Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - History's Worst F*ckboys: Charles II

Episode Date: September 2, 2025

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 - 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 survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Cade Lister, and you have arrived at Betwicks 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 and dutty things and an adulty way covering around adults of fix and you've been an adult too. And we call that the fair do's warning because, well, fair do's, 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. 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. 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 in good parts, but insatiable of women. I 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. What do you look for a man? Oh, money, of course.

You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect confidence of whatever my boss needs by just turning a knob. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, my beautiful time. Goodness had nothing to do with it, Terry. Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets. History of Sex Scandal and Society with me, Kate Lister. As the evil-eyed of you will have noticed,

our mini-series of History's Worst Fuck Boys is back with more. Hurrah! We're not exactly going to run out of content with this one, are we? But what better way to kick it off than with the Merry Monique himself, Charles II, whose many, many mistresses include my absolute favourite, Nell Gwyn. How did this take it off? 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 going to take us back to the wild world of Restoration England, where all of the action unfolded. Wigs at the ready, everyone. Let's do it. Hello, and welcome back to the Twigs the Sheets. It's only David Taylor. How are you? you doing? I'm doing very well, thank you. And it's really, really lovely, really exciting to be back with you, Kate. 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 the second 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, this is from Urban Dictionary.com. Because the term fuckboy isn't in the Oxford English Dictionary, I checked. It's not in there. So if they're listening, it might be time for an update. But this is according to Urban Dictionary. A fuck boy is a boy who plays with girls' feelings and doesn't really like them 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. So we will consider. if Charlie Boy fits that particular description. Definitely. So, the merry monarch. Before we get onto 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? 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.

There's been a republic since the execution of his father, Charles I first, in 1649. So that's the other thing that makes him different. 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. He didn't see that, did he? Did he? Was he there when that happened? No, so he wasn't there. So by the time, Charles I first was executed in front of Whitehall Palace in London in 1649.

Charles I second, 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 means. And apparently, according to reports, Charles breaks down into this,

as he realizes his father is dead and he is effectively. King, but also not king. No, you can't go back, can you? They've just executed the other king. You're not going to rock up and go, so where am I going to go then? No. 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 and 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. 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 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. I was going to say he's filling a hole,

but that just doesn't sound. Exactly. I think he has many holes to fill. I think he has many holes to fill. I think he does, doesn't he? Yes. Okay. So what's going on with him? He's bored. Yeah, he's bored. That does sound quite fuck boy, doesn't it? I think he's very bored. And what we know later on, it's one of the things that Samuel Peeps, the Restoration Dyerist, tells us about Charles. once Charles is king and he becomes king as I say. He says, 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 Orbert name. But Richard has no loyalty or power from the army. So he falls quite quickly. And in a series of events that genuinely shock most people, the monarchy ends up returning in 1660. Charles. It's a hell of a plot twist. It is a real plot twist that I think no one really sees coming to you. 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 Peeps, Samuel Peebs says, Charles has no interest in business at all. Really? He likes nothing but pleasure.

That's what Peeps says of him. And certainly that 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 he's not very rich. He looks across the English channel to his cousin, his first cousin, Louis XVIth 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 advisors and so forth are really loyal to him. Why doesn't they have any money? Did the Puritans spend it all? Exactly. The Puritans melted down the crown jewels. Oh, for fuck's sake. The case that Charles constantly struggles for money. He doesn't want to rule with Parliament. 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 stack.

some 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. Charles. 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 funding Charles ultimately as a lot of.

way of controlling him and of controlling Britain. Have this become public knowledge that would have been another civil war? Unquestionably, it would have been absolute political dynamite. So it's a secret treaty. Oh, wow. So Charles is a king who can't behave like previous kings, who certainly can't behave as his father, Charles I first 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. It's meant that when you think about it, though, just listening to you describe that there.

So like we got, 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 by going, oh, well, really, that's about enough of that then. We actually cut his head off. And then we got the Puritans in. 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 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. One of the preconditions of Charles' return in 1660 is effectively what we might call a general pardon. He publishes a couple of months before he returns. he makes a statement called the Declaration of Breeder,

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, First Death War,

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, 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 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. 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. Wow. So he was, that's understandably a deeply cynical man. And so he has his reputation as a merry monarch. And he certainly is a man who loves his women, absolutely. And he loves his high lifestyle, his food, his drink, his sports as well. He loved sport. He was a looker as well, wasn't he? He was good looking. He had style.

He absolutely had style. He had style. J.M. Barry, the author of Peter Pan, bases Captain Hook on Charles II. I didn't know that. That's slightly kind of, that's slightly mischievous, but also debonair kind of masculinity. That is absolutely Charles II.

And if you see some of the portraits of Charles, he's often showing a good bit of leg. That's nice leg. He's 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.

