Act One: At Court Harlots, Housewives and Heroines: A 17th Century History for Girls

On 29th May 1660,

King Charles II returned from exile to reclaim his throne.

Everyone believed the Stuart dynasty had lost power forever.

His father Charles I had been publicly executed

only ten years previously, and England had been firmly in the grip

of Oliver Cromwell's commonwealth.

But now the monarchy was back in business.

The Restoration was a turning point in British history.

It marked the end of the medieval and the beginning of the modern age.

It affected the life of every single person in the country.

In this series,

I'm looking at the lives of women in the late 17th century.

This is a really exciting time to be a woman.

For centuries, they'd been lurking about in the footnotes

of history, but now they come to prominence.

Some of them have such modern attitudes and ambitions

and we see them coming up against a world

that was still pretty male and misogynistic.

Over three programmes, I'm exploring their lives at the lavish

and liberated Royal Court...

The King, without a doubt, would have been completely delighted.

-If all my clothes had suddenly fallen off?

-Yes, I'm sure he would.

..at home, behind closed doors,

and in public, at work and play.

She dominated the theatre. She had more plays put on than anybody.

Not any woman. Any man.

You might have thought that Britain was swinging in the 1960s,

but it was the 1660s that really shook things up.

In this first programme, I'm going to meet

the women at the top of the tree at Charles II's court.

These women were intimately connected with the King.

They would experience the most immediate and profound effects of the Restoration.

Charles II's Restoration was really an extraordinary turn of events,

but his return to the throne wasn't going to be a simple return to the past.

While he'd been in exile on the continent,

he'd learnt lots of new ideas

and he came back with a new kind of court.

It was more lavish, but also more debauched

and more licentious than ever before.

At it, women would take a new prominence.

They could now win celebrity and wealth and influence.

It sounds quite recognisably modern,

but this was a dangerous game to play for women because,

to get to the top at the court of Charles II,

the quickest way was to become a royal mistress.

And, for me, the big question is,

was this female empowerment or was it just a new form of exploitation?

I'm starting out at one of England's most impressive historic houses,

Althorp in Northamptonshire.

Today, Althorp is still famous for its royal links

as the childhood home of Lady Diana Spencer, later Princess of Wales.

But its regal connections go back much further.

In the 17th century, it was the owners of grand houses like this

who populated the Royal Court.

The portraits on its walls bring us

face to face with all the great and the good of the Restoration.

And what's remarkable is the number of women included,

many of them mistresses of Charles II.

So here Charles is.

A very human, human being

with all of his weaknesses and frailties and lusts,

the biggest of which was his lust for women.

By the time he came back from his exile on the continent,

he'd already had seven mistresses.

The total would reach 13 by the end of his life.

He also had 13 illegitimate children that he acknowledged.

There may even have been others.

He's positioned here on the wall

and he's ogling this bevy of court beauties over here.

This is Barbara.

She's definitely the top mistress

during the early part of Charles' reign.

Trounces all the opposition.

She gives him five children,

not withstanding the fact that she actually has a husband.

Charles loves these children.

He goes and tucks them up into their beds at night

and he rewards her with power and riches and celebrity,

but this is the opposition to Barbara.

Louise, the French Louise de Kerouaille,

who comes up and challenges her.

She's the younger, sexier model.

She, too, gives the King a baby,

and he rewards both of them with the highest rank that there is -

the title of Duchess.

The Restoration mistress was entirely new.

Charles' women weren't just fly-by-night party girls.

They would achieve independent wealth,

dictate fashion and win celebrity.

They'd even change the shape of contemporary politics

and the way that the masses thought about their monarch.

Barbara Villiers was the first and greatest Restoration mistress.

She'd become one of the most powerful people in the country

and a trailblazer for these new-style mistresses of a modern age.

Barbara was born into the Villiers family.

Now, some of the Villiers were very grand indeed, dukes and so on,

but she came from an impoverished branch,

but nevertheless, very well established and very respectable.

This is her marital home and this is very respectable too,

although it's not a palace and, to be honest, Tudor architecture

like this was looking a bit old-fashioned by the Restoration.

But in 1659, Barbara, then just 18, would escape the boredom

of a middle-ranking marriage in a provincial pile,

when she was charged with a mission of national importance -

to go to Europe

to tell the exiled King that the time was ripe for his return.

She was chosen because she was beautiful, intelligent

and was married to one of Charles' most staunch supporters.

But most importantly of all, she'd survived the smallpox.

She was lucky to remain unscarred and, of course, she was now immune.

With smallpox sweeping the continent,

she was the only one of Charles' followers who could safely be sent.

Within days of their meeting, the two of them were smitten with love.

Barbara would now go shooting up into the social stratosphere

because of her relationship with the King,

rather leaving behind her husband. This was challenging for him.

17th-century men did not expect to be eclipsed by their wives.

This is Barbara's long-suffering husband, Roger Palmer.

He'd lent the King money during the Restoration,

helped him get back on the throne

and he could have expected a reward.

Instead, the King steals his wife. Roger is humiliated.

He does at least get a title.

He's made Earl of Castlemaine by way of compensation,

but even this is tainted.

It comes with the proviso that it will be inherited

by Barbara's illegitimate children with the King.

Poor old Roger.

He hasn't got a proper chin anyway!

