you've had a few venos, then you can email us at [email protected]. This podcast was edited by Amy Haddow and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again, Betwixt the Sheets, History of Sex, Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.