A Gambling Man: Charles II's Restoration Game by Jenny Uglow Read Free Book Online Page B

relations’. During the Dutch crisis, wrote Pepys, ‘the King’s greatest pleasure hath been with his fingers, being able to do no more’. 8
    If conflict made him impotent or dulled his desire, when the war ended he found release in an unusual burst of promiscuity. So far Charles had been known as a one-woman man, or at least one at a time. In the next few months he was linked to a circle of names: to the maid of honour Winifred Wells, about whom Buckingham was so cruel; to Jane Roberts, a clergyman’s daughter down on her luck, who was imbued ever after with a deep sense of guilt, caught the pox and suffered in the same sweating-houses as Rochester. He was bracketed, too, with Maria Knight, the singer with the heavenly voice; with the beautiful Elizabeth, Countess of Kildare; and with Mary, Countess of Falmouth, the widow of his beloved Berkeley and the future wife of his friend from the circle of wits, Charles Sackville, Lord Buckhurst.
    Buckingham was well aware of Charles’s sensual enjoyment of women and as soon as he was back in favour he began trying to direct Charles’s sex life as well as his political fortunes. He could see that he was weary of Barbara. While the war was at its height she had been seen constantly again with the ugly, frog-faced yet oddly attractive Henry Jermyn. Charles had crushed their earlier flirtation, but it was now accepted that they were lovers. When she thought she was pregnant again, however, she asked Charles to acknowledge the child. He would not, he said, given that he had no memory of sleeping with her in the last six months. ‘God damn me! but you shall own it,’ was her reply. If the baby was not christened at Whitehall, she would dash its brains out before him on the Gallery wall, and parade his bastard children outside his door. 9 When Charles stood firm Barbara left to stay in Covent Garden with her friend Elizabeth, Lady Harvey, a member of the ubiquitous Montagu family and co-fighter against Clarendon. True to habit Charles begged forgiveness; true to custom, Barbara returned. Nothing more was heard of the controversial pregnancy.
    In February 1668, while critics were poring over the state accounts, Barbara was gambling so deeply that she apparently won £15,000 in one night’s play, and lost £25,000 the next – betting £1,000 or more on one throw of the dice. She had also quarrelled with Buckingham, now that their alliance against Clarendon had ended. In Buckingham’s view, Charles needed a protestant mistress to counter Barbara’s Catholicism, a woman who would link him to the people, rather than the despised, licentious court. And where better to find one than the theatre.
     
    Two actresses who had leapt to fame in recent seasons were Moll Davis at Lincoln’s Inn Fields and Nell Gwyn at the Theatre Royal. Moll had been on stage since childhood and was famed for her singing and her light-as-air dancing. Her first great hit was Sir Martin Mar-All , a farcical collaboration between Dryden and Newcastle (Pepys went three days running, it made him laugh so much), and George Etherege then wrote a madcap role for her as Gatty in She Would if She Could , complete with song and jig. In this play, as she and her companion Ariana spy their gallants, the language of naval warfare that the court knew so well is turned into the jargon of dalliance:
     
    Ariana . Now if these should prove two men of War that are cruising here, to watch for Prizes.
    Gatty . Would they had courage enough to set upon us; I long to be engag’d.
    Ariana . Look, look yonder, I protest they chase us.
    Gatty . Let us bear away then; if they be truly valiant they’ll quickly make more sail, and board us. 10
     
    A little later, as the mad Celania in a revival of Davenant’s The Rivals , Moll appeared in a more winsome vein, singing a plaintive song:
    My lodging it is on the cold ground,
    And very hard is my fare
    But that which troubles me most is
    The unkindness of my dear.
    Yet still I cry, O