Minting an Icon: The Birth of Britannia - Episode 19

At the Restoration court of Charles II, few figures were more talked about than Frances Stuart. Celebrated for her beauty and closely watched by the King and his circle, she navigated a world where visibility brought both opportunity and risk.

In 1667, following the Peace of Breda, her image was used for something quite unexpected. On a medal by Jan Rottiers, Frances appears as Britannia—an enduring symbol of Britain’s identity. As Samuel Pepys noted at the time, her likeness was unmistakable.

From there, the image moved onto coinage, placing Britannia and France, into everyday circulation. Over time, the connection to the woman herself was lost, and the figure became timeless.

In this episode, we look at the story behind Britannia: the court, the image, and the woman at its centre.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Welcome to Spink Inside Here, the podcast where history is valued. My name is Gregory Edmund. I'm head of the numismatics department here in London. And today I'm delighted to be joined by Marlo Avadon, a last-year PhD student at the University of Cambridge, who has a specialism in the royal women of 17th century England, and of course their material culture. So please, Marlo, introduce yourself.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Thank you so much for having me. I'm really um excited to be here and to talk about some of my work with you and some of these amazing women, like you said, um who lived and breathed and sort of had these vibrant lives in the late 17th century. So my work sort of broadly looks at fashion and elite femininity in the late 17th century. So their clothing and accessories and how the consumption habits of these women links to sort of wider ideas about luxury and changing patterns of consumption and how that sort of led to a the collection of a feminine identity. Um so yeah, these are just some of the amazing women that I get to look at, and I'm really excited to share them with you today.

SPEAKER_03 1:06

Fantastic. Well, I suppose it's it's probably good to give an overview of what we're talking about when we think about the 17th century. Um, because it is a period of great change in England. We've gone from the start of the century when we have, of course, the death of the great Queen Elizabeth I, of course, of Spanish Armada fame, um, and we end it with the Stuarts and William III and and and Mary II as Stuart herself, who sadly dies in 1694, but passes on the torch to the Orange Revolution, the bloodless revolution. And so we go from a period of relative civility under the Tudors to the migration under the Stuarts. But of course, it's not that simple because we have in the middle an English Civil War, we have a period of uh what is known as the interregnum, which is the period that Oliver Cromwell ditches royalty and comes in with these puritanical ideas of no Christmas, no fun, exactly. Very much, very much an austere approach to religion, an austere approach to English life. Um but we're talking about that that select period immediately afterwards when we returned to what we call the restoration.

SPEAKER_01 2:06

So please right after. So Cromwell, um, when he died and his son had a very brief uh tenure as the Lord Protector that wasn't particularly well received, and people were hankering for a bit of a change. So Charles II, who spent most of his sort of late teens and his entire twenties on the continent, was brought back over and basically given back the throne. So he arrived in 1660 with sort of pomp and circumstance, and there was this period of trying to redefine the court and what it meant to be royal and looking back to the past, but also trying to innovate and move forward. And that meant looking to what was happening on the continent, what was happening in France, but also this sense of a distinct Englishness and what it meant to have an English monarch and an English court. And women were a huge part of that, not only as consumers, which is what I sort of look at in my wider work, but as social figures, as actresses increasingly, is this is restoration period, is when you first see women on the stage, witty pretty Nell. Um, and women also had quite important social and political roles as well, both within the household, but at court, they were really important. And Charles II actually respected women quite a bit, um, despite the many mistresses he had, um, which we'll be talking about in the context of Francis here. But I think that these women, when you look at the tutors, and then when you look slightly later into the 18th century, women are talked about quite a bit and their roles. Um, but they kind of get lost a bit in this period in the Restoration. So Charles II reigned from 1660 to 1685, and then his brother James, Duke of York, had a brief, tumultuous period as king before, as you mentioned in 1688, William and Mary sailed over from the Netherlands. But most of the stuff that I think I find really interesting happens in that earlier 15-year period. Sure. Um where women were really trying to carve out a position for themselves at court and with various difficulties and sort of the eyes of the entire nation sort of fixed upon them. So Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:22

Fascinating. Well, I well, I'm sure we're gonna delve into this, and I'm sure our listeners are eager to learn more about the women to which you refer. Um, of course, as I'm listening to you, I'm thinking obviously Elizabeth I effectively smashes the glass ceiling for women at the start of the of the 17th century because she proves not only her capabilities as a a monarch in her own right, she doesn't need a consort famously she doesn't marry. Um and so, to an extent, what do you feel like uh her role has played in the magnification of women or the respect towards women in a very male-dominated world? When you look at parliament, it's m entirely male-dominated. When you look at court, obviously men are the typical decision makers. How much do you think that that role model actually affected the people the women we're going to talk about and allowed them to be sort of the the ears behind the throne or the eyes behind the throne or people that had, you know, as ladies in waiting more influence than perhaps we give them credit for?

