Nell Gwyn

Eleanor ‘Nell’ Gwyn (1650–1687) was one of the first actresses on the English stage and the best-known mistress of Charles II. Raised in a London slum, she sold oranges in a King's Company playhouse before becoming an actress. Samuel Pepys praised her comic parts and called her ‘pretty, witty Nell’, and she won acclaim in a breeches role in 1667.

She became the king's long-standing mistress and bore him two sons; the elder, Charles, was later made Earl of Burford and Duke of St Albans. Struck by two strokes in 1687, she died that November.