Dan Snow's History Hit - The Sex Life of Charles II

Episode Date: February 12, 2026

He had at least 14 known mistresses and a hoard of illegitimate children; Charles II's private life was as politically charged as it was scandalous. He presided over the Restoration court, a world of excess, intrigue, gambling, gossip and a lot of sex. Dan is joined by the host of the Betwixt the Sheets podcast, Dr Kate Lister, to explore the salacious side of Restoration England and examine how power, pleasure, and reputation collided at court.A warning that this episode isn't suitable for children! Produced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Dougal Patmore.You can learn more about Nell Gwynn from Kate in her TV documentary on the History Hit website: sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe to watchDan Snow's History Hit is now available on YouTube! Check it out at: https://www.youtube.com/@DSHHPodcastSign 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.We'd love to hear your feedback - you can take part in our podcast survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on.You can also email the podcast directly at [e-mail]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi folks, welcome to Dan Snow's history. The people of England, Scotland and Wales, I'm sure collectively breathe a sigh of relief when Charles II returned to London and was restored to the monarchy in 16 at 60. After 11 years of Puritan rule, people had grown pretty sick and weary of living under endless, strict rules. Intense religious observance, bans on, well, lots of things, the joy of. of life, celebrations, alcohol, the theatre, Christmas. When Charles returned, so did fun. Pubs reopen. Women were allowed to perform on stage for the first time. Literature and art and science. Flourished. It's no wonder Charles II, who presided over this restoration, earned himself the moniker,

the merry monarch. He certainly practiced what he preached. His court was notorious for gambling, gossip and sex. He himself, had no less than 14 mistresses over his life, and they're the ones we know about. Many had illegitimate children. So it's a peak behind the curtain of Charles's salacious sex life. There's only one person I could call, and that is, of course, the wonderful Dr. Kate Lister, historian and host of our sister podcast, Betwixt the Sheets. It's a pretty wild one this one, folks, so maybe don't watch this one with the kids.

T-minus 10. The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. No black quaint unity till there is first than black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And lift off and the shuttle has cleared the tower. Kate Lister, good to have you on the podcast. Hello. How's it going?

It's going really good. How are you going? Well, I'm doing really well, partly because we're going to talk about one of the most colourful, is that the right word? Colorful monarchs of... It's a nice historian word for it. Complex. Complex.

That's another good historian work. Challenging. All the seas. King of England, Scotland, Charles II. But actually, he's quite an interesting guy because he was born, Prince the Blood, father Charles I, remembered the Civil War, witnessed the Battle of Edge Hill, then became a sort of penniless exile. So quite an interesting story out compared to some of our monies.

Yes, yes, definitely. I mean, his dad had his head cut off. The dad was head chopped off. Yeah. That would have a few ripples, wouldn't it? He was smuggled out of custody and traipsed around Europe. And having to, it must be, as a young exonement, Prince, there's such a kind of, it's a bit of a trope in this world, isn't it?

There are princes wandering around everywhere, going, actually, I was kicked off the throne by my uncle or something. Would you mind putting me back on it? And they must have bumped in quite a lot of them in the low countries and France. You thought about that in that period. There's just loads of deposed royals just wandering around. But it did spend a good few years wandering. And what can you do in that situation, apart from go to other royal courts and go, hello, I'm a royal. Could you put me up for a bit, please? And it's fascinating, because you're just a pawn because when a country wants to sort of up the pressure on England, when it's perhaps even in outright war, you get invited to the court.

They're like, yeah, you know, we reckon. Then if the peace treaty, you get thrown out again, you are a pawn. Yep, and that's exactly what he was. And he's just being, he's been passed around. He doesn't know if he's coming and going. His head cut off. Can you go back to England? Can you not go back to England?

It's just a mess. And also, unfortunately, he's unlucky in his enemy, is that Oliver Cromwell is one of the most brutal, possibly nasties, but probably most effective leaders that England ever had. And he runs a pretty tight ship. It looks like it does like the Republic's head to state. And then Oliver Cromwell's son is completely useless, and the whole thing collapsed like a deck of cards.

So Charles goes from penniless exile to he's back on the throne. 1660, the Stuarts are back. He's on the throne. How do you think that would shape his sort of mindset? I can't even begin to fathom that. I'd like to think of Charles is that it wouldn't have surprised him that he got to be king. I think that he would have had a sense about him that this is his, this is his destiny. This is his, he should be king.

