Mistresses

Mistresses examines the women whose relationships with Charles II shaped the culture and politics of the Restoration court. Lucy Walter, Barbara Villiers, Frances Teresa Stuart, Nell Gwyn, Louise de Kérouaille, Moll Davis and Hortense Mancini entered royal life from very different social and national backgrounds. Their access to the king could produce wealth, titles and influence, but it also exposed them to public hostility, court rivalry and dependence on Charles’s favour.

Porter places these relationships beside the experience of Catherine of Braganza, Charles’s childless queen, and the succession crisis created by his illegitimate children and Catholic brother. Plague, fire, war, espionage and the Exclusion controversy form the political setting for lives often reduced to scandal. The book treats the women as individual actors whose households, patronage and international connections helped define Restoration England.