Moll Davis

Like her fellow actress, Nell Gwyn, Mary ‘Moll’ Davis’ roots are a bit of a mystery. Contemporary accounts disagreed on who her family were. Some said she was from Wiltshire and that her father was a blacksmith; others claimed that she was the illegitimate daughter of Thomas Howard, 3rd Earl of Berkshire, and that he was one of the men that dangled her under the king’s nose when Barbara’s favour with Charles was on the downturn.

Wherever she came from, by 1663 she had become one of the principal performers at the Duke’s Theatre in London. And though it is Nell that has endeared herself in popular memory and history as the actress who stole the king’s heart, Moll was on the scene long before Nell became the king’s courtesan.

A new class of mistress

Moll was the first commoner that the king openly took as a mistress. Charles had undoubtedly engaged the services of prostitutes or had one-off liaisons with low-born women before, but royal mistresses needed to be of a certain stock: aristocrats moving in the same circles as the king.

It was the Duke of Buckingham who proposed finding actresses who might take up the role of mistress. He was attempting to oust his cousin, Barbara Palmer, from power as he didn’t think she had been promoting his interests enough with Charles. The best course of action, he thought, was to look outside the now thinning crowd of noblewomen from which  the king had usually selected his playmates, and which was  much depleted, and into a pool of younger, less demanding and more yielding women. Charles loved the theatre and its women -- who were the first ever to be allowed to take jobs as thespians; so, indulging himself in the arms of the talented and glamorous actresses was a good fit for the king.

Three women were procured for the king: Jane Roberts (who had a very brief, but ultimately unsuccessful fling with the king), Nell Gwyn (who initially asked for £500 a year to be kept as the king’s mistress, which was deemed far too expensive), and Moll, who was renowned for her beautiful face and figure and her seductive performances on stage.

Moll and Charles began seeing each other casually from the summer of 1667. In November, the king attended a play that Moll was starring in, and it was suggested that it was her beautiful singing of the ballad ‘My lodging it is on the cold ground' that roused Charles to pursue her even more aggressively. By now the king was smitten, and plans were underway to elevate Moll to the position of a royal mistress. At the end of 1667 Charles made plans to set her up in a beautifully furnished house on Suffolk Street, close by to St James’ Park and Whitehall Palace, while Moll agreed to the payment of £200 a year to become his mistress.

Causing a Stir

The promotion of an actress to the position of royal mistress was the talk of the town, and it wasn’t long before Moll was boasting about her luck in theatre circles. It seemed that her new role quickly went to her head. Samuel Pepys wrote on the 11 January 1668 that a fellow actress, Mrs Knepp, told him that Moll “is for certain going away from the Duke’s house, the King being in love with her; and a house is taken for her, and furnishing; and she hath a ring given her already worth 600l.” A few days later his wife Elizabeth complained that Moll was acting like “the most impertinent slut, she says, in the world; and the more, now the King do show her countenance” and that this “homey jade” was flashing her beautiful new ring to everybody at the theatre.

Back at court, Moll was putting just about everybody’s noses out of joint, especially Queen Catherine and Barbara, who could not believe that Charles would stoop so low as to take a commoner as a mistress. Though she had now left the Duke’s Theatre, Moll, renowned for her singing, dancing, and guitar playing skills, still starred in occasional court performances. At the end of May 1668, she put on a performance at a court event that was so provocative that Queen Catherine got up and left halfway though, furious that she was being made to watch her husband’s mistress dance in such a suggestive way. Barbara, who had recently taken another lover (actor Charles Hart, Nell Gwyn’s ex!) to spite Charles for setting up with Moll, was equally upset, and Pepys reported on 31 May that Barbara was “now mightily out of request, the King coming little to her, and thus she mighty melancholy and discontented.”

Charles, of course, was mesmerised. Anything that Moll lacked in terms of status, intelligence, or conversation, she more than made up for with her sexual magnetism, beauty and dancer’s body. The king was infatuated by his fun and sexy actress companion, who was a welcome change from the high-maintenance and demanding Barbara.