He should be king. But there's no denying that that is a hell of a switch in fortunes from just traipsing around Europe to just suddenly, do you want to be king again? And then the weirdest thing happens is the whole parliament, everybody, they just sort of go, well, we'll just ignore the last 18 years. We're just going to pretend that that didn't happen. She'll just pick up where we left us. I always think as well that he was clever enough not to pursue vendettos.

There were people around him whose family homes unburnt, siblings killed, parents reduced to poverty. Well, we'll do that. He went out, he said, everyone who was signed my dad's death certificate is going to get it. But apart from that, let's just forgive and forget. And he rules, he's reasonably tolerant, isn't he? He doesn't come back and try and sort of wind the clock back to that hour at a beginning of 60. No, he does try for religious toleration.

He does, I mean, it must have been very weird from his point of view to come back to the throne and know that there are people all around you that definitely, definitely had a hand in your dad being killed and you being chucked out the country and having to just smile along and play nice. That's a masterclass in diplomacy. I'm not sure I would have been able to do that. Just reminding this period, so much of kingship and does just come down to, Maybe it's true to date. Personality.

You know, his brother James is obviously an absolute idiot. But he clearly had that charm, that charisma, that ability to, well, that political touch. He was clever. He was bright. He was a big patron of the sciences. He was very into science and learning and pushing New Horizons and the arts and the theatre. And he must have had something about him, some good banter. And particularly in contrast to what had come before, because people talk about the Puritanical, you know, the banning of Christmas.

closing of theatres. So we have this idea, don't we, that Charles comes back and there's an explosion of fun and naughtiness. Do we think, is that slightly overdone? The merry monarch? Or could you trace that in the record?

I think that there is a hefty dollop of that that's true. I mean, if you really want to get into the nitty gritty of it. Yes, we do. Do we? Okay, all right, fine. But if you went and spoke to

like a peasant out in the field in, I don't know, rural Sussex somewhere and we're like, the monarchy's been restored. It's like, would they have had a restoration, I'm not entirely sure, or would they have just kind of nodded along on right? Oh, then you crack on with that. But if you were in court, if you were in the cities, you would have noticed

something quite dramatic. For example, he reopened the theatre and he said, women can go on the stage. Right. Okay. Which doesn't sound like a big thing today, like, you know, reopening the theatres, but so much their culture was based in the theatre and the arts, and that was their big social life. Like taverns could open again. And the Puritans are bought in all kinds of rules around like adultery and fornication and lots of these quite oppressive, don't be having any fun kind of rules. And he did sweep all of that away. Now, it doesn't mean that everyone in the country went brilliant, yay,

because there were a lot of people that really liked that and wanted more of it, in fact. So you didn't get rid of those beliefs, but you would certainly have noticed a big shift in attitude. Do you think it's true to say that he, was he just constitutionally like that, or was it the fact he'd grown up in France, It's going on in the low countries.

There are different rules, different sexual politics there. Do you think is part of that the travel that he'd undertaken? He brought a lot of French influences into the court, definitely. Yeah, too many. Too many. He was well cultured. He was well-traveled. And he'd spent time in the French court, and so what he saw there he kind of liked.

So he was going to bring back quite a lot of that. He's like the ultimate gapier kid, like coming back with like beads in their hair and, you know, like, oh, when I was in India speaking to the Maharisha, that's him, but he's on stage and he's on the throne, and he can do everything he wants now. And unfortunately, his Maharisha was Louis XIV, the 14th of France, who he gives Dunkirk back to for no reason. By the way, that's my niche, but extremely heartfelt complaint about Charles Second.

We've never forgiven him. Never forget, never forgive. The war was against the Dutch, a lot of it around trade. Yeah. Great Fire of London. Great Fire of London. Yeah, he was there for that. And he was amazing as well.

He was there kind of involved in trying to fight the fire and on the front line, bizarre. And also the year before, I suppose, but there was that terrible outbreak of plague as well, one of the most astonishing outbreaks of plague. Yeah, he wasn't quite so much there trying to fight that in the thick of it. No. He'd have been... That would have been a very, very silly idea. Yes, he did and he self-isolated quite far away from where the plague was.

