This is Nell Gwynn, mistress to Charles II of England. Born in a brothel, she became a prostitute an

This is Nell Gwynn, mistress to Charles II of England. Born in a brothel, she became a prostitute and then an actress (the two weren’t really mutually exclusive at the time) before catching the eye of the king. Her wit and high spirits kept her close to Charles until his death.

Her sharp tongue was legendary. When her chief rival, Louise de Kéroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth, cattily remarked that Nell was dressed richly enough to be a queen, Nell shot back, “You are certainly right, Madam, and I am whore enough to be a duchess!”

Once when her coachman got into a fight with another man who had called her a whore, Nell intervened by saying, “I am a whore. Find something else to fight about!”

Her most famous quip came about when she was passing through the streets of Oxford in her coach and a mob, mistaking her for her rival, the Catholic Louise de Kéroualle, began to shout at her. Nell put her head out the window, smiled, and said, “Good people, you are mistaken; I am the Protestant whore.”