SPEAKER_01 5:18

Yeah, that's a really interesting question. I I think it's a hard thing to negotiate because you don't want to be overly anachronistic. And I think there's a tendency to, as much as I'm sitting here and I'm contradicting myself to a degree, give um too much credit to some of the women. There was also a tremendous amount of anxiety surrounding women's roles. And Elizabeth was queen in her own right, and even Queen Consorts had a lot of negotiation and a struggle for power. And one of the ways in which they were able to arbitrate that power and that sort of cultural prestige was through consumption and display. So it wasn't necessarily overt politics. They weren't commanding the Navy, for example, but they wielded a tremendous amount of power behind the scenes, the way in which they engaged and interacted with one another, the choices in the clothing that they wore and the way that they presented themselves and the people that they allowed into their private domestic spaces. Um, this is sort of the birth of the salon in France, but also the dressing room culture and the toilet and the idea of having people in these intimate spaces and restricting access. And those are the sort of informal venues where women at court, regardless of if they were the queen consort or a mistress or um a member of the aristocracy, could arbitrate and sort of negotiate their place in society. And I think obviously Elizabeth I, well, not obviously, but Elizabeth I had a really um deep connection to some of her ladies in waiting. And some of that carries over into the restoration, but you also see a tremendous amount of tension at times between some of these women and Catherine of Braganza, who was Charles II's queen, was sort of put in a very difficult position from the start of her reign, where she arrived in um from Portugal and was a foreign Catholic princess being brought into England. And Samuel Peeps and John Evelyn both in their diaries describe her foreign dress and he her foreign Portuguese women that she brought with her. And there's been a lot of work by historians trying to sort of rehabilitate her image and show actually that she adapted very quickly. But one of the sort of chief obstacles that she had to overcome, particularly early on when she sort of assumed um the mantle of Queen Consort, were Charles' mistresses, um of which there were several. At this point early on in his reign, sort of the premier mistress was Barbara Villiers, um, Lady Castlemain, who Charles had begun seeing prior to the restoration. Um and they already had had an illegitimate child together. And she was uh quite a fierce and capable woman in her own right. Um, and there was a lot of tension right off the bat when Charles tried to put her into Kathana Braganza's household, which created sort of further um tension between them. But then Frances um comes onto the scene shortly thereafter and disrupts that dynamic as well. So there's a sort of cascading series of events where women were competing against one another, but also functioning and operating in very close proximity to one another. And it creates some very almost modern, soapy drama at times. Um but also shows a lot of humanity and a lot of quite modern anxieties. And I think that's something that in my work I've always been very keen to dive into is anxiety and the sort of pressures and emotions that some of these women faced in trying to navigate this society and navigate this very, very high pressure environment of the court where you had eyes on you all the time. And I think Frances Stewart, um, when she came from court as a teenager, um, which we'll talk about, I'm sure, is really uh exemplifies that tension and the way in which women had a lot of power and a lot of authority and a lot of agency, even, but also were subject to a lot of sexualization and peer pressure and financial straits in ways that I think are probably quite relatable to young women now navigating sort of intense, high pressure, potentially political or social cultural sort of landscapes and venues.

SPEAKER_03 10:06

Fantastic. I mean, well, there are so many which ways we could take this discussion. Um, but I've thought as I was struck as I was listening to you, I'm thinking, um, you're absolutely right, in s in in so many ways, uh, with the shaft in the glass ceiling that Elizabeth I obviously made for women into the 17th century. Actually, the antithesis to that is the fact that with the bloodless revolution of 1688, yes, they invite Mary Stuart, Mary II, to be Queen, but she can only do that because William is accepted as her consort as king at the same time, and so it feels like there is still that element of control around the dynamic of women even at the very upper echelons of society. Um, but when we talk about the Duchess of Richmond, Frances Stewart, who we'll be focusing on uh more specifically, I'm thinking about the period and the subtext to why she develops into this particular cultural icon. And I suppose it's in in the same way today there is so much about um the overproduction and overconsumption of physical and material culture. And right at the onset of Charles II's reign, there is a an explosion of royalist propaganda, as you'd expect, at the re-establishment of monarchy, to celebrate the fact we've done away with those nasty Puritans, that nasty 10-year period. Um, and right down to the coins, which literally rewrite history and obscure that 11-year period of the Commonwealth, through to the buttons and buckles and royalist propaganda to celebrate the marriage of Catherine of Braganza and Charles II in 1662. Everything is done as a concerted effort to visualize women within the space, within royalty, as a normalised message. And to an extent, Elizabeth I normalised it 50 years earlier. I'm sure those that would have been using m English money would have seen images of Queen Elizabeth I well after her demise. Um and so by the time we get to the 1660s, surprisingly, there is there is a large amount of visual evidence of women in the very senior levels of society. So I suppose with that subtext, that probably leads us on quite nicely to the impact specifically of Frances and and how she came to be such a cultural phenomenon in the 1670s. So can you tell us a bit more about that?

