HEADLINED “Whore’s who” – the North-East pronunciation of the word may add emphasis – last week’s column talked of great tarts in art.

Among those who appreciated it were Linda Smith, who’d given a lively lecture on the subject, and Harry Watson, in Darlington, who was taken by the reference to Nell Gwynn.

Nell was one of Charles II’s – floozies, Harry calls them, and probably they’ve been called much worse.

The king enjoyed rather a lot – “especially those of the wrong faith, usually Catholic.”

Periodically, it seems, the mob – “there was always a convenient mob about in those days,” says Harry – would throw nasty things at a courtesan’s carriage, on one occasion so greatly alarming Ms Gwynn that she had to plead with her assailants.

“Forbear, good people. I am the Protestant whore.”

Charles, on his death bed, is supposed to have said, “Let not poor Nelly starve”. She didn’t, but died aged 37 from what might best be termed an occupational hazard.

THEN there was Barbara Villiers, said by Linda Smith to be the most promiscuous of the lot – “an absolutely dreadful woman” – but rewarded for lying back and thinking of England by being made Duchess of Cleveland.

Was there, we’d wondered, any connection with the Villiers Streets in Spennymoor and in Hartlepool?

Terry Schofield, in Billingham, thinks not, rather that the streets were named after George Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham and suspected lover of King James I (who endowed the old alma mater in Bishop Auckland, for goodness sake).

None, of course, is quite sure.

Being appointed a Gentleman of the Bedchamber may even have been coincidental.

That the king was in the habit of calling Villiers his “sweet child and wife” and that Villiers would sign letters to the monarch “Your most humble slave and dog” may have done little to dampen speculation, however. That Villiers also wrote “I naturally so love your person and adore all your other parts, which are more than one man ever had” was also likely to have caused multiple orgasms among the prurient.

Villiers prospered, at least until being assassinated in the Greyhound pub, in Portsmouth, by a naval officer (and Puritan) who believed Villiers had passed him over for promotion.

He was buried beneath a lavish memorial in Westminster Abbey.

Translated from the Latin, the inscription read “The enigma of the world”.

JOAN Munro points out that there’s also a Villiers Street in Sunderland, the city in which she lives, and believes that the actor James Villiers was also a descendant.

Villiers, who died in 1998, is said to have borne a strong resemblance to Charles II (here we go again), who he played in the television series The Young Churchills. An obituary claimed that he was proud of his aristocratic lineage, and that it could be traced back to the Duke of Rockingham.

They’re probably all related, anyhow.

THEN there was the second Duke, another George Villiers, though that Buckingham seems to have spent much of his time in North Yorkshire, which is much more congenial, and in 1668 set running England’s first hunt, the Bilsdale.

Their founder, says the Bilsdale website, was “a bit of a playboy”, who from his base at Helmsley Castle embarked on a life of “wine, women and sports”.

It’s even said that young Buckingham, a man who embodied the thrill of the chase, was the inspiration behind the nursery rhyme “Georgie, Porgie, pudding and pie, kissed the girls and made them cry.”

He also founded the Sinnington Hunt in 1680, died seven years later from a chill said to have been caught when digging out a fox above Kirkbymoorside.

Still the hunt holds the annual “Duke of Buckingham ball” in his memory, the latest at the Golden Lion, in Northallerton, just a few weeks ago. It’s said to have been “a huge success”.

PERHAPS remembering what they say about an Englishman’s home, the second Duke sold York House, his London house, to “developers” in 1672.

The site covered seven acres, sold for £30,000. The Bishop of Durham’s stately London residence was across the road.

The sale, however, included the condition that streets on the site should be named George, Villiers, Duke, Buckingham and even “Of”.

Villiers Street remains near Charing Cross railway station, though Of Alley, more prosaically, became York Place.

“The burgers of Westminster don’t possess the same wit,” writes a London cabbie on his blog and no matter that probably he means “burghers”.

Near to Villiers Street, Spennymoor also had a Duke Street and a George Street, where Terry Schofield was born. There seems never to have been an Of Alley.