Emily on Moll Davis

Moll Davis (Emily Masterson)

                          “Moll Davis.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 28 Sept. 2018,

                                   en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moll_Davis.

Molly Davis, also known as Moll Davis, was one of the mistresses of King Charles II. She was born in 1648 in Westminster. She was said by Samuel Pepys, a famous diarist, to be “a bastard of Collonell Howard” She was a singer, dancer, and comedian who became an actress in the Duke’s Theatre Company in the early 1660s. She and the king met in a coffee house or a theatre around 1667. She was known for being very greedy, and she liked to show off her expensive jewelry. Somewhere between 1668 and 1673, Davis had a daughter to King Charles II and named her Lady Mary Tudor. Davis’s daughter also became famous on her own. None of the websites that I found go into detail about what she was famous for, but she passed away in 1726. Not long after Mary Tudor was born, King Charles II ended things with Moll Davis. Nobody knows exactly why, but there are rumors that it had something to do with Nell Gwyn who happened to be competing with her for affection from the King. It has been said that Nell Gwyn thought that Moll Davis was devious and only using the King for his money. When the King left her, he decided to give her a large sum of annual money for life. King Charles II also bought her a house. Four to five years later, in October of 1673, Moll Davis bought a new house. In Saint James’s Square. In December 1686, Moll Davis married a man named James Paisible who was a French musician and composer. In 1708, Moll Davis died. I could not find how she died anywhere.

Works Cited

Revolvy, LLC. “‘Moll Davis’ on Revolvy.com.” Revolvy, www.revolvy.com/page/Moll-Davis.

“Encyclopedia.” The Diary of Samuel Pepys, www.pepysdiary.com/encyclopedia/9899/.

“Mistresses of King Charles II: Moll Davis.” Stuarts Weekly, 8 July 2016,

stuartsweekly.wordpress.com/2016/06/17/mistresses-of-king-charles-ii-moll-davis/.