SPEAKER_01 12:19

Yeah, so Frances Stewart is a really interesting case study in that she comes to court very young. Her family are distant relations of the Stuarts on the Scottish side and sort of occupy this position as professional courters, where they're not necessarily titled in their own right, but they've operated in proximity to the court um for generations. So Francis was in France um serving Henrietta Maria, Charles' mother, um, who was at the French court, and following um the marriage of Charles and Catherine of Braganza and Henrietta Maria returning to England, Francis accompanied her. And at the time she was a teenager, she was about 13, 14 years old when she came over and very quickly developed this reputation as a court beauty, um, which is something that I think to our sort of modern ears, you don't look at a 13-year-old and go, Wow, that's the most beautiful woman in this sea of beautiful women. But when you think about in pop culture, people like Brooke Shields, who was a teenager in the 80s when she was put on this sort of pedestal in her Calvin Klein ad and things like that. And Frances, to me, occupied a very similar position in a very different context. But she appeared and took on the role as a maid of honor, which were very poorly paid positions for unmarried women, often who occupied this level of being a professional courter, even amongst the gentry, where you didn't necessarily have a tremendous amount of money in your own right and you received a very small salary, but you would be paid a dowry or sort of your marriage portion by the crown and the treasury after you were wed. So you come to court essentially to stand there and be pretty as an ornament for the court. Um, and it was a really tumultuous role because you attracted tremendous amounts of male attention. And Francis immediately attracted the attention of the king himself, which is a bit of a difficult position to be in as a young, unmarried woman, because how do you refuse the king? And on top of that, Francis then immediately found a rival in Charles II's mistress, Barbara Villiers. There's these amazing portraits that I actually wrote my undergrad dissertation on, going back several years now, um, by Peter Leely, who is the preeminent court portraitist at the time, called the Windsor Beauties, which depict 10 of sort of the most prominent women at the court. And Barbara Villiers and Frances Stewart are painted in this series. Um and Frances is depicted as Diana, um, so the virginal goddess of the hunt, and she's in this amazing yellow dress and she holds a bow, and you could see how young she is, which is something I find really striking about the painting itself and the way in which Lily sort of renders her. But on the flip side of that, you have Barbara, who is painted as Minerva, and this big plumed headdress and this very regal persona. And in sort of the mythological context that they sort of pulled these images from, there was a sort of almost maternal relationship between Minerva and Diana, where she protected Diana's chastity and virtue. And I always read into those images as a sort of tongue-in-cheek reference to people in the know of this role that these two women occupy. That really does translate into practice. Samuel Peeps, in his diary, wrote about it at length, um, where he would describe the two women in various circumstances together, and Barbara sort of assuming this role as a friend and protector, potentially as a way of limiting Francis' access to the king, or rather the king's access to her. Um, they're the particularly uh interesting anecdote where Charles II sort of barges into Francis's chambers to find her in bed with Barbara. Not clear what was happening, but they were together at that point. So there's this very clear sense of negotiating place and space and access. Um, there was also a mock wedding that they staged uh between the two women where Barbara portrayed the groom and Francis the bride. So there's some very interesting undertones that sort of go beneath the surface surface, excuse me, of Frances' life and her sort of early arrival at court, all of which sort of predates when she is used as the figure of Britannia in 1667, um which is in some ways, I think, the pinnacle of her success at court and uh immediately precedes one of the sort of unfortunate instances in her life, which was her marriage and sort of subsequent fall from grace temporarily at court. So she in 1668, I want to say, 1667.

SPEAKER_03 18:02

Around the time of the Peace of Breta or Around the Peace of Bretta.

SPEAKER_01 18:04

So um oh well, for the medal, depends on uh if we're talking about her medal or her marriage, but in her marriage, just I guess to finish her biography, she had realized very quickly, and this is something that Samuel Peeps or John Evelyn writes about quite explicitly in their diary, that the only way Frances realized that she could avoid the king's attention because she's been putting this off now for several years, was to get married. Yeah, very well, I think there's different sources would would say different things about how successful she was at that. Generally speaking, people say that she never officially performed as the king's mistress, um, at least not until after she was married. But this was one of those really interesting loopholes, per se, in 17th century society of if you were an unmarried woman, that would destroy your reputation to become a mistress. But if you had a husband, it still wasn't necessarily acceptable. But these things could be arbitrated and worked around to a certain degree. I almost want to say the rather derogatory modern term hall pass, but that kind of feels like importantly, you see it with Barbara Villier, from Barbara Villiers um Lady Castlemane, she had a husband that Charles II paid amply um to make sure he sort of kept his distance for a bit and allowed them to have this affair, um, which was public knowledge. Everyone knew about it. But her being married was a way of sort of legitimizing not only the illegitimate children that she then had with the king, um, which Charles actually acknowledged as his own, um, which was uncommon sort of at the time. Um, but one of the reasons why I say that Charles actually was quite respectful towards women within the context of the late 17th century, and that he did acknowledge his ill illegitimate children um and seemed to really dote on them and actually really genuinely care for them, um, which is nice, especially since he never had any legitimate children. Catherine or Braganza never had um children.

SPEAKER_03 20:20

But so to summarize in brief terms, I suppose, um the period is one of raucous promiscuity, certainly very distant and alien from what we would consider acceptable norms nowadays, um certainly the ages being involved, but also clearly a sign of the power that women had in the role of influencing the great and good as then was of society. Um so I suppose you've touched on the Windsor Beauties, which is a beautiful segue into where we're going with, and you mentioned the imagery of Britannia. Um how was it that Francis herself came to be the model behind which we visualize Britannia in 17th century Britain?

SPEAKER_01 21:05

Yeah, it's it's a really interesting one because there's not a lot of extant documentation about the process itself. But in 1667, Charles II achieved peace in one of these many Anglo-Dutch naval wars that would ensue over the course of the period. And to commemorate this, he had a medal commissioned uh to celebrate the Peace of Breda. And on one side of the medal, it depicts Charles in um a sort of Roman garb. So he has, he's not wearing his big periwig. He has short hair and he's wearing a garland, um, a laurel wreath. And on the reverse side, you have the figure of Britannia seated looking out over the navy, um, very poised. And that figure is Francis Stewart. And one of the reasons we know that is because Samuel Pep, in his diary, described going to See the medal where he describes Miss Stewart's face in miniature on this medal and describes her as being very pretty. Um, so whether this was an attempt to woo her or whether it was simply by virtue of the fact that she held this preeminent position as the most beautiful woman at court at the time, she was selected to immortalize the figure of Britannia, which I always find really poignant considering immediately afterwards she would fall from grace. Um, she had gotten the king's permission to marry, then proceeded to elope with her intended husband without the king's permission, which really, really bothered him. And she was barred from court where she then immediately caught smallpox. And for someone who is considered the most beautiful woman at court, smallpox could be the most disastrous thing that could happen to you, assuming you survive. You could be scarred permanently. And there was contemporary writing that was arbitrating and trying to figure out how disfigured she would become. Samuel Pete referred to, and I'm paraphrasing here, as the greatest uncertainty of beauty that there ever was, which is a pretty grand declaration. And Charles immediately went to go see her and visit her and sort of reconcile. And he apparently commented that she was not much marked by the smallpox. And that sort of period of illness and not only her potential death, but also her potential disfigurement sort of brought her back into his good graces and back into sort of the circle of court. But the piece of Breda, metal, that would eventually get put onto um copper farthings from the 1670s was sort of a marker of Frances at the peak of her beauty and the peak of her celebrity before this sort of cascading series of almost tragedies and misfortunes that befell her.