So the court has this reputation, doesn't it, of being this place of sort of wife-swapping and chaos and colour and drama. And that is, given what came before, that must be true. It is pretty true. I mean, it was probably still going on underneath the Puritans. We know that Cromwell was suspected of having a few mistresses himself, but you just, yes, hypocrite. But you just kept it a bit quieter. But certainly in the court of Charles II, and I emphasise that to say that it didn't mean it was a free-for-all for absolutely everybody, but in that court, they're developed a much more permissive attitude. You've got people like John Wilhelm. Earl of Rochester wandering around, who was prodigious for the amount that he could drink

and the obscene poetry that he would write and just generally being sure. He wrote a poem about how big King Charles' Willie was. Really? Yeah. Yeah. I guess as you're saying that, that made me think of what's going on on Kings Road, the 1960s. So the rest of the country, like, what do you mean the 60s? I don't get this.

But in pockets and in part of elite culture, the 60s, but as we saw in the 1920, If you're rich, then you can have a revolution. The poor people, not so much. I mean, it would have kind of trickled down. They would have noticed things like not getting arrested for having adults. And there would have been pubs reopening, taverns reopening. Christmas was allowed back. They would have noticed things like that.

So you've mentioned mistresses. We are going to talk a lot about his mysteries because he was prolific. Yes, he was. And he had lots and lots of children with those mysteries. Isn't it weird? Do you see if the Henry I was the first. It's almost like there's something in the, It's like calmer.

If you have lots of mysteries and have lots of children, you don't sometimes produce that many legitimate offspring. And Charles II and his wife didn't. Did they have a very unhappy marriage? Catherine of Briganza. Did they have an unhappy marriage? It's difficult to get a window into it. I don't know how this woman put up with the things that she did.

But what can we say? She didn't have any children, which is bad news if you are a queen in the 7th. It was a political marriage. It was there to cement relationships between Portugal and between England. But she was quite unpopular with the masses because she was foreign. And obviously being British, anyone who's foreign, we're not pleased with that, quite frankly. She's Catholic. Catholic. So those two big things. And then the third, she didn't have any children. So she wasn't very popular with the Brits. But she herself seemed to be, she was all right. She liked tea parties. The story goes that she used tea drinking.

And she did bring definitely Bombay as part of her dowry. But that's a hell of a thing. It's a hell of a thing. Bombay. Bombay. There you go. So Charles is second for that. So Bombay.

I don't know if they had a happy match. But one thing that you can say is that Charles could have divorced her. There was a precedent for this. And certainly he was under pressure to divorce her and find himself a nice fertile Protestant queen. And he would have had quite a lot of backing to do that. But he absolutely refused to do it. He said,

think in later life, she is a good woman and I am not a good man. I think he... That's a fair estimation. Yeah, it's true. And she did have lots of miscarriage, I think. So they gave it a go. Yeah. Yeah, she had three miscarriages that we know about.

And what that woman had to put up with in terms of this guy's other partners and mistresses is absolutely off the chart. Because it would have been in your face at court. Because she was at court and it would have been obvious. It would have been beyond obvious. In fact, one of the things that he did is. is he made Barbara Villiers, a name was one of his most notorious and powerful mistresses. He made her his wife's lady-in-waiting.

And when Cathode began to quite reasonably went, sod off. He really dug his heels in, and he sent home all of her retinue from Portugal and really put the pressure on her until she caved and let her husband's mistress be her lady in waiting. So that wasn't too cool, Charles. That was a bit of a dick move to say the least. That's not nice, is it? You've mentioned one missus. let's talk about the rest of them.

There's 14, I think, acknowledged. The historians can track down 14 mistresses. What they mean by that are those are the ones that we know we had children with. Oh, okay, right. That's what we mean by confirmed, as in he acknowledged, the children are his. Yes, because I'm often struck by the fact that you read about the king having misdressions and always very, well, often quite aristocratic. Charles Second, we do know about some others, don't we?

But you think to yourself, is the king also forcing himself on members of staff when he goes off on hunting parties as well? I mean, so it's kind of, even the word mistress has a certain connotation, doesn't it? It does. We don't know that bit, but I would imagine that that is a low estimate of, I think it would be a lot more. This is including just casual one-night stands, flings, like I said, servants, people, we just don't know. So what does mistress mean when you hear that being talked about? Does that imply almost, is there a monogamous? Do you have one or mistress after another?

No, no, okay. Well, I mean, you might have certain. It's a fancy word, or is it something of an institution? It is an institution if you're French. The French did this properly. They had an official court mistress, whose official job it was to be the mistress of the king, and that was known as the Matrice on Tietra. The first official mistress was Agnes Sorrel in the 1400s.

The English and everyone else attempted to emulate this, but they never made it an official position. So you get this weird no-man's land of what we're doing, but the French were quite clear. You get a mistress is the mistress. But if you cheat on the person you're already cheating on your wife with, that was considered quite bad form. Really?

