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List Of English Royal Mistresses
{{Short description, none This article contains a list of notable English royal mistress, English Royal mistress, royal mistresses. Henry I of England, Henry I *Henry I of England#With Gieva de Tracy, Gieva de Tracy *Henry I of England#With Ansfride, Ansfride (born c. 1070) *Henry I of England#With Sybil Corbet, Lady Sybilla Corbet of Alcester (1077 – after 1157) *Edith Forne, Edith FitzForne *Nest ferch Rhys, Princess Nest ferch Rhys (c. 1073 – after 1136) *Henry I of England#With Isabel de Beaumont, Isabel de Beaumont (c. 1102 – c. 1172) Henry II of England, Henry II * Rosamund Clifford (before 1150 – c. 1176):) * Ida de Tosny was a royal ward and mistress of Henry II Edward III of England, Edward III *Alice Perrers (c. 1348 – 1400) Edward IV of England, Edward IV *Jane Shore *Elizabeth Lucy Henry VIII of England, Henry VIII * 1515-1520 : Elizabeth Blount, Bessie Blount (c.1501 – 1540), mother of his only acknowledged illegitimate child, Henr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English Royal Mistress
In the English court, a royal mistress is a woman who is the lover of a member of the royal family, specifically the king. She may be taken either before or after his accession to the throne. Although it generally is only used of females, by extrapolation, the relation can cover any lover of the monarch whether male or female. Queen Elizabeth I is said to have many male favorites although it is not known whether the relationships were sexual or not. Monarchs have had an incentive to take mistresses in that they generally made dynastic marriages of convenience, and there was often little love in them. Beyond the physical relationship, the royal mistress has often exercised a profound influence over the king, extending even to affairs of state. Her relationship with the queen could be tense, although some wives appear to have felt little jealousy in the matter. House of Normandy Henry I Henry I had a succession of mistresses before and during his reign, including Nest ferch Rh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anne Boleyn
Anne Boleyn (; 1501 or 1507 – 19 May 1536) was Queen of England from 1533 to 1536, as the second wife of King Henry VIII. The circumstances of her marriage and of her execution by beheading for treason and other charges made her a key figure in the political and religious upheaval that marked the start of the English Reformation. Anne was the daughter of Thomas Boleyn, 1st Earl of Wiltshire, and his wife, Lady Elizabeth Howard, and was educated in the Netherlands and France, largely as a maid of honour to Queen Claude of France. Anne returned to England in early 1522, to marry her Irish cousin James Butler, 9th Earl of Ormond; the marriage plans were broken off, and instead, she secured a post at court as maid of honour to Henry VIII's wife, Catherine of Aragon. Early in 1523, Anne was secretly betrothed to Henry Percy, son of Henry Percy, 5th Earl of Northumberland, but the betrothal was broken off when the Earl refused to support their engagement. Cardinal Thoma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Winifred Wells
Winifred Wells was a courtier at the Stuart Restoration court as a Maid of Honour to Queen consort Catherine of Braganza. She was also one of the many mistresses of King Charles II of England.Antonia Fraser, ''King Charles II'', Book Club Associates, originally published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson Ltd., London, 1979, p.285 Samuel Pepys refers to her as the King's mistress in his diary, and she also features in Philibert de Gramont's famous ''Mémoirs''. At the royal court Wells was born about 1642 as the youngest daughter of Gilbert Wells of Twyford, Hampshire.John Harold Wilson, ''Court Satires of the Restoration'', p.7, Google Books, retrieved 7 June 2010 The Wells family members were staunch Royalists during the English Civil War. She came to court early in the reign of King Charles II as she was one of Queen Catherine's original Maids of Honour. She became a mistress to King Charles sometime in 1662. Winifred is referred to in Philbert de Gramont's ''Mémoirs'' in which he wr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Moll Davis