SPEAKER_03 24:11

My goodness. It sounds almost like a high school rom-com or this story of love, labors lost, and then it turns out into being cast out of court, and then, oh my goodness, love brings them back together. But she's not even 20 years of age at this point, is she?

SPEAKER_01 24:26

No, she is a teenager and in her late teens by this point, but she's about 14 when she arrived at court, around 15 when she's painted for the Windsor Beauties, give or take. So she was eight, 17, 18 years old, probably around 1667 when this happened.

SPEAKER_03 24:43

So she's thrust into the national spotlight at the time of, you know, a great celebration in the sense that England and Britain had secured New York as then became, rather than New Amsterdam, as was under the Dutch. Um and so I suppose with the medal, of course, it has a very much more closed audience that it's going to. It's to celebrate the naval victories it's presented to, generally speaking, serving men, politicians at the time. As you touched upon there, there is this great jump in 1672. Britannia becomes immortalised, and therefore Frances Stuart becomes immortalised on the coinage that everyone in England was going to see. So there is a huge amount of pressure on the visual demonstration of her likeness, her face, her body, as this allegorical figure of what was to represent Britain. Um I'm struck by thinking, you know, there must be modern parallels to that very form where you know we can think of today, and I'm sure listeners are thinking at this very moment, there are people that we can instantly recognise just by the shapes of their bodies, just by the design of makeup they wear. And of course you're talking about smallpox, the most disfiguring of all at that time. Um I d I don't know. Do you have you have you come across any sort of parallels today that would represent a similar sort of figure to France Stuart in 1672 and that of Britannia?

SPEAKER_01 26:04

Yeah, I mean, I think it's interesting because it depends on the cultural context in which you are looking at things. We live in a world full of influencers and where celebrity is far more readily available and things are self-monitored and self-curated. So I think rather than focusing on, I guess, the immediate context of what it means to be a celebrity now, I think looking back a couple of decades is really where you begin to see similar figures who emerge who embody the cultural, even political, and certainly the beauty standards of a particular period. I mentioned earlier Brooke Shields as a particular example from the 80s, as someone who rose to prominence very, very young and became the most beautiful woman in the world, this symbol of Western beauty that was sort of circulated and her image and likeness was disseminated around. And you could also think of, in a much more modern context, someone like Kim Kardashian. You mentioned bodies. You think of Kim Kardashian's sort of champagne photo shoot, sure, um, which broke the internet back in whenever it happened a decade ago, probably at this point. And there are these women who become so recognizable that they come to define a decade, a generation, a period. In terms of that then defining nationhood, I think is really interesting because the culture and the world that we live in has become so much more broad and diverse. And I think, particularly when you're talking about a figure like Britannia, there's a lot of connotations that come with that in a British context and things that are coming to the forefront and the of discussion in the 17th century. So who would be Britannia now, I think, is a very difficult sort of position. Who embodies that role, this mm almost mythic figure that comes to define the entire nation? Because I think in a lot of ways, anyone can be seen as Britannia. I mean, and media has become so broad and also so homogenized in a way, too, where finding media that is particular or visual sources and mediums that are pr distinctly English or distinctly British is, I think, very difficult now. It's all become sort of amalgamated as quote-unquote Western culture as a whole, or I think really more specifically, American and English culture has sort of fused together. But I mean, some could probably say the people from Maiden Chelsea. I mean, you never know. I think there's people like that who are so synonymous with British identity. Um, if you were looking to the court, I think, or sort of the royal family, someone like Kate.

SPEAKER_02 29:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:09

Someone, or I mean, depending on who you ask once upon a time, back when Harry and Megan were more active. And I think that's the flip side of it, as how things do and don't, and how these are arbitrated now in these relationships.

SPEAKER_03 29:25

That's a really interesting point. And I suppose it's it's useful to sort of give a slightly potted history about who was Britannia, why was she personified, and and unsurprisingly, much like the depiction of the Windsor Beauties in this classical Roman goddess-like deity form, um, Britannia is very much symbolic of that. She comes from the classical world, she evolves in the second century during the reign of Emperor Hadrian, of Hadrian's Wall fame up in the north of the of the country, um, and she gets depicted on coins in the 120s, she gets re-depicted on coins under Antoninus Pius. So, for anyone who can conjure up images of Gladiator, at least the first movie, the old Emperor at the beginning, he is responsible for sort of um re-establishing and reinventing Britannia as this seated, seated, beautiful woman, representative of the British Isles, this new jewel in the crown of the Roman Empire, at the very far-flung reaches of it. But it's interesting, even in the second century, she's depicted with a shield. And so this idea of a militaristic woman, a strong woman representative of the British people, in a sort of a Bouddhist-style vibe, very interesting that the Romans capture that and embody that. And even though they're subjugating this island and they're subjugating its peoples, they want to represent those peoples in the form of a strong woman. And so I suspect that in a similar way to what we've been discussing rather in the 17th century, you do like the idea of strong women because you know the fact that you have access to their beauty, they're stunning, they're stunning beauty, and the fact that they are the you know, the givers of life, the next generation, the heirs, the most important thing for the royal cause, and something that of course Charles II failed to achieve, hence the the the throne passing to his brother, and then obviously on to Mary Stuart and William III. The beauty and power of women is pronounced at this point. And so to have the combination of a male ruler, but actually the representation of a female powerful woman to represent Britain, that's a really interesting topic. Um and you picked up on it with Samuel Peeps. I think that's the idea that even he was sort of what we might describe as leching to an extent, how much.

