Noble Blood - Nell Gwyn's Cinderella Story

Episode Date: June 4, 2024

When the monarchy of England was restored and King Charles II became king, the playhouses were reoppened. And for the first time, women would be permitted to be on stage, performing. The most popular comedic actress of the age, Nell Gwyn, would become a success, but her most famous role would be as the King's mistress. Support Noble Blood: — Bonus episodes, stickers, and scripts on Patreon — Noble Blood merch! — Order Dana's book, 'Anatomy: A Love Story' and its sequel 'Immortality: A Love Story'See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Will Ferrell's Big Money Players and IHart Podcast presents soccer moms. So I'm Leanne. Yeah. This is my best friend, Janet. Hey. And we have been joined at the hips since high school.

Absolutely. A redacted amount of years later, we're still joined at the hip. Just a little bit bigger hips. This is a podcast. We're recording it as we tailgate our youth soccer games in the back of my Honda Odyssey. With all the snacks and drinks. Why did you get hard seltzer instead of beer? They hit a bogo. Well, then you got them. Listen to soccer moms on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of IHeart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised. It is April of 1668, and the London Tavern Keeper can't stop looking at the odd party of four all drinking together at his establishment. The woman is undeniably beautiful. It's hard to keep your eyes off of her. The tavern keeper notices others covertly glancing her way. But she's also undeniably strange. She is not a black-haired, black-eyed beauty like the other women following the fashion of the age. Instead, she has red hair and hazel eyes.

When she reaches for her beer, she moves as if she's used to. being looked at, maybe even gawked at. The theater at Lincoln's Inn Fields is not far away. She could even be one of those salacious women, this new class of people who call themselves actresses. Whatever she is, she's clearly ignoring the man beside her, who appears to be her date. Instead, the woman has her eye on another man at the table. The brazen flirtation with that man seems urgent. He has a regal bearing, though the tavern keeper can't quite place him. What would a nobleman be doing here in a tavern with an actress,

a profession that's considered more or less equivalent to sex work? An actress who was married to a fellow performer could be, seen as respectable. But an unmarried actress? Everyone knew what sort of woman that was. Still, the tavern keeper has a job to do. He presents the party with their bill. The regal-looking man at the table narrows his eyes. He has no money he realizes to pay. It's the striking woman who pays the tab. But she puts on a flirtatious, low-born, act. And she puts on a flirtatious, low-born attitude when she turns to her dining companion. Odds fish, she says, this is the poorest company I've ever dined with.

It was a strange thing to say to the reigning king of England. The woman in the tavern on that April night was named Nell Gwynn, and the object of her flirtation was King Charles II, who had restored the monarchy to England eight years prior. Nell was the most famous actress of Restoration England, but her longest running and most scandalous role didn't happen on the stage. She was King Charles II's mistress for 17 years. Nell was like a real-life Cinderella, rising from the English, quote, body houses of her birth, to the English stage and then to the king's bed.

And her rise didn't end there. One of the sons she had by the king wound up elevated by the sovereign himself to titled nobility. Nell Gwynn did what should have been impossible for a woman of low birth who strutted across the English stage at a time when actresses were objects of lewd attention accused of being horrors. She got her family into the line of Noble Blood. Her rags to riches story may not have had a fairy godmother,

but it was nothing short of a magic trick. Unfortunately, all magic has a cost. I'm Dana Schwartz, and this is Noble Blood. Nell Gwynn was most likely born on February 2, 1650. Her father was a royalist soldier who died, in debtor's prison early in Nell's life. Her mother, known as Madame Gwyn, was left to raise Nell and Nell's sister Rose by herself. So she did what she had to and ran a, quote, body house, essentially a brothel. It was in this setting that Nell and her sister grew up, which basically

meant Nell's childhood was about as far from the nobility as one could get. If Nell was, like Cinderella in the early part of the story, the rags before the riches. Let's just say this was not the Disney version of the fairy tale. Before I can keep going into Nell's story, let's do a brief, brief recap of what is happening during this time with the English monarchy. In 1649, the year before Nell was born, King Charles I was executed for high treason, a governing body known as the Rump Parliament had declared England a Commonwealth Republic, which meant that Nell was born in the only period in English history in which England was without a king or a queen during their brief experiment with republicanism. But if you associate anti-royalism with social progressivism,

then you would be wrong in the case of Commonwealth England. At the time when Nell was born, theater was banned in England. Just about 50 years after Shakespeare wrote about the poor player who struts his hour upon the stage, the English playhouses had gone mute. And the theater wasn't the only casualty of puritanical moralism in the Republic. Dancing, singing, leaping, and even walking that was deemed unnecessary were all officially banned at the time of Nell's birth. But little Nell had a sparkling wit and a lively spirit. So you can only imagine her delight when King Charles II, King Charles is the first's son, was restored to the throne in 1660. Nell was there at the party on the streets of London when Charles rode through on his