Mary "Moll" Davis (c. 1648 – 1708), also spelt Davies or Davys, was a courtesan and mistress of King Charles II of England. She was an actress and entertainer before and during her role as royal mistress. Early life Mary Davis was born in Westminster, as a presumed illegitimate child of Thomas Howard, 3rd Earl of Berkshire. The eminent diarist Samuel Pepys wrote of Mary as "… a bastard of Collonell Howard, my Lord Barkeshire." Her parentage is also attributed to Thomas' elder brother Charles Howard. Mary's birth is often contradicted, though it is believed to be around 1648. In 1663 Mary had installed herself as an actress in the Duke's Theatre Company, and boarded with the company's manager, Sir William Davenant.Olive Baldwin and Thelma Wilson, ''Davis avies; married name Paisible Mary oll(c.1651–1708), actress and royal mistress'' in ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (Oxford University Press, 2004) There she quickly became a popular singer, dancer and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nell Gwyn
Eleanor Gwyn (2 February 1650 – 14 November 1687; also spelled ''Gwynn'', ''Gwynne'') was a 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 long-time 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) (the surname is pronounced ''boh-clair''). Charles was created Earl of Burford and later Duke of St Albans. 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. On the other hand, an account published in ''The New Monthly Magazine and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hortense Mancini
Hortense Mancini, Duchesse de Mazarin (6 June 1646 – 2 July 1699), was a niece of Cardinal Mazarin, chief minister of France, and a mistress of Charles II, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland. She was the fourth of the five famous Mancini sisters, who, along with two of their female Martinozzi cousins, were known at the court of King Louis XIV of France as the Mazarinettes. Early life, family and marriage One of five sisters noted for their great beauty, she was born ''Ortensia'' in Rome to Baron Lorenzo Mancini, an Italian aristocrat. After his death in 1650, her mother, Girolama Mazzarini, brought her daughters from Rome to Paris in the hope of using the influence of her brother, Cardinal Mazarin, to gain them advantageous marriages. Hortense's four famous sisters were: * Laura (1636–1657), who married Louis de Bourbon, duc de Vendôme and became the mother of the famous French general Louis Joseph de Bourbon, duc de Vendôme, * Olympe (1638–1708), who married Princ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Louise De Kérouaille, Duchess Of Portsmouth
Louise Renée de Penancoët de Kéroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth (5 September 1649 – 14 November 1734) was a mistress of Charles II of England. Early life Louise was the daughter of Guillaume de Penancoët, Seigneur de Kéroualle (d. 1690), and his wife (married on 27 February 1645) Marie de Ploeuc de Timeur (d. January 1709), paternal granddaughter of René de Penancoët, Seigneur de Kéroualle et Villeneuve, and his wife (married on 12 October 1602) Julienne Emery du Pont-l'Abbé, Dame du Chef du Bois, and maternal granddaughter of Sébastien de Ploeuc, Marquis de Timeur, and his wife (married on 8 January 1617) Marie de Rieux (d. 1628). The name Kéroualle was derived from an heiress whom an ancestor François de Penhoët had married in 1330. The Kérouaille family were nobles in Brittany, and their name was so spelt by themselves. The form "Quérouaille" was commonly used in England. All are derivations of the original Breton name Kerouazle, which is the most common for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Barbara Palmer, 1st Duchess Of Cleveland
Barbara Palmer, 1st Duchess of Cleveland, Countess of Castlemaine (née Barbara Villiers, – 9 October 1709), was an English royal mistress of the Villiers family and perhaps the most notorious of the many mistresses of King Charles II of England, by whom she had five children, all of them acknowledged and subsequently ennobled. Barbara was the subject of many portraits, in particular by court painter Sir Peter Lely. Barbara's first cousin Elizabeth Villiers (later 1st Countess of Orkney 1657–1733) was the presumed mistress of King William III. Early life Born into the Villiers family as Barbara Villiers, in the parish of St. Margaret's, Westminster, Middlesex, she was the only child of William Villiers, 2nd Viscount Grandison, a half-nephew of the 1st Duke of Buckingham, and of his wife Mary Bayning, co-heiress of Paul Bayning, 1st Viscount Bayning. On 29 September 1643 her father died in the First English Civil War from a wound sustained on 26 July at the stormin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lucy Walter
