Drawing on a wealth of evidence by contemporary observers, such as diaries, memoirs, letters, gossip and satire, Scandalous Liaisons: Charles II and His Court recounts the king’s many mistresses, including Barbara Villiers and Nell Gwyn. Here, writing for HistoryExtra, Pritchard introduces you to the pleasure-seeking world of Charles II’s court…

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Most people think of Charles II as the ‘merry monarch’, with his perky Cockney mistress, Nell Gwyn, at the centre of a court remarkable for its gaiety, extravagance, and amorous entanglements. The poet John Dryden, always agreeable to the ruling classes, described it as a “laughing, quaffing and unthinking time”, but it is clear that there was widespread disapproval of this ‘brave new world’, as is suggested by the title of poet Samuel Butler’s Satire upon the Licentious Age of Charles the Second. Samuel Pepys recorded the king dancing to a popular tune of the time, ‘Cuckolds All A-Row’, which well suggests the cheery, heartless, amoral world of the royal court.

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