Yeah. That was like a little bit. So it's one after the other? Yeah. Like that's your official mistress. That's what you get. You listen to Dan Snow's Historyhead. Don't give up on the mistress here.

There's more coming. It's Louis 15th. Madam de Pompadour was his mistress. But then in order that there wouldn't be a high status mistress to replace her, she'd put sort of low-born, common folk into his bed so that he wouldn't get rid of her. Yeah, but they don't count because they're just flings. She's got the official title.

In this country, and certainly what Charles was doing, no, that isn't what you... So it was a bit anarchic? Yeah, it was very anarchic. What you had was favourites, which is quite ill-defined. And if you think back, or if anyone thinks back about their colourful dating past, that you have people that you are completely infatuated with and people that you really fancy,

and then it might wane. And then there are people that you look back on and you think, what was I thinking? I was, what on earth? How could I possibly have liked that person? Love will do that to you. But that's how precarious, this all is. So these women who are his mistresses and that could gain enormous amounts of power and influence, it's all ride or die on the king's affections.

It's not an official position at court. And do you mention power and influence? Let's dig into that. How does that work? If their brothers, their cousins have got a kind of property dispute or something, a petition they want to put in front of the king, they can just slide that to the top of his entry. They could do that.

I mean, they've got what is often called soft power. So they wouldn't have been allowed on any councils. They wouldn't have been allowed on any war councils. But they spend time with the king. They're very intimate with the king. They can talk to him about the war councils. They might be influencing policy and events in the way that your partner can do. When you go home and talk about things with your partner, with your lover,

you know, get some advice and some feedback. They can be very powerful like that. He really seems to acknowledge his children by these mistresses. Yeah, he does. He has a son, James, who he makes Duke of Monmouth, with a woman he meets in the low countries, I think, who's not an aristocrat. Yeah, that's Walters.

Yeah, Lucy Walters. And when Monmouth comes into his life, he's like, oh, I'm thrilled to see him. Like, welcome to the family. I want to make you a Duke, give you the night of the garter. Yep. And I can't work out. Does that show him in a good light?

It's difficult to say, isn't it? He definitely acknowledged his children. and he had so many illegitimate children he called three of them Charles. Four of them Charles and two of them James. That's how many illegitimate children you have. But he definitely recognised them. He gave them titles.

He gave them land. Some of them had the last name, Bo Clerk. Some of them had the last name Fitzroy. But he made a really big deal about it, which might have been great for him, but I always think, what was that like for Catherine?

Well. Catherine of Beganza, who's there with no babies. And he is like falling over himself, surrounded by children with other women. I think Lucy Walter, the mother of James Duke of Monmouth, he does abandon her. Yeah, he does. Some of his mistresses he finds good marriages for,

which in those days is what accounts for, you know, a big reward. Well, it's a tricky one being the mistress. I mean, how do you play this properly? It's all very, very precarious. It can end in a second if the king takes against you. So really the best course of action to you are probably to get pregnant and get pregnant quite quick, because then the king has got a tie to you

and he should look after this baby and that's what most of them did. So Barbara Villiers, who's probably one of the most famous mistresses, she ends up, he ends up looking after her. She was mental, by the way. She was like, the thing about Charles is not only did he like a lot of women

and he seems to have, like, slightly older women, he seems to have liked crazy women, like properly, like she was mad. How mad was Barbara Villiers, right? So not only is she married, her husband eventually gives up on this because his wife is clearly having an affair with the king and not trying to hide it at all.

And he's like the most famous cook-old in Christendom. So he gives up. But when Charles marries Catherine of Baganza, Barbara was so incensed that she hung her underwear outside of her house as a public display, as a public protest. And then when the king and his new bride went to Hampton Court for their honeymoon,

she went there to have his baby. She insisted on it. So she basically gate-crashed their honeymoon to have his baby. baby. Nuts. You mentioned Charles, liking old women. There is a story that Charles as a teenager was seduced by his former wet nurse.

Yeah, that's not good, is it? That's all getting a bit Freudian. Yeah, that is something that he would say later in life. Tell me about other mistresses. Okay, so there's Barbara Villiers, completely back crap crazy, notorious for being very greedy and spending money like it's going out of fashion. Lots of erotic pamphlets and satirical things written about her. She was like this great big trollop.