So he's going to indulge. I would. You would. And he did. 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? I mean, that's an excellent question. How many women he slept with is impossible to know. What we do know. know is that he had 14 illegitimate children in total by seven different women. So we can think of seven mistresses who ultimately had enough of a relationship with the king to actually become pregnant by him. But there would have been more women and there may well have been more children.

Yeah, because that's not even counting. One night stands, flings, sex workers, just a casual. up against a wall. 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. Well, I mean, he didn't have to acknowledge a children. That's an interesting thing. The fact that he chose to acknowledge them in many cases is itself important. And he not only acknowledged them, but in many cases, he ennobled them. So he ultimately gave them. I'm going to put that in a plus point in Charles's column, actually. Like, that many illegitimate children, not great.

But the fact that he supports me. Yeah. As he does, really, most of his mistresses, he's generous to his mistresses. Okay, well, before we get to them, we've got to talk about his wife. She often gets left out of this discussion. It's so easy to get carried away. Like, Nell going in the theatre and the wigs and Rochester. And forget his poor bloody wife.

All right, so who was she and when did they get married? So his wife was Catherine, known as Catherine of Brighanza. 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 a return for that and also for the marriage, Charles got a huge sum of money going back to what he already talked about.

It's all that he needs the money. He gets over £300,000 as a lot. It is, isn't it? Portugal hands over the ports of the really important strategic ports of Bombay and Tangier to England. So it's a hugely important political alliance that's forged to the marriage. You just think about what I gave up to get, like, somebody bought me a drink down the pub. This is insane. Absolutely.

But of course, it's a loveless marriage. It's an arranged marriage. Catherine arrives in England on the South Coast in 1662. 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, Barbar Villiers, one of her ladies of the bedchamber.

Oh, no. Soon after the birth of Charles and Barbara. as child. So the story goes that when Catherine Fertz meets Barbara Villiers by, you know, who becomes the Countess of Castlemain, poor Catherine has a nosebleed and she faints, 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. You didn't meet my girlfriend properly? Exactly. Oh, that's right, I'm marking that down against him. That's not good behaviour. Definitely. Did she know that he was, that you had all of these love? She knew. She knew, right?

Okay. She knew. One of the things that it's 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. No monarch has had their sex life so subject to common gossip as Charles II. And that's the case, again, well before he became. In fact, many of his advisors in the 1650s 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 Charles is getting a bad reputation. I mean, it means that in 60, there's one report of a woman in Newcastle who's asked how she feels about the king returning.

in 1660. And she says, well, the only people who are happy about him returning are drunken whores and whoremongers. So already, for some, by 1660, by the time he becomes king, he already has this reputation. So absolutely, Catherine knows. And 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 in the bedchamber. And to be clear, to be a lady of the bedchamber means you're one of the closest attendance on the queen. That's awful. You're all there with her.

Charles makes others of his mistresses, ladies in the bed chamber, Francis Stewart and also Louise de Carrowell, Duchess of Portsmouth, they all become ladies in the bedchambers. So there's a kind of on running, ongoing pattern

where Charles forces his mistresses into his own wife's company. 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? She doesn't.

It's, at a political level, it's kind of fascinating and kind of ironic that this king, who is ultra fertile. I know, I can get the furniture pregnant by sitting on it. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Right, ultra promiscuous. He just can't stop fathering illegitimate children.

But it's ironic that this king, he's fathering so many illegitimate children. 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 1685, 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 evolution of 68, where effectively Parliament says, we don't want a Catholic king. We want a Protestant king. It dispatches James and invites the Protestant to William of Orange, along with his wife, Mary, who's James's daughter,

to come and take the throne instead. So this lack, his 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. And there was indeed, there was pressure on the king to get rid. To think about alternatives. So there was a point where Catherine was very ill.

And at that point, some of his advisors were suggesting he remarried, possibly even marry one of his mistresses. And at the height of the biggest political crisis of Charles's reign, which is known as the exclusion crisis, between 1678 and 1681, many people in parliament were saying to the king, you must exclude your own brother for the line of succession because he is Catholic. We will not accept a Catholic king. Now, Charles wasn't having any of this, but it was a real political crisis. It looked like, again, there might be civil war. And what the so-called exclusion is swanted was to replace James, the brother as heir, with the Duke of Monmouth, who was Charles' first illegitimate son. whom Charles is a noble.

