#jane needham

[artschoolglasses]

Jane Needham, Studio of Sir Peter Lely, 1660-65

[nellygwyn]

Fabulous women of the Restoration era

Jane Needham, Mrs. Myddleton (1645-1692)

Sir. Peter Lely chose Jane Needham as one of the muses in his collection of Windsor Beauties, a selection of the most beautiful women at the court of King Charles II. And her portrait is easily one of the most enigmatic and alluring in the entire collection. She has a beauty that Thomas Seccomb later called “a soft and slightly torpid type of blonde loveliness, with voluptuous figure, full lips, auburn hair, and dark hazel eyes.” Indeed, in other portraits of Jane, her almond-shaped eyes and faint smirk are undoubtedly erotic. Her pictures were circulated and admired throughout Europe and further: even Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire owned a miniature of the lovely lady. But what’s the true story behind her pretty face? 

Jane was born in 1645 in Lambeth, to Sir. Robert Needham and his wife. She was soon joined by a younger sister, Eleanor, who later became a long-term mistress and mother of many of the children of the doomed Duke of Monmouth. Jane was noted for being particularly exquisite even from a young age. When she was 15, she married Charles Myddleton. Charles, at first, appears to have doted on his beautiful young bride and even though they were particularly strapped for cash in the early years of their marriage, the couple resided in several townhouses and Charles even gave Jane her own retreat in Greenwich. A year after their marriage, in 1661, Jane gave birth to a daughter, named for her mother but always known as “Jenny.” Soon, however, Jane’s beauty caught the attention of many men at court and Jane was seemingly caught up in the attention.

She was pursued by many: Phillibert de Gramont, Edmund Waller, Charles de Saint-Evremond, Viscount Ranelagh, the Earl of Sunderland, the Duke of Buckingham (who frequently invited her to his home in a desperate attempt to seduce her), the King himself and the King’s brother, as well as many others. But it is believed she was particularly choosy about who she took to her bed and we only know of a handful of men who had success with Jane: namely, Ralph Montagu, John Wilmot (the Earl of Rochester) and Lawrence “Lawry” Hyde. The men she slighted usually took the rejection badly: de Gramont decided to backtrack on his previous admiration and praise for Jane and declared she was actually a bore who could and would induce all her lovers into a deep sleep. The historian, Antonia Fraser, has argued that Jane’s life was “founded on masculine support in return for sexual favours" but the affairs were also a way for men to pay tribute to her beauty.  As a result, she features in a lot of poetry, usually referred to as simply “the divine Mrs. Myddleton.” And she was not just living by her beauty, either. Jane was a particularly talented amateur artist as well as, during the reign of Charles II’s brother and successor, James II, employed by the secret service. She was also extremely ambitious for her daughter, Jenny and in 1678, planned to have King Charles fall in love with her. It was fruitless, however, as Charles only seemed to be truly interested in the mother and not the daughter.

Jane effectively drops off the records in her later years. She was certainly still a beauty but was perhaps tired of lovemaking and every man’s desperate endeavour to have her. She died a year after her husband and is buried with him in Lambeth Church, the church she was baptised and married in. 

Perhaps her most lasting epitaph comes from the rejected de Gramont, who told his friends: “I showered her with letters and love-tokens but la belle Myddleton always denied me a place in her bed.”

Click on the links to see portraits of and information on the included persons in Jane’s story!

[thestuartkings]

Portrait of Jane Needham Mrs Myddleton 1675c.

By Henri Gascar

Jane Needham was the eldest daughter of Sir Robert Needham and his second wife, Jane, daughter and heir of Sir William Cockayne. She was married at the age of fourteen, on 18 October 1660 at St Mary''s, Lambeth, as his second wife, to a man some ten years older than herself, Charles Myddelton.

Decribed as ‘all white and golden’ beauty and with ‘airs of indolent languor’. Samuel Pepys was so struck by her ‘very great beauty’ that he several times in his Diary singles her out for notice.

At Court her striking beauty was the only necessary qualification for advancement, where she had numerous admirers. When only eighteen years old she had been chosen by the Duke of York for inclusion in Sir Peter Lely’s paintings of the Court beauties that hung in his apartments at Windsor. Two years later she was again painted by Lely for inclusion in the portraits of beauties commissioned by Robert Spencer 2nd Earl of Sunderland for Althorp. Portraits of her were clearly prized; one was owned by Cosimo III Grand Duke of Tuscany, as well as by Colonel William Russell and by a ‘Lord Astley’ identified as Jacob 3rd Lord Astley of Reading. Despite her marriage her known lovers at Court included Ralph Montagu later created Duke of Montagu and Laurence Hyde. She never became the lover of the King, but in the summer of 1678 she made a concerted attempt to replace Louise de Kerouaille, the King’s unpopular French mistress, with her daughter Jenny. The plan failed.