by Robert Laurence
Nobody would expect anything from someone nicknamed 'scum" and
leading British actor Cardonnell 'scum" Goodman (l649-99) provided
nothing. Nicknamed 'scum" since his schooldays, when he was kicked out of
Cambridge, Cardonnell, the son of a clergyman, probably had the most
reprehensible manners of any actor who ever trod the boards. One time he
fatally stabbed a fellow actor in an argument over a shirt the two men
shared - Goodman wanted to wear it out of turn. On another occasion he was
fined for trying to poison the two older sons of his mistress, the
Dutchess of Cleveland, by whom he had a son of his own - apparently to get
the two boys out of the way so that his son could inherit her fortune.
Later he turned highwayman but was soon caught, James II pardoned him and
he returned the royal favor by becoming involved in a plot to kill William
II. Scum Goodman finally fled to Paris, a British syndicate paying the
dirty rotten scoundrel an annual pension to remain there for the rest of
his life.