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Royal Liaison · London, Greater London

Banqueting House, Whitehall (Charles II's court)

The last standing fragment of Whitehall Palace, the sprawling warren where the Merry Monarch kept his court and his mistresses — Barbara Villiers chief among them — sometimes within corridors of the Queen's own apartments. The palace burned in 1698; the gossip proved more durable.

StatusDocumented history
DateRestoration court, 1660s–80s
The peopleCharles II, Barbara Villiers, Lady Castlemaine, the Restoration court
The siteBanqueting House, Whitehall (Historic Royal Palaces)
Coordinates51.50417, -0.12583 (confidence 5/5)

The story

When Charles II returned in 1660, he brought with him an appetite that eleven years of Puritan rule had only sharpened — and set it up at Whitehall Palace, the most sexually candid court in English history. The diarist John Evelyn called the King "addicted to women," and Charles spent his reign proving it.

He kept a remarkable roster of mistresses — Barbara Villiers, Louise de Kérouaille, Moll Davis, Hortense Mancini, Nell Gwyn — and publicly acknowledged fourteen illegitimate children by seven women, ennobling son after son. Yet with his loyal, childless queen, Catherine of Braganza, he produced no legitimate heir at all. The Earl of Rochester mocked him to his face as a "merry monarch, scandalous and poor," and somehow kept his head.

Almost all of Whitehall Palace burned in 1698. The Banqueting House — Inigo Jones, 1622, with Rubens's ceiling glorifying the Stuarts — is the great survivor. It is also where Charles's father was executed in 1649: the son grew up knowing precisely what the crown could cost.

More stories at this spot

The couplet that didn't cost a head

The Earl of Rochester, the court's great libertine poet, wrote of his own king: "Restless he rolls from whore to whore, / A merry monarch, scandalous and poor." Insulting the monarch in verse was risky sport, but Charles — who rather enjoyed being written about — let it stand. The line has outlived every flattering portrait of him.

The dukedom from Drury Lane

Nell bore Charles two sons. The elder became Earl of Burford and then Duke of St Albans — a title his descendants hold to this day. It is one of the few English dukedoms that traces, in an unbroken line, straight back to a girl who sold oranges in a theatre pit.

Sources

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Documented history

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