Until now, a woman's title, position and prosperity

had all been determined by her husband.

Only as a widow could she have independent wealth and status,

but there's no doubt who was the boss in the Palmer household.

Barbara's rise reflected a wider movement

from the medieval to the modern.

Her success is all the more extraordinary

if you compare it to a woman's expectations in the recent past.

WHISPERS: First of all there is this.

That's is going to go like this.

There are little strings to tie this up.

For nearly ten years before the Restoration,

England had been governed by a puritan, Oliver Cromwell,

an intensely religious manic depressive

with strict moral views about hard work and piety.

Are you covering up my hair, cos it's dangerously sexy.

Fun and frivolities like gambling, the theatre and sports

had been banned.

Even the way men and women dressed was under stern scrutiny.

Puritan leaders and soldiers had roamed the streets

making sure women's hair was covered up.

So am I dressed like a proper puritan lady of the 1650s now?

You are a perfectly turned out puritan lady.

Very, very proper and very demure.

And would my parish priest have approved of this get-up?

He would have been delighted to have seen you like this and,

in fact, he would have been even more delighted

if ALL the women were dressed just like you.

There's no hair showing at all. No skin, no flesh.

No skin, no flesh.

Everything is all very demure.

It makes me feel very submissive.

I feel like I'm in a uniform.

You couldn't tell me apart from another puritan lady.

But I'll tell you what I think is positive about this outfit.

It feels warm.

It's really thick, woolly stuff and also there's quite a lot of legroom.

I feel like I could do a bit of ninja kicking if I want to.

There's plenty of volume to it,

but I can't imagine going to a party dressed like this.

I don't think you would be out there partying all night.

I can imagine you sitting there reading and, in fact,

this is a decade that actually saw women as businesswomen,

actually taking on the responsibility of family finances and so on,

and actually doing it very, very well indeed.

But the lack of parties is all going to change, isn't it?

The 1660s saw the beginning of a very different world.

Let's have a look at that one.

Now I'm going to be a court lady of the 1660s.

But it's not a proper gown, this, is it?

No, this is little more than just a negligee.

Basically, I'm wearing my underwear here.

You are wearing your underwear.

Now, in contrast to the other one,

it feels decadent and luxurious

and it also feels like it could quite easily just sort of fall off.

Well, I think that's most of the point, actually. It probably could.

And if the King were to suddenly appear,

that would be exactly what both of us would hope to happen, I guess?

The King, without a doubt, would have been completely delighted.

-If all my clothes had suddenly fallen off?

-Yes, I'm sure he would.

Wanting all your clothes to fall off in order to get ahead

is hardly the ultimate expression of girl power.

But for the Restoration mistress,

it wasn't a straightforward matter of male exploitation.

For the first time, some women were taking some control for themselves.

For centuries, it had been pretty much expected that a man would have

his wife for bearing his children and a mistress for pleasure.

What was new in the 1660s was a sense that it was becoming

more socially acceptable to be a mistress.

It was almost a matter of a positive career choice.

This woman, Catherine Sedley, for example, was independently wealthy.

She could have made a good marriage, but she chose instead to be

a mistress of James, Duke of York, the future James II.

She also went about it in an unconventional way.

People at the time didn't think that she was very good-looking at all,

so it was said she won him not through her beauty,

but through her wit and her brains.

The career mistress was something completely new.

The country had never seen anything like it.

But Charles and his Royal Court had done.

They'd spent ten years in exile on the continent

where women not only played a prominent role at court,

but gained respect for it.

We've got Charles II in France for a good bit of his exile.

And there's a kind of idea that he learns how to have

mistresses in France - cos that's what French people do,

they have lots of mistresses - is this fair or not?

I think he was learning this new ethos and practice,

which is a sort of big deal in the 1650s in France,

that's known as gallantry, a highly codified way

of thinking about friendship and flirtation.

On the continent, aristocratic women were debating

and writing about exactly what they wanted from their relationships

in a totally new cultural environment - the salon,

attended by men, but hosted by women.

One influential novel, Clelia,

claimed to be authored by Monsieur de Scudery,

but actually it was written by his sister, a famous salonniere.

It's an allegorical lesson in love,

with a route planner to help both men and women on their way -

the Map Of Tenderness.

So, these are the little travellers about to go on their journey,

and they're starting at the city of New Friendship.

And we pass through pleasing verses, a gallant letter, an amorous letter,

and after that we get to new forms of emotion

sincerity, a great heart, honesty, generosity, and so on.

This seems pretty positive to me, if you're talking about

a friendship between a man and a woman,

and they're saying it requires respect and honesty

and generosity and sincerity...

Exactly, and they're showing men how to get there.

So, do you think that some of the time,

when Charles was playing around with all these women,

actually he was being gallant towards them?

He was following this French model of intersexual relationships?

We tend to think of having mistresses as wild, party-ish behaviour,

but these kinds of books help us to see that it's a highly codified

kind of relation, and that it's the sort of relation in which women

can ask for certain things and expect certain kinds of behaviour.

At his restoration, Charles returned from exile unmarried,

but with his new girlfriend, Barbara, on his arm,

and a pocket full of enlightened, continental ideas.

His court now showcased a new breed of women

who thought differently, acted differently

and looked different too.

We can see this clearly in their portraits by the Restoration's

most fashionable court painter, Sir Peter Lely.

