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Robert Sidney, as it is believed that Lucy had a liaison with Robert during Charles’s absence.
    When Charles returned to The Hague he settled back into his relationship with Lucy, who bore their son James in 1649. Charles seemingly had no doubt that the child was his and later bestowed upon him the title of 1st Duke of Monmouth. Lucy and Charles remained a couple until he left for Jersey (Lucy may have accompanied him for part of that time) and then to Scotland in 1650. Alone in Holland, Lucy turned to other men to provide for her. To one of them she bore a daughter, Mary. When Charles finally returned he did not acknowledge the child as his and made it clear to Lucy that their relationship was truly at an end. There are sources that claim there were several intimate meetings between them after this, one even as late as 1656.
    Lucy’s life gradually deteriorated from then on. Charles did not give in to her constant demands for money and he tried hard to get custody of his son, by means fair or foul. At one point Charles tried to take the boy by force. A kidnapping was successful in 1658 and James was taken from his mother to Paris. Lucy, desperate to get her son back, followed him to France, but before she could find him she was taken ill and died. As she lay dying she told John Cosin, who would later become Bishop of Durham, that she was the legal wife of Charles II. This is a claim that Lucy had made several times throughout her life but there had never been any evidence to support it. Indeed, if there had been any truth in it then Lucy would have been in danger of committing bigamy – as it is known that she seriously contemplated marriage with Sir Henry de Vic. Given that Charles was ready to approve the match, it is unlikely that he and Lucy had ever been officially married.
    The supporters of Charles’s brother James, in their bid to see him succeed to the English throne, did everything they could to discredit James of Monmouth in order to lessen his claim to it. They even blackened his mother’s name, claiming she was of low parentage and of no consequence. A memoir written by a member of the court of James II records that Lucy Walter died of syphilis, which may well have been a deliberate slur contrived to discredit her.
    After Charles ended his affair with Lucy she did take on more lovers and it is possible that with such a promiscuous lifestyle she may have contracted venereal disease. One of her lovers was Lord Theobald Taffe, an Anglo-Irishman who was one of the exiled prince’s main confidantes. Taffe was in all probability the father of Mary Walter, Lucy’s daughter. It was Taffe to whom Charles appealed to ask that he urge discretion on Lucy in the aftermath of the couple’s failed relationship. Taffe was to tell Lucy to leave The Hague, as it was too public and was in neither her interest nor Charles’s that she was in such close proximity to him. Taffe was also entrusted with the duty to arrange a monetary allowance to keep Lucy and the children. Unfortunately Lucy had been the mistress of an exiled prince, not an established king, and money was never in great abundance or handed out regularly enough to keep her from accepting protection from other lovers.
    A couple of years before her death Lucy took her two children back home to England. Whatever thought was behind the action, the result was that she was arrested by Cromwell. While imprisoned she was referred to both as Charles’s wife and his mistress. The former title held no weight: it was not believed and she was released and allowed to return to Holland.
    The diarist John Evelyn refers to Lucy Walters as a Mrs Barlow. He describes her as being brown and beautiful but insipid in nature. Later, after Charles II’s death, Evelyn called her a strumpet, although he still remembered she had been beautiful. He claims Lucy was of low birth and that in his opinion there was certainly doubt as to the true paternity of her son James Monmouth. Pepys