Janet Jackson did not invent the ‘Wardrobe Malfunction’ Margaret Jackson managed one in the 1650’s while being painted by Sir Peter Lely.

Sir Peter Lely is among my favourite artists, not because of his artistic ability which is rather variable, but for all the interest he brings to a visit to a stately home. With my wife in charge of the guidebook as we walk round the rooms and corridors I try and spot the Peter Lely’s and get my wife to check if I am right. As he lived from 1618 to 1680 and was very prolific there are few big houses without one or two. The trick is that all his faces have a resemblence to each other and in the case of minor gentry they all got the same face with different clothes. The best instance was at Audley End House, near Saffron Walden in Essex , which has stewards who are both extremely helpful and well informed. One steward come round with me on a Lely spotting tour and while all those I said were Lelys were indeed Lelys, some other Lelys I missed because the old fox hadn’t used the Lely standard face. I’ll put a post up about Audley End House , a place steeped in history.

Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland.

Barbara Villiers was the daughter of William, 2nd Viscount Grandison and his wife Mary. In 1659 she married Roger Palmer but shortly afterwards she became the mistress of Charles II. In 1661 she and her husband were created Earl and Countess of Castlemaine. Barbara Villiers was the King’s leading mistress until 1668, although their liaison probably continued periodically for several more years. Much to the Queen’s distress, Villiers was made a Lady of the Bedchamber, a position she held until 1673. She was made Duchess of Cleveland in her own right in 1670. The King acknowledged five of her children as his own. The child shown here is almost certainly her eldest son, Charles Fitzroy, later created Duke of Southampton and then Duke of Cleveland. Her other sons were also created Dukes, and her daughters given the rank of daughters of Dukes.

Nell Gwynn.

Though it is over 330 years since she sold oranges to audiences at the King’s Theatre in London, then became the most popular actress in England and finally the mistress of King Charles II, Nell Gwyn’s name is still familiar to most people - and it can only be because of a personality which was delightful in every way: ‘pretty, witty Nell’, as Pepys called her, charmed not only the King but his subjects - who cordially disliked most of his other mistresses, in particular the Catholic Frenchwoman Louise de Keroualle. When crowds booed Nell’s carriage, thinking she was Louise, she leaned out of the window and called ‘I am the Protestant whore!’
She was never ashamed of her position, and never ceased to delight the King - who grew very bored indeed with Louise, and with his earlier mistress Barbara Villiers. And she never attempted, as they did, to interfere in politics. The King was greatly relieved - though he was a master politician, he tried hard to keep state affairs separate from his private life- to which he gave a great deal of time and energy, with the help of his pimp-in-ordinary, a Mr Chiffinch, who arranged the schedule by which his mistresses moved in and out of his palace at Whitehall

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