Charles II and his spaniels: what the diaries of Pepys and Evelyn record

This page follows the dogs of Charles II of England through the words of people who saw them. It starts with the small lap spaniels that English writers described before he was born. It then reads what the diarists Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn wrote about his dogs, and what a newspaper printed when one of them went missing in 1660. It ends with how his spaniels, after his death, became the two breeds that carry his name today. For the other rulers and animals in this series, start at the royal pets in history guide.

Lap spaniels before Charles II

Small spaniels were at home in English houses long before the Stuart kings. In 1576 a London printer published Abraham Fleming's English translation of a Latin book on English dogs by John Caius, a doctor of medicine at the University of Cambridge. Caius gave a chapter to "the delicate, neate, and pretty kind of dogges called the Spaniel gentle, or the comforter".

Caius wrote that these dogs were small and fine, and that ladies carried them in their arms, kept them in their rooms, took them to bed and fed them at the table. He did not approve. He also recorded a belief of his time: that a small dog held against the body could ease an upset stomach with its warmth, and that the illness passed from the owner into the dog.

The Royal Kennel Club says toy spaniels can be traced back to at least the 1500s and were most likely bred down in size from sporting spaniels, the dogs that found and flushed birds for hunters. It says Queen Elizabeth I had a "spaniel gentle" as a comforter, and that a spaniel belonging to Mary, Queen of Scots was found hidden in her skirts after she was beheaded. The club says it was at the courts of Charles I and his son Charles II that toy spaniels became well established, most of all among the nobility.

A king without a country

Charles II spent his young life at war and then in exile. The official website of the Royal Family says he was eight years old when the Civil War broke out, and that he was with his father at the Battle of Edgehill before Charles I sent him to safety in France. Charles I was executed in 1649. The Scots crowned the son at Scone on 1 January 1651, but his army lost the Battle of Worcester that September. He escaped to France again and spent the next nine years in exile, until he was invited back to London and restored to his father's throne in 1660.

His return is where the first eyewitness record of his dogs begins.

The dog in the boat at Dover

Samuel Pepys, a naval official, sailed with the fleet that brought Charles home. His diary for 25 May 1660 describes the landing at Dover. The king went ashore in a barge with the two royal dukes, his brothers. Pepys followed in a second boat with a Mr. Mansell, one of the king's footmen, and "a dog that the King loved".

On the way, the dog dirtied the boat. Pepys wrote that this made them laugh, and made him think "that a King and all that belong to him are but just as others are". They reached the shore when the king did, and Pepys watched General Monk receive him on the beach. The diary does not name the dog or its breed.

The king's stolen dog, 1660

Within weeks, the king lost a dog. Henry Wheatley, who edited the Project Gutenberg edition of the diary, quotes an advertisement from the newspaper Mercurius Publicus for 28 June to 5 July 1660, which he says seems to have been written by the king himself:

"We must call upon you again for a Black Dog between a greyhound and a spaniel, no white about him, onely a streak on his brest, and his tayl a little bobbed. It is His Majesties own Dog, and doubtless was stoln, for the dog was not born nor bred in England, and would never forsake His master."

The advertisement goes on to say that the dog was better known at court than the people who stole it, and asks: "Will they never leave robbing his Majesty! Must he not keep a Dog?" It ends with a joke. The dog's place at court, it says, is the only place that nobody asks the king to be given. Wheatley adds that the king's dogs were stolen again and again, and that two more of the king's lost-dog advertisements survive in print.

The historian Stephanie Howard-Smith, writing in History Today, says an earlier offer of a reward for this dog had brought no answer, which is why the king went to the newspaper. She shows that dog theft was a trade in its own right in the 1700s. Lost-dog advertisements became common in British newspapers, and the usual reward was half a guinea.

This black dog is worth a second look. The king described a cross between a greyhound and a spaniel, born outside England. Charles loved dogs of more than one kind, and the small spaniels are only part of the record.