So it wasn't just known about in court. This is something of people on the streets of London when they know about the kids. Yeah, there was like satirical poems written about them having threesomes together and about Barbara Villiers being a lesbian with these other mistresses and it just goes on and on and on. In 1668, there was something called the Bordy House riots in London, which was where a lot of brothels were attacked

and people were dragged down the street and beaten up. It was a horrible thing. But out of that came this satirical work called the Poor Horse Petition, which was supposedly written by the poor whores of London to their sister Barbara Cathlmane, because she was at that point. Apparently she was absolutely furious. She was absolutely raging. This document is all like, oh, please take pity on your sisters,

on your sister whores, and she was absolutely raging. So she's like fireworks, crazy, mad. Then you've got, an opposition to that, you've got the French aristocrats and Catholic Louise de Carrawe, who was very demure, very delicate, cried a lot. One of his other mistresses, Nell Gwyn, used to make fun of her

calling her a weeping willow and squintabella. Whenever Charles would get his wandering eye and go off with someone else, she'd just take to her bed and just cry hysterically. She was also one of his most expensive mistresses. At one point, she was collecting like £20,000 a year off him, which is about £59 million today. I know. It's like so much money.

That's extraordinary. Extraordinary. You mentioned Nell Grin there, who I'm a big fan of. She was another mistress. She's not of an aristocratic background. No, she's not. She's my most famous mistress. So Nell does not come from an aristocratic background, not even remotely.

She was born in poverty. In London, we think, although there's some dispute about it, her mother might have run a baudy house, a brothel, or that might have been a story that was spun about her later. We're not sure. Her father, whoever he was, disappeared. Some suggesting might have been in the army. Some suggestion might have been in debtor's prison.

We just don't know. but she was one of the first actresses on the stage and she was a fantastic comedy actress as well and this was the first time women have been on the stage so she's a real trailblazer people come from all round to watch her and she's only about 14 years old when she's doing this and she appears in Samuel Pepys's diaries, isn't she?

Oh, loads of them appear in Samuel Pepys in the diaries, the horny old sod that he was. He went and looked at Barbara Castlemind's knickers when she hung them up and he's just, how did Charles meet her? We're not entirely sure about that one, but it's likely they met in 1669, and he probably came to see her in the theatre. Or at least that's the story that we get told about it. It was probably a little bit more political than that.

The mistresses had a huge amount of power. People knew that. So there were some finagling behind the scenes to try and get Charles a new mistress, because people were very, very upset with Barbara Villiers shrieking and stealing and just being mad. So people were trying to push other mistresses in front of him. Nell was one of those. And apparently she originally said that she would meet with him and be his mistress, I think it's like £500 a year. And they said, no, it's too expensive.

So she initially turned it down. And then he took up with another actress called Moll Davis. But Nell has gone down in history because she was so funny and she was such a firecracker. And she just seems like she was a really good laugh. And I think that was really important to Charles. I mean, you've got to think he's got Louise DeCic. Carrowell balling over here. He's got Barbara Villiers, waving her knickers around and having

babies over here. His poor wife is somewhere having tea, who knows. So it's just absolute bedlam. And in the middle of it, you've got Nell cracking jokes. But I say that, she was also pretty vicious to some of the other mistresses. Moll Davis, the other actress one, she knew that she was going to have a night with Charles. And so she sent her a load of sweets that were laced laced with laxatives. No way. Nell, really? No. She did. But think about how cutthroat and how vicious. Because they're all stuffed in together. They're all hanging out together. They all sit around playing cards, all knowing that, oh, is it your turn next? No, it might. And it's all so competitive. They have to try and get this man's attention. And she was really, really good at it.

And she knew her reputation and she played on it. And she never let people put her down. And she was constantly berated for being this, like, jumped up working class. Like some real nasty stuff was written about her. But she knew that she was also very popular with the people. There's this story about how she was in her carriage and they were going through London and people started attacking the carriage and they thought that it was Louise de Carrowell who was in there

and she leans out and she says, good people, pray, be quiet, I'm the Protestant hall. So she's like, that's a good line. Not the Catholic one. Not the Catholic one. That's a good line. To us London is this giant global megacity, London would have been so intimate back there.

Yeah. People knew. people, you know, they were the celebrities of their day. So she takes up with him about 1670s, got 15 years left to run. Are they close through the rest of that? Does she fall from favour as well? They are pretty close. He buys a house in Palmal.