white horse. She was about 10 years old and she was thrilled to be surrounded by clowns and stilt and public laughter, possibly even unnecessary walking. She took in all manner of entertainment that had been outlawed throughout her young life. King Charles II of Restoration England, known now as the Mary Monarch, went on to reinstate theater, dancing, singing. It must have felt to Nell like King Charles II had reinstated joy itself. Maybe that was why Nell was destined to be so enamored with him. Under King Charles's reign, one other revelation came to the English theater,

and it was going to change Nell's life and the king's life forever. Before Restoration England, men and boys had played the parts of women and girls on stage. But after the restoration, actresses were allowed on the English stage for the first time, and little red-haired Nell of Madam Gwyn's Body House was destined to become the most beloved actress of them all.

But first, Nell had to pay her dues, and in the 17th century English theater, that meant working as an orange girl at the playhouses along Drory Lane. Clad in skimpy outfits, Nell and her fellow orange girls sold the sweet fruits to theater. patrons, mostly men. Actresses were new to the English stage at the time, and they were primarily viewed as objects meant to be stared at, or more. In fact, the orange girls would often send messages between men in the audience and the actresses backstage. Nell was familiar with that

kind of behavior from the body houses, and it meant she knew what she was getting into when at age 14, she was cast in her first play. As a dramatic actress, Nell was not especially remarkable. But in comic roles, she was a hit. The red-haired comedian with the bawdy mouth was called Pretty Witty Nell, by the famous diarist Samuel Pepes. In the late 1600s, the public's appetite for new plays was huge and ever-growing, especially after the drought of the 11 years of the Republic.

There was obviously no Netflix or HBO, and most common people couldn't read. So new plays didn't stay on for weeks, months, or even years at a time, as some do today. Instead, a theater might mount 50 plays in one year, which would run for three to six days each. Nell was illiterate, but she still had to memorize new lines incredibly quickly. Group rehearsals were rare if they happened at all, which meant that to succeed on stage, pretty much everybody had to improv. And Nell had the knack. The audience adored her.

She played one half of a mad couple alongside an actor named Charles Hart, at a time when affairs and dalliances between actresses, between actresses and the men of the theater were rampant, Charles Hart became Nell's first Charles. Later in her career, there was to be a second, Charles Sackville, Lord Brockhurst, who was supposedly so overcome with lust after watching Nell roll in her petticoats on stage that he found her backstage immediately. But Nell's affairs with those first two Charleses would be pale in comparison to the third. King Charles II, who restored the monarchy to England after its 11-year hiatus, is famous today both for his large, curly hairstyle and for his many mistresses.

His wife, Queen Catherine of Brighanza, was a steadfast companion who suffered three miscarriages. She gave the king no legitimate children. Though King never engaged in the in the possibility of leaving his wife to try to have a legitimate son, a la King Henry the 8th, as many of his supporters probably hoped. The king found his fun elsewhere. The so-called Mary Monarch would have a number of extramarital liaisons, but in April of 1662, his eye landed on the woman who would become his most famous mistress, at least in the popular imagination. The beguilely misleading mischievous actress Nell Gwynne, and Nell played him like a fiddle. The other actresses in King Charles' long retinue were eager to jump into bed with the king

and who could blame them. A dalliance with the king meant access to wealth and resources that the working actresses of Drury Lane could scarcely dream of. But Nell was the clever daughter of the body houses, the improvisational actress who rose from Orange Girl to Star of the boards. So when the king came to performances, she flirted and flounced but did nothing more. Basically, she put him in a friend zone, which didn't mean she didn't have her ultimate designs. When the king took up with Nell's fellow actress Mal Davis, Nell was not happy. Right by, Before one of their dalliances, Nell and her friend Afra Ben poisoned Maul with the tuber of a jollip weed, known to, quote, operate energetically occasioning profuse stools. Just a literary side note for the English majors out there, if the name Afra Ben sounds familiar, it's because she was the first English woman to make a profession as a writer, most famous for her book, Orinoku.

not famous for her laxative poisonings. But out of literature and back into life, in February 1668, Nell starred in a play called The Great Favorite, which seemed to chide the king for his many mistresses. Two months later, in April of 1668, Nell was sitting on the other side of the curtain. She was in box seating at the Duke's House Theater,

beside a man called Villiers, who was her date. But the two other people in the box were the Duke of York, King Charles's brother and the heirs of the throne, and King Charles II himself. The play they were watching was called She Would If She Could about a nymphomaniac not so cleverly named Lady Cockwood. No subtext necessary there.

