Eleanor Gwyn (also spelled Gwynn, Gwynne, Gwin; 2 February 1650 – 14 November 1687) was an English stage actress and celebrity figure of the Restoration period. Praised by Samuel Pepys for her comic performances as one of the first actresses on the English stage, she became best known for being a longtime mistress of King Charles II of England.
Called "pretty, witty Nell" by Pepys, she has been regarded as a living embodiment of the spirit of Restoration England, and has come to be considered a folk heroine, with a story echoing the rags-to-royalty tale of Cinderella. Gwyn had two sons by King Charles: Charles Beauclerk (1670–1726) and James Beauclerk (1671–1680). Charles Beauclerk was created Earl of Burford and Duke of St Albans; Murray Beauclerk, 14th Duke of St Albans was her descendant.
Early life The details of Gwyn's background are somewhat obscure. A horoscope in the Ashmolean manuscripts gives her date of birth as 2 February 1650.Peter Cunningham, The Story of Nell Gwyn, ed. Gordon Goodwin (London, 1903), pp. 3–4. On the other hand, an account published in The New Monthly Magazine and Humorist in 1838 states that she was born about 1642. The earlier date of birth was asserted without documentation, but various scholars have supported both the earlier and later dates.Edward J. Davies, "Nell Gwyn and 'Dr Gwyn of Ch. Ch.'", The Bodleian Library Record, 24(2011):121–28, at 124–27. The eight-year difference between these two possible birth years can offer different readings of what Gwyn achieved during her lifetime.
The obscurity surrounding her date of birth parallels numerous other obscurities that run through the course of her life. The information we have about Gwyn is collected from various sources, including the plays she starred in, satirical poetry and pictures, diaries, and letters. As such, much of this information is founded on hearsay, gossip, and rumour, and must therefore be handled with caution.
Her mother Ellen (or a variant, being referred to in her lifetime as "Old Madam", "Madam Gwyn" and "Old Ma Gwyn") was born, according to a monumental inscription, in the parish of St Martin in the Fields, which stretched from Soho and Covent Garden to beyond Mayfair, and is thought to have lived most of her life there in the West End. Most of her biographers believe her to have been "low-born". Her descendant and biographer Charles Beauclerk calls this conjecture, based solely on what is known of her later life. Madam Gwyn is sometimes said to have had the maiden surname Smith. This appears to be derived from a fragmentary pedigree by Anthony Wood that shows signs of confusion between different Gwyn families and it has not been firmly established.Edward J. Davies, "Nell Gwyn and 'Dr Gwyn of Ch. Ch.'", The Bodleian Library Record, 24(2011):121–28, at 124. Nell's mother is said to have drowned when she fell into the water at her house near Chelsea. She was buried on 30 July 1679, in her 56th year, at St Martin-in-the-Fields.Peter Cunningham, The Story of Nell Gwyn, ed. Gordon Goodwin (London, 1903), p. 125.
Nell Gwyn is reported in a manuscript of 1688 to have been a daughter of "Thos [Thomas] Guine a Capt [captain] of ane antient fammilie in Wales", but the statement is doubtful as its author does not seem to have hesitated to create or alter details where the facts were unknown or perhaps unremarkable. There is some suggestion, from a poem dated to 1681, again of doubtful accuracy, that Gwyn's father died at Oxford, perhaps in prison. It has been proposed, based on the pedigree by Anthony Wood, that Gwyn was a granddaughter of Edmund Gwyn, Canon of Christ Church from 1615 to 1624. But administration records show that Edmund Gwyn died unmarried. Moreover, Wood did not give a forename for Gwyn's supposed grandfather and there are reasons to think that the "Dr ... Gwyn" in the pedigree was intended to be not Edmund Gwyn but rather his brother Matthew. In either case, the available evidence indicates that Nell Gwyn was not a member of their family.Edward J. Davies, "Nell Gwyn and 'Dr Gwyn of Ch. Ch.'", The Bodleian Library Record, 24(2011):121–28, at 121–23.
Gwyn was assigned arms similar to those of the Gwynnes of Llansannor, but her specific connection to that family, if any, is unknown.
Three cities make the claim to be Gwyn's birthplace: Hereford, London (specifically Covent Garden) and Oxford. Evidence for any of the three is scarce. The fact that "Gwyn" is a name of Welsh origin might support Hereford, as its county is on the border with Wales; the Dictionary of National Biography notes a traditional belief that she was born there in Pipe Well Lane, renamed Gwynne Street in the 19th century. There is also the legend that Nell Gwyn chose red coats for the pensioners of Chelsea Hospital, which she allegedly influenced King Charles to found, because she remembered that similar coats had been worn at Coningsby Hospital in Hereford. London is the simplest choice, perhaps, since Gwyn's mother was born there and that is where she raised her children. Alexander Smith's 1715 Lives of the Court Beauties says she was born in Coal Yard Alley in Covent Garden and other biographies, including Wilson's, have followed suit. Her noble descendant Beauclerk pieces together circumstantial evidence to favour an Oxford birth.