Now, it's a bit of a cliche to say it,

but really all these women do look a bit like each other, don't they?

-Is that fair?

-I think that's fair.

You're looking at a look in a modern sense of the word.

1960s, Twiggy,

a fashion icon, everybody wants to dress like her,

look like her, be photographed like her.

And it's the same with Peter Lely portraits in the 1660s court.

You've got this fashionable artist developing

a sexy, new look for the 1660s decadent court of Charles II,

and these are incredibly popular.

You would get people coming along to Lely's studio saying,

"I want to look like Barbara Villiers or Elizabeth Hamilton."

And what are the constituents of the look, then?

They've all got that sort of sleepy look in the eyes,

and they're all showing this part of their shoulders, aren't they?

That must have been an erogenous zone.

Sexualised, but virtuous.

This particular portrait is of a women that is getting married,

probably, around the time this portrait was painted.

Just at the line of respectability.

One centimetre lower and she could have been somebody scandalous.

Absolutely, and I think you can see that in the art

you can see that in how women had to navigate this world, as well.

It was an empowering moment, in one respect.

Beauty was a route towards court positions, court patronage,

wealth, titles, a good husband...

But at the same time,

if you used it too much or if you slept with the wrong people...

You could end up alone with syphilis.

At the very least you're going to end up very pregnant and unwanted.

For the first time, whether you were a mistress or not,

sexual allure defined the look of an age.

Many people didn't like it but surprisingly,

this decadence actually helped Charles to define his own reign.

It distanced him, not only from Oliver Cromwell,

but just as importantly, from his father.

Charles II erected this statue of his dad,

Charles I, after the Restoration,

and today it represents the durability of the monarchy,

it looks like it's been there forever.

But at the time he erected it, Charles II must have been

really conscious of how fragile the monarchy could be.

We're within eyeshot, just down the road, of the spot

where his father had had his head cut off.

Charles II was really sensitive to the mistakes his father had made.

He was keen not to repeat them.

To make sure he didn't suffer his father's fate,

Charles had to address a very fundamental problem.

What did it mean to be a king?

For centuries, the idea of monarchy had remained unchanged.

Monarchs were divinely ordained,

and they didn't have to answer to anyone -

not to their people, not to Parliament,

only to God himself.

So, down at that end we've got the King on his chair of estate,

and we're standing here. What does this picture say to us?

It's James I just getting to heaven.

This picture says kings are appointed by God

to be answerable to God,

and that means that if my conscience tells me God is saying something

my subjects are not saying, I can ignore my subjects.

High-risk policy.

Charles I's fundamental belief in his own divinity

had ultimately led to his execution.

When Charles II reclaimed the throne on this very spot,

he understood that a king was ill-advised to use his divinity

as an excuse to ignore his subjects.

But at the same time, nobody expected him to behave

like an ordinary mortal, either.

After all, his people still expected Charles

to perform miracles.

So, at certain times of the day you would have seen Charles II

doing this weird thing, touching for the King's evil.

And that meant he was helping people

with this disease called scrofula. What is scrofula?

Your skin, especially your head, swells up

and bursts into suppurating sores - looks ghastly, smells ghastly.

And the idea was, because he was appointed by God,

he could cure them with his touch.

He'd run his hands over them.

He is healing them by laying on hands.

He is deliberately imitating Christ.

In other words, in a very limited way and a very mortal way,

kings are also sons of God.

Charles was happy enough to perform his divine duties during the day,

but he also saw no reason

that he shouldn't indulge his human desires by night.

When one of his archbishops begged him

to stop having girlfriends, Charles replied he couldn't believe

that God would not forgive a little pleasure on the side.

And he likes being known as a passionate lover.

He sounds like a regular bloke.

So, Charles is full of contradictions.

Sometimes he is the divine monarch.

Other times he's just a red-blooded man,

and it's this mismatch, I believe,

that allowed the mistresses to rise to prominence.

Yes, he was still the ultimate source of authority

and everyone depended on him for their position,

BUT women like Barbara were able to exploit his human weaknesses.

She could hope to win as much power as any male government minister.

A royal mistress like Barbara could take on the political establishment,

but she also had to fight an even greater battle.

In 1661, Charles did the right royal thing and got married

to a Portuguese Princess, Catherine of Braganza.

How would Barbara manage now that she was up against

a far more formidable opponent - a wife. What's more, a queen.

There's a very good reason that these three are hung like this.

We have the King, we have his wife, and we have the mistress,

all three of them together.

It's almost as if he's got a lady on each arm.

This is Catherine of Braganza as she was at about 22

when she turned up from Portugal, though she looks younger.

And these strange Portuguese dresses that she wore caused

a lot of consternation at court. People found them very odd indeed.

Also, this strange sort of cowlick she's got on her forehead.

And because she was always in black, the King said,

"You've brought me a bat! What am I going to do with her?"

She looks like a little goody-goody.

Over here, by terrific contrast, my goodness,

it looks at first like this is a religious image,

it's the Madonna and Child,

and a copy of this picture ended up in a nunnery.

The nuns were quite surprised when they discovered who it really is.

It's Barbara Villiers, the King's mistress,

holding up the King's illegitimate son as the baby Jesus!

The audacity of this is quite something.

Also, probably, she was pregnant again at this point,

as Catherine clearly wasn't.

