Excerpt from Romances of the Peerage IN the galaxy of fair women who in turn enslaved the Merry Monarch's heart, Barbara Villiers shines splendid and supreme. Others had their day of triumph, when for a time her supremacy seemed in danger; but, from Hortense Mancini, the most radiantly beautiful of Mazarin's quintette of lovely nieces, to bewitching Nell Gwynne, the orange wench of Drury Lane, Barbara Villiers saw all her rivals relinquish their sc'eptres, While she, who was the first to receive Charles's caresses on the day of his restoration, remained to his last conscious hour his uncrowned Queen. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.