Women of England

by Bartlett Burleigh James

A period of industrial depression subtracts, in the estimation of the people, from the merits of a government, however noble may be its policy; and for twenty years previous to the Restoration the condition of the masses of the people had steadily been growing worse, so that there was a widespread longing for more provisions and less piety. Before the Civil War, the state of the people had reached high-water mark; so vast had been the increase of England's commerce, owing to the strife among the neighboring powers, that the revenue from customs had almost doubled, and the blessings of prosperity were felt among all classes. Sir Philip Warwick even asks us to believe that there was scarcely any cobbler in London whose wife did not include a silver beaker among the furnishings of her modest sideboard. During the Commonwealth, pauperism increased to an alarming extent, so that at the time of the coming of Charles ten thousand men and women were languishing in the debtors' prisons, and thousands of others were living in continual dread of the sheriff's executions.

The condition of English society at the coming of Charles II. explains somewhat the tremendous outburst of popular enthusiasm with which that event was greeted. The people on the village green received him with morris dances to the music of pipe and tabor, and with other rustic festivities which for so long a time had been banished as sinful engagements. At some of the towns through which the triumphal procession passed, young damsels to the number of hundreds lined the way and strewed flowers in the path of the king. The women were especially noticeable for their active participation in all the popular demonstrations. It was as if they had felt so heavily the repression of the rigorous theocracy of Cromwell that they were ready to accept to the fullest the pledge of better times which the return of Charles gave them, and to pass from fuller liberty into the wildest license. The king himself, by his own example, lost no time in establishing the new standards of conduct. Even the reckless spirit of the Londoners was somewhat surprised when it was bruited abroad that the king, who was received as a Divine dispensation to a waiting people, had slunk out of the palace the first night after his return, under cover of darkness, in the furtherance of one of the unsavory intrigues which made his life and his court notorious in the annals of English history. The sensibilities of the English people were not seriously shocked, however,—we are speaking of the Royalist following and not of the Puritans,—and in the rebound from the first amazement at the revelation they received of the kingly character, they were ready to follow his lead; and so English social life during the reign of Charles was greatly corrupted. As the key to the times is to be sought in the tone of the court, the unwelcome task must be fulfilled in the interests of history, as it relates to woman, of setting forth the actual conditions which were instituted and prevailed at the court of Charles II.

The king came to England fresh from the court of Louis XIV., and tainted by all the vices which made that court infamous. For the first time, England became widely affected by the gross iniquities which had for a long while been a familiar fact of the noble circles of French society. So long as England imported from France only its dress goods, jewelry, and novelties, the influence exerted upon it by its continental neighbor touched society in only a superficial way; but when England's "Merrie Monarch" brought over with him the low standard of French morals, England paid tribute to France in a more serious way and modelled its conduct after that of the more frivolous people. The reign of Charles brings to view as the principal fact of the times the personality of the monarch himself, not because he was a strong man, but because he was so thoroughly weak in his character and abandoned in his conduct. We have nothing to do with political or constitutional measures, but, in passing judgment upon the state of society, we are constrained to say that the reign of King Charles marked a distinct retrogression, and, in its effect upon the status of woman, is notable for the distinction it bestowed upon the courtesan class. The honoring of such characters discounted greatly the gain for the higher ideals of womanhood which had been secured by the Puritans.

The woman whom Charles had signalized by his favor immediately upon his entrance into London was known simply as Barbara Palmer until, by the ratio of her decline in morals, she was elevated in honors and received the titles of Countess of Castlemaine and Duchess of Cleveland. It needs not the saying that beauty and graces of manner and of form were her chief recommendations to the royal notice. This woman, who became notorious throughout England,—and who, upon the retirement of Clarendon, whose dismissal she had secured, stood upon the balcony of the palace in her night attire to rain down upon his head curses and vile epithets,—was the woman who, through her influence over Charles, occupied a commanding position in England. Her amours before coming under the royal notice absolve the king from responsibility for her moral ruin, but the offence of thrusting her before the English people and the contamination exerted upon society by her presence and conduct at court are what make up the indictment of womanhood against him. Although many glimpses are afforded in the gossipy news of the corrupt court of this courtesan's imperious domination of Charles, nowhere is the story told more simply than by Pepys in his Diary. He says: "Mr. Pierce, the surgeon, tells me that, though the king and my Lady Castlemaine are friends again, she is not at White Hall, but at Sir D. Harvey's, whither the king goes to her; but she says she made him ask her forgiveness upon his knees, and promise to offend her no more so, and that indeed she hath nearly hectored him out of his wits."

Such incidents were not confined to the knowledge of the court circles, but percolated all classes of society, and not only furnished the newsmongers with racy scandal, but set in a whirl the light heads of many foolish women who without such incitement from court example might have remained models of virtue.

Another of the king's favorites—and indeed one who was, unlike the disagreeable countess, a favorite as well with the English people, and whose name has not yet lost its popularity—was Nell Gwynn. Pretty, witty, and open-hearted, her face an index of the simplicity and purity of character which the unfortunate circumstances of her birth and bringing-up denied her, a veritable gem of womankind lost amid the flotsam and jetsam of a coarse age, she is to be regarded less as a sinner than as one sinned against, although she herself, perhaps, seldom paused to reflect upon the moral value of her actions.

"How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame

Which, like the canker in a fragrant rose,

Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name."