All this drapery and the pink and the blue,

a sort of explosion of luscious fertility.

So that's another hold that she had over the King -

her ability to reproduce.

So, actually, sorry to say it, Catherine,

it looks like the mistress holds more cards than you do.

Barbara had sexual allure, wit, and Charles' beloved child.

But Catherine brought a political alliance with a foreign power

and a lucrative dowry.

Catherine gave Charles Bombay, a foothold in India,

the richest country in the world.

Queen and mistress clashed head to head

and for the first time in history

it wasn't clear who'd come out on top.

Catherine of Braganza discovered that the King had a mistress -

this was Barbara - and Catherine was furious.

She said, "Never am I going to meet that terrible woman."

But Barbara wasn't going to give up and disappear.

She nagged the King to make her one of Catherine's

Ladies of the Bedchamber, some of the Queen's most intimate servants.

But Catherine realised what was going on.

She got the list of new ladies, she saw Barbara's name

and she crossed her out.

But Barbara still didn't give up.

She came to Hampton Court and had herself introduced to the Queen.

The Queen didn't catch the name and hadn't realised what had happened.

When she discovered, she was furious.

She burst into tears and she had a nosebleed.

She complained to the King, but the King took Barbara's side.

It was devastatingly obvious how deeply the mistress

was embedded in the very heart of the court

if even the Queen couldn't stand up to her.

Now, you may think that Catherine of Braganza sounds like

a bit of a pushover, but she did do something very important.

She came from Portugal, a nation of tea drinkers

because of its trading links with the Far East.

When she came over to England for the first time,

she had a terrible journey, she was seasick,

she landed and said, "Please, give me a cup of tea!"

But the English said, "What's that? We've got some beer, will that do?"

So Catherine really popularised tea drinking.

It changed the lives of women,

because now they would hold tea parties,

domestic occasions, men excluded,

and the men were sometimes quite annoyed about this.

So, Catherine didn't give the King of England a son,

but she did give us our national drink.

Charles would grow very fond of both Catherine and Barbara.

But as his reign progressed,

he'd also grow fond of quite a few other ladies, too.

So fond that the mistresses began to take over the whole palace.

This is the Palace of Whitehall as Charles inherited it in 1660.

And the interesting thing about the geography of Whitehall Palace

is the way that it reflects the changing geography of the court.

People get better rooms as they climb up the ladder.

When the King gets married, he spends a lot of money

refurbishing rooms for his wife, Catherine of Braganza.

There she is, quite close to him at number 23.

But, even closer to the King, this apartment next to him, 24,

belongs to the Maids of Honour,

young ladies of the court, always very good-looking, we're told.

They're supposed to be an ornament to the court - basically they're party girls,

so I think he found that quite convenient, having access to them.

Up here is Barbara Villiers, in a separate house on King Street.

But as time went on and Barbara became more and more powerful,

she was given an apartment actually in the Palace proper.

Later, Barbara gets kind of ousted, really,

by Louise, the French opposition.

She gets given a vast apartment, 24 rooms up here.

And then along comes Frances Stewart.

The King likes her very much indeed.

He gives her apartment 10, which is the closest yet to his own rooms.

So, imagine you were poor old Catherine, the Queen,

stuck in the middle here, with all these mistresses

gradually creeping towards you down the palace corridors.

She must have felt like she was under siege.

With so many women invading the Palace,

there was a constant cat fight for attention.

So, women actually do like that tightening effect.

Yes, it gets rid of wrinkles, right?

-Like botox.

-Yes, wrinkles like botox!

During the Commonwealth, puritan leaders tried to pass a law

against the wearing of make up.

A more adventurous woman

-would certainly paint the nipples with cochineal.

-I don't fancy it.

You've porridged me!

'But now mistresses became masters

'of this new and supposedly sexy art.'

This is not lead, but it's the equivalent of lead.

Now, women did know that lead was poisonous,

but there was nothing as effective at covering the face.

You've turned me into a ghost.

Perhaps when we put the cochineal on you might be a bit more convinced.

Which is?

Beetle wings, first discovered by the conquistadors in Mexico

in the early 16th century.

To me it just looks like a horrific bruise.

Well, it may look like that to you,

but it may have sort of given a subliminal sexual message.

John Evelyn, who was a bit of a serious person,

said that now women are wearing this make-up,

he can't tell who's a prostitute and who isn't.

Men throughout history have always said,

if women wear a lot of make-up,

they're out to sort of entice men and deceive them and so on.

Then we get writers like Margaret Cavendish,

who I think you could describe as a proto-feminist,

and she says it's fine to wear make-up.

Yes, she says it's perfectly permissible for women

to try and look beautiful, and why shouldn't they?

Of course, the funny thing is,

all these debates about how much make-up is OK still go on today.

Absolutely recognisable.

It's an argument that will run and run.

-There?

-A bit further down.

Yes, there.

That means passion.

The rise of the career mistress brought with it endless intrigue.

Wives were now openly competing with mistresses,

husbands competing with their wives,

and mistresses with each other.

With all this high-profile coming and going of mistresses at court,

you won't be surprised when you learn the name

of Charles II's favourite dance.

It was called Cuckold's All A-Row,

or in other words, a line of cheated-on husbands.

COURTLY MUSIC PLAYS

Even something as innocent as a dance

became an opportunity for one-upmanship.