One way or another, Gwyn's father seems to have been out of the picture by the time of her childhood in Covent Garden, and her "dipsomaniac mother, [and] notorious sister", Rose, were left in a low situation. She experimented with cross-dressing between 1663 and 1667, going under the name "William Nell" and adopting a false beard; her observations informed a most successful and hilarious character interpretation acting as a man on the stage in March 1667. Old Madam Gwyn was by most accounts an alcoholic whose business was running a bawdy house (or brothel). There, or in the bawdy house of one Madam Ross, Nell spent at least some time. It is possible that she herself was a child prostitute; Peter Thomson, in the Oxford Illustrated History of Theatre, says it is "probable". But a rare mention of her upbringing from the source herself might be seen to contradict the idea. A 1667 entry in Pepys's diary records, second-hand, that:Here Mrs. Pierce tells me ... that Nelly and Beck Marshall, falling out the other day, the latter called the other my Lord Buckhurst's whore. Nell answered then, "I was but one man's whore, though I was brought up in a bawdy-house to fill strong waters to the guests; and you are a whore to three or four, though a Presbyter's praying daughter!"Pepys's diary for 26 October 1667 at www.pepys.info It is not out of the question that Gwyn was merely echoing the satirists of the day, if she said this at all.
Various anonymous verses are the only other sources describing her childhood occupations: bawdyhouse servant, street hawker of herring, oysters, or turnips, and cinder-girl have all been put forth. Tradition has her growing up in Coal Yard Alley, a poor slum off Drury Lane.
Around 1662, Nell is said to have taken a lover by the name of Duncan or Dungan. Their relationship lasted perhaps two years, and was reported with obscenity-laced acidity in several later satires; "For either with expense of purse or p---k, / At length the weary fool grew Nelly-sick".From The Lady of Pleasure, quoted in Beauclerk, p. 40 Duncan provided Gwyn with rooms at a tavern in Maypole Alley, and the satires also say he was involved in securing Nell a job at the theatre being built nearby.
During the English Commonwealth era, pastimes regarded as frivolous, including theatre, had been banned. Charles II had been restored to the English throne in 1660, and he reinstated the theatre. One of his early acts as king was to license the formation of two acting companies and to legalise acting as a profession for women. In 1663, the King's Company, led by Thomas Killigrew, opened a new playhouse, the Theatre in Bridges/Brydges Street, which was later rebuilt and renamed the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.
Mary Meggs, a former prostitute nicknamed "Orange Moll" and a friend of Madam Gwyn's, had been granted the licence to "vend, utter and sell oranges, lemons, fruit, sweetmeats and all manner of fruiterers and confectioners wares" within the theatre. Orange Moll hired Nell and her elder sister Rose as scantily-clad "orange-girls", selling small, sweet "china" oranges to the audience inside the theatre for a sixpence each. The work exposed her to the theatre and to London's higher society: this was "the King's playhouse", and King Charles frequently attended performances. The orange-girls also served as messengers between men in the audience and actresses backstage; they received tips for this role, and some of these messages ended in sexual assignations. Whether this activity rose to the level of pimping may be a matter of semantics.
Actress
The new theatres were the first in England to feature actresses; earlier, women's parts had been played by boys or men. Gwyn joined the rank of actresses at Bridges Street when she was 14 (if we take her birth year to be 1650), less than a year after becoming an orange-girl.
If her good looks, strong clear voice, and lively wit were responsible for catching Killigrew's eye, she still had to prove herself clever enough to succeed as an actress. This was no easy task in the Restoration theatre; the limited pool of audience members meant that very short runs were the norm for plays and 50 different productions might be mounted in the nine-month season lasting from September to June. She was reputed to have been illiterate.
She was taught her craft of performing at a school for young actors developed by Killigrew and one of the fine male actors of the time, Charles Hart, and learned dancing from another, John Lacy; both were rumoured by satirists of the time to be her lovers, but if she had such a relationship with Lacy (Beauclerk thinks it unlikely), it was kept much more discreet than her well-known affair with Hart.
Much as in the dispute over her date of birth, it is unclear when Gwyn began to perform professionally on the Restoration stage. It is possible that she first appeared in smaller parts during the 1664–65 season. For example, The Bodleian Manuscript of The Siege of Urbin has the part of Pedro (Melina, a maid servant in breeches) played by a "Mrs Nell". Additionally, "Nelle" was intended to play the small role of Paulina, a courtesan, in Killigrew's Thomaso, or The Wanderer in November 1664, but the play seems to have been cancelled. The use of "Mrs" would imply that Gwyn was more likely born in 1642 than 1650 as it indicates an actress over the age of 21 (not her marital status) for which certain roles would be more suitable. Nonetheless, since players of less substantial parts are seldom mentioned in cast lists or playgoers' diaries of the period, an absolute date for Gwyn's debut cannot be ascertained.
Whatever her first role as an actress may have been, it is evident that she had become a more prominent actress by 1665. It is around this time when she is first mentioned in Samuel Pepys' diary, specifically on 3 April 1665, while attending a play, where the description "pretty, witty Nell" is first recorded. This unusual use of only her first name implies that Gwyn had made herself known both on the stage and off as her celebrity status started to emerge. Her first recorded appearance onstage was in March 1665, in John Dryden's heroic drama The Indian Emperour, playing Cydaria, daughter of Moctezuma and love interest to Cortez, played by her real-life lover Charles Hart.