They have two children together. There's a story about how Nell and one of the little boys was in the presence of the king and he was running away and she went, come here, you little bastard. And the king was really shocked that she would call him that. And then she looked and said, well, your majesty is giving me no other name by which to call him, and then he gave him a title, boom. Oh, come on. Come on. Well, yeah, that's a remark.

So you talk about the Fitzroy's, there's that dukes have grafted into this date. So many of our aristocrats still today in Britain are descended from these illegitimate children of Charles II. Yes, an absolute litter of illegitimate children. But once she's got the titles for her children, that's her pretty much secure. He never gave her a title, by the way. So he gave titles out to the other mistresses like they were going out a favour,

but he never gave one to Nell, but her children got titles. My grandmother called her, so my Welsh nine, my grandmother called her little corgi Nell after Nell Gwynn. Oh, always had a soft spot for her. Samuel Pooke said pretty witty Nell. Pretty witty Nell.

Pretty witty Nell. It's cool that she obviously fired him up, not just physically, but intellectually. She was really clever, but she never learnt to read. She was illiterate throughout her whole life, which when you think that she was an actress on the stage. She must have been memorising those lines, had them read to her. Like, how did you do

that now? That's impressive. But that is the best Rags to Riches story. She only made it to 37, though. So she died in the six and 80s? Yeah, because it does seem that Charles was riddled with syphilis. As you might expect, he seems to have passed that round, like a bag of toffies. That goes around all of his mistresses. Yeah. Louise de Carrowell takes to her bed again when she gets infected with it. He gives a loads of jewels to say story. And there's like a joke going around at court about like, oh, maybe it'd be worth it to, you know, give me a dose for £10,000, Charles.

But it's a horrible, horrible illness. And it's probably what contributes to Nell's death, certainly, because at 37, she has a series of strokes. We think that their strokes. She suddenly becomes paralysed. And that's probably a result of what syphilis has done to her body. Charles doesn't do badly as far as that pretty, 54-ish, 685. Not a nice death, though.

Is it not? No, no, it's not. I mean, there's a lot of debate, actually, about what happened to him. He suddenly started fitting one day, and his doctors came to help. But what they did is they spent the next three or four days repeatedly bleeding him, blistering him, burning him with stuff, force-feeding him, emetics and things to make him shit himself. And just what they did to his body, whatever had happened to him, maybe he would have recovered. but the doctors coming in made that significantly worse. And then he left the throne to his little brother, James Second,

and that was a catastrophe. Looking at the rounds, how should we think about these women and Charles Second? Did they have agency? Is this a story about how women can thrive and succeed in a patriarchy, or is it just a depressing tale of misogynistic, unbalanced relationships who women get shafted and get given syphilis and just die miserable deaths? Both those things are true at the same time. A story and answer there from Dr. Kate Lister.

It's a complex history. That's what we say. And then we walk away. What do I think about it? So the system was shit. The system was completely waned. The king had all of the power and a great big wig and he could do whatever he wanted to because he was king.

And some people had loads of power and some people had none. And it was a really difficult time to be a woman. And if you were a woman, there's only a few tiny accesses to power that you could get. And that was that you could marry it or you could shag it. and that's a really rubbish system, but that's what was there. And those women played an absolute blinder. They played the cards that they were dealt fantastically. They managed to carve out a legacy for themselves, titles, money.

I mean, how else would Nell have ever, a woman like Nell with her background, have got to where she was, if not for Shagging the King? It just wouldn't happen, but an actress born in the Slums of London, that was the only route for her. and it's incredible that she did that. So it's difficult because the system sucks, but they played it incredibly well. And I think that there was agency there,

but the other thing we have to kind of balance it with, it was for a few people, for a few people. Like, for a few people, they managed to play the game really well. For millions of others, it was just unremittingly awful. But I can't help admire them. Just the balls of them and the outrageousness of them. and the fact that they knew what they wanted and they got it as well.

Well, thank you very much, Kate Lister. What I wanted was to get you on the podcast and I got that, so I'm very happy. You are the host of the Our Sister podcast, Batrix the Sheets. I am. You got any more content like this for people? Oh, we've got loads. We've got loads.

We've got a really good episode on Nell because we love her. There's so much royal sex, honestly. You'll get sick to death of it. But we spend a lot of the time looking at the scandalous the rude and the naughty things throughout history. There's plenty of that.

You're not going to run out. Thanks for coming on. A pleasure. Well, thank you so much for listening today, folks, as ever. If you want more from Kate and who doesn't, check out her podcast per Twix the Sheets. It's available wherever you get your pods. See you next time.