SPEAKER_01 31:39

I think that is an understatement when you're sometimes talking about Peeps. I think he was very preoccupied with women in general, but also on the women at court, who he had very little direct relationship with.

SPEAKER_03 32:02

But I suppose from our point of view, you know, Britannia starts as a woman we recognise, Frances Stewart, Duchess of Richmond, but she fades into obscurity rather sadly, because Britannia becomes Britannia. And for us today, and for those thinking about it, looking at change in their pockets, um, Britannia existed on some form of British currency in circulation from 1672 until 2008. And it's only in the last two decades that we haven't had her on a circulating British coin. Um, she does appear in other forms on commemorative issues, but actually Frances Stewart, in a sense, is touching us today from 300 odd years ago.

SPEAKER_01 32:41

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 32:42

Um and I think that you know it's probably good to show some of the examples by which she's changed. But I wonder whether your your studies have have sort of identified why is she often seen this sort of militaristic Minerva-like garb rather than some of the more softer, beautiful forms of you know, classical Roman deities. Do you have anything? Any guide on that?

SPEAKER_01 33:03

It's interesting because it touches on this fundamental hypocrisy, I almost would ha dare to say, in the way in which people in the late 17th century conceived of and articulated gender and femininity in particular. Because as you mentioned earlier, this idea of producing heirs as something that was profoundly important. The womanhood of a woman was something that was held in great sort of importance. But at the same time, particularly at court or within day-to-day life, you did see women occupying these more nebulous and often understated roles. And I think perhaps it is hearkening back to the idea of Elizabeth and having a powerful militaristic woman. And as you point out, there's a sort of history that goes back even further. I hesitate to say that the idea of Britannia in the late 17th century is designed as a way to elevate women, because I think that's perhaps giving far too much credit where credit is due. But what I do think it is is perhaps inadvertently a reflection of a period where women's access and authority was steadily increasing. And I think throughout history, not necessarily even in an English context, you do have women who are engaging in militaristic pursuits. I mean, you hear stories of women during the English Civil Wars, not only sort of camp followers, but noble women, women who royalist women who sort of held down the fort, protected their families, and they weren't necessarily fighting, but they were holding their own. They were sort of doing their duty to the country and to the cause that they believed in. And I think there's something about this maternal, fierce, but yet distinctly feminine figure that really speaks to what it means to be a nation and the idea of prosperity and regeneration and growth, and obviously the link in the context of Britannia in 1667 specifically to sort of the regeneration of the Navy, which was something that had obviously been held in such high regard in the previous century, and Charles II being able to stage this relatively successful um naval campaign with against the Dutch, who had a very good navy of their own, is something to be celebrated. And in the same way that boats are often feminized, I think exclusively, but I'm not a naval historian, so I could not really tell you. But I think there is something to be said for why certain objects and why certain figures are often feminized and given um feminized names. And I think that there's probably a bunch of different reasons for it. But I think for me and from my gut feelings, more so than any definitive evidence that I've sort of stumbled across. While every individual family and every individual woman was held in different standards and had different degrees of access and autonomy and agency, and that's at the center of my PhD in many ways, there was a general understanding that women were becoming more important in society at large. And that elicited equal amounts of anxiety. I mean, in my research, sort of more broadly, I look at um a lot of popular print and sort of vitriol surrounding luxury and women's frivolous immorality and sort of superfluous spending. Royal mistresses were subject to considerable amounts of scrutiny, particularly if they were Catholic. It was an area where you didn't have total control, but I suppose just used the figure of Britannia and for it to become this sort of enduring symbol. It paints England as somewhere domestic, something protect that is protective and protecting, and a sort of militarized but also a is it a softening.

SPEAKER_03 37:48

I think it's softening of the sharp edges of the male role model.

SPEAKER_01 37:52

I think that's exactly it. It's painting a militarized figure in a palatable guise, perhaps. Um and I think that's you, I mean, you draw a really astute comparison to Minerva. And I think mythology is such an interesting way of exploring how women were perceived throughout history. There's an amazing book by Natalie Haynes that sort of talks about that. But the way in which goddesses and mythical figures have been understood and portrayed at different points throughout history says a lot about the period in which those stories were being told and sort of reinterpreted. And I think Britannia in the 17th century, on top of the sort of immediate context of the piece of Breda, also is reflecting a time of expansion and rejuvenation. It's in many ways the birth of English colonialism, which people often associate Britannia in a very 19th-century context as a figure of empire. But you see, as you mentioned, you mentioned New Amsterdam into New York and sort of not only just expansion in the Atlantic world, but in the East as well. When Charles II married Catherine of Braganza as part of her marriage settlement and her dowry, he acquired Bombay and Tanger. And that provided an opportunity for the East India Company to really establish a foothold and expand. And with that came new commodities and new sort of modes of appearance and dress. And there's a lot of discussion about Orientalism and when that becomes a term that can be used. But you see increasingly the adoption of Indian gowns. So sort of Samuel Peeps is painted in one at the National Portrait Gallery, but also tea. And then you have chocolate coming in from the Atlantic world and all of these foreign commodities and the rebirth of a nation and the the the sort of cornucopia of new resources and things that are available. And I think again, that can be read as quite prosperous in that sense of prosperity and rejuvenation through expansion and through subjugation and sort of militarized exploits and pursuits. That in many ways links to the idea of a female Britannia, someone beautiful but also powerful, and someone who can bring wealth and riches and prosperity to sort of the nation.

