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A nice lady from Iowa recently asked me, “What is voter suppression?”
I hemmed and hawed a bit, mostly because I figured most voter suppression is aimed at black voters. However, there aren’t many black people in Iowa,* so I had to come up with an answer that was “case specific.” That is, I had to frame it in a way that made sense to someone with her “purer” mindset. That is, to someone not that familiar with “diversity.” Which turned out to be way more complicated and time-consuming than I thought.
So in the meantime I offer up this reprise of “Nell Gwynn, Protestant Whore.”
That idea came from a post I did in March 2015, “When adultery was proof of ‘loyalty.” I based the original post on one of Harry Golden‘s short pieces in his book Only in America. Harry’s column “dealt with the English Civil War, the execution of King Charles I, the Puritan Regime under Oliver Cromwell, and the Restoration of Charles II.” That is, Charles II of England.
Briefly, England’s Puritans under Oliver Cromwell – seen at left – executed Charles II’s father (Charles I) in 1649. Son Charles fled to a long exile in France, and 11 years later – after Cromwell died – the English people were heartily sick of Cromwell’s Puritan regime. They welcomed back Charles II with “tumultuous acclaim.”
That is, the Puritan Regime under Oliver Cromwell had “imposed a very strict moral code upon the people.” One result: People having too much fun – or any – ended up “reported by friends, neighbors, and their own children.” (Basically, for dancing, play-acting, kissing on the Sabbath… In short, “gaiety of any kind” was severely punished.)
Then Charles II got restored to the throne, and naturally there was some lingering concern. The new administration was concerned about people who weren’t loyal to the new king, because – after all – such people had executed the new king’s father. So in the era that followed, the best way to prove loyalty was “to have fun.” To enjoy yourself, and if you really wanted to prove to the new world order that you were “not now and never have been” a member of the Puritan Party, committing adultery was the most convenient way to prove it. (Said Harry:)
If a man and a woman were on a journey and they suspected the coachman of being a Government agent, they went to all sorts of extremes to prove their “loyalty” and throw the fellow off… And so when the coachman peeked, and saw what was going on back there, he shrugged his shoulders; “Those people are all right, they ain’t no Puritans.”
In other words, after the Restoration of Charles II, “there was a bit of turnabout is fair play.”
One estimate said Charles II had 14 Mistresses, by whom he fathered 11 children. Nell Gwynn was but one, but the only faithful one. According to the site below, Gwynn “met Charles when she was just 17 and was faithful to him not just until his death, but afterward too.”
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There’s more detail in the original post, but in reviewing it I saw that – among other things – I had to upgrade the lead picture. That led me to Scandalous Facts About Nell Gwyn, England’s Royal Mistress, which led me to a story about how she got her nickname.
It seems that in 1681, Gwynn was passing through Oxford in a stylish coach. An anti-Catholic mob “besieged” the coach, mistaking her “for a Catholic rival in the king’s bed.” They started screaming at “the Catholic whore,” at which point Gwyn “popped her head out of the carriage window and assured the mob, ‘Good people, you are mistaken; I am the Protestant whore!'” Whereupon the mob cheered – “lustily?” – and let Gwynn “carry on her way.”
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I did an earlier update in March 2016, “The Protestant Whore,” and other posts from last March. (2015.) That made it March 2016, just about the time Donald Trump was solidifying his hold on Republican voters. So in March 2016, I thought maybe my “adultery – loyalty” post was a bit prescient. As in looking back to 1649, when “a bunch of radical conservatives took over the government, shook things up, and made every Englishman’s life miserable.
Which naturally gave rise to a whole lot of quasi-religious hypocrisy:
One may easily see how desire for office or promotion led to hypocrisy. If sour looks, upturned eyes, nasal twang, speech garnished with Old Testament texts, were means to favor, there were others who could assume them besides those naturally afflicted with such habits.
Back in March 2016 I asked, “Does any of this sound familiar?” And in closing I noted one of Harry Golden’s main points, that history repeats itself in cycles. Which led to the question:
“Which cycle are we in now??”
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The upper image is courtesy Nell Gwynne – Image Results.
Re: Black people in Iowa. According to Iowa Population demographics 2020, 2019, African-Americans make up two percent of Iowa’s population. (Which is 91% white, with “Hispanic or Latino” as the second-largest racial group.) Compare that with Georgia – where I’ve lived for 10 years now – which has a black population of 32.6 percent. (While “Non-Hispanic Whites” make up only 50.1 percent of the population – a bare majority – compared to Iowa’s 91 percent white population.)
Re: Number of “kingly” mistresses. According to the link in the main text, the record for most mistresses goes to King Henry I, who had twenty-two. And the site Henry I of England – Wikipedia listed nine illegitimate sons and 15 possible illegitimate daughters.
The “hypocrisy – sour looks” quote comes from the book by Winston S. Churchill, “The New World.” (Volume Two of a four-volume series, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Chapter XX, “The Lord Protector.” See also Chapter XXII, “The Merry Monarch,” which told of the relief the English felt when Charles II took “a mistress from the people,” Gwynn, and further that the King’s example “spread far and wide,” demonstrating a “sense of relief from the tyranny of the Puritans.” (More prescience?)
The lower image is courtesy of McCarthyism – Wikipedia. See also Joseph Nye Welch – shown in the lower image at left – as “head counsel for the United States Army while it was under investigation by Joseph McCarthy’s Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations for Communist activities.” See also – re: history repeating in cycles – Historic recurrence – Wikipedia.
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