But King Charles hardly needed the suggestion of the action on stage. He had been flirted with and friend zoned by Miss Nell Gwynn for the past several months. He spent the play pressed into the edge of the box, head turned,

talking to Nell. The curtain had scarcely closed by the time he suggests that the four of them should go out afterwards to a tavern he knew nearby. It was clear to everyone involved that the foursome was a pretext.

The king wanted. Nell. She spent one last evening holding out, flirting, of course, maddeningly abandoning her original date for the night, and at the end of the evening, dramatic Nell could not have planned it better herself. The king and Duke had brought no money with which to pay the bill, so it was Nell Gwynn who got to play act as the wealthy one among the nobles when the tavernkeeper came with the cost. She used her acting chops to image. to imitate Charles' voice and accent with his favorite exclamation, odds fish, and then she looked at the king with all the deliberation of a sharp woman who knows her own worth.

She took a breath and deployed the witticism that would cinch her newest conquest, the man she would playfully call her Charles III. But this, she said gesturing to the nobles in her company, she said famously, is the poorest company I was ever in. It would have taken a stronger man than Charles II to resist that charm. After that, Nell Gwynn commenced her long-awaited affair with the king in earnest. But this was not, as many expected, a short-lived affair like the ones that the king had with many other actresses. It continued and continued.

Nell's first son by King Charles II was named Charles for his father. Nell gave birth to her Charles, Beaulc, on May 8, 1670, two years into her long affair with the king. Her second son by King Charles was born a year and a half later on Christmas Day, 1671. He was named James, the same as the Duke of York, King Charles's younger brother, heir to the throne. That King Charles was managing to father children out of wedlock, but not in it, was nothing new. By the time Nell's first son Charles was born, the king already had at least seven children by at least five different mistresses, if not more. The king elevated some of them

to nobility, but it wasn't a guarantee. Being a royal bastard during this period put you at the mercy and generosity of your father. How much he liked you or your mother, how much he wanted to indulge you. But Nell was Nell. She was going to use her impudence to get what she wanted. And so when her son Charles was six years old, he was granted the noble title of Duke of St. Albans and Earl of Beaufort. And his younger brother, James, was granted the titles Lord and Baron. If you're wondering about the boys' last name, Bo-Clirk, that was another of the little games that played out between Nell and her lover, the king. In French, Bo-Clurk signified the word steward,

which was a play on King Charles' family, the Stuart Dynasty. So how had Nell ensured that her sons were elevated to nobility? How did the girl who had been selling oranges in a theater go from rags to mother, of an earl. That's what every Cinderella story asks, and in fairy tales, the answer is magic. Nell did not have magic at her disposal. What she had was wit and a flair for the dramatic and the improvisational, and she deployed all of her skills masterfully. When her son Charles was six years old, he was playing at court when the king arrived to visit him. Nell seized her opportunity to deploy a clever line in order to get her way, just as she had back in the tavern when their friendly

flirting finally gave way to their affair. Come hither, you little bastard, she called. The king, of course, was humiliated by her vulgarity. Nell said, I have no other title to call him by. And King Charles was once again entrapped to his own delight by that ravishing imp of an actress, Nell Gwynn. Their son, Charles, was given a title. Nell's second son, James, was born in 1671 when Nell was 21 years old. That was also when her career in the theater ended. She had begun as an actress at age 14 and had already managed a seven-year celebrated career

by the time she was 21. But there were other consolations for Nell, because in the end, she and the king did not fall out of their affair as many probably expected them to, and as he had with his many other mistresses. Instead, the bawdy housegirl and the king had an ongoing love affair that lasted for 17 years, the rest of the king's life. Of course, Nell and the king never made it to the altar, as they would have in a fairy tale. That was never on the table, not even close. Even if Nell wasn't a commoner who may or may not have been born in a brothel. Again, given that the king didn't have any legitimate children with his wife, it would have been politically advantageous if he had been able to

remarry to another noblewoman and have children with someone else. But Charles made it extremely clear that he was not going to cast his wife Catherine aside, and even though Protestants might have subtly or not so subtly hoped that Charles might have his eldest illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth, made his heir. Charles never wavered on the fact that his inconveniently Catholic brother, the Duke of York, would be the next king. And so Charles and Nell's relationship evolved into what looked like a long and lasting friendship. Nell's descendant and biographer, a modern-day Charles Bocler, describes the king's relationship with Nell as him essentially saying, quote, whoever is worthy of my friendship is my equal. For her part, Nell said of the king,

