The Most Ravishing Women of All Time: Four – Nell Gwyn

Introduction

“Pretty, witty Nell,” as Samuel Pepys, English diarist of the 17th Century called her, was the embodiment of the English Restoration after the English Revolution. A true Londoner and the first female star of English theatre, Nell bore two sons to restored English monarch King Charles II. Hers is known as a Cinderella-tale, one of rags-to-riches from those exciting times when the British banished the strict religious years of Puritanical rule in the late 17th Century.

Image via Wikipedia

Buxom and Fun

Eleanor, “Nell” Gwyn was a Londoner who was named after her mother and raised in that city during a time when England faced revolutions, plagues and turmoil. Into this hot-pot this lovely child was born and her destiny was to be on the stage. By the time she was an adult the theatres were being re-opened and a new English theatre boomed. Biographers oft name Nell as being, “low-born,” although her father was a Captain of the Navy qualifying Nell to be from the ranks of Britain’s prosperous new middle-class benefiting from the riches flowing into England from Virginia and the New World. But, it was her beauty and comic allure that set Nell apart; she was talented and could play the lead female roles in the theatres of post-revolutionary England.

Revolution and Black Death

It was as if a veil was lifting from the cultural life of England after the Revolution of 1641 -1651 that imposed strict religious rules upon all. Oliver Cromwell’s Puritan Revolution was a flop. The Parliamentarians had tried and hung King Charles I, installed the Parliament as supreme, but as history shows, the end result failed. In 1660, Charles II was restored King, albeit a Constitutional one. Also, up until the Great Fire of London of 1666, bubonic plague racked England. Nell Gwyn rose to prominence then, as a beauty and a talent, in the refreshed cultural life of this miserable kingdom. After all this tempest the English needed laughter, beauty and drama – Nell Gwyn was the one to bring it on.

Oranges Poranges