A dog at the council table

The best-known diary line about Charles II's dogs comes from 4 September 1667. Pepys attended the king's council at Whitehall, where it heard a complaint from Alderman Barker about the treatment of his lands by the Council of Ireland. Pepys wrote that all he noticed was "the silliness of the King, playing with his dog all the while, and not minding the business". The American Kennel Club gives the year as 1666, but the entry sits under September 1667 in the diary.

Wheatley's footnote to this entry quotes two lines from the poet Lord Rochester, printed in his poems of 1697:

"His very dog at council board Sits grave and wise as any lord."

The Pepys lines about dogs at Whitehall, and the legend of a law that lets the spaniels go anywhere, are covered in our article on royal dogs in history.

Spaniels in the royal bedchamber

John Evelyn, a second diarist of the time, wrote a long portrait of the king in his diary when Charles died in February 1685. Among the king's habits, Evelyn wrote:

"He took delight in having a number of little spaniels follow him and lie in his bedchamber, where he often suffered the bitches to puppy and give suck, which rendered it very offensive, and indeed made the whole court nasty and stinking."

In plain words: the king let his female dogs give birth and feed their puppies in his bedroom, and Evelyn thought the smell spread through the court. The official Royal Family website says Charles died after a stroke in 1685 with no legitimate children, so the crown passed to his brother James. The American Kennel Club says a group of his spaniels, as many as a dozen, were at his bedside when he died.

After Charles: the four colours

The king's spaniels changed in the centuries after him. The Royal Kennel Club says the first Duke of Marlborough developed the Blenheim spaniel, a rich red and white dog that kept its sporting instincts and could still flush game. It took its name from the duke's house, Blenheim Palace, and the word now names the chestnut and white colour. The Duke of Norfolk kept the Blenheim type too, but developed the black and tan colour. The tricolours were called the Prince Charles, and the ruby, a solid red, was the last colour to appear.

Charles's brother James, Duke of York, also kept dogs. John Evelyn wrote on 23 June 1665 that the duke told him how, during a sea battle, his dog had found the safest place on the whole ship. The American Kennel Club links the black and tan colour to James, who became James II. It repeats a story that James, caught at sea in a storm, shouted "Save the dogs and the Duke of Monmouth!", and it presents this as a report. The club also dates the first recorded ruby toy spaniel to 1875. It tells a story about the Blenheim spot, a thumb-shaped chestnut mark on top of the head: the Duchess of Marlborough, waiting for news of the Battle of Blenheim in 1704, is said to have pressed her thumb on the head of a pregnant spaniel, and every puppy was born with the mark. The club calls this folklore.

From one royal spaniel to two breeds

The Royal Kennel Club says the toy spaniels kept the longer muzzle and flatter skull of sporting spaniels until the late 1800s. Then short faces became the fashion, as seen in the Pug and the Pekingese, and breeders chose dogs with domed skulls and short muzzles. The American Kennel Club adds that the Japanese Chin was crossed into British toy spaniels in this period.

Breeders who preferred the older, longer-nosed type brought it back in the 1920s under the name Cavalier, and the Royal Kennel Club recognised the King Charles and the Cavalier as separate breeds in 1945. The royal dogs article linked above tells that story.

The Royal Kennel Club says the Cavalier grew popular from the 1960s, and the King Charles fell in numbers as a result. It lists the King Charles as a vulnerable native breed, which means fewer than 300 puppies are registered with the club each year. Its figures show 84 King Charles puppies registered in 2016 and 56 in 2025. For a spaniel at a later royal court, read about Dash in Queen Victoria and her dogs.

Where this fits in the royal pets series

Charles II is the earliest ruler in this series whose dogs we can follow through the diaries of people who stood beside them. In the 1700s, Frederick the Great's Italian greyhounds left a record in the king's own letters. For a royal line of dogs in the 1900s, read about Elizabeth II's corgis. The court portraits of Charles I and Charles II belong to the European royal portraits guide.

The cover of this page shows a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel from the studio examples, painted in the Indian Royalty style. You can see more finished portraits in the gallery, or start your own in the portrait studio with one clear photo of up to 5 MB and any of the 15 royal styles.