Lucy Walter (c. 1630 – 1658), also known as Lucy Barlow, was a Welsh noblewoman, the first mistress of King Charles II of England and mother of James, Duke of Monmouth. During the Exclusion Crisis, a Protestant faction wanted to make her son heir to the throne, fuelled by the rumour that the king might have married Lucy, a claim which he denied. Life Ancestry and early life Lucy Walter was born into Welsh gentry as the daughter of William Walter (died 1650) and his wife, born Elizabeth Prothero (died 1652), daughter of John Prothero and niece of John Vaughan, 1st Earl of Carbery. She was probably born in 1630 at her family's home, Roch Castle near Haverfordwest in Pembrokeshire, Wales, and had two brothers, Richard and Justus. She received no formal education but learned etiquette. As her parents had a strained relationship, they separated in 1640 when Walter was 10 years old. She, her mother and her brothers went to live with her maternal grandmother in London. She may hav ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles II Of England
Charles II (29 May 1630 – 6 February 1685) was King of Scotland from 1649 until 1651, and King of England, Scotland and Ireland from the 1660 Restoration of the monarchy until his death in 1685. Charles II was the eldest surviving child of Charles I of England, Scotland and Ireland and Henrietta Maria of France. After Charles I's execution at Whitehall on 30 January 1649, at the climax of the English Civil War, the Parliament of Scotland proclaimed Charles II king on 5 February 1649. But England entered the period known as the English Interregnum or the English Commonwealth, and the country was a de facto republic led by Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell defeated Charles II at the Battle of Worcester on 3 September 1651, and Charles fled to mainland Europe. Cromwell became virtual dictator of England, Scotland and Ireland. Charles spent the next nine years in exile in France, the Dutch Republic and the Spanish Netherlands. The political crisis that followed Cromwell's death in 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anne Stafford, Countess Of Huntingdon
Anne Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon (''née'' Lady Anne Stafford) (c. 1483–1544) was an English noble. She was the daughter of Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, and Lady Catherine Woodville. She was first the wife of Sir Walter Herbert and then George Hastings, 1st Earl of Huntingdon, and served in the household of King Henry VIII's daughter, the future Queen Mary I. Life Born around 1483, Lady Anne Stafford was the daughter of Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, and Catherine Woodville Catherine was a sister of Elizabeth Woodville, Consort of Edward IV, making Anne a first cousin of Elizabeth of York. Anne had two brothers, Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham, and Henry Stafford, 1st Earl of Wiltshire; and a sister, Elizabeth Stafford, Countess of Sussex. In 1483, Richard III executed her father for treason, following his part in the uprisings which became known as Buckingham's rebellion. Anne's mother remarried in 1485 to Jasper Tudor, later Duke of B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mary Shelton
Mary Shelton (1510-1515 – 1570/71) was one of the contributors to the Devonshire manuscript. Either she or her sister Madge Shelton may have been a mistress of King Henry VIII. Family Both Margaret and Mary were daughters of Sir John Shelton and his wife Anne, the sister of Thomas Boleyn, 1st Earl of Wiltshire. Thomas Boleyn was the father of Anne Boleyn, second Queen consort to Henry VIII of England. Margaret and Mary were thus first cousins of the Queen. Princess Mary sent her New Year's Day gifts of a sum of money, 7 shillings 6 pence, in January 1537 and 1540. Mary wrote poems, and it was said she was chided "for writing 'ydill poesies' in her prayerbook". She was part of a social group which included the poets Sir Thomas Clere (d. 14 April 1545), Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, and Thomas Wyatt, with all of whom she was romantically linked. In an epitaph he composed at the death of Sir Thomas Clere, Surrey identified Mary as Clere's "beloved". Mary's two closest frie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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