SPEAKER_03 40:36

As then was. I mean, that that that really is a fascinating insight. And I suppose I'm here thinking, in a sense, Britannia started as Frances Stuart, but she's taken on a life of her own, her own mythology that means whatever it means to people at their time in history. And I suppose, you know, we're we're thinking about England and Britain in isolation here, but actually the idea of a female figurehead is something that is so synonymous with most Western cultures. You think of Marianne for France, you think of Lady Liberty for America, and in a sense, it's that tangible connection to our Roman and Greek classical forebears and their deities, bleeding through into a modern system of what it is to be the Western world, the enlightened world. Um, and so that's why we see, you know, she represents the the long arm of the law, the stiff crutch, so to speak, with the military side, but within that there's that soft beauty of you know, she is carrying the expectations, the weight of the nation forward. Um, and so I suppose that's why it's interesting when Britannia is this permanent feature on the very lowest coins in society. That can't be anything but a deliberate attempt to get the you know, the great unwashed, however you want to view them, the the the um the masses of the English populace to see what it is to be British, what it is to be part of this society. Um and that continues as a constant through the pennies, the halfpennies, the farthings of the 17th, the 18th, the nineteenth century. And so perhaps it's quite interesting at the the neoclassical revival in the 19th century up to the eighteen forties with the neo-gothic movement, that actually when you have a female monarch again with Queen Victoria, Britannia's not necessarily chosen for her coins outside of these pennies and farthings, but the Princess Una from Edmund Spencer's Fairy Queen is used. So there seems to be an evolution with that as well. And so I wonder whether you see, even within your period of study, um, expansion within the way that Britannia is modelled, because there seems to be this constant feeling of her seated with either a British lion, which is of course was a very novel concept, as you're mentioning there, with Africa at the time. But she seems to be seated or at rest. And I wonder, is that some sort of reflection of the feminine form to an extent, or some sort of cultural resonance with that, perhaps?

SPEAKER_01 42:58

Yeah, that's a really interesting question. I think I've yet to come across, and maybe someone can write in and tell me if I'm wrong, any other um contemporary depictions of a sort of known courtier woman as Britannia. So I think Francis Seward is very much an exemplar in certain ways, but in regards to though her physical portrayal, there's something about her sort of casual elegance that really taps into these very restoration-specific beauty standards at the time that come through in the portraiture, but also in day-to-day fashion of this sort of sense of densibil, this casual elegance and undress and all the portraits of the period. As you mentioned, there's this sense of a classicized, timeless element to it and this homogenized form of beauty. Um, particularly Peter Lely gets accused of this quite a bit. Samuel Peeps once described all of his portraits as being good, but not like. He sort of painted. Everyone with a veryone's a critic. Everyone, people it and you can see it to a certain degree. I I often push back when people bash Lily. I'm I'm a bit of a Lily defender. People often look at him as sort of being a pale imitation of Van Dyke. But there is this very clear semblance of beauty and femininity that comes through in his portraits, and I think bleeds into the way in which Britannia is depicted. Even though it's particularly on the coin, so small, you really can't make out much by way of detail. But what you can see is someone draped in fabric in this very classical guise, reclined at ease. And that is in many ways the ethos of the restoration. And some of the unfair criticism. I mean, I think going back to the very beginning of our discussion, we when we were sort of talking about the restoration as a whole and the period of debauchery and licentiousness. And certainly it is, I mean, there's the description of Charles II as the merry monarch or the king who brought back partying.

SPEAKER_02 45:11

But of course.

SPEAKER_01 45:12

It's uh the classic. But I think that that perhaps undersells not only him, um, but also his court and the very, very difficult situation that he and his courtiers sort of inherited. And how really, as particularly within that first decade of his reign, he faced burden after struggle after nightmare from plague in 1665, and the entire court had to pick up and move to Oxford, and then 1666, you have the Great Fire of London, and then you have this Anglo-Dutch war that sort of nearly bankrupt the nation at various points. And there was a lot of undue scrutiny, and I think people pointed to the Restoration Court and this culture of classical revival and frivolity and excess and consumption and Charles II's love of women as something that, in direct contrast to Cromwell and this very puritanical protectorate, which there's actually a lot of evidence that kind of suggests that Cromwell wasn't nearly as uh puritanical as he wanted people to think. He was quite the consumer himself. He his court was in many ways as vibrant and sort of lush as Charles II, who came back to England with pretty much no money. He was more or less um in rags, in the context in which any king can really be in rags. But there's a lot of uh documentation of him basically pleading for money from various European monarchs and talking about his own embarrassment about how poorly presented he was as this sort of king in exile. But I think when you contextualize that period and that idea of beauty within the context of a period of political turbulence, but also cultural revival and then the sort of period that follows where there was more political turmoil, it's easy to then focus in on those 15 years when Charles was king as being debaucherous and sort of sexually perverse, even. But and Samuel Peeps, unfortunately. And I say this as someone who has published on Peeps and has a lot of thoughts on Peeps and has a lot of empathy for him, but really hasn't helped that narrative very much in the way that he writes about women in his diary. And since that's for most people their sort of introductory source to the 17th century, it can be a bit problematic. But I guess to bring it back to Britannia, to sort of wrap to detangentify myself, I think what you see with particularly that initial depiction and the choice of Frances Stewart, but also the choice in depicting her as a reclined seated figure, sort of in a classical style, but not quite to the same degree of sort of contemporary beautification as you see in Lily portraits. But it's evoking the spirit of an age that is somehow looking back to the past, not only just the classical past, but also sort of the immediate preceding past of Charles I's reign in the period before the Civil Wars, but also looking to the future, looking towards what comes next, and perhaps even picking such a young woman to portray Britannia in that way is really embodies that forward-thinking ideology. And Barbara Villiers, despite the fact she was only in her 20s, so I don't think she's not the sort of old crone that oftentimes some of the contemporary sources make her out to be. But to pick someone young and sort of coming into her own as the model for a nation coming into its own and a woman who encapsulate these classical beauty standards, I think really emphasizes the multifaceted meanings and influences that shaped this specific moment to bring Britannia back into the fold and to use Francis specifically. And ultimately, why I find it so fascinating that even though she was the figure of Britannia for so many years, that story has become so disconnected from her biography and her life. Um, because coins are coins and they're so ubiquitous and they pass through so many hands. And so many people have looked on these pictures and looked at these this figure of Britannia, but would have had no idea that this was ever modeled off of a real person, let alone someone so fascinating and someone who had such a rich life of her own. And I think that's really compelling, um, particularly then if you think about it in a very material culture way, um, as I'm often inclined to do, of the sort of handling of these objects as coins as something that is passes through so many hands, something that's constantly felt and rubbed and tucked away. Sure. And to a degree to which that itself also kind of mirrors into Francis' own life. And even though she seemingly sort of was able to keep the king at bay, her early life and her early time at court was defined by being sexualized and put on this pedestal by various male figures and coveted, and whether there's something to be said about how using her as Britannia and how the loss of her identity while she continued to be touched almost. Um which is a little depressing, but I think raises can be occasionally.

