Lucy Walter or Lucy Barlow (c. 1630 – 1658) was a mistress of King Charles II of England and mother of James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth. She is believed to have been born in 1630 or a little later at Roch Castle near Haverfordwest, Wales into a family of middling gentry. Rumours that she had married the king during his exile (and thus that she was Queen of England) appeared by the mid-1650s, but the question was later seized upon during the Exclusion Crisis, when a Protestant faction wished to make her son the heir to the throne, while the king denied any marriage, and supported the claim of his brother, the Duke of York.
Read more about Lucy Walter: Origins, Courtesan or Queen?, In Books and Literature, In Film & Television
Famous quotes containing the words lucy and/or walter:
“No mate, no comrade Lucy knew;
She dwelt on a wide moor,
MThe sweetest thing that ever grew
Beside a human door!”
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
“And they be these: the wood, the weed, the wag.
The wood is that which makes the gallow tree;
The weed is that which strings the hangman’s bag;”
—Sir Walter Raleigh (1552?–1618)