Mad as an Actress

But why stop at one actress, when you could have two? Moll was soon to have a rival for the king’s attentions.

Nell Gwyn was back in town after taking up with Lord Buckhurst in the countryside for several weeks and, by early 1668, even with Moll freshly established as the king’s newest mistress, Charles’s men were pursuing Nell Gwyn again on behalf of the king,

Long before Moll and Nell were rivals for the king’s affections, they were counterparts in competing theatre companies; Moll at the Duke’s Theatre and Nell at the King’s Theatre. Though Nell has been remembered as one of the most famous and most talented comedy actresses of the Restoration, it was Moll’s singing and dancing that made her stand out from the rest. Pepys could not resist comparing the two, writing, after seeing a play starring Moll, that her dancing was “infinitely beyond” a similar performance that Nell had recently put on. 

Their professional rivalry soon turned sour when they were jostling for first place with the king. Nell, not above resorting to foul play, conjured up a plan to ensure that Moll fell from favour. One day, when she learned that Moll had an appointment to spend the evening with the king, Nell invited her round for afternoon tea. But the cakes that were served had been baked with a special ingredient: jalap, a powerful laxative! That evening, while in the king’s company, the jalap worked its magic, and Moll suffered the full force of the spiked sweet treats. After that, Moll and Charles’ relationship cooled somewhat; it was reported that she was sent off with an annual pension of £1000, and room was made in the king’s bed for Nell.

It’s not you it’s me

Though Moll’s relationship with the king did slow down, it may have been less to do with the unfortunate jalap incident, and more to do with the fact that he was simply growing tired of her and had already taking more of an interest in Nell, who, by comparison was an absolute riot. While Moll did remain in the king’s favour, their relationship became far more casual. She was also starring in performances and plays at the court, securing herself as one of the top actresses in England, as well as retaining her house and pension from the king, and even an occasional place in his bed.

It wasn’t until 1673 that Moll gave birth to their first (and Charles’ final) child -- a daughter named Mary. The fact that she was therefore in the king’s bed during the beginning of Louise-mania is testament to Moll’s staying power and her relationship with Charles. In December 1680, their daughter Mary was granted the title of Lady Mary Tudor, in recognition of her royal connection and his fondness for her mother. Moll had lived in the Suffolk Street townhouse that Charles had set her up in for 9 years but, in 1676, just a few years after Mary was born, they were moved to a much grander nearby house on the south-west side of St James Square, close to the park and Whitehall palace.

Back to her roots

In 1686, almost two years after Charles’ death, Moll married James Paisible, a musician and composer, who she had worked with in the court masque, Calisto, in 1675. Paisible had been employed by James II as a member of his music group, and he regularly performed at the king’s Catholic chapel. The dramatist Sir George Etheredge cattily wrote that in marrying a musician, Moll had, “given proof of the great passion she always had for music, and Monsieur Peasible has another bass to thrum than that he played so well upon."

After James II was unseated as king, the Paisibles spent time at his court-in-exile in St Germain-en-Laye, France. They began a chancery suit over in England to retrieve some of the money that Moll was owed, probably from her pension allocated by Charles II. After a few years abroad, they were successful in their case and managed to get passports back to England in 1693, where Paisible resurrected his royal musical career as composer to the future Queen Anne and her husband, while Moll lived (as far as we know) a fairly quiet life, far from the hustle and bustle of court, whose days were far behind her. 

After that, the record on Moll goes quiet, but we could assume that she enjoyed an artsy, decadent, fun life as she had always wanted. Moll is believed to have died at her home in Dean Street – then, as now, a fashionable and affluent area of London’s west end for theatre, shopping, dining, and nightlife. She was buried at St Anne’s church in Soho on 24th February 1708.

Although Moll may be one of the lesser known mistresses –she is never considered one of Charles II’s  favourites in the same way that Barbara, Nell and Louise were – she certainly caused a stir when she first became the king’s concubine and appears to have remained a friend to Charles until his death. Their daughter went on to become a famous actress too, following in the footsteps of her mother and her bohemian-at-heart father.

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