England under Charles II. from the Restoration to the Treaty of Nimeguen, 1660-1678: English History from Contemporary Writers
Taylor, W. F.
1889
The King's Mistresses.
Ibid, continued. | |
The duke of Buckingham upon that broke with her and studied to take the kingdom from her by new amours; and because he thought a gaiety of humour would take much with the king, he engaged him to entertain two players, one after another, Davies and Gywnne. The first did not keep her hold long; but Gwynne, the indiscreetest and wildest creature that ever was in a court, continued to the end of the king's life in great favour, and was maintained at a vast expense. The duke of Buckingham told me that when she was first brought to the king, she asked only five hundred pounds a year and the king refused it. But, when he told me this about four years after, he said she had got of the king above sixty thousand pounds. She acted all persons in so lively a manner and was such a constant diversion to the king, that even a new mistress could not drive her away. . . . The king had another mistress that was managed by lord Shaftesbury, who was the daughter of a clergyman, Roberts; in whom her first education had so deep a root, though she fell into many scandalous disorders, with very dismal adventures in them all, yet a principle of religion was so deep laid in her, that though it did not restrain her, | |
90 | yet it kept alive in her a constant horror of sin that she was never easy in an ill course and died with a great sense of her former ill life. The duchess of Cleveland, finding that she had lost the king, abandoned herself to great disorders, one of which, by the artifice of the duke of Buckingham, was discovered by the king in person, the party concerned [John Churchill, afterwards Duke of Marlborough,] leaping out of the window. |