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 air for many people in what we might think of as a kind of political opposition. That caused a lot of problems for Charles. I bet it did. I bet it did. So he's got a politically favourable 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 the lunatics, the really bonkers ones. Like Lucy Walters that you described just there, like, oh, hello. Tell me a bit about her. 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 behavior becomes increasingly embarrassing to Charles and to his advisors. 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

and takes other lovers and is very overt in the way she behaves. And as a result, Charles and his advisors make several attempts to kidnap the son they've had together, the future Duke of Monmouth. And eventually they succeed. Eventually they get James, future Duke of Monmouth, away from her when he's nine years old. Okay, so Lucy Walters is definitely unpredictable, a volatile figure, and they, Charles and advisors really want to distance themselves from her. 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 getting back. Exactly. 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 behaviour is becoming more and more extreme. Absolutely. I think there is almost a kind of stalking element too. it. I think there is. 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. Charles in some ways is her leverage or she sees it that way.

So that's absolutely the case with Lucy Walters. I think Lucy and others, all of them have their own quirks to say the least. Barbara Villiers, headcase. Absolute stone cold maniac. But also, canny. This is the thing. Oh, I didn't say didn't like her. I just said maniac. Yeah, exactly. Absolutely. I mean, I suppose what way of putting it is that wouldn't you have to be to live this particular, this strange life? But didn't she, when Catherine Baganza 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? This, these are all, this is what, this is the story.

are reported and some of these must be true. Okay. Some of these must be true. Absolutely. Absolutely. Another story is that she, yeah, that at their, I think the, I can't remember it's the wedding or 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 the equivalent of a bridesmaid turning up in a beautiful, a fun or beautiful white dress than the bride now. That she's determined to upstage the bride, basically. And she, you know, it's, it's the equivalent of a bride's, you know, it's the equivalent to upstage the bride, and she, She does it. She does it. Yes. Several times. But she wasn't popular, is she? She wasn't popular. I mean, 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 had already mentioned Louise de Carrowell, who became Duchess of Portsmouth. She becomes the principal mistresses. And in both cases, they're not much. light, particularly Louise, because she's French, which is at a point where there's a great deal of xenophobia, big no-no. But the thing that's amazing about

Barbara Billy is that she's pretty much the first acknowledged mistress of a king for centuries. And she's openly acknowledged. She's given these titles, as I say, Countess of Casimir and Duchess of Cleveland. She's given money. She's given power.

We know that she helps many of the closest political advisors and statesmen to Charles into high office. She helps get them there. People like Henry Bennett, Earl of Arlington, who was more or less, there was necessarily at that point as a prime minister, but Arlington 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 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 away. Wow.

So it really is the case that these women are politically powerful. Yeah, they are. They will 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. Tell me about the poor whores 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 Bordy House riots 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 Castlemain, imploring her as one of their own, please come and rescue. Exactly. Yeah, so the brilliant house right.

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 moment and outbreak of civil violence. In part because of the prices, they're complaining about the prices. 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. And they're imploring Barbara Villiers, Cantos de Castlemagne, 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. I love that. You'd love to be a fly on the wall when she heard about that. like how did she take that news? But you know, I'm actually, I'm getting distracted now. I just want to talk to you about Barbara Villiers because she's so interested. We should focus on how did the king treat her?

Because we need to answer, was he a fuck boy? Because he did look after her. And how many kids did they have together? How many kids did they had? They had five children. Five. Yep. Okay. Wow. 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. Wow. It's a 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. Yes, he is. Yes, he is. In 1670. She's given non-such palace in Surrey. Okay, she's given a palace to herself. See, that's... I've met many of football and they've never given me a palace.

Chlamydia maybe, but not a palace. And that definition of a fuck boy, which is that they'll say anything to get what they want. Well, I mean, Charles didn't have to say anything. I mean, he is king. And you're right. He's not as rich or as powerful as other 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 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. 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 this atmosphere have been like? Because it's not just Barbara Castleman. You've got Louise de Carraway, who turns up.

We've got our favourite Nelgwin in the mix. There is Hortense Mancini, who turns up at one point as well. Yeah. The castle is just stuffed full of these mistresses wandering around. Yeah, absolutely. Like, is that fuckboy behaviour? Has any other king done that that you are aware of that has that many at once? 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 acknowledge mistresses, people like Barbara Villiers. And they get huge recognition. Louise de Carrowell, Duchess of Portsma, she gets her. own apartments in the Palace of Whitehall, 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 Bruganzas are. So certainly, Louise de Carrow well effectively becomes Queen Consort. So on the one hand, we've got these mistresses who are unbelievably visible, okay, and unbelievably acknowledged. 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 Gwynn was ushered into Charles's bedrooms. But no, Charles is unprecedented. I mean, his promiscuity 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 paint for the time, Peter Lely, 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 Illigitimate children. Francis Stewart, another one of Charles's mistresses, it sits as the model in 1667 for Britannia. And that meant that all the images of Britannia that appeared on English coins all the way through to decimalization, okay, in the 1970s, were actually images of one of Charles II's mistresses. I love that. It's one of his side pieces. Another one is that Charles's nickname for Louise DeCaroel was Fubbs. That's what he always called her Fubbs. And he names one of his own Royal Yachts, Fubbs. Again, in her recognition. So these paintings of her, the way that these

mistresses 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 Rilliers, 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.

