Frances Jennings was loved by the dashing Dick Talbot, who was accounted the finest figure and the tallest man in the kingdom, but she offended him by her partiality for the lady-killer Jermyn. She was soon disgusted by this empty coxcomb, and in 1665 was married to George Hamilton, brother of the author of the Grammont “Memoirs.” After the death of Hamilton, the widow married her first lover Talbot, afterwards created Duke of Tyrconnel. Subsequent to the death of her second husband, she visited London, and hired a stall at the New Exchange in the Strand, where, dressed in a white robe and masked with a white domino, she maintained herself for a time by the sale of small articles of haberdashery. Thus her second and more notorious adventure caused her to be known as the “White Milliner.”

This notice of the ladies of the Court of Charles II. may be concluded with a brief mention of the two actresses,—Nell Gwyn and Moll Davis.

Pepys’s first mention of the former is under date April 3rd, 1665, where he calls her “pretty witty Nell.” He was always delighted to see her, and constantly praises her excellent acting, yet sometimes he finds fault, for instance—“Nell’s ill-speaking of a great part made me mad.”[270] She disliked acting serious parts, and with reason, for she spoilt them.[271] Pepys mentions on January 11th, 1667–68, that the King had sent several times for Nell, but it was not until some time after that she left the stage finally, and became a recognized mistress of the King. Peter Cunningham tells us, in his “Story of Nell Gwyn,” that had the King lived she would have been created Countess of Greenwich. James II. attended to his brother’s dying wish: “Do not let poor Nelly starve,” and when she was outlawed for debt he paid her debts. Her life was not a long one, and she died of apoplexy in November, 1687, in the thirty-eighth year of her age.

Moll Davis it is well known charmed the King by her singing of the song, “My lodging is on the cold ground,” in the character of the shepherdess Celania in Davenant’s “Rivals,” a play altered from “The Two Noble Kinsmen,” and the Duke of Buckingham is said to have encouraged the King’s passion for her in order to spite the Countess of Castlemaine. She was also a fine dancer, and greatly pleased Pepys on more than one occasion. On March 7th, 1666–67, he expresses the opinion that her dancing of a jig in boy’s clothes was infinitely better than that of Nell Gwyn. About a year after this, when Moll Davis had been “raised” to the position of King’s mistress, she danced a jig at court; and the Queen being at this public exhibition of one of her rivals in her own palace, got up and left the theatre.[272]

After the ladies come the male courtiers, but these butterflies of the court do not figure very prominently in the “Diary.” Rochester is occasionally mentioned, as is Henry Jermyn rather oftener. Buckingham appears more frequently, but then he set up for a statesman. He was one of the most hateful characters in history, and as one reads in the “Diary” the record of his various actions, the feelings of disgust and loathing that they inspire are near akin to hatred. He gave counsel to the King at which Charles recoiled; he showed himself a coward in his relations with Lord Ossory, and his conduct towards his wife proves that he was not even a gentleman. Grammont calls Buckingham a fool, but he was more of a knave than a fool, for he was too clever for us to be able to despise him. He seems to have exerted the fascination of the serpent over those around him, and the four masterly hands that have drawn his portrait evidently thought it worthy the devotion of their greatest care. Walpole says of these four famous portraits: “Burnet has hewn it out with his rough chisel; Count Hamilton touched it with that slight delicacy that finishes while it seems but to sketch; Dryden caught the living likeness; Pope completed the historical resemblance.”[273]

In conclusion, some mention must be made of those who did not take a prominent position at court, but who nevertheless exerted considerable influence in that corrupted circle, such as the Chiffinches, Bab May, and Edward Progers, with all of whom Pepys had constant communication. Thomas Chiffinch was one of the pages of the King’s bedchamber, and keeper of his private closet. He died in 1666, and was succeeded in his employments by his brother William, who became a still greater favourite of the King than Thomas, and was the receiver of the secret pensions paid by the court of France to the King of England. Progers had been banished from Charles’s presence in 1650, by an Act of the Estates of Scotland, “as an evil instrument and bad counseller of the King.” Baptist May, Keeper of the Privy Purse, had a still worse rebuff than this, for when he went down in state as the court candidate for Winchelsea, he was rejected by the people, who cried out that they would have “No court pimp to be their burgess.”[274] It would not be fair, however, to throw all the obloquy upon these understrappers, for we have already seen that the bearers of historical names could lend themselves to perform the same duties.

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