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Lucy Walter

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This is an intermediate page for the Lucy Walter.

Stephensonia

She is the mother of the Duke of Monmouth; maybe one of her maids gave birth to the wee Dutch Captain van Hoek -- "the Merry Monarch" had 350 illegimate offspring by one count.

Authored entries

Community entry: Lucy Walter

The Anglo-Welsh mistress of Charles II for a short time who bore the eldest of the king's twelve illigitimate children, later made the Duke of Monmouth. After his father's death, Monmouth led the unsuccessful rebellion against James II which resulted in his defeat and death and the execution or transportation of hundreds of his supporters in the West Country after the Bloody Assizes presided over by the notorious Judge Jeffreys.

She entered the fringes of London society through family connections and, at the age of 17, was the mistress of Algernon Sidney, a Roundhead officer. In the Netherlands, she met his younger brother, a Royalist exile, Robert Sidney. It was through Robert that she met Charles II.

Lucy Walter was described by the diarist John Evelyn as "a most beautiful strumpet". Lucy claimed that the baby boy who was born when she was nineteen years old was the result of this short liason with Charles II. Doubts were cast as to whether the child was fathered by Charles or Robert Sidney but, when the boy was nine years old, he was removed from his mother's control by Charles. Lucy died shortly after, aged only 28.

Lucy was the first of a large company, which also included Lady Byron, Lady Castlemaine (Mrs Barbara Palmer, née Villiers, later he duchess of Cleveland), the duchess of Portsmouth (who had been the king's sister's French maid) and Hortensia Mancini, the niece of Cardinal Mazarin, the chief minister of France. Nell Gwynne was the only one of Charles' women who wasn't a Catholic.

Charles was married to the Portuguese Catherine of Braganza. She was no beauty – John Evelyn reported that her front teeth stuck out – and she and the king had no children. This lack of offspring eventually resulted in the crisis begun by the accession of the Catholic James II on Charles death, which led to the Glorious Revolution.