Charles II: The King and His Court
A King Shaped by Exile
Charles II was thirty when he returned to England in 1660. He had spent eleven years in exile, much of it short of money, in France, the Spanish Netherlands and the Dutch Republic. The experience left him pragmatic, charming, distrustful and determined never to go ‘on his travels’ again. Contemporaries described him as tall, dark, witty and easy in conversation; the diarist John Evelyn admired his manners but worried about his morals. Behind the charm was a politically realistic king who valued discreet management over open confrontation.
The Court at Whitehall
The English court in 1660 was not a palace but a sprawling complex of around 2,000 rooms beside the Thames at Whitehall. Whitehall Palace mixed government offices, private royal apartments, kitchens, chapels and lodgings for around a thousand permanent staff and hangers-on. Public rooms were open to anyone gentlemanly enough to look the part; private rooms were guarded. Access to the king moved by stages, from the public rooms to the bedchamber, where only a handful of courtiers were admitted. Reaching the bedchamber was the surest sign of political favour.
Whitehall Palace had around 2,000 rooms and roughly 1,000 staff. Charles II’s court was organised by access — from public chambers to the private bedchamber. Reaching the inner rooms meant political favour; being kept in the outer rooms meant exclusion.
Catherine of Braganza
In May 1662 Charles married Catherine of Braganza, a Portuguese Catholic princess. Her dowry was extraordinary: around £300,000 in cash, the cities of Bombay and Tangier, and trading rights in Brazil and the East Indies. The marriage was politically successful as a Portuguese alliance against Spain. It was personally a sadness. Catherine miscarried at least three times and never produced a living heir; the lack of a Protestant heir was the seed of the Exclusion Crisis fifteen years later. Catherine endured Charles’s public mistresses with quiet dignity and lived in England until her widowhood, returning to Portugal in 1693.
Royal Mistresses as Political Actors
Charles had at least seven acknowledged royal mistresses, and fathered at least twelve illegitimate children. They were not private matters — they were court appointments. Barbara Villiers, Countess of Castlemaine, dominated the court 1660–70 and was rumoured to influence appointments. Nell Gwyn, an actress from Drury Lane, became his most popular mistress, born poor and politically harmless — her crude wit pleased crowds. Louise de Kéroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth, arrived from France in 1670 with the encouragement of Louis XIV; she remained close to Charles for fifteen years and was widely (and rightly) seen as a French diplomatic asset. Court mistresses were not signs of frivolity but channels of patronage: who got near them got jobs, contracts and titles.
It is tempting to picture the Restoration court as a long carefree party after Puritan austerity. The reality was darker. Theatre and print were censored under the Licensing Act of 1662 and Sir Roger L’Estrange was appointed Surveyor of the Press in 1663. Many courtiers were quietly Catholic, in a country where Catholicism was illegal. Mistresses had French diplomatic links. Below the wit, the same religious and political tensions that had caused the Civil War were unresolved. Tim Harris and other modern historians have argued the ‘merry monarch’ label hides a politically skilful king navigating real party formation.
Court Fashions and the Vest
Charles brought back French and Spanish fashions from his exile. Long curled wigs replaced the Puritan crop. Heeled shoes, lace, and slashed sleeves marked status. In October 1666, in the middle of the Plague-and-Fire crisis, Charles personally introduced the vest — a long sleeveless garment worn under a coat — as a deliberately English alternative to the French doublet. The diarist Samuel Pepys recorded the king’s announcement and bought one within days. The vest is the ancestor of the modern waistcoat. Beyond clothing, the court favoured Italian opera, French formal dance, racing at Newmarket and tennis. Charles had a real-tennis court built at Whitehall and was often beaten by the better players.
The Court as a Political Machine
Court life mattered politically because it was the engine of patronage. Offices in the royal household, pensions, peerages and military commissions were all distributed through the court. The Earl of Danby, Lord Treasurer 1673–79, used systematic court patronage to manage Parliament — estimates suggest he had perhaps 200 MPs receiving Crown money in some form. Court mistresses negotiated for their kin. Foreign ambassadors lobbied through their countrymen. The court was therefore not separate from politics but the inner stage on which politics happened.
Charles II was the most physically active king England had seen in a century. He had a real-tennis court built at Whitehall and another at Hampton Court; Pepys recorded watching him play on early mornings. He swam in the Thames at Battersea, walked at speed through St James’s Park (a long-running joke at court was that no minister could keep up), and rode at his Newmarket racing stables, which he visited twice a year for the spring and autumn meets. Sociable habits had political uses: a courtier who walked with the king for an hour got a hearing that no formal audience could match. Even leisure was a route to access.
Charles II’s court at Whitehall was the engine of patronage. Mistresses such as Barbara Villiers, Nell Gwyn and Louise de Kéroualle were not private matters but channels of access — Louise de Kéroualle in particular was openly a French diplomatic asset arriving with Louis XIV’s encouragement.