quote, he was my friend and allowed me to tell him all my griefs. There were indeed griefs. Nell's second son, James, died in Paris at the age of eight, of an unknown but seemingly sudden illness reported only as a sore leg. That was 1680 or 81 when Nell was just about 30 years old, and she had not seen her younger son since he was six years old. She was not there at his deathbed. Nell was sorrow-stricken, and as she so well described, the king shared in her griefs. He moved her to Beaufort House in Windsor and spent 5,000 pounds repairing its apartments and a tennis court close by where he could play and be near her. But King Charles too could not live forever. He died on February 6, 1685, of an apoplectic fit that had overcome him incredibly suddenly

when he was only 53 years old. His brother, aired the throne, James, Duke of York, was at the deathbed. Charles had kept other mistresses to the end of his life, too, of course. This was no monogamous Cinderella story. Still, as he died, Charles singled out Nell. Quote, let not poor Nellie Star. Charles told his younger brother, and then he died. And King James II took his brother's words to heart.

He took care of Nell with an annual pension of 1,500 pounds and the relief of her debt. And on November 14, 1687, at the age of just 37, Nell herself died. She had suffered several strokes in the lead-up to her final heart failure. Several historians suggest that she died as a result of syphilis, and the idea was not lost on rumor mongers of the time. Quote, a parting gift from the king, someone said. But a crowd of hundreds thronged to the church to mourn her passing, and she left money for charity, including one directive to release debtors from prison every Christmas. Perhaps it was Christmas charity, but I think it was in honor of her son whose Christmas Day birthday she thought of for the rest of her life.

And Nell's father, after all, had died in debtor's prison. So in the Cinderella story, the bawdy house girl turned comedian and actress extraordinaire, turned King's longtime lover, then friend, turned mother of an earl, had enough leftover funds. to give back to those in need. Nell Gwynn's family line is still noble today. That's the story of the English actress Nell Gwynn's affair with King Charles II. But stick around after a brief sponsor break to hear the other story of how she got her son ennobled. My next guest, you know from Stepbrothers Anchorman, Saturday Night Live and The Big Money Players Now, network. It's Will Ferrell.

Woo. Woo. Woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. I went and had lunch with him one day. And I was like, and Dad, I think I want to really give this a shot. I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings. I'm working my way up through, and I know it's a place that come look for up and coming talent. He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet. Yeah.

He goes, but there's so much luck involved. And he's like, just give it a shot. He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that.

There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks Dad on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, everyone? I'm Ego Vodam. My next guest, you know from Step Brothers Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and The Big Money Players Network. It's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo.

My dad gave me the best advice ever. I went and had lunch with them one day, and I was like, and Dad, I think I want to really give this a shot. I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings. I'm working my way up through, and I know it's a place that come look for up-and-coming talent. said if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet. Yeah. He goes, but there's so much luck involved.

And he's like, just give it a shot. He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there. Yeah. It would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that.

There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The story of how Nell Gwyn got her son the title of Duke and Earl is that she called him a bastard in front of King Charles. But that's only one of the stories. The other story plays even more on Nell's flair for the dramatic. According to this story, King Charles was heading over. to visit Nell when a scream came from a window high above his head. It was the screaming of his son and namesake Charles.

Nell had him dangling out the window by his legs upside down. Michael Jackson might have been proud. I'm going to drop him, shouted Nell, unless you give him a title. And there was a reason why King Charles and Nell had such a long-lasting relationship. He was as witty as she was. He looked up at his fiery mistress holding their son and said,

God save the Earl of Beaufort. Nell Gwynn laughed and brought their little Earl back inside. Noble Blood is a production of IHeart Radio and Grimmin Mild from Aaron Menke. Noble Blood is hosted by me, Danish Schwartz, with additional writing and researching by Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick, Courtney Sender, Julia Melani, and Armand Kasam. The show is edited and produced by Noemi Griffin and Rima Il Kali, with supervising producer Josh Thane and executive producers Aaron Manky, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick.

For more podcasts from IHartRadio, visit the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Will Ferrell's Big Money Players and IHart Podcasts presents soccer moms. So I'm Leanne. Yeah. This is my best friend, Janet. Hey.

And we have been joined at the hips since high school. Absolutely. A redacted amount of years later, we're still joined at the hip. Just a little bit bigger hips. This is a podcast. We're recording it as we tailgate

our youth soccer games in the back of my Honda Odyssey. With all the snacks and drinks. Why did you get hard seltzer instead of beer? Oh, they hit a bogo. Well, then you got them. Listen to soccer moms on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This is an My Heart Podcast. Guaranteed human.