The interesting thing about this dance

is that, while you're dancing with your partner...

-Who might be the King, let's imagine.

-He might well be.

I'm actually looking into his eyes and going

sort of to and fro with him. It's quite a promiscuous dance.

If I was Catherine of Braganza and I was dancing here

with my husband the King, I don't like the sound of this,

because she might be a royal mistress,

and she's a much better dancer than I am.

It's all just a question

of the vertical expression of the horizontal desire.

I could not have put that better myself.

It was positively perilous to stand up to a mistress.

One respectable countess who spread nasty rumours about Barbara

found herself out in the cold.

At a royal dance, the lady was expecting to partner the King.

Instead, he banished her from the court on the spot.

At the new Restoration court,

you'd be mad to insult Charles' mistresses.

But here's the interesting thing - if a woman spurns Charles himself

and refused to be his mistress, she might just get away with it.

This is Frances Stewart.

She comes to court, makes a huge impression and, famously,

the King goes after her really hard, but she says no.

She wants to get married and she has to do it secretly.

She runs off and marries the Duke of Richmond.

And this could have been a catastrophic error,

he could have been furious.

Luckily, though, he does forgive her.

Frances' actions and Charles' response

reveal something quite surprising about the Restoration court -

the level of respect given to women.

Even on the Continent, no woman upon whose door

the French king knocked at night would be allowed to keep it closed.

Some nosy parkers, like Samuel Pepys,

suggested that Frances did eventually sleep with Charles,

if only to keep the peace.

But in public the virtuous Frances was rewarded with an unprecedented accolade.

Whether or not Frances Stewart did finally succumb to Charles II,

there's no doubt he found her absolutely ravishing.

Samuel Pepys did too.

He said that she was the most beautiful woman that he'd ever seen.

In 1668, Charles personally selected Frances

to be a model for the figure of Britannia.

It was really unusual for him to choose an important,

named courtier like this, and Britannia was to appear on a medal

struck to celebrate peace with the Dutch.

And this image would prove very durable.

In 1672 it appeared again on a copper farthing of Charles II's.

And the image will look familiar,

because here's a 50p piece from 2006,

still in circulation today, still with Frances Stewart.

That's immortality for you, isn't it?

300 years later, you can still find Charles II's beauties

in your back pocket.

In the open, accessible life of the Restoration Palace,

Charles made no attempt to hide his women.

In fact, they were becoming celebrities.

One of their biggest fans was history's most famous diarist,

Samuel Pepys.

His original diaries are locked away in his own library

at Magdalene College, Cambridge.

Written in shorthand, they're very hard to decipher.

Wisely so, because they're full of Pepys' sexual misdemeanours,

as well as lascivious references to Charles' mistresses.

Barbara alone is mentioned 184 times.

And this one's particularly stalker-ish behaviour.

In the code version he's left some words in clear,

and those words are "privy garden", "Castlemaine's" and "bottoms".

Make a sentence out of that!

Well, if you connect them up...

They do actually form a sentence, which is...

OK, he's in the privy garden at Whitehall and he says

he sees "the finest smocks and linen petticoats

"of my Lady Castlemaine's, laced with rich lace

"at the bottoms that ever I saw."

And it did him good to look upon them.

The old perv! Don't you think?

He's looking at her underwear drying on a washing line.

You do have to remember that underwear was much more

uncommon then than it is now.

These women, particularly Barbara, had quite an effect on him,

-didn't they?

-Oh, tremendous effect.

Yes, there is the occasion when Pepys goes to the Chapel Royal

and he's registering that there's both the Queen

and Lady Castlemaine - amazingly - in her nightclothes.

What happens?

Well, "I did make myself to do the thing..."

He did the thing? He did the thing?!

With Lady Castlemaine and the Queen and all those people present?!

"..by mere imagination." He experienced an emission.

He's in the room with the Queen and Barbara Castlemaine,

and he's got so excited that...

-Yes, and, to his own embarrassment...

-To my embarrassment, too!

And you are blushing!

THEY LAUGH

Oh, deary me! Samuel Pepys!

With a new vogue for celebrity prints,

Pepys could even collect pin-ups of his favourite crushes.

And this is Samuel Pepys' actual scrapbook.

These are all of the famous faces that he decided to cut out and keep.

This is the section where it gets really interesting.

It's called "Ladies, et cetera."

He's got some historical figures,

but flipping forwards, we get to the page of the royal mistresses.

Here they all are. We've got Barbara, Duchess of Cleveland.

Actually, she's looking here a bit like a man.

Almost like Charles II himself, I'd say.

Here she is looking over her shoulder in a different pose. Lovely pearls.

Here is Louise, the Duchess of Portsmouth.

Now, what's new about this is not that the King had mistresses,

this had been known before, Henry VIII et cetera,

but now everybody knows what they looked like.

And we've got the wrong idea about this.

You think that horrible magazines like Heat and Closer

were invented somehow in the late 20th century.

Not so. This popular print culture goes right back to the 1660s.

For the first time, cheap, printed pictures

gave people at large a chance to leer at the rich and famous,

and many grasped it enthusiastically.

While all of these pin-ups were aristos,

the most celebrated of Charles' mistresses very definitely wasn't.

The London pad he bought for her is, ironically,

now the site of a highly respectable gentleman's club,

but in it is the most revealing portrait of them all.

