Page:Catherine of Bragança, infanta of Portugal, & queen-consort of England.djvu/270

230 to do with." She flew at him with passion, and informed him he was a fool, " for if he were not he would not suffer his business to be carried on by fools that did not understand them, and cause his best subjects and those best able to serve him to be imprisoned."

It was perhaps the direct result of this battle that Charles this year publicly acknowledged Mary Davis and Nell Gwynn as his mistresses. Lady Castlemaine reviled him for these connections with all the power of her stinging tongue. She told him he betrayed his own '* mean low taste," and called Nell Gwynn a ** pitiful, strolling actress." Floods of tears went with these recriminations. She threatened to tear her children in pieces before his eyes, and set fire to the palace. At the same time her constant in- _^elities disgusted Charles, and the contrast of her behaviour and manners with the charming gentle- ness and refinement of Frances Stuart no doubt com- pleted his weariness of her. When Charles became aware of her intrigue with John Churchill, and found that she was supplying her lover with those immense sums which helped to found the family of Marl- borough, he merely remarked that he forgave Churchill, since he had only become Lady Castle- maine's lover in order to keep himself from starving.

Mary Davis, who had been acting at the Duke's Theatre at the beginning of this year, was now accommodated by the King with a house in Suffolk Street. She had a "mighty fine coach," according to Pepys, who saw her step into it at the door of her own house. She wore a ring the King had given her worth ;^700, and she was a source of profound mortification to Lady Castlemaine, quite as much as to Catherine. At the play the King was seen gazing, enraptured, at a particular box, and "The Lady," craning to see the object of his notice, and 'finding it to be Moll Davis, ** looked like fire."