He did have some limits, though, Charlie Boy, if I remember correctly, maybe I've got this wrong, but didn't the poet Rochester, everyone's favourite Scaliwag, 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? So 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're used 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. 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, 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 favoured this young and rather a 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 big no-no. He was 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, 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 1674. And for that, he was, again, he was sent away from court, he was exiled. But as always with Rochester, he could have worked 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 mean, I would say that 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 sceptre and his prick are of a length. And she may sway the one who plays with the other. In other words, 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 Barbar Villiers, the likes of Louise de Carrowell have such influence over this man who's never thinking with his head. I think that might be a fair accusation, though, you know. Absolutely. Yeah. There might be some truth to that.

I think it is. He's, again, going back to what Peep said, that he's someone 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. Wouldn't he? 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 18 years old. And then the kind of will I, won't I ever be king of England? Will I won't I ever be able to return to my own country? He comes back. And of course, this is a man who, I mean, who knows, but one easy way of understanding Charles is that he wants to forget in lots of ways. Yeah. He wants to lose himself. He wants to lose himself.

Exactly. As a final piece of evidence that we might have to try and dissect to understand what we make of this man's behavior, I think 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 a lot of his mistresses seem to have. had something. So I think, yeah, what's your thoughts on that one? 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-1670s, if not earlier. We know for certain that he passes this to Louise de Carrowell that actually supports Smith, but not intentionally necessarily, but he infects her with disease. He must infect other of his mistresses. Yeah. So, I mean, Nell Gwynne died very young.

probably of complications from an aerial disease as well. Exactly. Naila dies just a few years after Charles, really quite soon after Charles. Again, surely her health is also affected by disease. I mean, lots of these people are riddled with disease. Rochester, we've just mentioned. That's some dirty dick, isn't it? That is some dirty dick right there. He's utterly riddled with disease by the end of his life. Yeah, I mean, he's utterly, and of course, all of this has made worse

because the main way that things like syphilis were being treated at the time was Mercury therapy, which is going to do you absolutely no good at all, because of course, that is utterly toxic, utterly poisonous to you. 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. So then, David, with all of your expertise and your knowledge about this man and his gargant sexual appetite, Do you think that we could classify him as a fuckboy in modern terms? He liked sex.

He liked a lot of sex. But I'm not sure that's quite what we mean by fuckboy, is it? Yeah, I'm not sure we could call him a fuckboy. He's definitely what I said, what I would call a liberty. He lived that lifestyle. A lifestyle of very conscious kinds of freedom of refusing to obey the dictates of society or morality. He definitely did that. You know, we could think of him as an authority.

a word that was coined shortly after Charles died. But is he a fuck boy? I don't think so because I think the two things that probably prevent him for being a fuck boy are, firstly, he doesn't have to work very hard. You know, he's not simply saying anything he was. He's in this unbelievably privileged position, as he knows well, 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, 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 I think that's one element. The other element of the fact I think whether or not he's a fuck boy is it. The word that arguably the woman he treated worst was his wife, Catherine Braganza. I mean, she might have had a whole different perspective on this conversation.

Absolutely. And poor Catherine. But otherwise, he treats his mistresses very well. Pretty well. They're getting thousands of pounds a year. Noel Gwyn is getting four or five thousand a year. Yeah. Someone like Louise de Carrowell is getting something like 20,000 a year.

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. 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. And he acknowledges not just the kids, but he acknowledges them. I mean, a fuckboy is defining things to go, oh, we don't need to put a label on it. we'll just go with the flow. Whereas he was quite happy to say this is my mistress to the point where we're going,

please go and work for my wife. Right, exactly. No, he seems actively to want them to be recognised. Yeah, okay. I think I'm going to agree with you. I think that there are elements of this behaviour that we would have to say from a modern point of view. I don't think he'd survived the Me Too movement very well. But I don't think that Charles is a fuck boy.

No. That's what I think. I think on the basis of the definition which she gave us at the start, I think. I don't think he is. So he's off the hook. Oh, well done Charlie boy. He's off that hook. He's off that hook.

There's plenty of other hooks. There's plenty of other hooks, including Captain Hook. Of course, Captain Hook. There you go. 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? 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, written this period in the Restoration and Beyond, better recognise and performed again. So if people will want to head to R18 Collective.org and check out the work we're doing that. That'd be fabulous. Amazing. Thank you so much. Will you come back and talk to us about more restoration scallywags?

I would love to. And there are many. Thank you so much. You've been marvellous. 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 fuck boy. 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 Vinos, then you can email us at betwixt at historyhit.com. This podcast was edited by Amy Haddo and produced. 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.