SPEAKER_03 51:20

Um but that's the beauty of doing podcasts like these, because we're not hiding anything, we're telling history as it is to learn and and and you know, occasionally that it's shocking, but occasionally it's wonderful. Um so I suppose, you know, if we were summarising Britannia as was, you know, in the modern parlance, it's giving tradition but modernity. Yeah. I would say. Um and I suppose to an extent that's what's fascinating about Britannia as she as she moves into the 20th century, again, outside your subject area, but I'm sure you can indulge me for a moment, um, is that there's this view to evolve her from a seated figure to a standing figure. And I think it's really interesting as the dawn of the 20th century. Not only does this happen in Britain with Britannia, she goes from sitting down to standing up, and there's a wonderful example we've got on show here from the reign of Edward VII at the dawn of the 20th century, but the same thing happens to Lady Liberty in America, and there's a famous case showing the sense and sensibilities of what is right and wrong with depicting uh female imagery on coins, which famously in 1916 they produced uh a silver quarter, again a coin that should be in circulation to the many. Um, but famously their first issue showed a bare breast of the Standing Liberty Quarter, and within a year they had to use chain mail to cover it up because there was such an outcry at this idea of the objectifying and the sexualizing of a symbol of the country. Um, and I think also of the the standing forms for Marianne in France, um for Bella Italia in Italy, um, all of these images of literally them rising up and standing up and representing, and I perhaps think that's an embodiment of you know the suffrage movement, the the the end of the Chartist movement, the move towards a modern society within which women are accepted at the same standard as men. They stand up just like any other man. Um, and so, in a sense, I would like to think that Francis, even though her likeness has changed and the view of Britannia has gone from slightly more voluptuous and curvaceous to represent, you know, the womanhood, the fact that she's giving life to the next generation, to perhaps today being a much more slight and you know, not quite fat jab kind of standard, but perhaps reflective of the fact that times have changed and what beauty looks like has changed is also reflected in her. Um and the fact that we've come full circle today to you know the coins that are produced of Britannia in the 21st century, under the reign of the late Queen, and of course continuing to his Majesty the King's reign, with her depictions as you know, this Boudican chariot warrior, um, pictures of her visage much more closely. And as you touched on, what represents Britannia? What what would her bone structure be? Would she be the traditional Western woman, or would she be more reflective of a multicultural society? And I recall even in the last couple of years there being debate about that reflection of having a slightly different jawline, slightly more reflective of, you know, the great nature of Indian, Pakistani, African heritage, Chinese heritage that has come and and enriched British society. And so I would like to think that if I were to summarize Francis Stewart's impact to Britannia and Britannia as a result, you end up with it being a constant and permanent reflection of society at large and as wonderful a critique as any periodical, any pamphlet, any Peeps letter about what society viewed women as, but also subtly an acknowledgement that no matter what, women had this very prominent role being the ultimate figurehead of their culture. And I think that's just a wonderful concept, even if it has some very ropey offshoots along the way.

SPEAKER_01 55:05

Absolutely. I think that's completely correct. I think it's often really hard. I mentioned earlier this idea of anachronism and something that historians are often sort of forced to grapple with is projecting modern emotions and modern sentiments onto historical thoughts and actions and behaviors. And it's a difficult thing to moderate because I think, particularly when you're dealing with histories that are emotional and histories that are quite biographic. And when those parallels and the cultural resonances to today are so evident in the source material, you immediately want to think of it through a 21st century lens. But I think you're completely correct in that there are these undercurrents of even when society and sort of polemic and popular print was terrified to a certain degree of women and what they were doing, both behind the scenes at court, um, for better or worse, but also just in society at large. They, if they were cuckolding their husbands or spending too much money on new imported luxuries, those very anxieties are a reflection of their power within a society to elicit concern and to be subject to scrutiny is a testament to what they were actually doing. And I think it's often very difficult to track day-to-day life, particularly the further back you go and in an early modern context. And you're often left with one side of a narrative, and that side is often the side that is publicly promoted and perhaps paints a very different picture of what was really happening. And I think Britannia can be seen both in a 17th century context, but perhaps more broadly and in two today as a reflection of I was about to make a really bad pun, but I'll do it anyway. Two sides of the same coin, I guess, in some ways, in something that elicited anxiety elicits anxiety and concern and debate and scrutiny, but also is a representation of what it means to be a woman and the power that women hold both in the past and today, and how that is not only just perceived by men, but how that functions in society at large, even in ways that we're not necessarily constantly cognizant of.

