Lord Cavendish, that Lady Rachael Russell records the King's command that Nelly should refuse to see them.[1] Monmouth was endeavouring to regain his situations, of which he had been properly deprived by his father, and Cavendish was urging the claims of the Protestants on behalf of the famous Bill for excluding the Duke of York from the succession to the crown. Nelly, it will be remembered, had already identified herself with the Protestant interest, but the regard with which she was treated by King James is ample evidence that she had never abused her influence, in order to prejudice Charles II. against his brother. Indeed she would appear to have been among the first who foresaw the insane ambition of Monmouth. She is said to have called him "Prince Perkin" to his face, and when the Duke replied that she was "ill-bred,"—"Ill-bred," retorted Nelly, "was Mrs. Barlow better bred than I?"[2]
I have introduced the mother of Nelly by name to the reader, and I have now to record her death. "We hear," says the 'Domestic Intelligencer' of the 5th of August, 1679, "that Madam Ellen Gwyn's
