The king and the actress

I hope that all of my American Facebook friends and readers have a peaceful Thanksgiving, with safe travels and no political arguments at the dinner table. For my Facebook friends who do not celebrate Thanksgiving, I am sorry you are missing out on a such a special holiday. 😊 Below is a historical post that I meant to put up last week.
November 14, 1687 is the death date for one of my favorite historical figures, Restoration actress and long-time mistress of Charles II, Nell Gwynn. Charles was obviously very attached to Nell, for their liaison lasted from 1668 until his death in 1685. They had two sons, one of whom died young; the older boy was made a duke by Charles, who was always generous to his mistresses and illegitimate children. Nell was said to be pretty, charming, and witty. Her most quoted quip came when her carriage was stopped by a mob who thought it contained Charles’s unpopular, aristocratic French mistress, who was Catholic at a time when Catholicism was a trigger point in English society. Not at all daunted by the turmoil, Nell stuck her head out the carriage window and called out, “Good people, I am the Protestant whore!” On his deathbed, Charles famously told his brother James, “Let not poor Nelly starve.” James was not the most admirable of men, but he did honor Charles’s request, paying Nell’s debts and giving her a pension. Sadly, she survived Charles by only two years. She suffered a stroke in March of 1687 and had several others that incapacitated her before her death on November 14th of that year; her most recent biographer thinks she’d contracted syphilis. . She was only thirty-seven. Not surprisingly, she has been popular with Hollywood and writers over the years. I highly recommend Exit the Actress by Priya Parmar, a very well researched and highly enjoyable account of Nell’s life. I was glad when Priya did not take the readers to Nell’s deathbed; I would rather think of her in her prime, bedazzling audiences and the king.