SPEAKER_03 57:41

That's fascinating. Um as I'm listening to you talk, I'm there's a fascinating connection that I have to this period through this distant relations of mine. But um, I'm thinking of the 1670s and of course your wonderful uh father thing that you've got here. Um and of course, copper is not particularly native uh to the United Kingdom, and actually at this time a lot of it was imported from the Baltic, from Sweden. Um, and one of the most influential voices in that import process was uh a wonderfully um talented uh female businesswoman, Lady Moresco, um, who was connected with the Le Tuliers, the French uh Huguenots that had been obviously evicted from France with the Catholic Protestant battles there. Um and she was instrumental um in the importation of copper that would be used in the production of these coins. A woman empowering another woman in order to produce coins. I love that. Um and she's a distant relation of mine. So for me, this is this is a this is a personal thing for me that I work with these coins and I see them every day. But actually to know that a relative was instrumental in that I think is is phenomenal. And I suppose really the only question I'm left with is obviously it is abundantly obvious you'd have loved to have met Francis Stewart if you could. I think it would be having a one-on-one interview with her would be fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 58:53

The dream especially there's no manuscript evidence really from her, it's which is the bane of my existence. But yeah.

SPEAKER_03 59:00

But that makes the joys of your study so much more enriching when you do find that nuggets of kernel of information, just like it is with the coin world. Um, but I suppose, you know, we we touched on it earlier, but you know, if you were to design or redesign or reimagine Britannia for tomorrow, because in a sense, despite being this very political figure, she has this apolitical role because she can be whatever she wants to whomever she is is is appealing to. You know, is that is there anyone that we can sort of think on in modern society or modern Western culture that would represent that in a good way? You know, is it someone the likes of Greta Thunberg? Is it someone who actually embodies, you know, the the movement towards climate change and being, you know, the child of tomorrow representing that voice? Or is it someone who's much more, you know, sort of, you know, difficult woman kind of mentality? Is it someone who's much more, you know, along the lines of Georgia Maloney, she's very much more family-oriented? Or is she a combination of everyone? Where where do we think, you know, Britannia could be seen tomorrow if she were to be reborn?

SPEAKER_01 59:58

I don't think there is any one Britannia. I think in a society, not to say that the past was not equally politically astute, because there's so much evidence to suggest that they were, um, and that everyday people were very attuned to what was happening at court and abroad and et cetera. But I don't think there's any one woman that can encapsulate what it means to be Britannia. And if you were to re mint Britannia on a coin now, I don't think you could necessarily have a singular image. I think there are so many different initiatives and forms of feminism and climate and sort of human rights and also culture. I think that's equally important too, is to think about women who embody modern theater. Some way you could put Judy Dent as Britannia, I think. You could put someone like Greta Thunberg, you can put there's so many different women who represent so much about Western society and the strides it has made and also the continued work that needs to be done. And as a reminder and as a way of looking forward, I think they're all Britannia, perhaps in their own way, um, or a symbol of not only just beauty, but what it means to be a woman and what do women represent in 2026? What what what do women mean right now? And I don't think there's a singular answer because there are so many pathways open to women, and that doesn't necessarily mean there isn't considerable amounts of work that still need to be done. But I think that you can't p isolate a singular person. I think Britannia could be anyone. They could make it a mirror. That would be an interesting coin.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:55

Well, I supp- I suppose that that's the perfect embodiment of her. She she gives voice to the voiceless despite not having a voice herself. She is but an image. Um and she embodies whatever people depict of her. Um I suppose, yeah, it's very difficult to define who who do we recognize in society simply by their image. There are very few people that can achieve that because the world is so drowned out by by noise, by communication. So do you think uh Britannia then is more trad wife or oh wow. What do we what do we think?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:28

Well, I think it's that that's so hard because also too, we live in a culture that is constantly evolving and trend cycles now move so much quicker than they ever did. So what is in vogue now in six months might be something completely different.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:42

And I think, particularly when you're thinking about different forms of feminism and the ideal womanhood and this sense of sort of girl boss versus homemaker and trad wife.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:56

I I don't think there's any one that will ever be more or less the norm or the standard. So I think in the traditional sense of Britannia as a quasi-militaristic figure, perhaps the girl boss, but I think you could also have both. I think this is again to the root of the issue is why one or the other. Why can't you be maternal and protective and feminine, but also be someone who is willing to fight for what you believe in and stand up for yourself and take on public positions and roles as advocates and cultural icons and performers, etc. So I don't think you need to necessarily choose one or the other.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:44

And I suppose it will be the biggest plot development since The Simpsons. But if you know Britannia was depicted with children, why not? No. But why could she not be depicted? Why could she not be depicted sitting at a computer or giving a lecture?

SPEAKER_01 1:03:57

She could be scrolling on TikTok.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:59

I'm sure there'll be plenty of people doing that as well now as they listen to us.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:02

Yeah, I think there's so many. You could be doing anything. I mean, the modern Britannia could be anyone doing anything. I think we don't have chariots. But even back in the 17th century, she was a classical classicized figure. So the sort of amalgamation of the classical past, but also modernity as we've talked about is something that makes it an interesting thing to render, I think, in the same way that we always look to the we look to the classical past ourselves and are constantly pulling from it and sort of I don't think it would be an interesting merger, I suppose.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:38

He's hoping that beige or greige doesn't become the trend of of Britannia of tomorrow.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:43

No, no millennial grey on on the next Britannia.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:47

Oh, excellent. Well, I mean, I I would hate to I would hate to bring this fascinating discussion to it then, but um I'm minded to think that I'm sure there are people getting on with their day, whatever they're doing, and desperate to learn more. Um so you know, is is there a part two to Britannia? I suppose there is, because she is what anyone wants her to be. Exactly. Um, she is both nothing and everything. Absolutely. Um and whilst we spend our time very much enjoying the likeness of Britannia, um, you know where to find us. You can catch us on all your regular streaming platforms, whether it's on YouTube. But uh until the next time, thank you very much for listening.