This is Nell Gwynn.

And imagine the equivalent today,

a leading member of the Royal family acknowledging a mistress,

her being a cockney actress, having her photographed nude

by Mario Testino, and circulating the images for everybody to see.

Of all the mistresses, Nell remains the most iconic.

With Barbara still on the scene, she rose from cinder girl

to orange seller to actress and finally to become Charles' lover.

So, this is said to be Nell Gwynn's actual fruit knife

that she used for cutting up oranges.

Do you believe this story?

-I do, I'm afraid.

-Don't be afraid, it's a great story.

Well, yes, I mean, her life is as much folklore as history,

so we have to take a lot on trust,

but oranges were very important to her life.

Nell was so famous that she even inspired

her own range of mistress merchandise.

These are brilliant, they're little outfits,

and you can put them over the miniature of her

to give her different costumes and looks.

Look, we can turn that into a nun, if we want to.

-Which one are you going to choose?

-Well, how about the crown?

Because I'm sure she must have dreamt of the crown in her wilder moments.

'Nell's relationship with Charles

'was the ultimate Cinderella story...'

What's she buying in this particular bill of goods?

'..taking her from rags to unbelievable riches.'

This is a bill for the upholstery of her coach.

And it has a new glass body.

That's like the glass coach in Cinderella, isn't it?

Where she goes to the ball, everyone could see who was inside.

And she spent £146 on it. How much money is that today?

-That's about £12,500 today.

-Phew!

Now, where did she get her money from?

-She was awarded an annuity of £5,000 by the Treasury.

-The Treasury!

That's official, then,

this is the Treasury actually giving her money on behalf of the nation.

Absolutely, Charles would do anything for a quiet life.

But this is actually a small sum compared to the other mistresses.

5,000 a year - I mean, Barbara was over 15,000,

and Louise, 19,000, which is about 10.5 million in today's money.

So this is to Mrs Eleanor Gwynn for the support of herself

and Charles, Earl of Burford, that was her son.

And it's also your own title, cos you are a direct descendant, aren't you?

That's right, yes.

She does sound like someone I would truly like to meet.

Yes, she was a very modern character in many ways.

The public purse gave Nell and the rest a luxury lifestyle.

But they weren't embarrassed about it,

they made no attempt to hide themselves away.

-And this looks like Nell Gwynn lived here.

-She did.

Is this all her house?

Yes, it's now three, but that was all hers, yes.

-It was all Gwynn Towers.

-Yes!

They were happy to flaunt their riches.

Their brash and brazen behaviour was best spotted at Newmarket,

in the racing season - Restoration Central

for royal playboys and playgirls.

During these racing seasons, the King came to town.

Who did he bring with him?

The girls!

Les femmes.

The Queen came, she stayed at Audley End...

-So, she's a little bit out of the way?

-She's out of the way.

And here, Nell, who as we know was over the road from the Palace,

Barbara Castlemaine, Louise...

And what else was going on in the town?

Well, it was just pleasure, endless pleasure.

It really was like every cliche of the Restoration, if you like,

and it was all happening in this little town

whose native population was 600.

Can you imagine? And then, suddenly, this descends upon it.

Tell me about the gambling.

The sums were extraordinary.

-I mean, quite a lot of it was on the horses.

-That's Nell's favourite.

Nell used to gamble on the horses, yes.

Barbara Castlemaine had a gambling den.

The Duchess of Mazarin had a gambling den,

and, according to Pepys, I think on one night

Barbara lost £25,000, which would be...

-Is that a million pounds?

-That would be more a million.

And on another night won 15,

so she clawed some of it back, but not nearly enough.

We're really talking about the 17th-century Las Vegas, aren't we?

Yes! Twice a year it became, in a way, the capital of England.

The whole world came here.

The excesses displayed by Charles' mistresses

may have got him talked about and admired by some,

but not everything that was said was pleasant.

Just like today, celebrity was a double-edged sword.

We've been making it sound like Newmarket

and the whole world at the court was jolly good fun,

but, actually, there was a nasty undercurrent to the whole thing.

And some people were very aware of this,

like the diarist, John Evelyn.

He says that Charles II would have been an excellent prince,

had he been less addicted to women.

And Evelyn witnessed some pretty squalid scenes.

He saw Mrs Nellie, as he calls her, the impudent comedian,

having a bit of a ding-dong with the King,

who walks out, leaves her, goes instead to the Duchess of Cleveland - that's Barbara -

and Evelyn calls her "another lady of pleasure,

"and the curse of our nation."

By opening up the decadent world of his court, Charles also

opened it up to unprecedented condemnation and satire.

Only 30 years previously, the polemicist William Prynne

had published some criticism of Charles I's wife.

As a punishment, he had his ears cut off.

In the Restoration, though, Charles II was probably more worried

about keeping his own head attached than he was about a little mockery,

something with which Lord Rochester, a leading court rake,

was more than happy to oblige.

So, we've got to cross the rude words out of this

for family viewing.

We'll have to start right at the top, I think.

-The King of Sodom, his name is Bolloximian.

-Yes.

Bolloximian. That's got to go. We can't have the word "bollocks".

He's out.

Lord Rochester's not-so-subtly entitled play Sodom

wasn't intended for the wider public,

only for select members of the court.

