- Lucy Walter
Lucy Walter or Lucy Barlow (c. 1630 – 1658) was the mistress of the English king Charles II and mother of the Duke of Monmouth. She is believed to have been born in 1630 or a little later at
Roch Castle nearHaverfordwest ,Wales into a family of middling gentry.Origins
Lucy Walter was the daughter of William Walter of
Haverfordwest and wife, Elizabeth Protheroe, a Welsh noblewoman descended from the second marriage ofThomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk . The Walters were a Welsh family of good standing, who declared for the king during the Civil War. Roch Castle was captured and burned by the parliamentary forces in 1644, and Lucy Walter found shelter first inLondon and then at theHague .Life as a courtesan
She entered the fringes of London society through family connections, and at the age of seventeen was the mistress of
Algernon Sidney , aRoundhead officer related to theEarl of Leicester . In the Netherlands she met his younger brother, a Royalist exile, Robert Sidney, with whom she began an affair. It was through Robert that she met Charles II.There is little evidence to support the story that she was the first wife of Charles II, and it is certain that he was not her first lover in royal circles. The intimacy between him and this "brown, beautiful, bold but insipid creature," as
John Evelyn called her, who chose to be known as "Mrs Barlow" (Barlo), lasted with intervals until the autumn of 1651, and Charles claimed the paternity of a child born in 1649 whom he subsequently createdDuke of Monmouth .After her relationship with Charles II ended for unknown reasons, she led a poor and dissolute life, which possibly resulted in her premature death at Paris in September/October 1658. The cause of death is unknown.
A daughter, Mary (b. 1651), whose father some sources claim to have been
Theobald Taaffe 1st Earl of Carlingford [Robin Clifton, ‘Walter, Lucy (1630?–1658)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004] and othersHenry Bennet, 1st Earl of Arlington , married William Sarsfield.In Books and Literature
* The novelist
Elizabeth Goudge published a novel about Lucy, [http://www.elizabethgoudge.org/Postings/Child%20From%20The%20Sea.htm The Child from the Sea] , in 1970
* Her descendent, Lord George Scott, published a biography called "Lucy Walter Wife or Mistress". London: George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd, 1947.References
*1911|article=Lucy Walter|url=http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Lucy_Walter
Notes
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