"Pray good people be civil, I am the Protestant whore" was Nell Gwyn's cheeky retort to the masses pushing around her coach in the mistaken belief that it was that of the Duchess of Portland, the Catholic Louise de Keroualle.

Eleanor "Nell" Gwyn (or Gwynn or Gwynne) (2 February 1650 – 14 November 1687) was a long-time mistress of King Charles II of England, she has been called a living embodiment of the spirit of Restoration England and has come to be considered a folk heroine, with a story echoing the rags-to-royalty tale of Cinderella.



Nell's father seems to have been out of the picture by the time of her childhood in Covent Garden, and her "dipsomaniac mother, [and] notorious sister," Rose, were left in a low situation. Old Madam Gwyn was by most accounts an obese brandy-swigging alcoholic whose business was running a bawdy house (a brothel). There, or in the bawdy house of one Madam Ross, Nell would spend at least some time. It is possible she worked herself as a child prostitute; Peter Thomson, in the Oxford Illustrated History of Theater, says it is "probable".

Mary Meggs, a former prostitute nicknamed "Orange Moll" and a friend of Madam Gwyn's, had been granted the license to "vend, utter and sell oranges, lemons, fruit, sweetmeats and all manner of fruiterers and confectioners wares," within the theater. Orange Moll hired Nell and her older sister Rose as scantily clad "orange-girls", selling the small, sweet "china" oranges to the audience inside the theater for a sixpence each. What the girls collected beyond that - and by what means - was none of Moll's concern. The work exposed her to multiple aspects of theater life and to London's higher society: this was after all "the King's playhouse", and Charles frequently attended performances. The orange-girls would also serve as messengers between the men in the audience and the actresses backstage; they received monetary tips for this role and certainly some of these messages would end in sexual assignations. Whether this activity rose to the level of pimping may be a matter of semantics. Some sources think it also likely that Gwyn prostituted herself during her time as an orange-girl.

Tags: List Of Famous Female Prostitutes, Famous Female Sex Offender, List Of Sexiest Women In Human History, Sexiest Women History, Sexiest Women, sex tape leaked, sex tapes leaked, sex tape, Famous Celebrity Sex Tapes, Famous Celebrity Sex Tape, new, number, post, blog, health, magic, luck, masterzico, world, money, subscribe, Famous Survivor Celebrities Of Sex Abuse, Famous Female Serial killers, The Erotic Methods of Execution Of Women, The Firing Squad: Taking the Bullit