That's what makes it so outrageous -

Rochester was being rude about the very people

who would have read his work, including the King.

And it's pretty strong stuff.

-Out.

-You definitely can't say the next one.

-Her name is Queen

-BLEEP

--gratia.

Which sort of means "free c-word".

I get what you mean.

That's Catherine of Braganza, who was Queen of England.

That's quite shocking, isn't it?

This is the young prince, and his name is Prickett.

We can't let that pass.

-If it was a sort of hedge it would be OK, but it's not.

-It's not.

Princess Swivia, who does a bit of swiving.

-Swiving, yes, which is

-BLEEP.

Yes. She's got to go.

The general of the army is called...

Immature, I know. His name is Buggeranthus.

That's James, Duke of York.

Lover of buggery?

It's sort of acceptable, today, is it? Bugger?

You old bugger? It sounds a little bit like a plant, to me.

Don't you think?

Maid of honour called...

-BLEEP

--adilla.

-Is that Barbara?

-That is Barbara.

It's got to go.

Clitoris - now that's just medical, isn't it?

It is, you might say like 'cly-tor-is'.

That's Louise, Duchess of Portsmouth.

That is the French mistress.

I think that'll cause sniggers in the fifth form, that's got to go.

We've lost nearly all of our characters as being too rude, I'm afraid.

This may all sound like smutty, juvenile filth,

but the play was actually a biting satire on the times.

Sodom, the title of the piece, refers to the biblical city,

whose population was punished for their lewd behaviour.

Writing it in 1680, following on from the plague

and the Great Fire of London, Rochester was implying

that Restoration England had suffered the same fate.

All because of the antics of Charles and his court.

Let's see Rochester's lasting epitaph for the King.

Yeah, this is, in fact, a satire on the King,

and in essence the King wrought his kingdom as his sexual desires would.

So, there's a beautiful little phrase here,

"His sceptre and his..." there's a dash, "..are of equal length."

-We know that means

-BLEEP,

-his sceptre and his

-BLEEP

are of a length, which is quite a compliment to the King, really.

-He's saying he's got a big one.

-Yes.

It's a brilliant piece of political insight, though, as well,

because as we know, if you wanted political favours

if you wanted access, intimacy with the King,

you went through one of his favourite mistresses.

-So, in one sense this statement is absolutely right.

-It's true.

Even by Restoration standards, it's incredible that Rochester

got away with little more than a slap on the wrist.

But he was a court insider, and Charles, ever the Merry Monarch,

saw the funny side of things.

Even so, Rochester's bawdy satires contained a very dangerous truth.

Charles' women weren't just powerful in the bedroom.

They were beginning to redefine the route through

the very corridors of power.

So, this is where the security begins.

Yes, this is where we at least have to be well-dressed,

Almost anybody can get into this first room,

the King's guard chamber, which is packed with people

waiting to see who's coming to the court and who's not.

It's basically celebrity watching.

'Before the Restoration, official court businesses

'was conducted front of house, with strict and public protocol.'

Look at all of these guys. We have checkpoints going on and on.

And you can see the layers and layers.

So, we will only get through if we're really important.

If we're a member of the King's close household

-or one of his ministers or counsellors.

-Thank you very much.

It reminds me of being at the airport, actually,

and going through all the different security procedures.

You get the sense of penetrating further and further in.

So, this is the top of the tree, it's the King's private closet.

This is where the King might do business,

look over papers, sign them, that kind of thing.

It's the heart of government, if you like.

Yes, but it's also where the King's public and private worlds meet.

So, we have what appears to be this very plain wall, luxurious.

But this hidden gib door which links the King's public and private world.

The secret door going to the secret STAIRS.

It's a real contrast, isn't it, to the grand, formal, painted front stairs?

Yes, it's nothing like as magnificent, but these are far more important.

This is where people are coming to meet the King

that he has decided are the people he wants to see.

-Including women.

-Absolutely, including his mistresses.

So, they have astonishing political power,

but they can't be seen to be influencing the King,

so this backstairs system allows for them to come and go,

gives them status and allows them to operate politically.

And it's almost the same that we have today.

So you might go and formally visit Downing Street

and drive up the front and be received in the downstairs,

public rooms, or you might go and have dinner with the Camerons

upstairs in the flat.

So, it's the same arrangement, and both are vital,

but the King can partly rule and control

by balancing these two public and private worlds.

I love the fact that this backstairs, it's not impressive,

it looks like you're not supposed to see it, really,

but, actually, it's one of the most important bits of the whole Palace.

Absolutely, it's the glue that holds the whole thing together.

The network of backstairs allowed Palace intrigue to flourish.

Behind the scenes whispers and bribes

had always played a part in court politics.

But "backstairs politics" was now coined as a phrase.

It was no secret that the mistresses

were it's most skilful operators.

If you were able to use the backstairs,

it gave you a real edge in court politics.

Mistresses like Barbara didn't want to just get into the King's bed,

they wanted to get his attention, ask him for favours,

and this is what made them so powerful, politically.

Barbara even brought down the Earl of Clarendon, the Lord Chancellor.

A hugely important figure in court politics,

but she wanted the King to get rid of him, and he did.

The result was that the Earl of Clarendon

hated Barbara with a vengeance.

He couldn't even bring himself to use her name.

He would just referred to her, rather sneeringly, as "the lady".

