“You’ve got to be impressed by how these women played the system”

Ellie Cawthorne: First of all, why did it matter who Charles II was sleeping with?

Linda Porter: Charles’s love life was a reflection of the luxury and glamour – but also the corruption – of the royal court at the time. The extramarital relationships that he enjoyed so unashamedly are important because they show that the king cared very little for public opinion. He avoided the general public like the plague, and really wasn’t embarrassed at all about what people might think of these women or their role in his life. Charles’s reign was a time of wars and disasters – plague, the Great Fire of London, a mini Ice Age – and through it all, his continued consorting with women was both a distraction and a way of bluntly saying: “I don’t care what you think.” He even seems to have used the fact that he produced so many illegitimate children to show the world that, while he didn’t have any legitimate heirs, he was still a very virile monarch.

But this behaviour did threaten to compromise his position – Charles was not nearly so popular as a lot of people think he was. The fact that he was throwing huge amounts of money at his mistresses went down very badly, as you can imagine. And for some people, particularly in the cultured, political and literary classes, the entire tenor and outlook of behaviour at his court was deemed repulsive and reprehensible. One aspect of monarchy is having a certain mystique, and Charles’s behaviour blew that mystique