CHARLES II. (of England, "The Merry Monarch"), 1630-1685. "_Don't let poor Nelly starve!_" The king referred to Margaret Symcott, known as Eleanor Gwynne or Nell Gwynn. She commenced life as an orange-girl in the streets of London. Later she sang in taverns, and after a time became a popular actress in the Theatre Royal. She is remembered as the mistress of Charles II. She seems to have been a very kind and good-hearted woman. She was faithful to her royal lover, and upon his death retired from the world and lived in seclusion.[12]
[12] In his _History of the Stage_, Curll states that Nell first captivated the king by her manner of delivering the epilogue to Dryden's _Tyrannic Love: or, The Royal Martyr_. The tragedy was founded upon the story of the martyrdom of St. Catherine, by way of compliment to Catherine of Braganza. She personated _Valeria_, the daughter of Maximin, tyrant of Rome.
CHARLES V. (of France, called "The Wise." He was the son of John II. who was made prisoner by the Black Prince at Poitiers), 1337-1380. "_Ah, Jesus!_"
CHARLES IX. (of France, second son of Henry II. and Catharine de' Médici), 1550-1574. "_Nurse, nurse, what murder! what blood! Oh! I have done wrong. God pardon me!_" The king referred, no doubt, to the massacre of St. Bartholomew, which he occasioned. Voltaire tells us his dying remorse was so great that "blood oozed from his pores."[13] There are recorded other examples of bloody sweat. It is said of a man at Lyons that when sentenced to death a bloody sweat covered his body. In the Medical Gazette, December, 1848, is an account by Dr. Schneider of some Norwegian sailors who, in a tremendous storm, sweated blood from extreme terror. See also the British Critic, 1831, p. 1. When our Saviour bore the sins of the world in the Garden of Gethsemane, "his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground." (Luke xxii., 44.)
[13] The massacre of St. Bartholomew lasted seven days, during which more than 5,000 persons were slain in Paris, and about 50,000 in the country. During all this season of murder, the king betrayed neither pity nor remorse, but fired with his long gun at the poor fugitives across the river; and on viewing the body of Coligni on a gibbet, he exulted with a fiendish malignity. In early life this monster had been noted for his cruelty: nothing gave him greater pleasure than cutting off the heads of asses or pigs with a single blow from his couteau de chasse. After the massacre, he is said to have contracted a singularly wild expression of feature, and to have slept little and waked in agonies. He attributed his thirst for human blood to the circumstance of his mother having at an early period of his life familiarized his mind with the brutal sport of hunting bullocks, and with all kinds of cruelty.--_Winslow's Anatomy of Suicide, p. 52, note._