Kéroüalle, Louise de (1649–1734)

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Kéroüalle, Louise de (1649–1734)

Duchess of Portsmouth and Aubigny and mistress of the English king Charles II. Name variations: Louise de Keroualle or Kerouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth; Louise de Querouille or Louise de Querouaille; (in France) variously spelled Queroul, Kéroual and Kéroël. Born Louise Renné in 1649 (some sources cite 1650) in Brittany; died in 1734; daughter of Guillaume de Penancourt and Marie de Plaeuc de Timeur;mistress of Charles II, king of England (r. 1649–1685); children: (with Charles II) Charles Lennox (1672–1723), duke of Richmond.

Born in 1649, Louise de Kéroüalle was the daughter of Guillaume de Penancourt and Marie de Plaeuc de Timeur , impoverished nobles in Brittany. The name Kéroüalle was taken from an heiress whom her ancestor François de Penhoët had married in 1330, but the form Querouailles was commonly used in England, where it was derisively corrupted into Carwell, Carewell, or Cartwheel. In France, it was variously spelled Queroul, Kéroual and Kéroël.

Early in life, Louise was placed in the household of Henrietta Anne , duchess of Orléans, who was the sister of England's king Charles II and sister-in-law of France's king Louis XIV. Saint-Simon asserts that, since Louise's parents could offer no dowry for their daughter, they threw her at Louis XIV in the hope that she would be promoted to the place of maîtresse en titre (royal mistress).

In 1670, Louise accompanied the duchess of Orléans across the Channel on a visit to Charles II at Dover. The sudden death of Henrietta Anne because of peritonitis, dubiously attributed to poison, left Kéroüalle unprovided for, but the king placed her among the ladies-in-waiting of his own queen Catherine of Braganza . It was later said that Louise had been selected by the French court to captivate the king of England, but there seems to be no evidence for this. Yet when the king seemed interested, the affair was energetically pushed by the French ambassador, Colbert de Croissy, and England's secretary of state, Lord Arlington. Louise, who concealed her wit and her strong will under an appearance of weakness, showed her true colors only after she had established a strong hold on the king's affections. When her son Charles, ancestor of the dukes of Richmond, was born in 1672, Charles II gave her the title duchess of Portsmouth, a pension of £10,000 per annum, and a suite of 24 rooms in Whitehall, described as having "ten times the richness and the glory of the Queen's."

Nicknamed Fubbs by Charles and Squintabella by her competitor Nell Gwynn , Louise set about providing Charles with comfortable domesticity, excellent food, and a sympathetic ear, and manipulated him with enough temper tantrums that Gwynn also dubbed her the "weeping willow." In so doing, it is said that Louise dominated Charles. "No body shall come to Court or to any preferment," said Louise, "but those who will be my creatures." Unpopular

with the populace of England, Louise returned to France following the king's death and lived at Aubigny, beleaguered by debt. She died in Paris on November 14, 1734, "very old, very penitent and very poor," wrote Saint Simon. (See also Gwynn, Nell.)