People recognised that finding favour with a mistress could be

a powerful political move, not just at home, but abroad.

The power and the influence that these mistresses have

is quite widely acknowledged.

The best example of this, perhaps, is Louise de Kerouaille, the French mistress.

She's actually planted in the British court by the King of France.

He wants to increase French influence at the British court.

He uses his secret weapon, he sends in Louise,

because he knows she's going to catch the eye of Charles II.

As the prominent politician Lord Halifax complained,

Charles lived with his ministers, as he did with his mistresses.

He treated them all the same way.

The political power of the mistresses brought its own risks.

The inner court circle had long been quietly disgusted that women

could bring down a member of the government

or influence the King on foreign policy.

But gradually, their criticism was spread more widely

through the flourishing popular press.

What's the significance of this little bit of paper?

It's a pamphlet, it's a new mode of communication.

A huge, new form of media of the 17th century?

You could absolutely say that.

It's making public information that wasn't available in print before,

and that makes it available to a much broader readership.

So, we have a big, new class of people in the later 17th century,

who are not at the top of society, they're in the middle of it,

but they have views on the King, on the courtiers, on the government.

Yeah, and that view begins to matter.

Politicians, MPs, begin to be conscious

of their representation in the press.

So, this is a dialogue between the Duchess of Portsmouth,

who's Louise, the French mistress, and Madame Gwin,

which is a fancy way of saying Nell Gwyn.

Louise is not well, and the pamphlet kind of celebrates her departure

because of what's seen as an inappropriate,

French, Roman Catholic influence upon the King.

Well, Nell Gwyn is saying, "You've had to go away cos you've got the pox."

That's not the smallpox, that's the great pox, isn't it?

-Venereal disease.

-Absolutely.

This is my favourite bit - Nell Gwyn says to Louise, the French mistress,

that she's, "A Jezebel of pride and malice,

"whose father had a hog sty for his palace."

And then Nell says,

"In my clear veins best British blood does flow,

"While thou like a French toadstool first did grow."

She says that she sprung up like a mushroom.

Calls her a "Mushroom-Duchess", sprung up in the night.

And she's got ulcers of venereal disease, which is why she's fleeing back to France.

So, it's pretty clear that Nell is good, Louise is bad.

Yes, I think the press isn't very kindly to women on the whole.

Gwyn says, "fame that never yet spoke well of woman".

The press is mostly written by men and read by men,

and femininity in this is actually a figure

for malign influence upon the government.

By the latter half of the 17th century,

pamphlets were widely and cheaply available

in the fashionable new hothouses for political debate - coffee shops.

As circulation increased, the mistresses

and the King himself came under increasingly ferocious

and personal attacks from anonymous hacks.

Now, some of these pamphlets got pretty close to the bone.

In 1668, London's traditional Shrove Tuesday riots

got out of hand and they burnt down lots of brothels.

This is a spoof petition from the prostitutes

whose business had been damaged,

and they've addressed it to "The most splendid, illustrious,

"serene and eminent lady of pleasure,

"the Countess of Castlemaine."

That's Barbara.

Now, I'm sure this made everybody laugh,

it's got a modern, tabloidy ring to it,

but it was dangerous for Barbara to be addressed as Britain's top prostitute.

The King was furious about it, and of course the implication is

that the Palace of Whitehall is the biggest brothel of them all.

Charles was under threat.

For the first time, the monarchy faced tabloid criticism

of a palpably modern sort.

But Charles was equally modern in his response -

he became his own spin doctor,

and the Merry Monarch proved to be a very cunning king.

Clearly, this hostility towards the mistresses was risky for the King,

but he was also quite good at exploiting it for his own purposes.

Sometimes he would play off one mistress against another,

and sometimes he would use them to send out political messages.

For example, if he was out with Louise,

the French Catholic one, and people said, "Oh, no, she's French,"

he would sometimes bring with him British Nell, too.

This cancelled it out and made it OK.

By ignoring the comments or spinning them to his own advantage,

Charles defeated the critics and he remained on the throne

for nearly 25 years, until his natural death,

the longest reigning 17th-century monarch.

And remarkably, his mistresses survived with him.

When Charles died in 1685, his last words were said to have been,

"Let not poor Nelly starve."

Her popularity ensured that, for the two remaining years of her life,

she went on receiving a state pension.

Although Louise remained a favourite during Charles' lifetime,

she didn't fare so well after his death.

Her assets were stripped from her and she retired back to France.

Well, she WAS French.

And as for Barbara, although she'd been the first,

the most formidable, the most durable Restoration mistress,

by the time of his death she'd been sidelined for several years.

As one of her enemies said, "You, too, Madam, will grow old."

But we don't have to feel too sorry for Barbara,

she still had her title, security for her children,

and the King give her one last job - he made her keeper of Hampton Court Palace.

It's not a bad little pad for your retirement.

They really impress me, these Restoration women.

They were a new type of woman, who could only have come forward

in the maelstrom melting pot of the 1660s.

In the next programme, I'm going to be looking at

the lives of women at home, behind closed doors...

-It is very, very...

-It's explicit!

THEY LAUGH

..when ordinary women were defined as either maids, wives or widows.

How did the extraordinary twists and turns of the 17th-century affect them?

And what happened if they stepped out of line?

MUFFLED SHOUTING

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